The Boys From Brazil

by Ira Levin

  In January of 1975 Liebermann went to the United States for what was to have been a two-month speaking tour, a counterclockwise circuit of the eastern half of the country starting and ending in New York City. His lecture bureau had booked seventy-odd engagements for him, some at colleges and universities and the majority in temples and at luncheon meetings of Jewish groups. Before being sent on the tour he was escorted to Philadelphia and put on a television program (along with a health-food expert, an actor, and a woman who had written an erotic novel; but invaluable and hard-to-arrange publicity, Mr. Goldwasser of the bureau assured him).

  On Thursday evening, January 14th, Liebermann spoke at Congregation Knesses Israel in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. A woman who had brought a paperback copy of his book for him to autograph said as he wrote in it that she was from Lenox, not Pittsfield.

  “Lenox?” he asked. “That’s near here?”

  “Seven miles,” she said, smiling. “I’d have come if it were seventy.”

  He smiled and thanked her.

  November 16th: Curry, Jack; Lenox, Massachusetts. He hadn’t brought the list with him but it was there in his head.

  That night, in the guest room of the congregation’s president, he lay awake, listening to snowflakes patting at the windowpanes. Curry. Something with taxes, an assessor or auditor. Killed in a hunting accident, someone’s wild shot. Aimed shot?

  He had checked. Thirteen out of seventeen. Including the three on October 16th. But only seven miles? The bus ride to Worcester wouldn’t take more than two hours, and he didn’t have to be there till dinnertime. Even after dinnertime in a pinch…

  Early the next morning he borrowed his hostess’s car, a big Oldsmobile, and drove to Lenox. Five inches of snow had fallen and more was coming down, but the roads were only thinly covered. Bulldozers pushed snow aside; other machines threw snow away in rushing arches. Incredible; back home everything would have been stopped dead.

  In Lenox he found that no one had admitted shooting Jack Curry. And no, off the record, Police Chief DeGregorio wasn’t sure it had been an accident. The hit had been suspiciously clean; smack through the back of the red hunting cap. That seemed more like good aim than bad luck. But Curry had been dead five or six hours when he had been found, and the area had then been walked over by at least a dozen people; so what could the police have been expected to find? Not even the shell had turned up. They had nosed around for someone with a grudge against Curry, but hadn’t found anyone. He had been a fair and even-handed assessor, a respected and well-liked townsman. Had he belonged to any international group or organization? The Rotary; beyond that, Liebermann would have to ask Mrs. Curry. But DeGregorio didn’t think she’d want to talk much; he heard she was still pretty broken up about it.

  At midmorning Liebermann sat in a small untidy kitchen, sipping weak tea from a chipped mug and feeling miserable because Mrs. Curry was going to cry any minute. Like Emil Döring’s widow, she was in her early forties, but that was the only resemblance: Mrs. Curry was lank and homely, with boyishly chopped brown hair; sharp-shouldered and flat-chested in a faded floral housedress. And grieving. “No one would have wanted to kill him,” she insisted, massaging below her flooding eyes with reddened crack-nailed fingertips. “He was…the finest man on God’s green earth. Strong, and good, and patient, forgiving; he was a…rock, and now—Oh God! I—I’m—” And she cried; took a crumpled paper napkin and pressed it to one streaming eye and the other, laid her forehead on her hand, her sharp elbow on the tabletop; sobbed and shook.

  Liebermann put his tea down and leaned forward helplessly.

  She apologized in her crying.

  “It’s all right,” he said, “it’s all right.” A big help. Seven miles through snow he had come, to start this woman crying. Thirteen out of seventeen wasn’t enough?

  He sat back, sighed, and waited; looked about dispiritedly at the small streaky-yellow kitchen with its dirty dishes and old refrigerator, carton of empty bottles by the back door. Wild Goose Number Fourteen. A fern in a red glass on the windowsill behind the sink, a can of Ajax. A drawing of an airplane, a 747, taped to a cabinet door; pretty good from where he sat. A cereal box on the counter, Cheerios.

  “I’m sorry,” Mrs. Curry said, wiping her nose with the napkin. Her wet hazel eyes looked at Liebermann.

