A Quiet Flame (35 page)

“No, it’s just that I’ve got a feeling we’ve met before.”

“I don’t think so. I’m sure I would have remembered.”

“In Berlin, wasn’t it? The summer of 1932.”

“In the summer of 1932, I was in Munich.”

“Yes, surely you remember. It was at the home of another doctor. Dr. Richard Kassner. On Dönhoff-Platz?”

“I don’t recall knowing a Dr. Kassner.”

I unbuttoned my coat so that I could treat his eyes to a little taste of the gun I was wearing. Just in case he thought to try something surgical on me. Like trepanning a little hole in my head with a pistol. Because by now I had no doubt he was armed. There was something heavier than a packet of cigarettes in one of his coat pockets. I didn’t know exactly what Mengele had done during the war. The only thing I knew was what Eichmann had told me. That Mengele had done something bestial at Auschwitz. And for this reason he was one of the most wanted men in Europe.

“Come now. Surely you remember. What was it he used to call you? Biffo, wasn’t it? No, wait a minute. It was Bippo. Whatever happened to Kassner?”

“I really think you’re mistaking me for someone else. If you don’t mind me saying so, this was eighteen years ago.”

“No, it’s all coming back to me now. You see, Herr Doktor Mengele—Beppo—I was a policeman in 1932. Working for the Homicide Division in Berlin KRIPO. A detective investigating the murder of Anita Schwarz. Do you remember
her,
perhaps?”

He crossed his legs, coolly. “No. Look, this is all very confusing. I think I need a cigarette.”

His hand went into the pocket. But I was quicker.

“Uh-uh,” I said, and holding the Smith & Wesson just a few inches above his belly, I smacked his hand out of his coat pocket and then took out a walnut-handled PPK. I glanced at it briefly. It was a thirty-eight with a Nazi eagle on the grip.

“Not very clever of you,” I said. “Keeping something like this.”

“You’re the one who’s not being very clever,” he said.

I pocketed the pistol and sat down again. “Oh? How’s that?”

“Because I’m a friend of the president.”

“Is that so?”

“I advise you to put that gun away and leave now.”

“Not before we’ve had a little talk, Mengele. About old times.” I thumbed back the hammer on the Smith. “And if I don’t like the answers, then I’m going to have to offer you a prompt. In the foot. And then in the leg. I’m sure you know how it works, Doctor. A Socratic dialogue?”

“Socratic?”

“Yes. I encourage you to reflect and to think and, together”—I waved the gun at him—“together we search for the truth to some important questions. No philosophical training is needed, but if I think you’re not trying to help us reach a consensus—well, you remember what happened to Socrates, don’t you? His fellow Athenians forced him to put a gun to his head and blow his own brains out. Something like that, anyway.”

“Why on earth do you care what happened to Anita Schwarz?” Mengele asked angrily. “It was almost twenty years ago.”

“Not just Anita Schwarz. Elizabeth Bremer, too. The girl in Munich?”

“It wasn’t what you think,” he insisted.

“No? What was it, then? Dadaism? I seem to remember that was quite popular before the Nazis. Let’s see now. You eviscerated those two girls because you were an artist who believed in meaning through chaos. You used their insides for a collage. Or perhaps a nice photograph. There were you and Max Ernst and Kurt Schwitters. No? How about this, then? You were a medical student who decided to make a bit of extra money by offering backstreet abortions to underage girls. It’s the details I’m not clear about. The when and the how.”

“If I tell you, will you leave me alone?”

“If you don’t tell me, I’m going to shoot you.” I took aim at his foot. “Then I’ll leave you alone. To bleed to death.”

“All right, all right.”

“Let’s start in Munich. With Elizabeth Bremer.”

Mengele shook his head until, seeing me take aim at his foot again, he waved his hands. “No, no, I’m just trying to cast my mind back. But it’s difficult. So much has happened since then. You’ve no idea how irrelevant all this seems to a man like me. You’re talking about two accidental deaths that happened almost twenty years ago.” He laughed bitterly. “I was at Auschwitz, you know. And what happened there was, of course, quite extraordinary. Perhaps the most extraordinary thing that has ever happened. Three million died at Auschwitz. Three million. And you just want to talk about two children.”

