The Dictator

by David Layton

  Seated on the warm, worn upholstery of the taxi, windows down, the wind blowing through his hair, Aaron felt like he was stepping inside someone else’s dream, a rushing, mysterious sequence of images that made little or no sense. He wanted to wake up and end this.

  “You like merengue?” asked the taxi driver.

  “I don’t know,” Aaron answered.

  The driver shrugged. “People come, they want.”

  What Aaron most wanted was to find his daughter, and so he felt that the driver was in a profound way correct. The phone was in his hand, the aluminum body sleek and black and modern, refusing to absorb any of his sweat, and he resisted the impulse to phone her again. He’d spoken to her at the airport and had told her he was here and that he would meet her at the hotel. He’d also spoken to her mother and told her the same. Karl was still missing.

  On Aaron’s phone screen were the words he’d already scrolled through countless times since boarding his flight: The small but growing town of Sosua, 18 miles east of Puerto Plata, is popular with visitors who come for the unusual European atmosphere. Founded by German and Austrian Jewish refugees escaping Nazi Europe, most of the original buildings have given way to modern development, but some of the town’s original charm remains intact, with a Viennese patisserie, a synagogue, and a delightful, if rather busy, beach of fine white sand and calm inviting waters.

  There was something about this descriptive clarity that he hoped might soothe him, make him believe he was merely a tourist in hope of some sun, sand and a spot of history.

  “He has a son. Your half-brother. There’s a bank he sends money to.” His mother’s words came out in staccato bursts of anxiety after he’d told her that Petra and Karl were in the Dominican Republic. “All I know is that your father came to Canada after the war. He never really talked about what happened.”

  Neither had Aaron’s mother.

  Aaron spotted the billboards for hotels and soon the hotels themselves, as the cab turned left off the main road and entered the town, passing restaurants and shops selling sunglasses and fishing expeditions and real estate, until they reached the hotel where Petra was staying. He’d expected to see her waiting for him at the lobby; instead he met the concierge and allowed himself to be branded with a blue wristband, a prerequisite for admittance onto the grounds. Petra’s room was on the second floor. Aaron took the stairs and then walked along a corridor overlooking the swimming pool. He searched for his daughter among the bathers and suntanners, but she wasn’t there.

  He knocked on the door of her room. “It’s me,” he said.

  He was about to knock again, when Petra opened the door, and to his complete surprise, he slapped her in the face. She began to cry, not because of the slap, which wasn’t very hard, but because she’d lost Karl.

  “He’s gone,” she sobbed. “I shouldn’t have brought him here. It was wrong. I’m sorry.”

  “It was a bit stupid,” Aaron whispered gently into his daughter’s ear, after she had buried herself in his arms. He’d last hugged her like this when she learned of the divorce. He hoped that one day they could be close like this without also dealing with some disaster, but for now, he greedily accepted this momentary gift.

  “He wasn’t in the room when I woke up this morning, and I can’t find him anywhere. I’ve looked all over town.”

  They stepped inside, and the door swung closed with a thud, as if the spirit of Karl were getting back at Aaron for the times he’d locked his father inside the apartment. He glanced around the room: two queen beds, generic tropical prints on the wall, shelves, a television, and a balcony with an ashtray full of cigarette butts. He decided not to say anything to his daughter about the smokes.

  “Grandpa is old. How far can he be?” he said, because Petra was still crying.

  “I don’t know.”

  “We’re going to find him,” he reassured her.

  After making enquiries at the front desk—no, no one had seen Señor Kaufmann leave—they started their search on the street. Two girls, not much older than Petra, beckoned him over, and he pulled out his phone to show them a picture of his father.

  “Fucky fucky?” they asked in unison.

  He declined.

  They followed up with a lesser offer. “Sucky sucky?”

  Aaron once again declined and showed them his phone screen.

  “Mi padre,” he said, pointing to a photo of his father. It was of Karl eating turkey on a crisp Thanksgiving day. Now Aaron was talking to two prostitutes in the tropics. “He is lost. Perdido.”

  The girls were sympathetic. They looked at the photo again but didn’t recognize Karl.

  He and Petra walked into nearby hotels and restaurants and shops, offering introductions and showing the picture. No one recognized him, but a few more girls attempted to entice Aaron with a blow job.

  “Prostitution is legal in the Dominican Republic,” Petra helpfully informed him.

  “I’m glad you did your research,” he said, wondering why he’d done so little of it himself over the years.

  There were dozens of hotels with names meant to enchant—Ocean View Hotel, Playa Beach Club, Pension Anneliese, Sosua-by-the-Sea. Situated away from the main drag were streets called Calle David Stern and Calle Dr. Rosen that recalled another aspect of the town’s history.

  They walked down toward the beach, past newly built shopfronts, most of them empty and smelling of damp plaster. Money-changers stood before stacks of multi-hued paintings with native themes of cane-pickers and swooping birds and sunsets. By the time they arrived at the beach, the late afternoon sun had begun its slide into the ocean.

  “I don’t think he’d be here getting a suntan,” Petra said.

