'How long does that usually take?' I asked him.
'It might take several weeks,' he said. 'After that you'll need a visa. Probably it will be Argentina you're going to. Right now everyone's going there, I believe. The government there is very sympathetic to German emigration. Then of course you'll need passage on a ship. The Comradeship will organize that, too.' He smiled encouragingly. 'I think you should reconcile yourself to being with us with for a month or two at least.'
'My father lives near here,' I said. 'In Garmisch-Partenkirchen. I should like to see him before I leave the country. It'll be my last chance I think.'
'You're right, Garmisch is not all that far away. As the crow flies, fifty or sixty miles. We deliver our beer to the American army base down there. They've a real taste for beer, those Amis. Perhaps you could go with the beer truck on our next delivery. I'll see what I can do.'
'Thank you, Father, I appreciate it.'
Of course, as soon as I had my new identity and passport I was going to head for Hamburg. I'd always liked Hamburg. And it was as far away as I could get from Munich and Garmisch and whatever I was going to do in Garmisch, without actually leaving Germany. There was no way on earth that I was going to end up on a slow boat to a banana republic like the old comrades to whom I was about to be introduced.
Father Bandolini knocked quietly on a door and then opened it to reveal a cozy little sitting room, and two men taking it easy in armchairs with the newspapers. There was a bottle of Three Feathers on the table and an open packet of Regents. A good sign, I thought. On the wall was a crucifix and a picture of Pope Pius XII wearing what looked like a beehive on his head. Maybe it was the little rimless glasses and the ascetic face, but there was always something about the pope that reminded me of Himmler. The pope's face was also quite like the face of one of the two men who were in the room. The last time I had seen him was January 1939, and he'd been standing between Himmler and Heydrich. I remembered thinking him to be a relatively simple, intellectually uninteresting sort of man, and even now, I found it hard to believe that he could be the most wanted man in Europe. To look at he was quite ordinary. He was sharp-faced, narrow-eyed, with somewhat prominent ears, and, above a small Himmler-like mustache--always a mistake--a longish nose on which sat a pair of black-framed glasses. He looked like a Jewish tailor, which, I knew, was a description he'd have hated because the man was Adolf Eichmann.
'Gentlemen,' said Father Bandolini, addressing the two men seated in the monastery's guest sitting room. 'I'd like to introduce you to someone who will be staying with us for a while. This is Herr Doktor Hausner. Carlos Hausner.'
That was my new name. Father Lajolo had explained that when giving a man a new identity suitable for Argentina, the Comradeship recommended a name that implied dual South American and German nationality. Which is how I ended up being called Carlos. I had no intention of winding up in Argentina, but with two sets of police on my tail, I was hardly in a position to argue about a name.
'Herr Doktor Hausner.' Father Bandolini raised his hand in Eichmann's direction. 'This is Herr Ricardo Klement.' He turned toward the second man. 'And this is Pedro Geller.'
Eichmann made no sign that he recognized me. He bowed his head curtly and then shook my outstretched hand. He looked older than he ought to have done. I estimated he was around forty-two, but with most of his hair gone, the glasses, and behind them a tired, hunted look like an animal that hears the hounds on its tail, he looked much older. He wore a thick tweed suit, a striped shirt, and a small bow tie that made him seem very clerkish. But there was nothing clerkish about the handshake. I'd shaken hands with Eichmann before, when his hands had been soft, almost delicate. But now his hands were the hands of a laborer, as if, since the war, he had been obliged to earn a living in some physically arduous way. 'Pleased to meet you, Herr Doktor,' he said.
The other man was much younger, better-looking, and better turned out than his infamous companion. He wore an expensive-looking watch and gold cuff links. His hair was fair, his eyes were blue and clear, and his teeth looked as if he'd borrowed them from an American film star. Next to Eichmann, he was as tall as a flagpole and bore himself like a rare species of crane. I shook his hand and found that, by contrast with Eichmann's, it was well-manicured and as soft as a schoolboy's. Looking at Pedro Geller more closely, I supposed he couldn't have been more than twenty-five, which made it hard to imagine what war crime he could have committed as an eighteen- or nineteen-year-old that now necessitated him changing his name and escaping to South America.
