The Informers (21 page)

On the sofa in my living room, lined up like infantry, were the tapes of my interviews with Sara. After our conversation on New Year's Eve--which lasted until six-thirty in the morning, since after the revelations already recorded came my questions, my protests, and then more questions--I listened to them again, pursuing in Sara's voice as well the covering up, or the complicity, or the references to other denunciations, other absurd inclusions on the blacklist, other family catastrophes that would have been caused in some remote way by that amateur inquisition. And the day of the program, before Sara's call, I'd been listening to one of the last. In the recording, I asked her if she would have ever returned to live in Germany if the opportunity had arisen, and she answered, "Never." And when I asked her how she could be so sure, she said, "Because I did go back once, so I know what it feels like." In 1968, she told me, she'd received an invitation from the municipality of Emmerich, her hometown, and she had traveled there with her father and her eldest son--by plane to Frankfurt and train to Emmerich--to attend one of those ceremonies of public atonement certain sectors of German politics used at the time to try in vain to do what we all try to do all the time: correct mistakes, alleviate the damage done. "It was strange to be there," the recorded voice was saying, "but we'd arrived by night, and I thought the next morning everything would seem even stranger to me when I saw in the light of day things I hadn't seen for thirty years. Although we didn't know if they'd still be there, because during the war Emmerich was one of the most bombed cities." Herr Strecker, the man who had helped them escape in thirty-eight, was in charge of welcoming them. Herr Strecker had also left Germany, Sara said, he'd left in thirty-nine, and he'd lived in Montevideo for a few years and then in Buenos Aires. "He and Papa embraced and almost wouldn't let go of each other," said Sara, "but on the plane my father had told us we were forbidden to cry in Germany, so I made an effort, it wasn't so difficult. Ceremonies are more or less what we know they're like. We visitors were assigned a local youngster, one for each exiled couple; since I'd gone without my husband, Papa and I were a twosome. The strangest thing was how their mouths filled up with the word
exile
and all its synonyms, in which the German language is generous; we have no lack of words to call those who leave. We were supposed to talk in a school or a university about our experience, and my father said, 'I don't know if there are enough schools in Emmerich for all its exiles to speak.' And just think, the same thing was happening in other cities, all over the country. I don't know, sometimes I think I don't really know what all that was in aid of. What was the aim of calling all those from abroad and reminding them of where they were from? As if they were claiming them, no? Like an absurd demand, to put it like that.

"A friend of Papa's had died three years earlier, and no one had informed us, and when we arrived they gave us the news. The widow asked us if it was worth it to go and live in Colombia. She kept repeating that she had every intention of going somewhere else, and she smiled at me and consulted Papa about the options. She asked us what Colombia was like. Sometimes she thought about Canada. What did we think of Canada? I felt sorry for her, because it was obvious she didn't want to leave. I still don't know why she tried to convince people she did. For my part, I met a school friend. It was the strangest thing in the world. I asked her what had happened to so-and-so and somebody-or-other, and most of all I asked about Barbara Wolff, who had been my best friend at Daughters of the Sacred Cross, yes, what a name, and what a school, as well: it was run by a community of aristocratic nuns; up to that moment I'd never imagined such a thing could exist. A blue-blooded nun, imagine that. Well anyway, this friend looked at me with such surprise, until she couldn't stand to hear any more praise from me about my friendship with Barbara Wolff. 'But she made you suffer so,' she said. It seems that everyone remembered how Barbara tormented me, took advantage of me, talked about me behind my back and made up stories, all those things little girls do. And I had no choice but to believe her, but it startled me, because I remembered absolutely nothing of what she told me. I had such a lovely memory of Barbara, and at that moment I didn't know what to think. I was a bit sad about that. You wouldn't expect to make such a trip to receive bad news; imagine if someone showed up now and told you your dad abused you and you don't remember. Tell me your world wouldn't start to change. Mine wasn't so serious, but almost, because in any case it was as if the world from before emigration was no longer trustworthy. I watched Papa closely, saw how necessary the journey had been for him. One of the reasons, the most obvious, was to confirm that he had made the right decision. Imagine if thirty years later you realized it would have been much better to stay. No, we needed confirmation of how bad things had been before we left, confirmation of how much the Jews who stayed had suffered. I couldn't do so with Barbara because she was living in England at the time; it seems she was or is a biologist. What would I have said if I could have called her? Let's see, Barbara, do you remember treating me badly when we were little? No, ridiculous. But still, if I did feel like crying, I'd get in the car and drive to Holland, cross the border, because I had Papa's rule very clear in my head: no crying in Germany. And I went along with the rule at all times, even when he didn't demand it. I didn't even cry when we visited the grave of my older sister, Miriam, who died of meningitis when she was seven. I barely remembered her. However it was, at those moments I began to think I understood why God had sent us to Duitama. I thought he had made us work so hard so we wouldn't dwell on bad memories. Not now, now I think that was hugely stupid, not only because Papa is dead now, too, and his presence was what allowed me that religiosity when I was young, but rather because of something more difficult to explain. One gets old and symbols lose their value, things become only what they are. One tires of representations: that this represents such-and-such and that represents something else. The ability to interpret symbols has gone for me, and God goes with that. It's as if it were extinguished. One gets tired of looking behind things. Behind a priest's glasses. Behind a communion wafer. Maybe for you young people it's hard to understand, but that's what God is for old people: a fellow we've been playing hide-and-seek with for too long. You'll have to decide if you want to leave all this nonsense in the book. Maybe you shouldn't: Who's going to be interested in this blather? Yes, it would be better if I stuck to my own story. If not, you'll get tired of my silliness and turn off the tape recorder. I don't want that to happen, I like talking about all this.