  “I’ll only ask a few questions, Mrs. Curry,” he said. “Did he belong to any international group or organization of men his own age?”

  She shook her head, lowered the napkin. “American groups,” she said. “The Legion, Amvets, Rotary—no, that’s international. The Rotary Club. That’s the only one.”

  “He was a World War Two veteran?”

  She nodded. “The Air Force. He won the D.F.C., the Distinguished Flying Cross.”

  “In Europe?”

  “The Far East.”

  “This one is personal, but I hope you won’t mind. He left his money to you?”

  Cautiously she nodded. “There’s not too much…”

  “Where was he born?”

  “In Berea, Ohio.” She looked beyond him, and with an effortful smile said, “What are you doing out of bed?” He looked around. The Döring boy stood in the doorway. Emil, no, Erich Döring, gaunt and sharp-nosed, his dark hair disordered; in blue-and-white-striped pajamas, barefoot. He scratched his chest, looking curiously at Liebermann.

  Liebermann rose, surprised; said “Guten Morgen” and realized as he said it—and the boy nodded and came into the room—that Emil Döring and Jack Curry had known each other. They must have; how else could the boy be visiting? With growing excitement he turned to Mrs. Curry and asked, “How does this boy come to be here?”

  “He has the flu,” she said. “And there’s no school anyway because of the snow. This is Jack junior. No, don’t come too close, hon. This is Mr. Liebermann from Vienna, in Europe. He’s a famous man. Oh, where are your slippers, Jack? What do you want?”

  “A glass of grapefruit juice,” the boy said. In perfect English. An accent like Kennedy’s.

  Mrs. Curry stood up. “Honest to Pete,” she said, “you’re going to outgrow them before you ever wear them! And with the flu!” She went to the refrigerator.

  The boy looked at Liebermann with Erich Döring’s deep blue eyes. “What are you famous for?” he asked.

  “He hunts for Nazis. He was on Mike Douglas last week.”

  “Es ist doch ganz phantastisch!” Liebermann said. “Do you know that you have a twin? An exactly-like-you boy who lives in Germany, in a town there called Gladbeck!”

  “Exactly like me?” The boy looked skeptical.

  “Exactly! I never before saw such a…resembling. Only twin brothers could be so much the same!”

  “Jack, you get back in bed now,” Mrs. Curry said, standing by the refrigerator with a juice carton in her hand, smiling. “I’ll bring it in.”

  “Wait a minute,” the boy said.

  “Now!” she said sharply. “You’ll get worse instead of better, standing around that way, no robe, no slippers; go on.” She smiled again. “Say good-by and go.”

  “Jesus H. Christ,” the boy said. “Good-by!” He stalked from the room.

  “You watch your tongue!” Mrs. Curry looked angrily after him, and at Liebermann, and turned to a cabinet and yanked its door open. “I wish that he paid the doctor bills,” she said; “then he’d think twice.” She pulled out a glass.

  Liebermann said, “It’s amazing! I thought he was the boy in Germany visiting you! Even the voice is the same, the look in the eyes, the moving…”

  “Everyone has a double,” Mrs. Curry said, pouring a careful stream of grapefruit juice into the green glass. “Mine is in Ohio, a girl Big Jack knew before we met.” She put the carton down and turned, holding the filled glass. “Well,” she said, smiling, “I don’t like to be inhospitable, but you can see I’ve got an awful lot here that needs doing. Plus having Jack at home. I’m sure nobody shot Big Jack on purpose. It was an accident. He didn’t have an
enemy in the world.”

  Liebermann blinked, and nodded, and reached for his coat on the chairback.

  Astounding, such a sameness. Peas in a pod.

  And even more astounding when, on top of the sameness of their gaunt faces and skeptical attitudes, you put the sameness of sixty-five-year-old fathers who were civil servants, dead by violence within a month of each other. And the sameness of their mothers’ age, forty-one or -two. How could so much sameness be?

  The wheel pulled toward the right; he straightened it, peering through the wiper’s fast flickings. Concentrate on the driving!

