The Quest for Anna Klein

some tropical veranda, watching a steamer move out of the harbor. There would be riotously colored birds in the long green fronds of the nearby trees, and on that ship, a woman in a satin dress would be standing with a champagne glass in her long white fingers, lifting it to him silently, Adieu, mon amour. He was part of a vanished time, I thought, a lost world, and because of that, my current mission seemed even more a matter of giving the new boy something to do.

“You’re an Ivy Leaguer,” Danforth said. “Columbia.” His gaze softened, and I saw the wound we shared. “A fellow New Yorker.”

A familiar wave of kill-them-all rage passed over me at the barbarity that had been inflicted upon what had always seemed the most American of cities, but I tamped it down with a crisp “Yes.”

Even so, it was clear that Danforth had seen the flame that briefly lit my eyes.

“Hatred is a very legitimate emotion,” he said. “Believe me, I’ve known it well, and certainly at this moment we have a right to our ire.”

This was a different position from the self-loathing justifications for the attack that had lately wafted up from various quarters, and I was relieved to hear it.

“Anyway,” Danforth said, “I’m sure the best think tanks are bloated with boys like you.”

I didn’t like the term bloated but nodded anyway, now a little impatient to get on with the interview, write up my report, and head back to Washington. “So?” I said hastily. “Shall we go on?”

Danforth noted my impatience. “You are a very focused young man.” His expression was quite gentle, perhaps even a bit indulgent. I might almost have called it Socratic.

“Crane,” he said. “An English name.”

“Yes, but I’m really of German stock,” I answered. “At least, for the most part.”

“So a name must have been changed along the way,” Danforth said. “What was it before?”

“I don’t know,” I answered. “My grandfather changed it during the war.” I offered a quick smile. “I suppose he didn’t want to be blamed for things he hadn’t done.”

Danforth nodded. “Quite understandable. No one would have wanted to be accused of things like that.”

“And which he couldn’t have done because he left Germany before the war,” I added.

Danforth smiled. “Do you speak German?”

“Not since high school.”

“That’s a pity,” Danforth said. “Certain words in that language often come to mind. Rache, for example. It has a rough sound, don’t you think? Kind of a snarl. It sounds like what it means: ‘vengeance.’ But others don’t sound anything like what they mean, of course. For example, Verrat doesn’t sound like what it means at all.”

“What does Verrat mean?”

“‘Betrayal.’”

Before I could respond to this, Danforth turned toward the window, beyond which a gentle snow was falling. “There was a lot of fear after the Crash of Twenty-nine,” he said. “People were desperate.” His gaze turned searching. “I’m sure you’ve read about it in your history books.”

“Of course,” I answered.

In fact, I’d read a great deal about that instability: streets filled with the angry dispossessed. Rallies, protests, mobs that surged and withdrew in enormous, roaring waves. Communists gaining influence. Fascists too. Those had been interesting times, no doubt, but Danforth’s backward drift smacked of the mental viscosity common to people of his age, and I simply had no time for it.

“Your activity before the war,” I said. “How did you—”

“We called it the Project,” Danforth corrected firmly. “I later came to believe that the name lacked resonance, that it gave no sense of what had actually been involved. Not like Nacht und Nebel, certainly. Which sounds pretty scary and said what it was.”

I looked at him quizzically.

‘“Night and Fog,’” Danforth translated. “The German policy of sending prisoners to camps where they would disappear into, as it were, night and fog.” He smiled in a way that suggested not only that my understanding of the Project might be less than accurate but also that he would not be rushed into his discussion of it. “And do forgive me for drifting into modal verbs. Would this and would that. It’s a habit I have, reflecting on things while I talk about him.” He laughed softly. “I also tend to drift into asides.”

“Asides?”

“For example, there’s a castle in Vincennes, on the outskirts of Paris,” he said quietly. “Diderot was imprisoned there. So was the Marquis de Sade. Just think of it, Mr. Crane —”

“Paul,” I said, to establish a slightly less formal mood. “Please, call me Paul.”

“Very well, just think of it, Paul,” Danforth went on. “The two poles of human thought within a few yards of each other. The reasoning of a philosopher and the ravings of a psychopath.”

“Why did you happen to think of this aside just now?” I asked.

“I suppose because the castle was used for executions as well as a prison,” he answered.

He went on to discuss the various times he’d been to the chateau at Vincennes, what he would have felt on his first visit had he known of the ones to come, what he would have made certain to see and recall, because these small things would speak to him eloquently and with great poignancy at a later time.

“We act in the present tense and recall in the past tense,” he said at one point. “But we reflect in the conditional and regret in the subjunctive.”

“I’m aware that you are a very gifted student of languages,” I told him, in case he’d been laboring to impress me with that point. I drew a notebook and pen from my jacket pocket and pretended that his answer to my next question was worth recording. “What languages do you speak?”

He spoke quite a few, as it turned out, and as he listed them, I took the opportunity to look him over as I’d been trained to do, evaluate and assess his fitness as a source.

Thomas Jefferson Danforth was ninety-one years old, but his eyes were sharp, and, save for the occasional wince of discomfort, there was little of the creakiness of age in the way he shifted his body or reached for his glass. His mind was obviously quite clear, and his voice never faltered. He might go off the beaten track, but so far his asides had remained tangentially connected to the topic of discussion.

“You mentioned Vincennes,” I reminded him when he reached the last of his languages.

“Mata Hari was executed at Vincennes,” Danforth said with deliberation, the way an etymologist might turn a phrase over in his mind, review the origin of each word, ponder its many facets and vagaries. “And the Germans executed thirty people there in 1944. I once went through the list.”

“Why?”

“Looking for a name,” Danforth said. “And do you know, Paul, the feel of a murder site changes when you know someone who was murdered there.”

“You knew someone who was killed at Vincennes?”

Danforth shook his head. “No, but I thought I might have,” he answered almost casually. “At Vincennes, I was just looking. I did a lot of that after the war.”

“After the war,” I said coaxingly. “So that had nothing to do with the Project?”

“Not all things end abruptly,” Danforth said matter-of-factly. “And some things never do. Acts of war, for example. They ripple on forever.”

This line of talk seemed not at all germane, and so I said, “You were in the army, I believe?”

“Working in London,” Danforth said. “Translating intelligence reports from all over Europe.” He appeared to scan those years for a relevant memory. “I remember a particular contact. A priest, as it happened. His communiques about Drancy were quite heartbreaking. What happened to the children there, I mean. He claimed to have heard their cries from the steps of Sacre Coeur.”

“But that wouldn’t have been possible,” I said in a rather too obvious effort to show that, for all my youth and limited travel, I was at least familiar with Paris and its environs. “The distance would have been too great.”

Danforth’s smile seemed indulgent, a worldly old man educating an unworldly youthful one. “No distance is too far for guilt to travel.” He shrugged. “But yes, the priest was no doubt speaking metaphorically.”

Despite his faintly pedagogical, didactic air, I had to admit that a certain gravity emanated from Danforth, an intense centeredness; reason enough, I decided, to play it his way a few minutes longer, go at things a little less directly than I’d planned, allow him the occasional digression. Such mental wandering was typical of advanced age,