“You really astound me.”
“Let me finish, please. I don’t even think we should have them be watched by their governments, because this will leak out, you can bet your life it will, and bring attention to them, draw to them exactly the kind of meshuganahs who’ll make them be Hitlers, encourage them. Or even from inside a government the meshuganahs could come. The fewer who know, the better.”
“Yakov, if one becomes Hitler, just one—my God, you know what we’ve got!”
“No,” Liebermann said. “No. I’ve been thinking about this for weeks. I say in my talks it takes two things to make it happen again, a new Hitler and social conditions like in the thirties. But that’s not true. It takes three things: the Hitler, the conditions…and the people to follow the Hitler.”
“And don’t you think he’d find them?”
“No, not enough of them. I really think people are better and smarter now, not so much thinking their leaders are God. The television makes a big difference. And history, knowing…Some he’d find, yes; but no more, I think—I hope—than the pretend-Hitlers we have now, in Germany and South America.”
“Well, you’ve got a hell of a lot more faith in human nature than I do,” Gorin said. “Look, Yakov, you can stand here talking till you’re blue in the face, you’re not going to change my mind on this. We not only have the right to kill them, we have the duty. God didn’t make them, Mengele did.”
Liebermann stood looking at him, and nodded. “All right,” he said. “I thought I’d raise the question.”
“You raised it,” Gorin said, and gestured toward the table. “Will you explain to them now? We’ve got a lot of things to work out before we leave.”
“My voice is used up for today,” Liebermann said. “You better explain.”
They walked back together toward the table.
“While I’m up,” Liebermann said, “is there a men’s room?”
“Over there.”
Liebermann caned away toward the stairs. Gorin went on to the table and sat down.
Liebermann caned into the men’s room—a small one—and into the booth; swung down its doorbolt. He hung his cane on his right wrist, got out his passport case, and took the folded-small list from it. He put the case back in his jacket, unfolded the list to half sheets, and tore them across; put them together and tore again; put them together and—tore again. He dropped the thickness of small pieces into the toilet, and when the typed-on pieces had separated and settled onto the water, turned down the black handle on the tank. The paper and water swirled and funneled down, gurgling. Pieces of paper stuck to the side of the bowl, pieces came back in the rising water.
He waited for the tank to refill.
As long as he was there, unzipped.
When he came out, he caught the eye of one of the men at the far side of the table and pointed at Gorin. The man spoke to Gorin, and Gorin turned and looked at him. He beckoned. Gorin sat for a moment, and got up and came toward him, looking annoyed.
“What now?”
“You should brace yourself.”
“For what?”
“I flushed the list down the toilet.”
Gorin looked at him.
He nodded. “It’s the right thing to do,” he said. “Believe me.”
Gorin stared at him, white-faced.
“I feel funny telling a Rabbi what’s—”
“It wasn’t your list,” Gorin said. “It was…everybody’s! The Jewish People’s!”
Liebermann said, “Could I take a vote? It was only me in there.” He shook his head. “Killing children, any children—it’s wrong.”
Gorin’s face reddened; his nostrils flared, his brown eyes burned, dark-ringed. “Don’t you tell me what’s right and wrong,” he said. “You asshole. You stupid ignorant old fart!”
Liebermann stared at him.
“I ought to throw you down these stairs!”
“Touch me and I’ll break your neck,” Liebermann said.
Gorin pulled in breath; his fists clenched at his sides. “It’s Jews like you,” he said, “that let it happen last time.”
Liebermann looked at him. “Jews didn’t ‘let’ it happen,” he said. “Nazis made it happen. People who would even kill children to get what they wanted.”
Gorin’s reddened jaw clenched. “Get out of here,” he said. And wheeled and stalked away.
Liebermann watched him go, drew a breath, and turned to the stairs. He took hold of the banister and started caning himself slowly downward, a step at a time.
Through the cab window, coming into Kennedy Airport, he saw Howard Johnson’s Motor Lodge. Where Frieda Maloney had given the babies to the U.S. and Canadian couples. He watched it swing past, its ten or twelve stories floodlighted in the dusk…
After he had checked in at Pan Am, he called Mr. Goldwasser at the lecture bureau.