  It couldn’t be only coincidence, it was too much. But what else could it be? Was it possible that Mrs. Curry of Lenox (who praised her dead husband’s forgiveness) and Frau Döring of Gladbeck (no model of faithfulness, it seemed) had both had affairs with the same gaunt sharp-nosed man nine months before their sons were born? Even in that unlikely event (a Lufthansa pilot commuting between Essen and Boston!), the boys wouldn’t be twins. And that’s what they were, absolutely identical.

  Twins…

  Mengele’s main interest. The subject of his Auschwitz experiments.

  So?

  The white-haired professor at Heidelberg: “Not one of the suggestions made so far has recognized Dr. Mengele’s presence in the problem.”

  Yes, but these boys weren’t twins; they only looked like twins.

  He wrestled with it in the bus to Worcester.

  It had to be a coincidence. Everyone had a double, as Mrs. Curry had said so unconcernedly; and though he doubted the statement’s truth, he had to admit he’d seen plenty of look-alikes in his lifetime: a Bormann, two Eichmanns, half a dozen others. (But look-alikes, not look-the-sames; and why had she poured the grapefruit juice so carefully? Had she been very concerned, and afraid a shaking hand might betray her? And then the quick kicking-him-out, suddenly busy. Dear God, could the wives be involved? But how? Why?)

  The snow had stopped, the sun shone. Massachusetts swung past—dazzlingly white hills and houses.

  Mengele’s obsession with twins. Every account of that subhuman scum mentioned it: the autopsies on slaughtered twins to find genetic reasons for their slight differences, the attempts to work changes on living twins…

  Now listen, Liebermann, you’re going a little bit overboard. More than two months ago you saw Erich Döring. For less than five minutes. So now you see a boy who’s the same type—with a strong resemblance, granted—and in your head you’re doing a little mixing and matching, and presto: identical twins, and Mengele at Auschwitz. The whole thing is that two men out of seventeen happened to have sons who look alike. So what’s so astounding?

  But what if it’s more than two? What if it’s three?

  You see. Overboard. Why not imagine quadruplets while you’re at it?

  The widow in Trittau had given Klaus the eye, and offered him more. In her sixties? Maybe. But probably younger. Forty-one? Forty-two?

  In Worcester he asked his hostess, a Mrs. Labowitz, if he could make an overseas call. “I’ll pay you back, of course.”

  “Mr. Liebermann, please! You’re a guest in our home; it’s your telephone!”

  He didn’t argue. The place was a mansion practically.

  It was five-fifteen. Eleven-fifteen in Europe.

  The operator reported no answer at Klaus’s number. Liebermann asked her to try again in half an hour, hung up; thought for a moment, and got her back. Turning the pages of his address book, he gave her Gabriel Piwowar’s number in Stockholm and Abe Goldschmidt’s in Odense.

  A call came for him just as he was sitting down to dinner with four Labowitzes and five guests. He apologized and took it in the library.

  Goldschmidt. They spoke in German.

  “What is it? More men for me to check?”

  “No, it’s the same two. Did they have sons about thirteen years old?”

  “The one in Bramminge did. Horve. Okking in Copenhagen had two daughters in their thirties.”

  “How old is Horve’s widow?”

  “Young. I was surprised. Let me see. A little bit younger than Natalie. Forty-two, say.”

  “Did you see the boy?”

  “He was at school. Should I have spoken to him?”

  “No, I just wanted to know what he looks like.”

  “A boy, skinny. She had his picture on the piano, playing a violin. I said something, and she said it was old, when he was nine. Now he’s nearly fourteen.”

  “Dark hair, blue eyes, sharp nose?”

  “How can I remember? Dark hair, yes. The eyes I wouldn’t know anyway; it wasn’t colored. A skinny boy playing a violin, with dark hair. I thought you were satisfied.”

  “So did I. Thank you, Abe. Good-by.”

  He hung up; the phone rang in his hand.

  Piwowar. They spoke in Yiddish.

  “The two men you checked, did they have sons nearly fourteen years old?”

  “Anders Runsten did. Not Persson.”

  “Did you see him?”

  “Runsten’s son? He drew my picture while I waited for his mother. I kidded him about taking him into my shop.”

  “What does he look like?”

  “Pale, thin, dark-haired, a sharp nose.”

  “Blue eyes?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the mother is in her early forties?”

  “I told you?”

  “No.”

  “So how do you know?”

