A Quiet Flame

It was my turn to be nervous now. I was looking around for some sign that we might have been observed. A death camp was more than I had bargained for. Much more. “I dunno. Maybe a thousand. Look, we really should leave. Now.”

“Yes, you’re right.” She found a handkerchief and wiped her eye. “Just give me a minute, will you? My aunt and uncle are probably buried in one of these pits.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Can you honestly think of a better explanation?”

“Look,” I said. “The people who are buried here. You don’t know that they’re Jewish. They could be Argentines. Political opponents of the Peróns. There’s no reason to suppose—”

“That’s a gas chamber in there,” she said, looking back at the barrack from which we had just emerged. “Isn’t it? Come on, Gunther. You were in the SS. You of all people should be able to recognize one.”

I said nothing.

“I never heard of Perón’s political opponents being gassed,” she said. “Shot, yes. Tossed out of a plane. Yes. But not gassed. Only Jews get gassed. This place. This camp. Is a place of death. That’s why they were brought here. To be gassed. I can feel it. Everywhere. I could feel it in that dummy shower-barrack. I can feel it here, most of all.”

“We have to leave,” I said.

“What?”

“Now. If they catch us here, they’ll kill us for sure,” I said. I took her arm and lifted her up. “I never expected this, angel. Really, I didn’t. I’d never have brought you here if I’d even suspected that it was this kind of place. I thought it might be a concentration camp. But never a death camp. Not that. This is much more than I ever bargained for.”

I took her back to the hole in the fence.

“Christ,” she said, “no wonder this is such a big secret. Can you imagine what might happen if people outside Argentina ever find out about this place?”

“Anna. Listen to me. You have to promise you’ll never mention this. At least not so long as you remain in this country. They’d kill us both, for sure. The quicker we’re away from here, the better.”

Entering the trees again, I started to run. And so did she. At least now, I thought, she had grasped the true gravity of our situation. I threw away the wire cutters. We found the hole we had made in the first, exterior fence. We started running back to where we had left the jeep.

I smelled them first. Or rather, I smelled their cigarettes. I stopped running and turned to face Anna.

“Listen,” I said, holding her by the shoulders. “Do exactly what I say. There are men looking for us on this road.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I can smell their tobacco.”

Anna sniffed the air and then bit her lip.

“Take off your clothes.”

“What are you talking about? Are you mad?”

“Maybe they won’t find the hole we made in the fence.” I was already undressing. “Our best chance is to make them think that we stopped here to make love. That’s the story we’ve got to stick to. If they think that’s all that we were doing, they might just let us go. Come on, angel. Strip.”

She hesitated.

“No one who’s just seen what we’ve just seen would strip and have sex in the woods, now would they?”

“I told you we should have come back and done this in darkness,” she said, and started to undress.

When we were both naked, I wrestled my way between her thighs and said, “Now, sound like you’re enjoying it. As loud as you can.”

Anna moaned loudly. And then again.

I started to thrust my pelvis at her as if not just her sexual satisfaction and mine depended on this charade, but our lives as well.

22 TUCUMÁN, 1950

I WAS STILL thrusting away between Anna’s thighs when I heard a twig break on the forest floor behind me. I twisted around to see some men. None of them were wearing uniforms, but two of them had rifles slung over their shoulders. That was good, I thought. At the same time, I grabbed something with which to cover our nakedness.

There were three of them, and they were dressed for riding. They wore blue shirts, leather vests, denim trousers, riding boots, and spurs. The man without a rifle had a silver belt buckle as big as a breastplate, an ornate-looking gun belt, and over his wrist was looped a short, stiff leather whip. He was more obviously Spanish than his companions, who appeared to be mestizos—local Indians. His face was badly pockmarked, but he had a quiet confidence in his manner that seemed to indicate his scars didn’t matter to him.

“I would ask what you are doing here,” he said, grinning, “only it seems obvious.”

“Is it any business of yours?” I said, dressing quickly.

“This is private property,” he said. “That makes it my business.” He wasn’t looking at me. He was watching Anna put on her clothes, which was almost as pleasurable a sight as watching her take them off.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “We got lost. We stopped to look at the map and then one thing led to another. You know how it is, I expect.” I glanced around. “It seemed like a nice, quiet spot. No one around.”

“You were wrong.”