The Eighth Dwarf (3 page)

But more often than not, the dwarf would sing popular American songs. He seemed to know the words to all of them, and he sang in a true, deep baritone. His piano playing, while enthusiastic, wasn't really very good.

Jackson came to realize that most men resented the dwarf. They resented his singing, his size, his charm—and most of all, they resented his success with women, which small knots of them would often discuss in prurient whispers at the endless succession of parties. Ploscaru seemed to enjoy the resentment; but then, the dwarf, Jackson had learned, doted on almost any kind of attention.

With the tank now full, Jackson followed the coast highway south toward San Diego. It was still early morning, and the dwarf sang most of the way to Laguna Beach, where they stopped at a hotel for coffee.

After the waitress had poured him a refill, Ploscaru said, “Are you sure you remember the code phrases?”

“I'm sure.”

“What are they?”

“Well, for one thing, they're silly.”

“In spite of that, what are they?”

“I'm supposed to call her on the house phone and tell her my name and then, like a fool, I say, ‘
Wenn der Schwan singt lu, lu, lu, lu.'
Jesus.”

“And what does she reply?”

“Well, if she can stop giggling, she's supposed to come back with,
‘Mach ich meine Augen zu, Augen zu, Augen zu.'”

The dwarf had smiled.

After the coffee they continued down the coast, stopped for lunch at La Jolla, and then drove on into San Diego, where Jackson dropped Ploscaru off at the zoo.

“Why don't you go to a picture instead of hanging around here all afternoon?”

The dwarf shook his head. “There'll be children here. Children and animals and I get along famously, you know.”

“I didn't, but I do now. I'm going to try to get back here before midnight. Maybe when you get through with the kids and the animals you can locate us some bourbon. Not gin. Bourbon. I can't take any more gin.”

“Very well,” the dwarf said, “bourbon.”

A half hour later, Jackson was across the border checkpoint, through Tijuana, and driving south along the narrow, much-patched coastal road into Baja California. There was a lot of scenery and not much else to look at between Tijuana and Ensenada. Occasionally there would be a cluster of fishing shacks, a substantial house or two, and the odd tourist court, but mostly it was blue sea, steep bluffs, fine beaches, and on the left, dry, mulberry-colored mountains.

Jackson made the sixty-five-mile trip in a little less than two hours and pulled up at the entrance of the sprawling, mission-inspired Hotel Riviera del Pacífico, which had been built facing the bay back in the twenties by a gambling syndicate that Jack Dempsey had fronted for.

It was a little after five when Jackson entered the spacious lobby, found the house phones, picked one up, and asked the operator for Suite 232. The call was answered by a woman with a low voice who said only “Hello,” but even from that Jackson could detect the pronounced German accent.

“This is Minor Jackson.”

The woman said nothing. Jackson sighed and recited the prearranged phrase in German about the swan singing lu, lu, lu, lu. Very seriously the woman replied in German that it made her eyes close. Then in English she said, “Please come up, Mr. Jackson.”

Jackson went up the stairs to the second floor, found 232, and knocked. The woman who opened the door was younger than the dwarf had led him to expect. Ploscaru had said that she was a spinster, and to Jackson that meant a maiden lady in her late thirties or forties. But Ploscaru's English, sifted as it was through several languages, occasionally lost some of its exactness.

She was, however, certainly no spinster. Jackson guessed her to be somewhere between twenty-five and twenty-nine, and on the whole, he found her almost beautiful, but if not quite that, at least striking. Her face was oval in shape and light olive in complexion. She wore no makeup, not even a touch of lipstick on her full-lipped mouth, which was smiling slightly now.

“Please come in, Mr. Jackson,” she said. “You are just in time for tea.”

It sounded like a phrase that had been learned early from someone with a British accent and hoarded carefully for later use. Jackson nodded, returned her small smile, and followed her into the suite's sitting room, where a tea service rested on a table.

“Please sit down,” she said. “My father will join us presently.”

