I asked Paul for help which I was loath to do after our conversation in Munich. He always acted as though he was my keeper or my manager. His tone was frequently condescending and overtly paternalistic. He never seems to understand, he is my subordinate.
I first met him when he was a lowly Gestapo officer cowering in a barn days before Warsaw fell. Paul and a colleague had been ambushed by Polish nationalists outside Katowice and he had somehow escaped and made his way towards the camp where I was working. I was in the middle of an evening walk when I heard spastic coughing from behind a wall. I was young and fit then and I easily clambered over the wall. As I landed I saw a man in a filthy dark suit. I instinctively edged backwards. I studied the man: a pathetic, scrawny creature begging for food.
“Who are you?” I demanded. I must confess to being a trifle scared by the man in front of me. Desperate people can be very dangerous to interact with.
“I am German too,” the man responded, I anticipated reedy sounds to emanate from his bloated, cracked lips but there was a rich timbre to his voice, “I am starving. Please sir, do you have anything that I can eat?”
“Who are you?” I repeated, keeping my voice level. The wretched man couldn’t answer and keeled over onto his knees and then sideways on to the floor. If it was a theatrical scam that he was performing he was very convincing. However, I could tell the man was genuine so I told him I had food back at my home.
I walked the short distance back to my quarters outside the camp with the man hanging off my right arm. Luckily the route home was deserted and no one saw us. I heated some of my leftover Pichelsteiner stew from the night before and gave it to the man. I warned him that he should eat very slowly. The man ignored my instructions and after a few mouthfuls he ran off to the bathroom to vomit.
He returned and apologised. The man adhered to my advice and ate the remaining stew over the course of the next hour. I ate and said nothing but simply observed him. His skin was drawn over his skull like it was two sizes too small for his head. He bore an uncanny resemblance to a lot of the inmates at the camp. In his desperation, I held him completely in my power.
The man offered to wash up but I rejected his gesture and told him to rest. After I completed the dishwashing the man was asleep in a chair. I let him sleep and in the morning I cooked some eggs and toast for us both. I telephoned into work to say I was unable to come in today and I spent the day talking to my visitor.
I learned his name was Paul von Reichardt and he was a scion of Bavarian royalty. His family had pledged allegiance and significant sums of money to the Nazis very early in their rise to power and had been well rewarded. Not only had they kept their ancestral home but Hitler himself had promised them vast tracts of land in the Caucasus after the war.
Paul became a Gestapo officer with a little bit of help from his father and had been operating in Poland. Paul was unable to tell me what he had been doing, whether that was because of official secrecy or due to personal shame I still don’t know. As the Polish uprisings began, Paul and his colleague were caught quite literally napping. They were on a stakeout of a potential high-ranking army turncoat when the two of them fell asleep.
They awoke to the sound of gunfire on the streets of Katowice, their car was being used as cover by gunmen. The gunmen were surprised when the two Germans exited the car beside them and immediately began running away the moment they heard Polish voices. The rebels shot at the two Gestapo agents but missed every shot.
Thus over the next seven days the two men walked as far from the city as they could get. As they woke on the fourth morning, Paul’s colleague decided to head for the German border and Paul headed south. Paul was nearly caught twice that day by roving patrols of Polish militia.
Eventually he arrived in the town of Auschwitz where he finally saw German soldiers. He was so embarrassed by his condition and scared that our boys would shoot him he continued to hide in peoples’ gardens across the city scavenging for food.
I allowed Paul to stay with me as the war ran its course. With the help of a Jewish forger inside the camp, I had new documents made up for Paul and gave him the new surname Beckermann. Dispatches came through that Paul von Reichardt had been killed in Katowice due to documents found in the streets. Paul did not bother to correct them, he had contacted his father who knew the truth.