Geller was carrying a Spanish-German dictionary under his arm, and another lay open on the table in front of the chair where Eichmann--Ricardo Klement--had been sitting. The younger man smiled. 'We were just testing each other's Spanish vocabulary,' he explained. 'Ricardo is much better at languages than I am.'
'Really?' I said. I might have mentioned Ricardo's knowledge of Yiddish, but thought better of it. I glanced around the sitting room noting the chessboard, the Monopoly set, the library full of books, the newspapers and magazines, the new General Electric radio, the kettle and the coffee cups, the full ashtray, and the blankets--one of these had been over Eichmann's legs. It was plain to see that these two men spent a lot of time sitting in that room. Holed up. Hiding. Waiting for something. A new passport, or passage on a ship to South America.
'We're very lucky that there's a priest from Buenos Aires here in the monastery,' said the Father. 'Father Santamaria has been teaching Spanish to our two friends, and telling them all about Argentina. It makes a real difference going somewhere when you can already speak the language.'
'Did you have a good journey?' asked Eichmann. If he was nervous at seeing me again he did not show it. 'Where have you come from?'
'Vienna,' I said. And then shrugged. 'The journey was tolerable. Do you know Vienna, Herr Klement?' I offered my cigarettes around.
'No, not really,' he said, with a flicker of an eyelid. I had to hand it to him. He was good. 'I don't know Austria at all. I'm from Breslau.' He took one of my cigarettes and let me light him. 'Of course it's now called Wroclaw, or something, in Poland. Can you imagine it? Are you from Vienna, Herr--?'
'Dr. Hausner,' I said.
'A doctor, eh?' Eichmann smiled. His teeth hadn't improved any, I noticed. No doubt it amused him to know that I wasn't a doctor. 'It'll be interesting to have a medical man around, won't it, Geller?'
'Yes, indeed,' said Geller, smoking one of my Luckies. 'I always wanted to be a doctor. Before the war, that is.' He smiled sadly. 'I don't suppose I shall ever be a doctor, now.'
'You're a young man,' I said. 'Anything is possible when you're young. Take my word for it. I was young once myself.'
But Eichmann was shaking his head. 'That was true before the war,' he said. 'In Germany anything was possible. Yes. We proved that, to the world. But not now. I'm afraid it's no longer true. Not now that half of Germany is ruled by godless barbarians, eh, Father? Shall I tell you the true meaning of the Federal Republic of Germany, gentlemen? We are simply a slit trench in the front line of a new war. A war waged by the--'
Eichmann checked himself. And then he smiled. The old Eichmann smile. As if he objected to my tie.
'But what am I saying? None of it matters now. Not anymore. Today has no meaning. For us, today does not exist any more than yesterday. For us, there is only tomorrow. Tomorrow is all that's left.' For a moment his smile grew slightly less bitter. 'Just like the old song says. Tomorrow belongs to me. Tomorrow belongs to me.'
THIRTY-NINE
The monastery beer was excellent. It was what they called a Trappist beer, which meant it was made under strictly controlled conditions and only by Benedictine monks. The beer they produced, which was called Schluckerarmer, was copper-colored, with a head like an ice cream. It had a sweet, almost chocolaty taste and a strength that belied its flavor and origins. And it was a lot easier to imagine it being drunk by American soldiers than austere and God-fearing monks. Besides, I had tasted American beer. Only a country that had once prohibited alcohol could have produced a beer that tasted like fortified mineral water. Only a country like Germany could have produced a beer strong enough to make a monk risk the wrath of the Roman Catholic Church by nailing ninety-five theses to a church door in Wittenberg. That was what Father Bandolini told me, anyway. Which was just one reason why he preferred wine.
'If you ask me, the whole Reformation can be blamed on strong beer,' he opined. 'Wine is a perfect Catholic drink. It makes people sleepy and complicit. Beer just makes them argumentative. And look at the countries that drink a lot of beer. They're mainly Protestant. And the countries where they drink a lot of wine? Roman Catholic.'
'What about the Russians?' I asked. 'They drink vodka.'