“Hello! How are you? Where are you?”
“At Kennedy, going home. And not so bad. I only have to take it easy a few months. Did you get my note?”
“Yes.”
“Thanks again. Beautiful flowers. That was some publicity, yes? Front page of the Times; CBS, the whole network…”
“I hope you never get such publicity again.”
“Still, it was publicity. Listen, if I give you my solemn word of honor I wouldn’t cancel out, would you want to try booking me in the late spring, early fall? My voice will be back to normal; the doctor swears.”
“Well…”
“Come on; so many flowers, you’re interested.”
“All right, I’ll sound out a few groups.”
“Good. And listen, Mr. Goldwasser—”
“Will you call me Ben, for God’s sake! How many years has it been already?”
“Ben—not the temples and Hadassahs. The colleges and kids. High schools even.”
“They don’t pay bupkes.”
“Colleges, then. Y.M.C.A’s. Wherever they’re young.”
“I’ll try to lay out a balanced tour, all right?”
“All right. Fill the holes with high schools. Let me hear. Be well.”
He hung up and put his finger in the coin-return; picked up his briefcase and caned himself toward the boarding gate.
9
DARKNESS RINGED THE ROOM.
A doorknob glinted, a mirror, tips of ski poles. Dark bed shape, dark chair shape. Metal rim of a cage; a treadmill inside it spinning, stopping, spinning. Rocket models. Wings of a small silver plane slowly turning.
At the room’s center, flat whiteness lay tabled under a low-bent lamp. A hand dipped a brush, thinned it, black-inked over penciled lines. Making a stadium: vast, transparent-domed, circular.
The boy worked carefully, bending his sharp nose close to the paper. He began putting in some people, rows of little head-curves focused on the platform in the middle. He dipped the brush, thinned it, backhanded his forelock aside, brushed in more heads, more people.
A piano played: a Strauss waltz.
The boy looked up and listened. Smiled.
He bent to the drawing and made more heads, humming along with the melody.
Great with Dad gone. Just he and Mom. No fighting, no door thrown open and “Put that away and do your homework or so help me God—”
Well, not great, he hadn’t meant great; just—easier, more comfortable. Even Grandma used to say Dad was a real dictator. Bossy, big-mouthed, prejudiced; always acting like the most important man in the world…So it was easier now. But that didn’t mean he’d hated him, had wanted him dead. He’d loved Dad a lot really. Hadn’t he cried at the funeral?
He got into the drawing, where everything was nicer. Gave himself to the platform, and the man standing on it. Small from so far away. Brush, brush, brush. Lift up his arms: brush, brush.
Who would he be, this man on the platform? Someone great, that’s for sure, with all these people coming to see him. Not just a singer or comedian; someone fantastic, a really good person that they loved and respected. T
hey paid fortunes to get in, and if they couldn’t pay, he let them in free. Someone that nice…
He put a little television camera up at the top of the dome; aimed a few more spotlights at the man.
He thinned the brush to a real fine point and gave little dot-mouths to the nearer bigger people, so they were cheering, telling him—the man, that is—how good he was, how much they loved him.
He bent his sharp nose closer to the paper and gave dot-mouths to the smaller people. His forelock fell. He bit his lip, squinted his deep blue eyes. Dot, dot, dot. He could hear the people cheering, roaring; a beautiful growing love-thunder that built and built, and then pounded, pounded, pounded, pounded.
Sort of like in those old Hitler movies.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Acclaimed novelist and playwright Ira Levin (1929-2007) was a native New Yorker whose books include A Kiss Before Dying, Rosemary’s Baby, This Perfect Day, The Stepford Wives, The Boys from Brazil, Sliver, and Son of Rosemary. His plays include No Time for Sergeants, Critic’s Choice, and Deathtrap (the longest-running thriller in Broadway history). Levin also wrote the lyrics of the Streisand classic He Touched Me, and was the recipient of three Mystery Writers of America Edgar Allan Poe Awards. For more information, please visit www.iralevin.org.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1976, 2004 by Ira Levin
ISBN: 978-1-4532-1758-0
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Ira Levin, The Boys From Brazil
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