As the war and my departure drew near Paul surprised me with a gift. In the looting of the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw he had raided the house of an elderly jeweller. Upstairs in the attic, he had discovered a couple of paintings. As he saw the pictures on the wall, the jeweller lost his composure and tried attacking Paul who shot the man in the head. Paul pulled the paintings off the wall, rolled them up and smuggled them back to Bavaria.
Paul arranged for the paintings to be delivered to me and he asked me if I could find out who the artists were. I said I knew a man who could tell us everything about the artworks. Luckily for us both that I did, as it would shape the next four decades of our life.
I moulded Paul in to the man he became and now he has the temerity to speak to me like I am a senile old relative. Short memories breed ingratitude. I’m not surprised. If I have learned anything over my long life it’s that men are weak and predisposed to selfishness and egotism. At times, I think this affliction may have infected me.
Paul suggested that I may need some support so he sent his grandson over from Munich to offer support. Thankfully it wasn’t the idiot boy Horst, who caused all this panic in the first place. Joachim is a strong specimen, not tall but very muscular. A fine example of Bavarian manhood. The two brothers are like chalk and cheese. They remind me of the Hernández boys that aided my South American business ventures. Federico is like Joachim, quiet and resourceful. Sadly Miguel was a mirror image of Horst, a huge liability. Horst inherited his grandfather’s shit-for-brains, Miguel inherited his old man’s drinking problem.
Major Sebastián Hernández was a brave man, a career soldier serving as a close advisor to the Argentinian President Agustín Justo. After President Justo passed away in forty-three, Sebastián became the contact for Odessa agents in Germany. After my arrival in Buenos Aires three years later he became a very good friend to me. He set me up in a house in Quilmes living with his daughter, a pretty little mother-of-one called Gabriela.
Poor Sebastián passed away weeks after we set up a business together in nineteen fifty-three. I was using my adopted name of Alfonso Hermann. At first my little pharmacy struggled for business as I tried to get to grips with the language. My rudimentary Spanish seemed to bear no resemblance to the Rioplatense dialect I would hear in the villas miseria. My only regular customers were German immigrants, none of them aware of what and where I had escaped from.
I ended up caring for Sebastián’s three children after his wife also died in the late fifties. By nineteen-sixty I had opened up a clinical research centre where a lot of major American and German pharmaceutical companies requested my expertise. I named the business after the two boys (their sister Gabriela had moved to Spain a year earlier to marry a naval officer who was surprisingly willing to take on an unmarried mother) and thus Clínica del Hermanos Hernández was founded.
Life was good and I had left the basic flat in Quilmes and moved to a wonderful apartment in Recoleta with a view over the cemetery. The two Hernández boys were exceedingly loyal and honest. Federico was an excellent business companion with a nous for negotiation. Miguel offered little apart from brute force and a pleasing ability to source attractive women who could accompany me to meals and other social events.
I miss those days, living in the high life in Buenos Aires. For a long time I almost felt Argentinian, my Germanness began to peel away. Especially with the two embarrassing governments in the fatherland. East German puppets of the Russian Communist untermenschen and the West German American lapdogs. To be German was to be defined by humiliation and subservience to other powers. By contrast, Argentina was a nation of progress and opportunity. I was successful in bus
iness allied with a home life that would make most Germans jealous.
And all it took was one week and the new life I had single-handedly created, was over.
My cautious nature saved me in Buenos Aires from those two maniacs at the Café Tortoni and their pals who tried and failed to capture me as I fled the city. My new life ruined by nefarious Jewish secret agents. Well, I certainly had the last laugh. It was very sweet to outfox the most cunning, low people in all of the world. It was such a shame that Federico had to lay down his life for me but it proved his true loyalty.
I have grown to believe that I possess an innate sense, an instinct to spot danger. Sometimes I can’t put my finger on it but eventually the realisation strikes and I can evade trouble. This extra sense has stopped me saying the wrong thing, or making bad life decisions and occasionally has handily prevented murderous attacks upon my life.
