Ira Levin - Boys from Brazil

Liebermann said, “This…can be done?”

Nürnberger nodded.

“It’s been done,” Klaus said.

“With frogs,” Nürnberger said. “A far simpler procedure. That’s the only acknowledged instance, and it caused such a flap—at Oxford in the sixties—that all later work has been done on the quiet. I’ve heard reports, every biologist has, of rabbits, dogs, and monkeys; in England, America, here in Germany, everywhere. And as I said before, I’m sure they’ve already done it with humans in Russia. Or at least tried. What planned society could resist the idea? Multiply your superior citizens and prohibit the inferior ones from reproducing. Think of the savings in medical care and education! And the improved quality of the population in two or three generations.”

Liebermann said, “Could Mengele have done it with humans in the early sixties?”

Nürnberger shrugged. “The theory was already known,” he said. “All he needed was the right equipment, some healthy and willing young women, and a high degree of microsurgical skill. Others have had it: Gurdon, Shettles, Steptoe, Chang…And of course, a place where he could work without interference or publicity.”

“He was in the jungle by then,” Liebermann said. “He went in in ’59. I drove him in…”

Klaus said, “Maybe you didn’t. Maybe he chose to go.”

Liebermann looked uneasily at him.

“But it’s pointless,” Nürnberger said, “to talk about whether or not he could have done it. If what Lena told me is true, he obviously did do it. The fact that the boys were placed with similar families proves it.” He smiled. “You see, genes aren’t the only factor in our ultimate development; I’m sure you know that. The child conceived by mononuclear reproduction will grow up looking like his donor and sharing certain characteristics and propensities with him, but if he’s raised in a different environment, subjected to different domestic and cultural influences—as he’s bound to be, if only by being born years later—well, he can turn out to be quite different psychologically from his donor, despite their genetic sameness. Mengele was obviously interested not in breeding a particular biological strain, as I think the Russians might be, but in reproducing himself , a particular individual. The similar families are an attempt to maximize the chances of the boys’ growing up in the right environment.”

Lena came to the kitchen doorway.

“The boys,” Liebermann said, “are…duplicates of Mengele?”

“Exact duplicates, genetically,” Nürnberger said. “Whether or not they’ll grow up to be duplicates in toto is, as I said, another question.”

“Excuse me,” Lena said. “We can eat now.” She smiled apologetically; her plain face became pretty for an instant. “In fact, we have to,” she said, “otherwise things will be ruined. If they aren’t already.”

They got up and went from the small room of scavenged furniture, animal posters, paperback books, into an almost-the-same-size kitchen, with more animal posters, a steel-gated window, and a red-covered table—bread, salad, red wine in mismatched tumblers.

Liebermann, uncomfortable on a small wire-backed chair, looked across the table at Nürnberger buttering bread. “What did you mean,” he asked, “about the boys’ growing up in ‘the right environment’?”

“One as much like Mengele’s as possible,” Nürnberger said, looking at him. He smiled in his brown beard. “Look,” he said, “if I wanted to make another Eduard Nürnberger, it wouldn’t be enough simply to scrape a bit of skin from my toe, pluck a nucleus from a cell, and go through that whole procedure I described—assuming I had the ability and equipment—”

“And the woman,” Klaus said, putting a plate before him.

“Thank you,” Nürnberger said, smiling. “I could get the woman.”

“For that kind of reproduction?”

“Well, assuming. It only means two tiny incisions, one to extract the ovum and one to implant the embryo.” Nürnberger looked at Liebermann. “But that would be only part of the job,” he said. “I would then have to find a suitable home for Baby Eduard. He would require a mother who’s very religious—almost a maniac, in fact—and a father who drinks too much, so that there’s constant fighting between them. And there would also have to be in the house a wonderful uncle, a math teacher, who takes the boy out of there as often as he can: to museums, to the country…These people would have to treat the boy like their own, not like someone conceived in a laboratory, and furthermore, the ‘uncle’ would have to die when the boy was nine and the ‘parents’ would have to separate two years later. The boy would have to spend his adolescence shuttling between the two with his younger sister.”

Klaus was sitting down with a plate at Liebermann’s right. A plate lay before Liebermann—dry-looking meat loaf, carrots steaming a minty smell.

“And even then ,” Nürnberger said, “he might turn out very different from this Eduard Nürnberger. His biology teacher might not take a shine to him, as mine did. A girl might let him go to bed with her sooner than one let me. He’d read different books, watch television where I listened to radio, be subject to thousands of chance encounters that might make him more or less aggressive than I am, more or less loving, witty, et cetera, et cetera.”

Lena sat down with a plate at Liebermann’s left, looked across the table at Klaus.

Nürnberger, breaking meat loaf with his fork, said, “Mengele was aware of the chanciness of the whole thing, so he produced and found homes for many boys. He’ll be happy, I suppose, if a few, or even only one, turns out exactly right.”

“Do you see now,” Klaus asked Liebermann, “why the men are being killed?”

Liebermann nodded. “To—I don’t know what word to use—to shape the boys.”

“Exactly,” Nürnberger said. “To shape them, to try to make them psychological Mengeles as well as genetic ones.”

Klaus said, “He lost his father when he was a certain age, so the boys must do the same. Or lose the men they think are their fathers.”

“The event,” Nürnberger said, “surely was of paramount importance in shaping his psyche.”

“It’s like unlocking a safe,” Lena said. “If you can turn the knob to all the right numbers, in the right order, the door opens.”

“Unless,” Klaus said, “the knob was turned to a wrong number in between. These carrots are great.”

“Thank you.”

“Yes,” Nürnberger said. “Everything’s delicious.”

“Mengele has brown eyes.”

Nürnberger looked at Liebermann. “Are you sure?”

Liebermann said, “I’ve held his Argentine identity card in my hand. ‘Eyes, brown.’ And his father was a manufacturer, not a civil servant. Farm machines.”

“He’s related to those Mengeles?” Klaus asked.

Liebermann nodded.

Nürnberger, taking salad onto his plate, said, “No wonder he could afford the equipment. Well, he can’t have been the donor himself, if the eyes don’t match.”

Lena said to Liebermann, “Do you know who’s the head of the Comrades Organization?”

“A colonel named Rudel, Hans Ulrich Rudel.”

“Blue eyes?” Klaus asked.

“I don’t know. I’ll have to check. And his family background.” Liebermann looked at the fork in his hand, put its tines into a slice of carrot, raised the carrot, put it into his mouth.

“At any rate,” Nürnberger said, “you know now why those men are being killed. What are you planning to do next?”