Ira Levin: Boys from Brazil

When the waiter had cleared the table and gone downstairs, leaving them with their cake and tea, Gorin leaned his forearms on the table, folded his hands, and looked at everyone gravely. “Our present problems are the least of our problems,” he said, and looked at Liebermann. “Right, Yakov?”

Liebermann, looking at him, nodded.

Gorin looked at Greenspan and Stern, at each of the five chapter heads. “There are ninety-four boys,” he said, “thirteen years old, some of them twelve and eleven, who have to be killed before they get much older. No,” he said, “I’m not kidding. I wish to God I were. Some of them are in England, Rafe; some in Scandinavia, Stig; some of them are here and in Canada; some in Germany. I don’t know how we’ll get them , but we will; we have to. Yakov’ll explain who they are and how they…came to be.” He sat back and gestured toward Liebermann. “In essence,” he said. “You don’t have to spell out all the details.” And to the others: “I vouch for every word he’s going to say, and Phil and Paul will vouch too; they’ve seen one of them. Go ahead, Yakov.”

Liebermann sat looking at the spoon in his tea.

“You’re on,” Gorin said.

Liebermann looked at him and said hoarsely, “Could we talk in private for a minute?” He cleared his throat.

Gorin looked questioningly at him, and then not questioningly. He took breath in his nostrils, smiled. “Sure,” he said, and stood up.

Liebermann took his cane, grasped the table edge, and got up from his chair. He caned a step, and Gorin put a hand on his back and walked with him, saying softly, “I know what you’re going to say.” They walked away together toward the bandstand with its wedding canopy.

“I know what you’re going to say, Yakov.”

“ I don’t yet; I’m glad you do.”

“All right, I’ll say it for you. ‘We shouldn’t do it. We should give them a chance. Even the ones who lost their fathers could turn out to be ordinary people.’”

“Not ordinary, I don’t think, no. But not Hitlers.”

“‘So we should be nice warm-hearted old-fashioned Jews and respect their civil rights. And when some of them do become Hitlers, why, we’ll just let our children worry about it. On the way to the gas chambers.’”

Liebermann stopped at the bandstand, turned to Gorin. “Rabbi,” he said, “nobody knows what the chances are. Mengele thought they were good, but it was his project, his ambition . It could be that none will be Hitler, not even if there was a thousand of them. They’re boys. No matter what their genes are. Children. How can we kill them? This was Mengele’s business, killing children. Should it be ours? I don’t even—”

“You really astound me.”

“Let me finish, please. I don’t even think we should have them be watched by their governments, because this will leak out, you can bet your life it will, and bring attention to them, draw to them exactly the kind of meshuganahs who’ll make them be Hitlers, encourage them. Or even from inside a government the meshuganahs could come. The fewer who know, the better.”

“Yakov, if one becomes Hitler, just one —my God, you know what we’ve got!”

“No,” Liebermann said. “No. I’ve been thinking about this for weeks. I say in my talks it takes two things to make it happen again, a new Hitler and social conditions like in the thirties. But that’s not true. It takes three things: the Hitler, the conditions…and the people to follow the Hitler.”

“And don’t you think he’d find them?”

“No, not enough of them. I really think people are better and smarter now, not so much thinking their leaders are God. The television makes a big difference. And history, knowing…Some he’d find, yes; but no more, I think—I hope—than the pretend-Hitlers we have now, in Germany and South America.”

“Well, you’ve got a hell of a lot more faith in human nature than I do,” Gorin said. “Look, Yakov, you can stand here talking till you’re blue in the face, you’re not going to change my mind on this. We not only have the right to kill them, we have the duty. God didn’t make them, Mengele did.”

Liebermann stood looking at him, and nodded. “All right,” he said. “I thought I’d raise the question.”

“You raised it,” Gorin said, and gestured toward the table. “Will you explain to them now? We’ve got a lot of things to work out before we leave.”

“My voice is used up for today,” Liebermann said. “ You better explain.”

They walked back together toward the table.

“While I’m up,” Liebermann said, “is there a men’s room?”

“Over there.”

Liebermann caned away toward the stairs. Gorin went on to the table and sat down.

Liebermann caned into the men’s room—a small one—and into the booth; swung down its doorbolt. He hung his cane on his right wrist, got out his passport case, and took the folded-small list from it. He put the case back in his jacket, unfolded the list to half sheets, and tore them across; put them together and tore again; put them together and—tore again. He dropped the thickness of small pieces into the toilet, and when the typed-on pieces had separated and settled onto the water, turned down the black handle on the tank. The paper and water swirled and funneled down, gurgling. Pieces of paper stuck to the side of the bowl, pieces came back in the rising water.

He waited for the tank to refill.

As long as he was there, unzipped.

When he came out, he caught the eye of one of the men at the far side of the table and pointed at Gorin. The man spoke to Gorin, and Gorin turned and looked at him. He beckoned. Gorin sat for a moment, and got up and came toward him, looking annoyed.

“What now?”

“You should brace yourself.”

“For what?”

“I flushed the list down the toilet.”

Gorin looked at him.

He nodded. “It’s the right thing to do,” he said. “Believe me.”

Gorin stared at him, white-faced.

“I feel funny telling a Rabbi what’s—”

“ It wasn’t your list ,” Gorin said. “It was…everybody’s! The Jewish People’s!”

Liebermann said, “Could I take a vote? It was only me in there.” He shook his head. “Killing children, any children—it’s wrong.”

Gorin’s face reddened; his nostrils flared, his brown eyes burned, dark-ringed. “Don’t you tell me what’s right and wrong,” he said. “You asshole. You stupid ignorant old fart! ”

Liebermann stared at him.

“I ought to throw you down these stairs!”

“Touch me and I’ll break your neck,” Liebermann said.

Gorin pulled in breath; his fists clenched at his sides. “ It’s Jews like you ,” he said, “ that let it happen last time .”

Liebermann looked at him. “Jews didn’t ‘let’ it happen,” he said. “Nazis made it happen. People who would even kill children to get what they wanted.”

Gorin’s reddened jaw clenched. “Get out of here,” he said. And wheeled and stalked away.

Liebermann watched him go, drew a breath, and turned to the stairs. He took hold of the banister and started caning himself slowly downward, a step at a time.

Through the cab window, coming into Kennedy Airport, he saw Howard Johnson’s Motor Lodge. Where Frieda Maloney had given the babies to the U.S. and Canadian couples. He watched it swing past, its ten or twelve stories floodlighted in the dusk…

After he had checked in at Pan Am, he called Mr. Goldwasser at the lecture bureau.