Juan Vásquez - The Informers

Hans Bethke's perfectly shaven face, his little spectacles, everything about him said: I'll smile at you, but turn round and I'll stab you in the back . He had curly, blond, slicked-down hair, and it formed little spirals at his temples. His whole head was a whirl, like sharing a table with one of van Gogh's trees. And the tree talked. It talked a mile a minute. He used the little he'd done in his life to put down anyone else. Before we'd finished our drinks in the living room, we already knew that Bethke had traveled to Germany when he was twenty, for a short stay, sent by his family to get to know the land of his ancestors, and he'd returned to Colombia more German than the Kaiser. You would have said he wore his passport on his sleeve if his passport wasn't still Colombian. He had very small hands, so small that the salad fork looked like the one for the main course when he held it. Small hands, I don't know why, always make me sort of suspicious. Not just me, your father feels the same way. It was as if they were made to slip into the pockets of the people sitting next to him. But he didn't slip them anywhere. Bethke handled his cutlery as if he were playing the harp. But when he spoke it was something else. Bethke had a column in La Nueva Colombia , although I only found that out later. And hearing him talk was like hearing that, a column in a Fascist newspaper. Yes, that's what the man on my right was, a talking newspaper. Don't tell me it's not the height of irony.

With the aperitif still in his hand, Bethke started to tell Konrad about the things he'd brought back from his trip. Records, books, even two charcoal drawings by names that meant nothing to me. I said I liked Chagall very much. Just to participate in the conversation, that's all. And Bethke looked at me as if it were time for my bottle. As if I should brush my teeth and go straight to bed. He said something about decadent art, something I didn't really catch, to tell the truth, and then he spoke to Konrad as prudently as he could, but if he was trying to hide his indignation, he did it very badly. He was either a bad actor or a very good one; I never figured it out. "I'll tell you something, Herr Deresser," he said. "I wouldn't be here, having a drink with you, if I knew that sort of decadence could take hold in Germany. But I'm not concerned, and I won't deny the reason. I'm calm because the Fuhrer is looking after us; he looks after you and he looks after me, he reminds us what we are. There's something in the air, Herr Deresser. It's there for whoever wants to notice it, and I want to be part of it, here in Colombia or wherever, it doesn't matter; a man takes his blood everywhere he goes. No, no one renounces his own blood. Why should a German have to forget himself when he arrives here? Have you forgotten who you are, have my parents forgotten? Quite the contrary. What happens to their children is another matter. Do you know what I think of all these Germans who don't speak German, with their Hispanic names and their reactionary customs, the ones who show up late because people here are always late, who do sloppy work because here they're slapdash, who lie and swindle because that's normal here? They are sick. They're sick and they don't realize. They're like lepers. They're falling apart. They wanted to assimilate and they've done so downward. The ironic thing about this business is that people like me had to come along, people who first stepped on German soil at the age of twenty, to explain all this, to correct the path."

I don't think Gabriel would have really understood what he was talking about. But I didn't have to explain it to him; first, because I didn't even understand it very well, I heard these things and it was like they were talking to me underwater, and second, because Gabriel, during the lecture, had been upstairs in Enrique's room, listening to the first few chapters of La Voragine . They were broadcasting a reading, or rather a performance, of the novel on the radio, with sound effects and everything. There was thunder and rain, Gabriel said, and people walking through grass and the sound of monkeys and of people working, it was fascinating. When they came down to the dining room, they were still talking about it, and Konrad had to suggest to Enrique the possibility that the rest of us hadn't heard the program, that continuing to talk about the program in front of us might not be very polite. Among other reasons, because talking about La voragine was interrupting Herr Bethke. And that was a no-no. It might be the end of the world, but Herr Bethke would take his message to the other side of the table. That's what old Konrad seemed to be saying. He seemed to be saying, We're not aware of how lucky we are. He seemed to be saying, This table doesn't know how lucky it is. And all for the fact that sitting there with us was a man who knew Emil Pruefert, the famous Emil Pruefert, leader of the Colombian Nazi Party. Pruefert had been one of the first Germans to leave the country. We didn't know if they were friends, but Bethke talked about Pruefert as if they'd shared the same wet nurse as babies, as if they'd drunk milk from the same breast. And old Konrad was pale, pale with admiration maybe, or maybe with respect, in spite of knowing that Pruefert had left before Colombia and Germany had broken off relations, and even long before, which some thought strange and others just cowardly.