I remember those final days in la reina del Plata back in nineteen-sixty as clearly as anything that has ever happened in my life. The bustle of the conference hall, the hairless man from Pfizer trying to sell me a new antibiotic they discovered. I stood fascinated, not by his sales pitch, but by his lack of eyebrows. He didn’t look real to me and in the end he walked off ashen-faced when Miguel made a crude remark to him.
The two men escorted me around the hall and at every stand I could feel the eyes of representatives from all the major firms wanting to speak to me. They knew Alfonso Hermann was the most respected medical researcher in all of the Americas. I was curious when I saw a stand next to the big Bauer presentation for a firm called FrancoPharm.
I had never heard of the company but this wasn’t too much of a surprise as a lot of European firms seemed to be coming from nowhere and taking market share. The stall looked very professional and they had the most beautiful girls handing out their marketing paraphernalia. It was Miguel who actually led us over to them to speak to, he was as entranced as I was by the raven haired women.
I saw the two men who were in charge. One was a smartly dressed man with greying hair. He looked clearly like he was the boss. This assumption was confirmed when I examined the other man. The second man was easily two metres tall and in tremendous physical shape. His face was a hard, cracked portrait. He was dressed in a suit but he had the look of a man who was rarely attired in that manner. He was lounging on a table and he stood to attention when I approached. That was a good sign that he was acknowledging my importance.
“Good morning,” I said to them both in German. The two men looked confused. The older man told me that they are French and don’t speak German. I found that strange considering the importance of German firms in the pharmaceutical industry.
We engaged in a stilted conversation in which all I managed to take away was that they were selling exceedingly cheap anaesthetics. Federico asked them a few questions about products and they replied with knowledgeable answers. But there was something about the big man that troubled me. He occasionally would touch the jagged white scar that ran all around one half of his neck.
Somewhere, a bell tingled in my head. Had I met this man before? I could not recall meeting such an imposing monster but the thought continued to eat away at me.
We arranged a meeting with the two men from FrancoPharm. I explained my concerns to the Hernández brothers. Federico was sceptical of my thoughts and the more he talked, I became increasingly convinced that I was imagining things. We worked out that this company could help cut our annual drugs costs by more than thirty per cent, a huge saving for the company. I simply asked the brothers to be mindful that we could be walking into a trap.
A day later, Miguel drove us to the historic centre of the city in his sparkling new Kaiser Carabela. He boasted that simply by owning this car, no woman on either side of the River Plate would be able to resist him. Federico responded with some jokes but I remained silent. A profound sense of foreboding rose in me, my blood felt like it was expanding in my veins as an early warning sign.
Miguel had arranged for a couple of watchers to be sat in the main bar area near the stage which was reassuring. We parked up near to Plaza del Mayo and walked up Avenida de Mayo to the meeting. My disquietude would not be dispelled and I told Federico that I think we should cancel. He squeezed my shoulder and told me that nothing bad will happen to me tonight.
We stepped in to the Café Tortoni and it was very busy. Every table was full and the waiters were weaving their way around the tall brown columns serving drinks to the well-dressed clientele. I had only been here a handful of times. If I wanted to impress a lady companion I would normally take her to Café La Biela. She would usually be won over when I would introduce her to famous racing drivers such as Froilán or Fangio. If she was of a more literary persuasion, I would discreetly point out Borges and Casares arguing by the window seats.
Federico nodded to two men sat underneath a group of portraits. The sight of two burly men in our corner helped ease my nerves somewhat. In a bar so busy it seemed nonsensical that anyone would attempt to do anything crazy in here. But I had heard a few tales about what the Israelis were capable in the last few years. A crazy plan would not necessarily be ruled out.
One of the managers informed me that we were being awaited in the barbers’ area. I walked through the bustling bar until I saw the ‘Peluqueria’ sign. From the fug and the music of the main bar the barbershop doorway was clear yet I could feel my lungs compressing.
I entered knowing something was amiss but not realising that something was the end of my life in Argentina.
