Juan Vásquez - The Informers

He said that last bit looking down at his own plate to scoop up a spoonful of broth. No, it wasn't broth, it was cream of tomato soup, as thick as custard, that Margarita had had served with a little spiral of cream adorning the surface. In the center of the spiral, where there was a sprig of parsley, landed a whole bread roll, one of those the size of a fist, with a hard crust, you know the ones? Enrique had thrown it hard, as if he'd wanted to kill a fly perched on the parsley. The bread stayed there, held up by the density of the tomato soup, and the tomato soup landed on Herr Bethke's shirt and tie and slicked-back hair. And I got splashed a little, too, of course, inevitably. I don't have to tell you I didn't mind in the slightest.

Old man Konrad stood up as if his chair had a spring, shouting things in German and waving his arms around like a swimmer. In extreme situations, he would call Enrique by his German name. And this situation was extreme. Old Konrad shouting in German at his son, Heinrich, and wiping off Herr Bethke's shoulders. "Don't bother, don't trouble yourself," Bethke said with his jaw clenched so tightly that it was a miracle we could make out the words. "We were just going in any case." And his wife, the invisible Julia, stood up then, and she did so as she'd done everything all evening: without making a single sound. Her cutlery didn't make any noise, her spoon never touched the bottom of the dish, her napkin never made a sound when Julia wiped her little lips. She stood up, went to her husband's side. Two seconds later we heard the door. We heard Konrad saying good-bye. "I'm so sorry, Herr Bethke. Something like this, a person like yourself will know how to forgive. ." But we didn't hear anything from the guests, as if they'd turned their backs on the apologizing old man. There was the sound of those little bells that shake when the door is opened, when it's shut. We did hear that. The jingling. And then we saw old man Konrad return to the dining room, red with rage but without letting a single growl, a single insult escape. He kissed Margarita on the forehead and began to climb the stairs without looking at Enrique and without looking at us; we had stopped existing or we existed as a disgrace, like a finger pointing at him. It seemed incredible to me that he wasn't going to say anything, and then he said four words, four little words, "That won't happen again," and he said them in the same tone someone else might have used to say, "Tomorrow's market day." "It will happen again," Enrique said, "every time you invite a son of a bitch into the house." Margarita was crying. I noticed your father had turned away from her, probably so as not to make her feel worse. I thought it nice that it had occurred to him. Meanwhile old Konrad stood still on the first step, as if he didn't really know how to get to his room, or as if he was waiting on purpose for Enrique to say what he said: "I wonder when you'll ever be able to stand up to anybody." "Enrique, love," said Margarita. "Or doesn't it matter to you?" said Enrique. "Doesn't it matter if someone insults your wife in front of you?" "No more," said Margarita. Old Konrad began to go upstairs. "You're a coward," Enrique shouted. "A coward and a toady."