“Thank you, Miss Oppenheimer,” Jackson said, and picked out a comfortable-looking beige chair near the window. The Oppenheimer woman decided on a straight chair near the tea service. She sat down slowly, keeping her ankles and knees together, and was not at all concerned about what to do with her hands. She folded them into her lap, after first smoothing her dress down over her knees, and smiled again at Jackson as though waiting for him to say something observant about the weather.

Jackson said nothing. Before the silence became strained, the woman said, “You had a pleasant journey?”

“Very pleasant. Very … scenic.”

“And Mr. Ploscaru, he is well?”

“Very well.”

“We have never met, you know.”

“You and Mr. Ploscaru?”

“Yes.”

“I didn't know that.”

“We have only talked on the telephone. And corresponded, of course. How old a man is he?”

“Thirty-seven, thirty-eight, somewhere around there.”

“So young?”

“Yes.”

“On the telephone he sounds so much more older. No, that is not right. I mean—”

“Mature?” Jackson supplied.

She nodded gratefully. “He could not come himself, of course.”

“No.”

“The trouble with his papers.”

“Yes.”

“They are very important these days, proper papers. Passports. Visas.”

“Yes.”

“He is a large man, Mr. Ploscaru? From his voice he somehow sounds quite large.”

“No, not too large.”

She again nodded gratefully at the information. “Well, I am sure you will be able to handle everything most satisfactorily.”

“Thank you.”

Jackson had never prided himself on his small talk. He was wondering how long it would continue, and whether he might risk lighting a cigarette, when the blind man came in. He came in almost briskly from the bedroom, carrying a long white cane that he didn't really seem to need. He moved into the center of the room and stopped, facing the window.

“Let's see, you are near the tea, Leah,” the blind man said in German.

“Yes, and Mr. Jackson is in the beige chair,” she said.

The blind man nodded, turned slightly in Jackson's direction, took two confident steps forward, and held out his hand. Jackson, already up, accepted the handshake as the blind man said in German, “Welcome to Ensenada, Herr Jackson; I understand you speak German.”

“I try.”

The blind man turned and paused as if deciding which chair to select. He moved confidently toward a wingbacked leather one; gave it a cursory, almost careless tap with his cane; and settling into it, said, “Well, we'll speak English. Leah and I need the practice. You've already met my daughter, of course.”

“Yes.”

“We had quite a nice chat about Mr. Ploscaru,” she said.

The blind man nodded. “Damned clever chap, that Romanian. Haven't met him, of course, but we've talked on the telephone. Known him long, Mr. Jackson?”

“No, not terribly long.”

The blind man nodded again and turned his head slightly so that he seemed almost to be looking at his daughter, but not quite: he was a trifle off, although no more than a few degrees. “Think we might have the tea now, Leah?”

“Of course,” Leah Oppenheimer said, and shifted around in her chair toward the tea service, which Jackson, for some reason, assumed was sterling.

Afternoon tea was apparently a studied and much-enjoyed ritual in the Oppenheimer household. It was certainly elaborate enough. There were four kinds of delicate, crustless sandwiches, two kinds of cake, and a variety of cookies.

While the daughter performed the tea ritual, Jackson scruntinized the father, Franz Oppenheimer, the man who the dwarf had said spoke no English. Either Ploscaru had lied or Oppenheimer had deceived the dwarf. Jackson bet on the dwarf. For if Ploscaru was not a congenital liar, he was certainly a practicing one who regarded lying as an art form, although perhaps only a minor one.

Franz Oppenheimer was at least sixty, Jackson decided, as the daughter served tea, first to her guest and then to her father. He was also a well-preserved sixty—stocky, but not fat, carrying perhaps ten or twelve too many pounds on a sturdy five-ten-or-eleven frame. Jackson concluded that it might be a good idea if the Oppenheimers were to cut out their afternoon tea.

Over his sightless eyes the blind man wore a pair of round steel-rimmed glasses with opaque, purplish-black lenses. He had gone bald, at least on top, and his scalp formed a wide, shiny pink path through the twin hedgerows of the thick, white, carefully trimmed hair that still sprouted on both sides of his head.

Even with the dark glasses, it was a smart man's face, Jackson thought. To begin with, there was all that high forehead. Then there were a pair of bushy almost white eyebrows that arced up above the glasses which rested on the good-sized nose. The nose thrust out and then down toward a wide mouth with thin, dubious lips. The chin was heavy, well-shaved, and determined, perhaps even stubborn.