“I’m not here to judge you. I’m here to finish an investigation.”

“Listen to yourself. You sound like one of those stupid Canadian cowboys. What is it that they call them? The Mounties? They always get their man. Is that really all this is? Professional pride? Or is there something else I’m missing?”

“I’m asking the questions, Doctor. But as it happens, there is some professional pride here, yes. I’m sure you know what that’s like, you being a professional man yourself. I got taken off this case, for political reasons. Because I wasn’t a Nazi. I didn’t like that then and I don’t like it now. So. Let’s start with Walter Pieck. You knew him quite well, didn’t you? From Günzburg.”

“Of course. Everyone knows everyone else in Günzburg. It’s a very Catholic little town. Walter and I were at school together. At least until he failed his
Abitur.
He was always more interested in sports. Especially winter sports. He was a fantastic skater and skier. And I should know. I’m a good skier myself. Anyway, he quarreled with his father and went to work in Munich. I passed my
Abitur
and went to study in Munich. We lived very separate lives but, occasionally, we would meet up for a beer. I even lent him a bit of money now and then.

“My family was quite wealthy by the standards of Günzburg. Even today, Günzburg
is
the Mengele family. But my father, Karl, was a cold figure and somewhat jealous of me, I think. For this reason, perhaps, he kept me short of money when I was at medical school and I resolved to earn some extra myself. It so happened that another old friend’s girl was pregnant, and, having already studied quite a bit on the subject of obstetrics and gynecology as a student, I offered to help them get rid of it. Actually, it’s quite a simple procedure. Before long, I’d carried out several abortions. I made quite a bit of money. I bought a small car with the proceeds.

“Then Walter’s girlfriend got pregnant. Elizabeth was a lovely girl. Too good for Walter. Anyway, she was adamant that she didn’t want to keep the child. She wanted to go to university and study medicine herself.” Mengele frowned and shook his head. “I thought I was helping her. But. There were complications. A hemorrhage. Even in a hospital bed, she would probably have died, you understand. But this was in my apartment, in Munich. And I had no way of helping her. She bled to death on my kitchen table.” He paused for a moment and almost looked troubled at the memory of it. “You must remember, I was still a young man, with my whole future ahead of me. I wanted to help people. As a doctor, you understand. Anyway, I panicked. I had a dead body on my hands. And it would have been quite obvious to any pathologist that she had had an abortion. I was desperate to cover my tracks.

“It was Walter’s idea, really, that I should remove all her sexual organs. There had been some lurid details of an old lust murder in some magazine he’d been reading, and he said that if we made Elizabeth’s death look like one of those, it would at least ensure the police did not come looking for an illegal abortionist. I agreed. So I cut her up, like something out of an anatomy lesson, and Walter disposed of her body. His father in Günzburg gave him an alibi. Said he’d been at home at the time of Elizabeth’s death. He was used to doing that for Walter. But after that, Walter had to toe the line. Do what his father told him. Which is how he ended up joining the SS. To keep him out of trouble.” Mengele laughed. “Ironic, really, when you think about it. The Americans shot him at Dachau.” He shook his head. “But I certainly didn’t mean to kill that poor girl. She was lovely. A real Aryan beauty. I was trying to help her. And why not? She made a mistake, that’s all. It happens all the time. And to the most respectable people.”

“Tell me about Kassner,” I said. “How did you know him?”

“From Munich. His estranged wife lived there. He was trying to persuade her to come back to him. Unsuccessfully, as it turned out. Someone introduced us at a party. And it turned out we shared a number of interests. In anthropology, in human genetics, in medical research, and in National Socialism. He was a friend of Goebbels, you know. Anyway, I used to go and visit him in Berlin. To spend in the fleshpots some of what I’d been making from carrying out abortions. They were the best times of my life. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what Berlin was like in those days. There was complete sexual license.”

“Which is how you caught a dose of jelly.”

“Yes, that’s right. How did you know about that?”

“And Kassner treated you with the new ‘magic bullet’ he was testing for I. G. Farben. Protonsil.”

Mengele looked impressed. “Yes. That’s right, too. I can see that the reputation of the Berlin police force was well deserved.”

