A Song Of Shadows Part 33

'I find it gives me consolation,' said Parker.

'So you have faith?'

'No.'

Werner looked confused. 'But why wear it if you do not believe?'

'That wasn't your question,' Parker replied. 'You asked if I had faith. I don't. Faith is belief based on spiritual conviction instead of proof. You could say that the nature of my convictions has changed recently. Faith is no longer an absolute requirement.'

'If that's true, I would not wish to be you,' said Werner. 'I don't want proof, not of what I now believe through faith. If I had proof, I would have no need of faith, and it is faith that sustains me. And, in my experience, people may say that they want proof, but the last time G.o.d gave it to them, they nailed it to a tree.'

They shook hands, and Parker left. Werner returned to his desk and switched off the lamp.

He would have to move Oran Wilde's body.

Werner's soup supper was well attended, and everyone stayed on for the short prayer service. Afterward, as he was making his farewells, he noticed a bottleneck at the door of the hall, and went to investigate.

The detective was there, handing out business cards.

'My name is Charlie Parker,' Werner heard him say. 'I'm a private detective. I found Ruth Winter's body out at Green Heron Bay. If you think of anything that might help in the investigation, anything at all, please contact me or Detective Gordon Walsh at ...'

Werner turned away.

62.

Demers arrived at Engel's bedside. As antic.i.p.ated, the Magistrate had reversed his decision and granted bail. Nyman had filed a new appeal against Engel's deportation based on health grounds. At the very least, deportation would now be delayed further.

Engel's wife and daughters were still on their way down to Manhattan from Maine, but their arrival was imminent. Demers didn't have much time.

Engel's left eye was half closed, and his mouth hung open. His face resembled a rock formation that had collapsed on one side. His right eye swiveled toward her.

'How are you feeling, Mr Engel?' she asked.

His reply was slurred, but it wasn't hard to pick out the words 'Like you f.u.c.king care.'

'I spoke with Isha Winter,' she continued. 'She denied that Baulman and Kraus are the same man. You lied to me.'

Engel started to gurgle, and the gurgle became a laugh. His body shook with the effort.

'Don't care,' he said. 'Going home. To Augusta. You lose.'

He stank, she thought. He reeked of vomit and corruption and old sins. He had partic.i.p.ated in murders untold, and was about to cheat the law at the last.

She leaned in closer to him. She had intended to ask him about Hummel, but she knew she would get nothing out of him now.

'I've spoken to the doctors,' she whispered. 'You're dying. You can expect another stroke in the next six to twelve hours. If it doesn't kill you, it'll leave you in a vegetative state, but even that won't last very long. You're never going to see your home again, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d. You lose.'

And his howls of rage followed her all the way down the hall until the elevator doors closed and silenced them.

63.

Werner visited Theodora Hummel the next day to offer his condolences on the sad death of her father. She was a modestly unattractive woman who had never married, and was her father's only child. Some work colleagues were with her in the family home when Werner called. She seemed surprised to see him. Her father had been a member of his congregation, but she had not set foot in his church any church in many years. She introduced Werner to her friends and offered him a drink. He then partic.i.p.ated gamely in the commemoration of the foul old man who was her father, although he did not struggle to come up with anecdotes to amuse them, for whatever his past Bernhard Hummel had been something of a character, even if much of his wit, and many of his pranks, came at the expense of others, and were underpinned by petty cruelty.

Eventually the friends began to drift away, until Werner and Theodora were left alone. He helped her clean up, and saw that she had done a lot of work on the house since her father was s.h.i.+pped off to Golden Hills. The kitchen, once dark and oppressive, with oak closets stained almost to black, had been extended and modernized, just as the living room was less forbidding than he remembered. Yet the changes were strangely characterless, and Werner felt as though he had wandered into the pages of a design catalog, and a cheap one at that. It wasn't that Theodora Hummel had bad taste: rather, she appeared to have no taste of her own at all.

Finally, Werner resumed his original seat, and waited for Theodora to join him. They sat on uncomfortable chairs, and pretended that they were celebrating the memory of a man who, in reality, would not be missed. It seemed about time to shed the pretense.

'It must be hard for you,' said Werner, 'living here surrounded by so many memories of your father.'

He didn't even try to disguise his sarcasm. No trace of Bernhard Hummel remained in the house, as far as he could see, not unless the first floor was a trap to fool the unwary and Theodora had preserved the second as a kind of mausoleum, all set to receive her father's ashes.

'What do you want, Pastor?' asked Theodora.

'To ask what you knew of your father's past.'

'I knew enough.'

'Enough?'

'Enough not to speak of it to him, or to others.'

So there would be no games, Werner realized. Good.

'I take it that you wish me to conduct the funeral service,' he said.

'I'm sure that's what my father would have wanted.'

'We have to be careful at such times,' said Werner. 'We are consigning a soul to its maker. There is, in the view of some, the requirement of an honest accounting. We cannot speak ill of the dead, yet we cannot whitewash their failings either. But perhaps, in this case, a private acknowledgement of them between ourselves may suffice.'

'My father was a n.a.z.i war criminal.'

'So it might be said.'

'He was helped to make a home in the United States by your father.'

'My father, like yours, made mistakes in his life.'

'But that was not one of them.'

'I couldn't comment.'

'I thought we were acknowledging sins.'

'We are: the sins of Bernhard Hummel. We need not trouble ourselves with those of others.'

