A Quiet Flame

“It was built by a German. A fellow named Carlos Wiederhold, toward the end of the last century. But quite soon after finishing it, he found an even nicer spot, to the south of here. Place called Bariloche. So he went there and built a whole town in similar style. There are lots of old comrades down there. You should visit it sometime.”

“Perhaps I will,” I said. “Always supposing I can get a clean bill of health from the doctor.”

“Naturally, I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thanks, Heinrich.”

Grund shook his head. “Only I’m still finding it kind of hard to believe. Bernie Gunther being here in Argentina, like the rest of us. I always had you pegged as a bit of a Commie. What the hell happened?”

“It’s a long story.”

“Isn’t it always?”

“But not right now, eh?”

“Sure.” Grund started to laugh.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

“You, a fugitive war criminal. The same as me. The war made fools of us all, didn’t it?”

“That’s certainly been my experience.”

I heard the sound of horses and looked around to see Kammler and his men riding up the slope toward us. The SS general lifted his boots out of the stirrups and slipped off his horse like a jockey. Grund went over to speak to him. Anna was watching Kammler closely. I was watching Anna. I put my hand lightly on her back. The gun wasn’t there.

“Where is it?” I murmured.

“Under my belt,” she said. “Where I can reach it.”

“If you kill him—”

“What, and spoil your little Nazi reunion? I wouldn’t want to do that.”

There seemed no point in arguing that one. I said, “If you kill him, they’ll kill us both.”

“After what I’ve seen, do you really think I care?”

“Yes. And if you don’t, then you certainly ought to. You’re still a young woman. One day you might have children. Perhaps you ought to think about them.”

“I don’t think I want to bring children into a country like this.”

“Then pick another country. I did.”

“Yes, I should think you would feel quite at home here,” she said bitterly. “For you, this must seem like a real home away from home.”

“Anna, please be quiet. Be quiet and let me think.”

When Kammler had finished speaking to Grund, he approached us with a sort of smile on his lean face, taking his cap off, his arm extended toward us both in a show of avuncular hospitality. Now that he had dismounted, I was able to get a better look at him. He was well over six feet tall. His hair was invisibly short and gray at the sides, but longer and darker on the crown, so that it looked like a yarmulke. The skull on his sticklike neck had been taken from Easter Island, probably. The eyes were set in cavelike sockets so deep and shadowy they almost looked empty, as if the bird of prey that hatched him had pecked them out. His physique was very spare but strong, like something that had been unwound from one of Melville’s spools of Glasgow barbed wire. For a moment I couldn’t quite place his accent. And then I guessed he was Prussian—one of those Baltic-coast Prussians who eat herring for breakfast and keep griffins for sport.

“I’ve been talking to your old friend Grund,” he said, “and I’ve decided not to kill you.”

“I’m sure we’re very relieved to hear it,” said Anna, and smiled sweetly at me. “Aren’t we, dear?”

Kammler glanced uncertainly at Anna. “Yes, Grund has vouched for you. And so did your Colonel Montalbán.”

“You called Montalbán?” I said.

“You seem surprised at that.”

“It’s just that I don’t see any telephone lines up here.”

“You’re right. There are none. No, I called him from a phone down there.” He turned and pointed into the valley. “An old service telephone from the days when the hydroelectrical people from Capri were here.”

“That’s quite a view you have there, Doctor,” said Anna.

“Yes. Of course, soon much of it will be under several fathoms of water.”

“Won’t that be a little bit inconvenient?” she asked him. “What will happen to your telephone? To your road?”

He smiled patiently. “We shall build another road, of course. Workers are plentiful and cheap in this part of the world.”

“Yes,” she said, smiling thinly. “I can imagine.”

“Besides,” he added, “a lake will be nicer. I think it will be just like Switzerland.”

We went up to the main house. It was made of stone bricks and pale-colored wood. I counted about twenty-five windows on the three-story front. The central part of the house was a red-roofed turret, at the top of which was a man with a pair of binoculars and a rifle. The lower windows had Tyrolean-style shutters and window boxes filled with flowers. As we came up to the front door, I thought we might meet the Aryan Ski Association coming the other way. Certainly the air was more Alpine up here than it had been down in the valley.

Inside the house, we were met by German-speaking servants, including a butler wearing a white cotton jacket. A big log was burning in the fireplace. There were flowers in tall vases, and pictures and bronzes of horses everywhere you looked.

“What a lovely house,” said Anna. “It’s all very Germanic.”