  “I can’t talk now. People are waiting for me. Good-by, Gabriel. Be well.”

  The phone rang again; the operator reported that there was still no answer at Klaus’s number. Liebermann told her he would place the call later.

  He went into the dining room, feeling light-headed and hollow, as if his working parts were somewhere else (in Auschwitz?) and only his clothes and skin and hair there in Worcester sitting down with those whole all-there people.

  He asked and answered the usual questions, told the usual stories; ate enough not to distress Dolly Labowitz.

  They drove to the temple in two cars. He gave the lecture, answered the questions, signed the books.

  When they got back to the house he put the call in to Klaus. “It’s five A.M. there,” the operator reminded him.

  “I know,” he said.

  Klaus came on, groggy and confused. “What? Yes? Good evening! Where are you?”

  “In Massachusetts in America. How old was the widow in Trittau?”

  “What?”

  “How old was the widow in Trittau? Frau Schreiber.”

  “My God! I don’t know, it was hard to tell; she had a lot of make-up on. Much younger than he was, though. Late thirties or early forties.”

  “With a son almost fourteen?”

  “Around that age. Unfriendly to me, but you can’t blame him; she sent him off to her sister’s so we could ‘talk in private.’”

  “Describe him.”

  A moment passed. “Thin, about as high as my chin, blue eyes, dark-brown hair, a sharp nose. Pale. What’s going on?”

  Liebermann fingered the phone’s square push buttons. Round ones would look better, he thought. Square didn’t make sense.

  “Herr Liebermann?”

  “It’s not wild geese,” he said. “I found the link.”

  “My God! What is it?”

  He took a breath, let it blow out. “They have the same son.”

  “The same what?”

  “Son! The same son! The exact same boy! I saw him here and in Gladbeck; you saw him there. And he’s in Göteborg, Sweden; and Bramminge, Denmark! The exact same boy! He plays a musical instrument, or else he draws. And his mother is always forty-one, forty-two. Five different mothers, five different sons; but the son is the same, in different places.”

  “I…don’t understand.”

  “Neither do I! The link was supposed to give us the reason, yes? And instead it’s crazier than what we started out with! Five boys exactly the same!”

  “Herr Liebe
rmann—I think it may be six. Frau Rausenberger in Freiburg is forty-one or -two. With a young son. I didn’t see him or ask his age—I didn’t imagine it was in any way relevant—but she said maybe he would go to Heidelberg too; not to study law, to study writing.”

  “Six,” Liebermann said.

  Silence stretched between them; stretched longer.

  “Ninety-four?”

  “Six is already impossible,” Liebermann said, “so why not? But even if it were possible, and it isn’t, why would they be killing the fathers? I honestly think I’ll go to sleep tonight and wake up in Vienna the night this all started. Do you know what Mengele’s main interest was at Auschwitz? Twins. He killed thousands of them, ‘studying,’ to learn how to breed perfect Aryans. Would you do me a favor?”

  “Of course!”

  “Go to Freiburg again and get a look at the boy there; see if he’s the same as the one in Trittau. Then tell me whether I’m crazy or not.”

  “I’ll go today. Where can I reach you?”

  “I’ll call you. Good night, Klaus.”

  “Good morning. But good night.”

  Liebermann put the phone down.

  “Mr. Liebermann?” Dolly Labowitz smiled at him from the doorway. “Would you like to watch the news with us? And have a little nosh? Some cake or fruit?”

  Hannah’s breasts were dry and Dena was crying, so naturally Hannah was upset. That was understandable. But was it any reason for changing Dena’s name? Hannah insisted on it. “Don’t argue with me,” she said. “From now on we’re calling her Frieda. It’s the perfect name for a baby, and then I’ll have milk again.”

  “It doesn’t make sense, Hannah,” he said patiently, trudging along beside her through the snow. “One thing has nothing to do with the other.”

  “Her name is Frieda,” Hannah said. “We’re changing it legally.” The snow opened in a deep canyon before her and she slid down into it, Dena wailing in her arms. Oh God! He looked at the snow, unbroken now, and lay on his back in darkness, in a bed in a room. Worcester. Labowitz. Six boys. Dena grown up, Hannah dead.