Theodora wet her lips. They were too large for her face, the lower lip in particular. It hung, pendulous and dark-blooded, like a slug.

'I have a reputation to protect,' she said.

'I hear that you may be about to become princ.i.p.al of your school. Congratulations.'

'I've worked hard for it.'

'I'm sure that you have.'

She rose and went to kitchen. When she returned, she was holding an envelope. She handed it to Werner. It was addressed to Bernhard Hummel. The letter inside bore the seal of the Justice Department, and came from the Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section at the Main Justice Building, Pennsylvania Avenue, Was.h.i.+ngton, DC. Werner read it through. It requested that Bernhard Hummel present himself for interview over possible irregularities in his original immigration paperwork, and advised him to make contact with the section to arrange a suitable time and venue for a discussion of the same. It was signed by Marie Demers.

'When did you receive it?' asked Werner.

'This morning.'

'Unfortunate timing for the Justice Department.'

'My father had not had contact with Thomas Engel for many years,' said Theodora. 'They had a falling out over money, and my father refused to speak to him again.'

'Did someone call to warn you that Engel might be talking?'

'Ambros Riese. He and my father were once close. Riese hates Engel.'

'Have you seen the news today?' Werner asked.

'No, I have not.'

'It appears that Thomas Engel died of a stroke early this morning.'

'Should I pretend to be sorry?'

'Not on my account, or even his. I doubt that he would have wished it.'

Werner folded the letter, replaced it in the envelope and returned it to Theodora.

'Your father suffered from dementia in his later years,' he said carefully.

'That's right.'

'Sometimes such people may not know to whom they are talking, or speak of the past as a thing of the present. Was your father such a man?'

'He was.'

'Was he careless?'

'He was very paranoid, even before he entered Golden Hills,' said Theodora. 'I think his illness reinforced that paranoia, but I also did my best to make sure that he did not speak out of turn. I drummed the potential consequences into him. I think he was afraid to speak to those whom he did not know.'

'The Justice Department may be in touch with you again when they learn of his pa.s.sing.'

'I don't see what help I can be to them.'

'Your father did not keep records, or old doc.u.ments, that might interest them?'

'I threw out boxes of his old junk when he left for Golden Hills. I don't think I even looked at what was inside. Anything that remains, I may burn tonight. I feel a chill in my bones.'

Werner stood. He was satisfied.

'Then your father's pa.s.sing was, I think, fortunate,' he said. 'A man should not have to live in such a state of distress.'

Theodora stood too. She was the same height as Werner, and could look him in the eye. She handed him his coat, and helped him put it on.

'They are investigating my father's death at the home,' she said.

'Really?'

'An autopsy is to be carried out. I think it's standard procedure not that there should be any cause for concern. His death was an accident.'

'Yes. He choked, I believe.'

'On grapes,' said Theodora. 'That's the only odd thing about it.'

'Odd?' asked Werner. 'How?'

Theodora smiled.

'My father didn't like grapes.'

That evening, Marcus Baulman poured himself a large celebratory snifter of brandy, and drank it while watching German soccer from the Bundesliga on his computer. Hummel was dead, and now Engel, too, was gone. Had he been a religious man, it might have been enough to make him send up a prayer of thanksgiving. Instead he watched Bayern Munich score again against Kaiserslautern, and was glad that he seemed a.s.sured of living out his final days in this great country.

But as is often the case with those who manage to escape punishment for an offense of which they are actually guilty, Baulman's relief was tempered by rage at his persecutors. Baulman had lived a blameless life after the war. He was a loving husband, a good citizen. He paid his taxes. He contributed time and money to charitable works. But the Justice Department dogs smelled on him only the blood of seven decades before; for them, Baulman's actions during the war defined him. Yet if he was the monster that they claimed, why had he not continued to kill when the war was over? He had never even considered hurting a child since the end of the conflict. The very thought was repugnant to him. The war had transformed him, but not utterly, and not permanently. Instead, the circ.u.mstances in which he had found himself caused aspects of his personality to metastasize into strange forms, and a man who had once thought of becoming a vet instead found himself euthanizing children, just as it was said that the devotional aspect of Klaus Barbie's personality might have seen him become a priest had the war not intervened. Baulman was not Reynard Kraus: Kraus had vanished with the surrender, along with all that he represented, and all the sins he had committed.

Marcus Baulman was a blameless man.

Detective Gordon Walsh arrived at Golden Hills shortly after eight, when many of the home's residents were already asleep. The call had come just an hour or two before from Marie Demers, asking for a favor. He supposed that he could have done it over the phone, but he preferred to take care of these matters in person. Besides, he had loved war movies as a child, and the thought of hunting n.a.z.is appealed to him. He identified himself over the intercom, showed his badge to the orderly on duty, and asked to see the visitors' book for the day of Bernhard Hummel's death. He went through the list of names, and asked if there was a photocopier he could use. He was shown to a small office, where he copied the relevant pages. None of the names meant anything to him, but they might mean more to Demers, he supposed.

Walsh was about to leave when a thought struck him. He turned back to the orderly, who had already returned to his puzzle book.

'Does every visitor have to sign in?' Walsh asked.

'Physicians who make regular visits usually don't get asked,' said the orderly. 'Priests and clergy too, I guess, once we get to know them. Basically, if you've been coming here for a while, and you're trusted, we let it slide.'