"The mayor gave the welcoming address. A real experience, because through that speech I discovered how much it cost to get out of Germany when we did. I discovered how rich my parents had been, because only the wealthy could afford to pay the
Reichsfluchtsteuer
. That's what they actually called it, desertion of the Reich tax. I discovered the fortune they'd left behind to go to Colombia. We went to the synagogue, a solid block of concrete with round copper domes like a Russian church. There, at some point, I accepted that Germany was no longer my country, not in the sense, at least, that a country belongs to normal people. Papa took that trip very hard. It did nothing but remind him of the laws of 1941. I told him that almost thirty years had gone by and a person has to forget about those things, but he couldn't."

"The laws of 1941?" This is my recorded voice. I don't recognize myself in it.

"We were in Colombia, an ocean away from Germany, and one fine day we woke up and weren't Germans anymore. You don't know what that means until your passport expires. Because then, what are you? You're not from here, but you're not from there either. If something bad happens to you, if someone does something to you, no one's going to help you. There is no state to defend you. Wait, I'm going to show you something." There is a pause in the recording, while Sara looks among her papers for a letter my father wrote to her from Bogota dated with the inscription:
1 Av 5728
. "The Jewish date was another gesture typical of that pedant of a father of yours," Sara said. "There was no way to explain to him that religion had also gradually disappeared from my life, and never came to exist in those of my children. I don't even remember what month that was, or what year."

"Can I keep it?" says my voice.

"That depends."

"Depends on what?"

"Are you going to put it in the book?"

"I don't know, Sara. Maybe, maybe not."

"You can keep it," she said, "if you don't put it in."

"Why?"

"Because I know Gabriel. He would not be amused to see himself in a book without anyone asking his permission."

"But if I need . . ."

"No, no, none of that. You can take it if you promise. If not, the letter stays with me."

I decided to keep it. I have it here.

If I were you I wouldn't worry too much [my father wrote to Sara]. A person is from wherever they feel best, and roots are for plants. Everyone knows that, don't they?
Ubi bene ibi patria
, all those ready-made sayings. (Still, ready-made by the Romans, so they can at least qualify as antiques.) Speaking for myself, I've never even left this country, and sometimes I think I never will. And I wouldn't mind, you know. Lots of things are happening here; more than that, here is
where things happen
; and although I'm sometimes disappointed by the provincialism of the South American Athens-in-its-dreams, I tend to think that here human experience has a special weight. It's like a chemical density. Things people say seem to matter here as much as what they do, I suppose partly because of a reason that is quite stupid when looked at closely: everything is yet to be constructed. Here words matter. Here you can still shape your surroundings. It's a terrible power, isn't it?

I've read it several times, I'm reading it now, while I write, and I read it that night, just before Sara called me to warn me that my father's fall from grace was just starting. My father, the man who had never left this country and who never would, the man who seemed to give as much importance to words as to deeds. What would he have thought if he had seen what I was seeing on television? Would he have regretted what he wrote on 1 Av 5728? Would he have forgotten it on purpose? For me, innocent reader of that letter, it was obvious that my father, when he wrote it, must have thought of Deresser, and that would undoubtedly be one of the many inventories that I should draw up, starting with the contributions of Sara's testimony: every phrase spoken by my father, every offhand and seemingly trivial comment, every reaction to someone else's comment, would soon be on a list, the list of moments when my father was thinking of Deresser and, especially, of what he'd done to him.
It's a terrible power, isn't it?
Yes, Dad, it's terrible, you would know, you were remembering what you'd done, what your words had caused. (But what words, and how spoken? To whom in exchange for what? In what circumstances? How had my father played his part as informer? And I'll never know, because there were no witnesses.) And now, publicly, you are paying for your words.