The Darkest Valley
Friday, 2 May 1986
Sleep arrived quickly which is no surprise after a day spent crashing vehicles, running away from the police and steaming letters open like a smelly James Bond. I check my watch which states it is seven in the morning. I feel refreshed and jump out of bed for a shower. I hope the postal worker is bearing up after our little incident yesterday.
After a quick breakfast, Gunari and I check out of the hotel and head towards the main train station. Gunari tells me we are hiring a car as it should make border checks a little easier as we head to the Eastern bloc.
We go to the Sixt counter and Gunari arranges the important stuff. After a short wait, we are informed our car is outside the station. It is a pea-green Audi 80 in immaculate condition. I’m impressed and Gunari seems suitably happy.
“Can I drive?” I ask hopefully.
“Yeah OK, can you actually drive?” Gunari responds.
“No,” I say, feeling deflated.
“I’ll drive,”
“Good idea,”
It takes time for us to fight through the rush hour morning traffic but eventually we are out of Munich and soon flying through the green Bavarian countryside. According to the speedometer we are travelling around two hundred kilometres per hour. This is surely the fastest I have ever moved. At this rate we will be in Berlin by midday.
We pass Nuremberg and we hit our first patches of traffic and we are forced to slow to a rather more pedestrian one and forty kilometres per hour. It is strange as it seems much slower now Gunari has eased off on the accelerator even though we are cruising at a very high speed. Gunari is in a world of his own and I can see his tattoo on the arm bearing the letters NURI holding the steering wheel. No time like the present to find out what it means.
“What is Nuri?” I say.
Gunari laughs at this and I can feel myself blushing and hating myself for it.
“Why is it funny?” I say to him crossly, “You’re always looking at that tattoo. What does it mean, is it a French word?”
Gunari continues to chuckle and I briefly contemplate jabbing him in the ear. As I ponder whether to perpetrate this fully deserved assault he looks round at me and smiles.
“Nuri isn’t a thing, she was a person,”
“What? A person, a female person? Who was she?”
“She was someone who Janko and I were both very fond of,”
“You both knew her, how come?”
>
“Because she was your predecessor,”
Once again, Gunari has delivered a knockout one liner. He’s more clinical than Apollo Creed when the mood strikes him. My predecessor? Why have I never even thought about who came before me? Maybe I was arrogant enough to believe that I was the special protégé of these two men.
I dare not ask what happened to her because the potential answers scare me. Does her absence explain the sadness that lingers around Gunari like a faint shroud? Nuri, who was she? I’m not sure how I broach the subject. I choose my usual ‘tactless Ana’ way.
“Were you in love with her?” I ask. Gunari is taken aback by the question.
“What makes you ask that?” he replies.
“You have her name tattooed on your arm, why would you do that otherwise?”
“It’s not about love Ana, it’s about the memories of someone who meant a lot to me,”
“I’m not sure I believe in love,” I say it absent-mindedly but the point stands.
“You love your parents I’m sure,”
“Not that kind of love, the love which make you do stupid things and lose yourself,” I am blabbering and I wish my mouth would close up and not reopen, “You know, the love you see in the films, or when Janko talks about his car,”
“I didn’t realise you were such a romantic, Ana,” Gunari is grinning again and the urge to bop him rises again in my brain.
“Forget I said anything,” I say, turning my head away and allowing the scenery to wash over me. Gunari starts speaking in a very low voice.
“I won’t lie to you Ana, the line of work we do makes that kind of emotion very hard to find. And...and you know there is a phrase from a famous Englishman? He said it is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved somebody at all. It’s not a theory I subscribe to, Ana,”
“Why not?” I’m still staring out of the window, I can’t bring myself to look at Gunari after that statement. Gunari continues driving but I know he isn’t ignoring me but is weighing up his answer. One thing I appreciate about him is the respect he has for the people he speaks to. He would prefer to say nothing rather than lie.
The Wind and the Rain Page 12