  They made a short foray past plastic chairs and topless women and then turned and trudged back up the hill, where, through the open door of a jewellery shop, Aaron spotted a man in his sixties standing behind the counter. They went inside.

  Holding out the photograph, Aaron said, “This man is my father, Karl Kaufmann. I think he might have lived here a long time ago. I’m trying to find him.”

  The jeweller looked not at the photograph but at Aaron, as if in appraisal.

  “Are you Jewish?”

  His directness made Aaron uncomfortable. “Half,” he said.

  “Was your father one of the refugees?”

  “He never spoke about it,” he said, offering an apologetic shrug and wondering who or what he was apologizing for. Who his father was and what his son knew about it seemed none of this man’s business.

  “Yes,” Petra said. “He was a refugee.”

  “Most of them left a long time ago, or they’ve died. I’ve been here since 1976.”

  “My grandfather isn’t dead,” said Petra. “He’s lost.”

  A young couple came into the store and leaned over the display cases, speaking German. Aaron had noticed there were a lot of Germans in Sosua enjoying the “European atmosphere” of Calle Dr. Rosen and apple strudel that their forefathers had inadvertently introduced into this Caribbean island. Either that or they came for the girls. The jeweller took no notice of the young couple.

  “A few of the children are around, but if you want any information, the person to talk to is Mr. Hesse. He came during the war and founded the school here, which they’ve named after him. He’s one of the last refugees living here and knows everything about Sosua.”

  “Where can I find him?”

  “That’s not difficult. He’s at the Britannia Bar every day for happy hour. You can’t miss him. He turned ninety-nine a few weeks back.”

  They thanked the jeweller and made their way toward the Britannia Bar.

  The growl of a plane flying overhead caught Petra’s attention and, looking up, she said, “Isn’t it weird how when you’re on a plane, you just watch a movie or eat or even go to sleep like nothing’s happening?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Sometimes I feel like I’m just flying over, looking down at the world bu
t not really part of it.”

  “We all feel that way.”

  “Do you?”

  “All the time,” Aaron said. “Just because you lost him doesn’t mean that you’re lost as well.”

  “What if we don’t find him?”

  “We’ll find him.”

  Aaron spotted an old man sitting alone at a table who he assumed must be Mr. Hesse. The very fact of his presence there, as promised, was reassuring, as if finally a connective thread had been established. He looked ancient, with an almost translucent skin, the few remaining strands of grey hair slicked back over his sun-spotted scalp. He wore a short-sleeved, collared shirt with a pen in his breast pocket. Age had drained all the colour out of Mr. Hesse, except for his eyes, which were startlingly blue, like two precious stones he might have plucked from the jeweller’s display cabinet. As Mr. Hesse fixed those blue eyes on the photograph, Aaron was startled at the resemblance to his father. These men, he was sure, came from the same past, the same place.

  “We’re looking for this man,” said Aaron. “Have you seen him?”

  Mr. Hesse laughed. “Not for seventy years.”

  “You know who this is?”

  “Of course. People think all old people look alike. You’re his son?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, talk to the other one. Maybe he knows.” Mr. Hesse had reached an age when not getting to the point was an unnecessary expenditure of energy. “Abraham’s probably still there.”

  “Abraham?”

  “Your brother. He’ll be at his shop,” said Mr. Hesse. “Kaufmann’s Rent-a-Car. It’s not far.”

  Not far? For Aaron it might as well have been on the moon. How had his family name become intimately attached to a rental car company? he wondered. What was going on here? He had a brother, another family in a faraway place, but he was now in that place, and the truth was around the corner.

  Mr. Hesse called over the waiter and spoke to him in Spanish. Aaron thought that he might be telling the waiter to take them there, but no, he was ordering another drink.

  They took to the street again. It was past five, and soon the sun would be setting, but still it was insufferably hot. Aaron passed several stores selling bottled water, but he didn’t want to stop, felt like he couldn’t stop, that he was being dragged against his will. So when they reached Kaufmann’s Rent-a-Car and stepped inside, he let his daughter approach the woman behind the desk.

  “We’re looking for Abraham Kaufmann.”

  “Abran is not here. Can I help you?”

  At that moment, Aaron wasn’t sure if anyone might help him, but his daughter must have thought otherwise.

  “Is there any way of reaching him?” Petra blurted out. “It’s urgent.”

  “I’ll phone,” said the woman, dialing his number. She said some words of Spanish into the receiver and then told them to take a seat. “He said to wait.”

  And so they waited, each of them flicking through Spanish magazines, Aaron grateful that his daughter understood he didn’t want to talk, that he didn’t even know how to talk at this precise moment.

  Ten minutes later, an immaculately maintained pickup truck pulled up, and out stepped a man in his late sixties with a plumpish, kindly face, dark skin and salt-and-pepper moustache partially shaded by the peak of a faded blue baseball cap.

  “I’m Abraham Kauffman. How can I help you?” the man asked.

  Aaron offered him the photo of his father and backed away, as if the picture were dangerous.

  “Do you recognize this man?” Aaron asked.

  Abraham Kaufmann took off his baseball cap and wiped his brow with his forearm, revealing, to Aaron’s great surprise, a kippa pinned to his hair with a metal clip.

