Ira Levin: Boys from Brazil

“Who are my parents?” the boy asked. “I’ll give you three. One…”

“You have none!” Mengele said.

“Two…”

“It’s true! You were born from a cell of the greatest man who ever lived! Re born! You are he , reliving his life! And that Jew over there is his sworn enemy! And yours!”

The boy turned toward Liebermann, blue eyes confounded.

Liebermann got his hand up, circled a finger at his temple, pointed at Mengele.

“No!” Mengele cried as the boy turned to him. The Dobermans snarled. “I am not mad! Smart though you are, there are things you don’t know, about science and microbiology! You’re the living duplicate of the greatest man in all history! And he”—his eyes jumped toward Liebermann—“came here to kill you! I to protect you!”

“ Who? ” the boy challenged. “ Who am I? What great man?”

Mengele stared at him over the heads of the snarling Dobermans.

The boy said, “One…”

“Adolf Hitler; you’ve been told he was evil,” Mengele said, “but as you grow and see the world engulfed by Blacks and Semites, Slavs, Orientals, Latins—and your own Aryan folk threatened with extinction—from which you shall save them!—you’ll come to see that he was the best and finest and wisest of all mankind! You’ll rejoice in your heritage, and bless me for creating you! As he himself blessed me for trying!”

“You know what?” the boy said. “You’re the biggest nut I ever met. You’re the weirdest, craziest— ”

“I am telling you the truth!” Mengele said. “Look in your heart! The strength is there to command armies, Bobby! To bend whole nations to your will, to destroy without mercy all who oppose you!”

The boy stood looking at him.

“It’s true,” Mengele said. “All his power is in you, or will be when the time comes. Now do as I tell you. Let me protect you. You have a destiny to fulfill. The highest destiny of all.”

The boy looked down, rubbing at his forehead. He looked up at Mengele. “Mustard,” he said.

The Dobermans leaped; Mengele flailed, cried out.

Liebermann looked. Winced. Looked.

Looked at the boy.

The boy thrust his hands into the pockets of his red-striped blue jacket. He moved from the table, walked slowly to the side of the settee; stood looking down. He wrinkled his nose. Said, “Sheesh.”

Liebermann looked at the boy, and at the burrowing Dobermans pushing Mengele down onto the floor.

He looked at his slowly bleeding left hand, both sides of it.

Growls sounded. Wet partings. Scrapings.

After a while the boy came away from the settee, his hands still in his pockets. He looked down at the dead Doberman, prodded its rump with a sneaker-toe. He glanced at Liebermann, and turned and looked back. “Off,” he said. Two of the Dobermans raised their heads and came walking toward him, tongues lapping bloody mouths.

“ Off! ” the boy said. The third Doberman raised its head.

One of the Dobermans sniffed at the dead Doberman.

The other Doberman came past Liebermann, nosed open the door beside him, and went out.

The boy came and stood between Liebermann’s feet, looking down at him, the forelock aslant his forehead.

Liebermann looked up at him. Pointed at the phone.

The boy took his hands from his pockets and crouched down, elbows on brown-corduroy thighs, hands hanging loose. Dirty fingernails.

Liebermann looked at the gaunt young face: the sharp nose, the forelock, the deep blue eyes looking at him.

“I think you’re going to die soon,” the boy said, “if someone doesn’t come help you, get you to the hospital.” His breath smelled of chewing gum.

Liebermann nodded.

“I could go out again,” the boy said. “With my books. And come back later. Say I was…just walking somewhere. I do that sometimes. And my mother doesn’t get home till twenty to five. I bet you’d be dead by then.”

Liebermann looked at him. Another Doberman went out.

“If I stay, and call the police,” the boy said, “are you going to tell them what I did?”

Liebermann considered. Shook his head.

“Ever?”

He shook his head.

“Promise?”

He nodded.

The boy put out his hand.

Liebermann looked at it.

He looked at the boy; the boy looked at him. “If you can point, you can shake,” the boy said.

Liebermann looked at the hand.

No, he told himself. Either way you’re going to die. What kind of doctors can they have in a hole like this?

“Well?”

And maybe there’s an afterlife. Maybe Hannah’s waiting. Mama, Papa, the girls…

Don’t kid yourself.

He brought his hand up.

Shook the boy’s hand. As little as possible.

“He was a real nut,” the boy said, and stood up.

Liebermann looked at his hand.

“ Scram! ” the boy shouted at a Doberman busy on Mengele.

The Doberman ran out into the hallway, then back crazily, bloody-mouthed, and past Liebermann and out.

The boy went to the phone.

Liebermann closed his eyes.

Remembered. Opened them.

When the boy was done talking, he beckoned to him.

The boy came over. “Water?” he asked.

He shook his head, beckoned.

The boy crouched down beside him.

“There’s a list,” he said.

“What?” The boy leaned his ear close.

“There’s a list,” he said as loud as he could.

“A list?”

“See if you can find it. In his coat maybe. A list of names.”

He watched the boy go into the hallway.

My helper Hitler.

He kept his eyes open.

Looked at Mengele in front of the settee. White and red where his face was. Bone and blood.

Good.

After a while the boy came back looking at papers.

He reached.

“My father’s on it,” the boy said.

He reached.

The boy looked uneasily at him, put the papers down into his hand. “I forgot. I better go look for him.”

Five or six typed sheets. Names, addresses, dates. Hard to read without his glasses. Döring, crossed out. Horve, crossed out. Other pages, no crossings.

He folded the papers against the floor, got them into his jacket pocket.

Closed his eyes.

Stay alive. Not finished yet.

Faraway barking.

“I found him.”

Blond-bearded Greenspan glared at him. Whispered, “He’s dead! We can’t question him!”

“It’s all right. I have the list.”

“What?”

Crinkly blond hair, pinned-in embroidered skullcap. As loud as he could: “It’s all right. I have the list. All the fathers.”

He was lifted—ei!—and put down.

On a stretcher. Being carried. Dog’s-head knocker, daylight, blue sky.

A shiny lens looking at him, keeping up, humming. Sharp nose next to it.

THEY HAD GOOD DOCTORSthere, it turned out; good enough, anyway, for him to find himself with a cast on his hand, a tube in his arm, and bandages all over him—in front and in back, above and below.

In the intensive care unit of the Lancaster General Hospital. Saturday. Friday was lost.

He would be fine, a pudgy Indian doctor told him. A bullet had passed through his “mediastinum”—the doctor touched his own white-smocked chest. It had fractured a rib, injured both the left lung and something called “the recurrent laryn-geal nerve,” and missed his aorta by only so much . Another bullet had fractured his pelvic girdle and lodged in muscle. Another had damaged bones and muscles in his left hand. Another had grazed a rib on his right side.

The lodged bullet had been removed and all the damage repaired. He should be talking in a week or ten days, walking on crutches in two weeks. The Austrian Embassy had been notified, although—the doctor smiled—it probably hadn’t been necessary. Because of the newspapers and television. A detective wanted to speak to him but would have to wait of course.