Ira Levin - Boys from Brazil

A clarinet piped faintly. Mozart? “Emil was involved…?”

“Maybe. Without his knowing it. I’m in your neighborhood now. May I come over? Or would you prefer to come out and meet me somewhere?”

“No. I can’t see you.”

“Frau Döring, please, it’s very important.”

“I can’t possibly. Not now. It’s the worst possible day.”

“Tomorrow, then? I’ve come to Gladbeck for the sole purpose of speaking to you.” The clarinet stopped, then piped again, repeating its last phrase, definitely Mozart. Played by the lover Springer? Which was why it was such a bad day to see him? “Frau Döring?”

“All right. I work until three. You can come over tomorrow at four.”

“That’s Frankenstrasse Twelve?”

“Yes. Apartment thirty-three.”

“Thank you. At four tomorrow. Thank you, Frau Döring.”

He freed himself from the phone booth and asked the bartender for directions to the building where Döring had died.

“It’s gone.”

“Which way was it, then?”

The bartender, bending, washing glasses, pointed a dripping finger. “Down there.”

Liebermann went down a narrow street and across a busy wider one. Gladbeck, or this part of it at least, was urban, gray, charmless. The smog didn’t help.

He stood looking at a rubbled lot flanked by masonry walls of old factory buildings. Three children piled broken stones, making an angled barrier. One of them wore a military knapsack.

He walked on. The next cross-street was Frankenstrasse; he followed it to Number 12, a soot-streaked buff apartment house, conventionally modern, behind a narrow well-kept lawn. From its rooftop a finger of black smoke rose up to join the smog-shroud.

He watched a woman struggle a baby carriage through the glass entrance door, and went on in the direction of his hotel, the Schultenhof.

In his clean stark German room he tried again to reach Döring’s sister. “God bless you whoever you are,” a woman greeted him. “We just this second stepped in. You’re our very first call.”

Fine. He could guess. “Is Frau Toppat there?”

“Oh poo. No, I’m sorry, she’s gone. She’s in California, or on the way. We bought the house from her the day before yesterday. It’s for Frau Toppat! She’s gone to live with her daughter. Do you want the address? I’ve got it here somewhere.”

“No, thanks,” Liebermann said. “Don’t bother.”

“Everything’s ours now: the furniture, the goldfish—we even have vegetables growing! Do you know the house?”

“No.”

“It’s awful, but it’s perfect for us. Well, the God-bless still goes. Are you sure you don’t want her address? I can find it.”

“Positive. Thank you. Good luck.”

“We’ve got it already, but thanks, we can always use a little more.”

He hung up, sighed, nodded. Me too, lady.

After he had washed up and taken his late-afternoon pills, he sat down at the much-too-small writing table, opened his briefcase, and got out the draft of an article he was writing about the extradition of Frieda Maloney.

The door opened to the extent of its short tight chain and a boy looked out, pushing dark hair aside from his forehead. He was thirteen or so, gaunt and sharp-nosed.

Liebermann, wondering if he had got the number wrong, said, “Is this Frau Döring’s apartment?”

“Are you Herr Liebermann?”

“Yes.”

The door closed partway; metal scraped.

The boy was a grandson, Liebermann supposed, or maybe—since Frau Döring was much younger than Döring had been—a son. Or maybe only a neighbor invited over so she wouldn’t be alone with an unknown male visitor.

Whoever he was, the boy held the door open all the way, and Liebermann went in—to a mirror-walled alcove busy with two or three himselves coming in, surprisingly seedy (“Get a haircut!” Hannah called. “Trim your mustache! Stand straight!”), and several boys in white shirts and dark trousers closing doors and hooking in chain-latches. Standing straight, Liebermann turned to the real boy. “Is Frau Döring in?”

“She’s on the phone.” The boy held a hand out for his hat.

Giving it to him, Liebermann smiled and asked, “Are you her grandson?”

“Her son.” The boy’s voice scorned the foolish question. He opened a mirror-doored closet.

Liebermann put his briefcase down and took his coat off, looking into a living room full of orange and chrome and glass, everything matching, store-like, unhuman.

He gave his coat to the boy, smiling, and the boy fitted a hanger into its sleeve, looking bored and dutiful. He was the height of Liebermann’s chest. A few coats hung in the closet, one of leopard skin. A bird, a stuffed raven or some such, peered out from behind hats and boxes on the shelf. “Is that a bird back there?” Liebermann asked.

“Yes,” the boy said. “It was my father’s.” He closed the door and stood looking at Liebermann with deep blue eyes.

Liebermann picked up his briefcase.

“Do you kill the Nazis when you catch them?” the boy asked.

“No,” Liebermann said.

“Why not?”

“It’s against the law. Besides, it’s better to put them on trial. That way more people learn about them.”

“Learn what?” The boy looked skeptical.

“Who they were, what they did.”

The boy turned toward the living room.

A woman stood there, small and blond, in a black skirt and jacket and pale-blue turtleneck sweater; a pretty woman in her early forties. She cocked her head and smiled, her hands clasped tensely before her.

“Frau Döring?” Liebermann went to her. She held a hand out and he shook its small coldness. “Thank you for seeing me,” he said. Her complexion was cosmetically smooth, with a few fine wrinkles at the outsides of her blue-green eyes. A pleasant perfume came from her.

“Please,” she said with embarrassment, “could I ask you to show me some identification?”

“Of course,” Liebermann said. “It’s smart of you to ask.” He shifted his briefcase to his other hand and reached into his inside jacket pocket.

“I’m sure you’re… who you say you are,” Frau Döring said, “but I…”

“His initials are in his hat,” the boy said behind Liebermann. “Y.S.L.”

Liebermann smiled at Frau Döring, handing his passport to her. “Your son’s a detective,” he said; and turning to the boy, “That’s very good! I didn’t even notice you looking.”

The boy, brushing aside his dark forelock, smiled complacently.

Frau Döring returned the passport. “Yes, he’s clever,” she said with a smile at the boy. “Only a little bit lazy. Right now, for instance, he’s supposed to be doing his practicing.”

“I can’t answer the door and be in my room at the same time,” the boy grumbled, stalking across the living room.

Frau Döring smoothed his unruly hair as he passed her. “I know, darling; I was only teasing.”

The boy stalked into a hallway.

Frau Döring smiled brightly at Liebermann, rubbing her hands as if to warm them. “Come sit down, Herr Liebermann,” she said, and backed toward the windowed end of the room. A door slammed. “Would you like some coffee?”

Liebermann said, “No, thank you, I just had a cup of tea across the street.”

“At the Bittner? That’s where I work. I’m the hostess there from eight to three.”

“That’s nice and convenient for you.”

“Yes, and I’m home when Erich gets here. I started Monday and so far it’s perfect. I enjoy it.”

Liebermann sat on an unyielding sofa, and Frau Döring sat on a chair adjacent to it. She sat erectly, her hands folded on her black skirt, her head tilted attentively.