“He was also treating Goebbels for venereal disease. Did you know that? I suspect it’s one of the reasons I was taken off the case. Because someone thought that I might find out about it. Which I did, of course.”

“I knew he was treating someone famous. But I didn’t know it was Goebbels. Actually, I thought it might be Hitler. There was some talk, you know. That the Führer was syphilitic. So, it was Goebbels all along.” Mengele shrugged. “Anyway, protonsil was highly effective. Until the advent of penicillin, I think it was the most successful drug that the Dyestuff Syndicate ever had. I got to know them quite well myself when Kassner went to work for them. I tested a number of drugs for them at Auschwitz. It was important work. Not that anyone remembers that now. All they’re interested in are the medical mishaps that I’m afraid were an inevitable consequence, given the exigencies of wartime scientific and medical life.”

“That’s a nice, clinical way of describing mass murder,” I said.

“And I suppose you’re here in Argentina for the beef,” he said.

“Never mind that. Just tell me about Anita Schwarz.”

“I can’t believe that you’re wasting my time with this shit.”

“If you can’t believe me, then believe this.” I brandished the gun for a second. “How did you come to meet her?”

“I met her father when I started coming to Berlin. He was in the SA. Later on, when he became a judge, we became much better acquainted. Anyway, someone introduced us. Kurt Daluege, I think. I had performed an abortion on his mistress. With no complications. Actually, it was her second, and I had asked Daluege if he’d ever considered the advantages of having her sterilized. He hadn’t, of course. But he talked her into it, eventually.”

“You’re joking.”

“Not at all. It’s simply a question of tying off the fallopian tubes. Anyway, Daluege mentioned this to Otto Schwarz. As a possibility for his daughter.”

I shook my head, horrified at what Mengele was telling me, although, given what I remembered about Otto Schwarz’s general demeanor upon being told that his disabled daughter was dead, the doctor’s explanation also seemed to make perverse sense. “Are you telling me that you sterilized a fifteen-year-old girl?”

“Look here, this girl was hardly the same type as Elizabeth Bremer. Not at all. Anita Schwarz was disabled and, despite her young age, an occasional prostitute. It made a lot of sense to have her sterilized. Not just for the benefit of her poor parents but also for the genetic health of the country. She was quite unfit to reproduce. Later on, of course, Otto and I were colleagues. He became a judge in one of the genetic-health courts that came into being under the 1933 Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring, to decide upon matters of racial hygiene. Certain people were forbidden to marry, while others were the victims of forcible sterilizations.” He paused.

“So the sterilization of Anita Schwarz was cooked up by the two of you, for the genetic health of the country,” I said. “Did Anita have any say in the matter?”

Mengele shook his head, irritably. “Her consent was irrelevant. She was spastic, you understand. Hers was an unworthy life. Any genetic-health court would have agreed with our decision.”

“Where did the operation take place?”

“In a private clinic in Dahlem. Where the girl’s mother worked as a night nurse. It was quite suitable, I can assure you.”

“But something went wrong.”

He nodded. “Unlike carrying out an abortion, a general anesthetic is required in sterilization procedures. And so the services of an anesthesiologist were needed. Naturally, I called on the same person I’d used in the procedure on Kurt Daluege’s mistress. Someone Daluege knew. Someone less than competent, as it turned out. I was unaware of the fact that he himself was a drug addict. And he made a mistake. You understand. It was not the procedure that killed her. It was the anesthesia. Quite simply, we were unable to revive her. And, left with a dilemma similar to the one before, with Elizabeth Bremer’s death in Munich, I decided to mutilate her dead body in the same sensational fashion. With, I may add, the full complicity of the girl’s mother. She was a strict Roman Catholic and believed that God had not meant her daughter to have lived in the first place. Which was a great relief to my colleague and myself. He and I disposed of the body at the opposite end of the city, in Friedrichshain Park. And the rest you know.”

“And after that?”

“I went home.”

“I meant in the years after that. Up to you joining the SS.”

“I carried on doing abortions and sterilizations until 1937. Legally, I might add. Then I joined the Reich Institute for Heredity, Biology, and Racial Purity, at the University of Frankfurt, where I was a research assistant.”