  “Who is he?” Abraham asked.

  “Does he look familiar?”

  “No.”

  Maybe old men did all look alike, thought Aaron. But of course this man, if he was Karl’s son, probably had no idea what his father looked like.

  “I think this is your father,” said Aaron, and added, “I’m his son.”

  “And I’m his granddaughter,” said Petra.

  “My father left when I was a baby. I don’t remember him. This man is your father?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you might be my brother.” Abraham did not phrase this as a question.

  “Half,” Aaron answered. He was half of everything today. The question really was which half mattered.

  And so there they were, Aaron staring at him for clues, resemblances that might bind them together. The colour of his skin, his fleshy nose and mouth, his dark eyes—all these must come from Abraham’s mother, Aaron assumed. We don’t look at all alike, he thought.

  Just then Petra said, “You look like each other.”

  Her expression of amazement told Aaron she was serious. Perhaps Abraham saw the resemblance too.

  “He’s missing,” said Aaron.

  “It’s my fault,” added Petra.

  “Don’t worry,” Abraham said, “Sosua is a small place. If he’s here, we’ll find him. Come.”

  They got into his truck and drove a short distance back into the heart of the town and then down a series of side streets.

  “This was where I was born.” Abraham parked the truck outside the entrance of a large hotel named The Sea Horse, and at first Aaron and Petra were unsure what he meant. “We sold the land fifteen years ago, and they built this hotel,” he said. “I lived here with my mother and grandfather. They raised me.”

  Abraham walked through the wide, open entrance and spoke to several hotel workers in the lobby, while Petra, seemingly exhausted by everything that had happened since her arrival, plopped down on one of the oversized wicker chairs.

  “They’ve seen him,” he said. “He came here earlier.”

  Petra jumped back to her feet. “What now?”

  “I thought he might come back here,” said Abraham, sounding pleased that he was right. As if Karl’s presence offered some proof of patrimony, he added, “Our father built the house that used to stand here.”

  Whatever the difficulties, however great the distance, Aaron had never shared his father with anyone else. He was the singular offspring, the only one his father chose to ignore. Now there were two of them.

  Aaron’s eyes swept over the large lobby as if attempting to banish the polished floor and lobby desk and overhead fans and manicured ferns, so that he could return to this place as it must have been—a small house with a small lawn, perhaps a garden. He tried to imagine how it was furnished, the number of rooms, the woman his father had shared a life with, or a fraction of a life, but specifics were beyond his imaginative capacities. It certainly wouldn’t have looked like any of the places his father had lived in recently, which, like his last one in Canada, felt stripped down, severe, with no space for wife or children, which was very much the point. Aaron reflected on the apartment he’d recently rented. That too had no proper space for family.

  Aaron brought himself back to the moment. This was the world of “our father,” the man he had spent a lifetime avoiding.

  A group of tourists in bathing suits and with towels strung across their shoulders sauntered past them, speaking German.

  “Follow me,” said Abraham.

  After exiting the hotel, they didn’t return to the truck but instead turned right and walked down the street. Abraham stopped along the way to ask people if they’d seen an old man wandering around looking confused, or so Aaron assumed, since he didn’t speak Spanish. Karl spoke it, and rather fluently, according to Petra, though Aaron had never heard his father utter a single word of the language.

  Abraham led them to a metal gate embossed with a blue Jewish star. Beyond the gate was a stone path leading to a synagogue with front doors painted in the same inviting blue. The synagogue was also a small museum, and it was empty—one had the sense it was most always empty—except for the attendant, who knew Abraham and allowed them to enter without paying the entrance fee. They
walked past walls of black-and-white photographs, the ones closest to the entrance offering familiar images of Jews being loaded into cattle cars but then giving way to something else altogether, of young men and women in their Sunday best alighting from ships, and of plowed fields and men on tractors and horseback, of crowded dining halls, and nurses in starched whites cradling babies in their arms, the caption reading: “A new Jewish community is born.”

  “I was circumcised in this synagogue. My mother and father were with me,” Abraham said, forgetting for a moment that he and Aaron shared the same father.

  “So you’re Jewish?” asked Petra.

  “Yes.”

  “My father is half Jewish,” Petra said.

  “But circumcised,” said Aaron. As far as he knew, it had been done at a hospital. No rabbis and wooden synagogues for him.

  “I’m not really Jewish at all,” Petra said.

  “No one can tell you what you are or aren’t, Petra,” said Aaron.

  That was true—or Aaron hoped it was true—but his words sounded trite. He remembered that it had been a fleeting desire of hers to have a bat mitzvah, probably because she knew the recipient received money and gifts, or so he’d ungenerously thought at the time. Now he wasn’t sure why he’d denied her the pleasure.

  “Did Grandpa want you to be Jewish?” Petra looked at him and then at Abraham.

  “I don’t know what Grandpa wanted,” Aaron answered. Then he too looked at Abraham, as if his half-brother might be able to shed some light on the matter.

  Abraham didn’t respond but stopped in front of a picture of two young men lying on the beach, heads propped on their hands, looking into the camera. The caption read: “Settlers on the beach.” The one on the left wore a crooked smile; the other was Karl.