So it was on television. It wasn't by means of a written interview, as Sara had believed at first and had made me believe, that Angelina was going to begin the task of bringing down, with the collaboration of the people of Bogota's hunger for sensationalism, my father's reputation; it was not a magazine that required her services, but one of those programs of rigorously local interest, of intense, late-night journalism centered on Bogota that are now so common, but in the year 1992 were still a novelty for the citizens of the illustrious capital. Some of my colleagues, I should admit, succumbed to these first programs, real journalists who managed to acquit themselves decently with a keyboard, good investigative reporters and acceptable writers, who instead ended up perpetrating little theatrical pieces for two actors (a presenter and a guest), filmed with a couple of cameras (to keep costs down) and in front of a black backdrop (to accentuate the dramatics). They were a mixture of forensic interrogation and show-business interview; the guests could be--in fact, had been--a con gressman accused of embezzlement, a beauty queen accused of being a single mother, a race car driver accused of using drugs, a city councilor accused of links to drug traffickers: all from Bogota, originally or by adoption, all susceptible to being recognized as symbols of the city. That was the program: a space to debate unproved accusations, to debunk more or less sacred figures, which, as everyone knows, is one of the Bogota viewing audience's favorite pastimes. If my father were alive, I thought, he would occupy the place of the guest: a moralist accused of betrayal. In his place was Angelina Franco, ex-lover and witness for the prosecution, the woman who had attended the fall. The dramatic plot--from glory to disgrace, all that and romance, too--was quite clear; the journalistic potential would have been obvious even to a novice, and you could almost feel the waves of the electromagnetic spectrum vibrating with Bogota's thrill at the prospect of the haughty being dishonored, the arrogant brought down a peg or two.

Angelina was sitting in a swivel chair, facing the presenter and separated from him by a modern office table, an inelegant slab that might have been particleboard or simply covered plastic; the presenter was Rafael Jaramillo Arteaga, a journalist known for his aggression (he would say his frankness) and for his lack of scruples when it came to making damaging revelations (he would say exposing hidden truths). The set was designed to intimidate: the illusion of mysterious, hidden, illegitimate things. There was Angelina, confident and complicit, dressed in one of her bright, straining blouses--this time it was fuchsia--and a skirt that seemed to be troubling her, because all the time she had to keep adjusting it, lifting up her hips and tugging at the hem. The camera was focused on the interviewer. "Not everyone remembers one of the most unclas sifiable, most paradoxical episodes of our recent history," he said. "I'm referring to the Proclaimed List of Certain Blocked Nationals, regrettably famous among historians, regrettably forgotten by the wider public. During the Second World War, the U.S. State Department issued blacklists with the aim of blocking Axis funds in Latin America. But everywhere, not just in Colombia, the system lent itself to abuses, and in more than one case the just paid for sinners. Today we present the story of one of those abuses. This, esteemed viewers, is the story of a betrayal." Cut to commercials. When they return, a photo of my father appears, the same one that had appeared in
El Tiempo
with his obituary. A voice off-camera says, "Gabriel Santoro was a lawyer and prestigious professor here in our capital. For more than two decades he devoted his time to teaching techniques of public speaking to other lawyers as part of a program at the Supreme Court of Justice. Last year he died in a tragic traffic accident on the Bogota-Medellin highway. He had traveled to the city of eternal spring to spend the holidays in the company of his lady friend, Angelina Franco, native of that city." Then Angelina's face appeared on the screen with her name in white letters. "But as soon as they arrived, Angelina Franco realized that her companion had not told her the whole truth. She has now found out the truth and is here to tell it." And that she did: she told. She told without stopping, she told as if her life depended on it, she told as if there were someone under the table pointing a gun at her. Among the things that came out of the speakers--that dialogue between the sniper and his own rifle--there was a lot of rubbish, I supposed, a lot of barefaced invention, but there was nothing that would not help me devise a portrait of my father's lover, because even lies, even a person's rudest inventions with respect to herself, tell us valuable things about her, perhaps more valuable than the most honest truths. Transparency is the worst deception in the world, my father used to say: one is the lies one pronounces. Any journalist learns that after conducting two interviews, any lawyer after two cross-examinations, and especially, any orator after two speeches. I thought all these things; nevertheless, during the elongated hour the program lasted, the sixty minutes, including the advertisements, of the beating and careful defenestration of the memory of my father, my perplexity did not cease for one second. Why was she doing it? While Angelina told what she was telling, while she looked occasionally toward the back of the set, fascinated by the blue neon lights that formed the program's name, I could only concentrate on that question:
Why was she doing this to my father?