Have you ever seen the staircases in those houses in La Soledad? They were very special, because some of them, the most modern ones, didn't have banisters. If you are on the first floor watching someone climb the stairs, the person's body gets cut off a bit with each step, I don't know if you've ever noticed. On the first step you see the whole body. By the fourth the head's no longer there because the ceiling cuts it off. Farther up the torso's gone, and farther still all you can see are two climbing legs, until the person climbing the stairs disappears. Well anyway, the stairs of that house were like that. I'm telling you all this because Enrique shouted what he shouted when old Konrad was nothing but a pair of legs. "A coward, a toady." The climbing legs stopped, I think with one knee up, or at least that's how I remember it. And then they began to come back. One step down. Then another. Then another. The body of old Konrad was reappearing to us. His torso, his head. Until he was back on the first step. No, he didn't come all the way down the stairs. It was as if he wanted to assure us that in spite of his having returned to say something, the dinner was over, the evening had been canceled. And there, standing on one of the first steps, in profile for those of us who were sitting in the dining room, he looked at his son, at the son who had called him a coward and a toady, and he just burst, the dam gave way. He spoke in Spanish, as if he wanted to say to Enrique, Now I'll play by your rules. I don't need advantages, I don't need condescension, what I want is for you to get it once and for all. And Enrique got it, of course. We all got it. "Yes, I am a coward," old Konrad said, "but that's because I'm not what I want to be. I am a coward for staying here, here I am, that's the cowardly thing. Every day Germany is humiliated, read El Diario Popular and you'll see. Look what Roosevelt's lackeys are saying every day. Do they think nobody notices? They call us fifth columnists, they stone our legation, break the windows of our shops, forbid our language, Enrique, they close the schools and deport the principals. Why is Arciniegas closing our schools? Is it for political or religious reasons? It's not because there are Nazis, it's because there are laymen, and the ones who aren't secularists are Protestant. We don't know who's closing the German schools, whether it's the government or the Holy See, and meanwhile Arendt and his traitors call themselves Free Germans, and I'm just supposed to rest easy. Bethke does what I am incapable of imagining; he is a true patriot and not ashamed to say so out loud, to speak aloud, the German language was made to be spoken aloud. Even if a person is mistaken. Yes, he is surely mistaken, but he is mistaken on behalf of Germany. I've been ashamed of being German, but that is not going to last forever; all cowardice has its limits, even mine. I tell you, I am not going to remain quiet and calm. Germany has friends everywhere. You don't love Germany, of course, you have no roots. Do you know what it means to be German, Fraulein Guterman, or are you a rootless one as well? Your language forbidden, literature stolen from the German schools and burned in public by the priest? But there are people working so that these things will stop happening. I don't care if a government of backward people considers them dangerous, I don't care, a patriot is never dangerous. In Colombia there are people who pray for Germany to win. I am not one of them, but that doesn't matter, because German destiny is greater than its leaders, yes indeed, German destiny is greater than the Germans. And that is why we are going to resist in spite of ourselves. Sometimes a person has to do unpleasant things, and who is going to judge you, that's all that matters, who is the judge of your life is the only important thing. Hitler will pass, like all tyrants, but Germany remains, and then what? We have to defend ourselves, don't we? And we will resist, I have no doubt about that. However and by whatever means necessary."

So later, when they put old Konrad on the blacklist, I had to remember that in order to understand why Enrique had vanished as if it had nothing to do with him. And it still shocked me, because such disdain is always shocking, no? At first I thought: When their business is left without customers is he not going to suffer the consequences, too? Does he think this is a game, that people will keep buying from them in secret, that they'll risk being blacklisted as well? When they were forbidden from buying even a lightbulb, when they were no longer able to pay the salaries of their two or three employees, what was Enrique going to do? That's what happened, of course, and it happened more efficiently than we had imagined. Fear works very well with things like this, nothing like fear to get things moving. In a week, an office-equipment shop in Tunja had already canceled their orders for five-meter-by-four display windows so special that they'd had to bring in new casts through Panama. And also the display windows the Klings had ordered for their jewelry shop, smaller but also thicker, remained in storage in the warehouse, and later the suppliers of carbonates and limestone stopped sending their products, but they didn't bother returning the money they'd already been paid. Margarita told me all this. It was as if she felt obliged to keep me up to date. As if I were a shareholder of Cristales Deresser, or something like that. "We have to have the kilns checked. I call the fellow who usually does it, and you know what he tells me? That he doesn't want to get into trouble. He asks me to please understand, not to hold a grudge, that when all this is over we'll most certainly do business again, of course. But it was just that an acquaintance of his was working for Bayer, got fired, and now he can't find work anywhere. What do I care about his acquaintances? Not that I'm insensitive to other people's problems, but we're in no position, you understand, Sarita. This fellow has a signed contract with us. The most terrified one is Konrad. He just can't believe it. The agreements, he says to me, they've given their word. Does this no longer matter to anyone?"