We'd never seen him like that, neither Gabriel nor I, and the impression was very shocking. It was as if he'd been emptied of himself. He couldn't hold his head up, that had to be it, it couldn't be agreement. That wasn't politeness or diplomacy. It wasn't the good manners of a host toward his guest. And I don't know if Enrique was pretending, making out he'd never seen his dad as that spectacle of disgusting obsequiousness, but he also looked shocked. "This is German," Bethke was saying. "To be able to sit down to a meal and talk of our land without complexes. Why should this country forbid us to use our language? What's already happened is terrible, but for us to let it happen is unthinkable. Why should we allow it, Herr Deresser? The government is closing German schools wherever they are. The German Secondary School of Bogota? Closed. The Barranquilla Kindergarten? Closed. What, seven-year-old children are a threat to the empire of the United States? You'll have read the comments by Struve, the Communist priest. The honorable minister didn't close a school, but an institute of political propaganda. And then there are these cheap harangues. No more Nazi teachers. Declare Spanish the official language of instruction. Let's make a bonfire on the patio and burn all the Nazi propaganda. And what is this material? History textbooks. That's what Arciniegas the minister is looking for, that's what President Santos wants, to burn German history books, to persecute and extinguish the German language in this country. And what are the Germans doing about it? They're letting it happen, it seems clear to me." Margarita interrupted him, or tried to interrupt him, talking about some association that was doing good things. Bethke heard her but didn't look at her. "Katz, a mechanic," he said. "Priller, a baker. Is that the great society? Are those the 'Free Germans'? There is poison in the blood of these Germans, Herr Deresser. The source of that poison must be cauterized, it must be done in the name of our destiny, that's what I say." At that moment your dad leaned over to me and said very quietly, "Liar, he didn't say it. It's from a very famous speech. Everyone in Germany knows it." To tell you the truth, it didn't surprise me that he should know things like that. But I couldn't follow it up, or ask him any questions, whose speech it was, what else it said, because Bethke never stopped talking. "Only a few dare to raise their voices, to protest, and I am one of them. Are you not proud of your German blood, Herr Deresser? And that that blood flows through your son's veins?" And that was when Enrique spoke for the first time. "Don't bring me into it," he said. He didn't say anything more, and it didn't seem like he would say anything else, but those five words were enough to make Konrad sit up straighter: "Enrique, please. That's no way to talk to a-" But Bethke cut him off. "No, let him, Herr Deresser, let him speak, I want to know the opinions of our young people. Young people are the reason for our struggle." "Well, don't tire yourself on my account," said Enrique. "I can take care of myself." Old Konrad interrupted. He obviously knew too well how far his son could go. "Enrique is a romantic," he said. "It's his Latin blood, Herr Bethke. How can you expect. . of course, you understand, those born in Colombia-" "I was also born in Colombia," said Bethke, cutting him short, "but that was an accident, and in any case I don't forget where I come from and what my roots are. At this rate Germany is going to be finished, Germany is going to lose the war, not against the Americans, not against the Com munists, but against every Auslandsdeutscher . No, one cannot stand around with one's arms folded watching the extinction of one's people. Everyone knows how human beings work. The mother always takes charge of raising the children, to a large extent by custom, and it's the mother's language the child adopts most naturally. Your wife knows it. Your son is the living proof. They rob us of our own blood, sir, they steal our identity. Every German married to a Colombian woman is a line lost for the German people. Yes, sir. Lost to Germanness ."