Oppenheimer ate two of the small sandwiches quickly, sipped some tea, and then patted his lips with a white linen napkin. There had been no fumbling in his movements, only a slight, almost undetectable hesitancy when he replaced his cup on the small table beside his chair.

With his head turned almost, but not quite, toward Jackson, Oppenheimer said, “We are, of course, Jews, Mr. Jackson, Leah and I. But we are also still Germans—in spite of everything. We intend to return to Germany eventually. It is a matter of deep conviction and pride. Foolish pride, I'm sure that most would say.”

He paused as if waiting for Jackson to comment.

In search of something neutral, Jackson said, “Where did you live in Germany?”

“In Frankfurt. Do you know it?”

“I was there for a short time once. In '37.”

The blind man nodded slowly. “That's when we left, my family and I—in '37. We put off leaving until almost too late, didn't we?” He turned his head in his daughter's direction.

“Almost,” she said. “Not quite, but almost.”

“We went to Switzerland first—Leah, my son, and I. My son was twenty-three then. He's thirty-two now. About your age, if I'm correct.”

“Yes,” Jackson said, “you are.”

Oppenheimer smiled slightly. “I thought so. I've become quite good at matching voices up with ages. I'm seldom off more than a year or two. Well, the Swiss welcomed us. In fact, they were most cordial. Correct, of course, but cordial—although that cordiality depended largely on the tidy sum that I'd had the foresight to transfer in a round-about way from Frankfurt to Vienna to Zurich. The Swiss, like everyone else, are really not too fond of Jews, although they usually have the good sense not to let it interfere with business.”

Oppenheimer paused, looked in his daughter's general direction, smiled, switched to German, and said, “Leah, dear, I think it's time for my cigar.”

“Yes, of course,” she said, rose, and crossed the room to where a box of cigars rested on a table. She took one out—long, fat, and almost black; clipped off one end with a pair of nail scissors; put it in her mouth; and carefully lit it.

“Would you care for one, Mr. Jackson?” Oppenheimer said as his daughter handed him the cigar.

“No, thanks, I'll stick to my cigarettes.”

“Damned nuisance, really. One of the few things I haven't been able to learn how to do for myself properly—light a cigar. Hard on Leah, too. Keeps her from wearing lipstick.”

“I don't mind,” she said, resuming her seat by the tea table.

“I always like a woman who powders and paints. What about you, Mr. Jackson?”

“Sure,” Jackson said, and lit a cigarette.

Oppenheimer puffed on his cigar for several moments and then said, “Miss the smoke, too—the sight of it. Ah, well. Where was I? In Switzerland. We stayed there until 1940. Until Paris fell. Then we went to England—London. At least, Leah and I went. Some people call me an inventor, but I'm not really. I'm more of a—a
Kesselflicker
.”

“Tinker,” Jackson said.

“That's right, tinker. I take other people's inventions and improve on them. Patch them up. I had an idea for a cheap way for the British to interfere with enemy radar. Well, they almost clapped me in jail. I wasn't even supposed to know about radar. But eventually they used my idea anyway. Long strips of foil. Someone else got the credit, though. I didn't mind. I had other ideas. A long-lasting electric-torch battery. I gave them that. Then an idea for a metal-less zipper. They didn't seem to think that zippers had anything to do with the war effort. I should've tried that one on the Americans. That's where I made my money originally, you know: in zippers. Damned near the zipper king of Germany. Didn't invent it, more's the pity, but I improved on it. But no matter. Then, toward the end of the war, I developed cataracts, and that's why I'm here.”

“Why Mexico?” Jackson said.

“There's an eye surgeon in Mexico City who's supposed to be the best in the world. I don't know whether he really is or not, but he's a German Jew like me, and I feel comfortable with him. He's going to operate next month, and that's why I wanted to get this business about finding my son settled.”

“What makes you think he's still alive?” Jackson said.

The blind man shrugged. “Because nobody's come up with any proof that he's dead. If he's not dead, then he's alive.”