A Quiet Flame

“I knew he was treating someone famous. But I didn’t know it was Goebbels. Actually, I thought it might be Hitler. There was some talk, you know. That the Führer was syphilitic. So, it was Goebbels all along.” Mengele shrugged. “Anyway, protonsil was highly effective. Until the advent of penicillin, I think it was the most successful drug that the Dyestuff Syndicate ever had. I got to know them quite well myself when Kassner went to work for them. I tested a number of drugs for them at Auschwitz. It was important work. Not that anyone remembers that now. All they’re interested in are the medical mishaps that I’m afraid were an inevitable consequence, given the exigencies of wartime scientific and medical life.”

“That’s a nice, clinical way of describing mass murder,” I said.

“And I suppose you’re here in Argentina for the beef,” he said.

“Never mind that. Just tell me about Anita Schwarz.”

“I can’t believe that you’re wasting my time with this shit.”

“If you can’t believe me, then believe this.” I brandished the gun for a second. “How did you come to meet her?”

“I met her father when I started coming to Berlin. He was in the SA. Later on, when he became a judge, we became much better acquainted. Anyway, someone introduced us. Kurt Daluege, I think. I had performed an abortion on his mistress. With no complications. Actually, it was her second, and I had asked Daluege if he’d ever considered the advantages of having her sterilized. He hadn’t, of course. But he talked her into it, eventually.”

“You’re joking.”

“Not at all. It’s simply a question of tying off the fallopian tubes. Anyway, Daluege mentioned this to Otto Schwarz. As a possibility for his daughter.”

I shook my head, horrified at what Mengele was telling me, although, given what I remembered about Otto Schwarz’s general demeanor upon being told that his disabled daughter was dead, the doctor’s explanation also seemed to make perverse sense. “Are you telling me that you sterilized a fifteen-year-old girl?”

“Look here, this girl was hardly the same type as Elizabeth Bremer. Not at all. Anita Schwarz was disabled and, despite her young age, an occasional prostitute. It made a lot of sense to have her sterilized. Not just for the benefit of her poor parents but also for the genetic health of the country. She was quite unfit to reproduce. Later on, of course, Otto and I were colleagues. He became a judge in one of the genetic-health courts that came into being under the 1933 Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring, to decide upon matters of racial hygiene. Certain people were forbidden to marry, while others were the victims of forcible sterilizations.” He paused.

“So the sterilization of Anita Schwarz was cooked up by the two of you, for the genetic health of the country,” I said. “Did Anita have any say in the matter?”

Mengele shook his head, irritably. “Her consent was irrelevant. She was spastic, you understand. Hers was an unworthy life. Any genetic-health court would have agreed with our decision.”

“Where did the operation take place?”

“In a private clinic in Dahlem. Where the girl’s mother worked as a night nurse. It was quite suitable, I can assure you.”

“But something went wrong.”

He nodded. “Unlike carrying out an abortion, a general anesthetic is required in sterilization procedures. And so the services of an anesthesiologist were needed. Naturally, I called on the same person I’d used in the procedure on Kurt Daluege’s mistress. Someone Daluege knew. Someone less than competent, as it turned out. I was unaware of the fact that he himself was a drug addict. And he made a mistake. You understand. It was not the procedure that killed her. It was the anesthesia. Quite simply, we were unable to revive her. And, left with a dilemma similar to the one before, with Elizabeth Bremer’s death in Munich, I decided to mutilate her dead body in the same sensational fashion. With, I may add, the full complicity of the girl’s mother. She was a strict Roman Catholic and believed that God had not meant her daughter to have lived in the first place. Which was a great relief to my colleague and myself. He and I disposed of the body at the opposite end of the city, in Friedrichshain Park. And the rest you know.”

“And after that?”

“I went home.”

“I meant in the years after that. Up to you joining the SS.”

“I carried on doing abortions and sterilizations until 1937. Legally, I might add. Then I joined the Reich Institute for Heredity, Biology, and Racial Purity, at the University of Frankfurt, where I was a research assistant.”

“And now?”

“Now? I live a very quiet life. I am a humble doctor, as you can see.”

“Not so humble, I think. Tell me about the girl who was here half an hour ago. I suppose you just polished her toenails and combed her hair.”

“You are way out of your depth, Hausner.”

“That’s all right. I’m a good swimmer.”