The demitasse cup of thick, sludgy espresso stopped midway between the saucer and Patrick Fenton’s slightly parted lips. His arm froze and he felt cold, as if beads of fever-sweat covered his forehead. He stared past his luncheon companions, across the tiny French restaurant, through the front window that faced onto East Fifty-sixth Street, eyes widened, as the old man strode by outside.
“Jesus Christ!” he said, almost whispering in wonder. “What’s the matter?” Damon said, looking worried. Fenton’s hand began to shake. He set the cup down very carefully. Damon continued to stare at him with concern. Then Katherine perceived the luncheon had come to a halt and she looked back and forth between them. “What’s happening?”
Fenton pulled his napkin off his lap and wiped his upper lip. “I can’t believe what I just saw. It couldn’t be.”
Damon shoved his plate away and leaned forward. He had been the only one Fenton had communicated with during the month in the hospital; they were good friends. “Tell me.”
“Forget it. I didn’t see it.”
Katherine was getting impatient. “I don’t think it’s nice to play these nasty little word games. Just because
I’m facing the kitchen and you’re not, is no reason to taunt me. What did you see, Pat?”
Fenton sipped water. He took a long pause, then said, “I was a clerk at the Nuremberg trials in forty-six. You know. There was an officer, an Oberstleutnant Johann Hagen. He was in charge of the mass grave digging detail at Bergen-Belsen. He did things to women and small boys with a pickax. He was hung in June of 1946. I was there. I saw him hang.”
Damon stared across at his old friend. Fenton was in his early sixties, almost bald now, and he had been sick. “Take it easy, Pat.”
“I just saw him walk past the window.”
They stared at him for a moment. Damon cleared his throat, moved his coffee cup, cleared his throat again. Katherine continued chewing and looked at each of them without speaking. Finally, when the light failed to fade from Fenton’s eyes, she said, “You must be mistaken.”
He spoke softly, without argument. “I’m not mistaken. You don’t see a man hang and ever forget his face.”
Damon laid a hand on Fenton’s wrist. “Take it easy. It’s getting dark. A resemblance, that’s all.”
“No.”
They sat that way for a long time, and Fenton continued to stare out the window. Finally, he started to speak, but the words caught in his throat. He gasped and moaned softly. His eyes widened at something seen outside on the sidewalk. Damon turned with difficulty—he was an extremely fat man, a successful attorney—and looked out the window.
Katherine turned and looked. The street was thronged with late-afternoon crowds hurrying to get
inside before the darkness that promised rain could envelop them. “What now?” she said.
“Another one,” Fenton said. “Another one. Dear God, what’s happening . . . ?”
“What do you mean: another one?”
“Katherine,” Damon said snappishly, “shut up. Pat, what was it?”
Fenton was holding himself, arms wrapped around his body like a straitjacket. “Kreichbaum.” He said the name the way an internist would say inoperable. “From Treblinka. They shot him in forty-five. A monster; bonfires, furnaces, fire was his medium. They shot him.”
“Yes? And . . . ?” Katherine let the question hang. “He just walked by that window, going toward Fifth Avenue.”
“Pat, you’ve got to stop this,” Damon said.
Fenton just stared, saying nothing. Then, after a moment, he moaned again. They didn’t turn, they just watched him. “Kupsch,” he said. Softly, very softly. And after a few seconds, he said, “Stackmann.” Shadows deepened in the little French restaurant. They were the only ones left dining, and their food had grown as cold as the tablecloths. “Oh, God,” Fenton said, “Rademacher.”
Then he leaped to his feet, knocking over his chair, and screamed, “What kind of street is this?!”
Damon tried to reach across to touch him, to get him to sit down, but Fenton was spiraling toward hysteria. “What kind of day is this, where am I? They’re dead, all of them! They went to the gallows or the wall thirty years ago. I was a young man, I saw it, all of it . . . what’s happening here today?”
They tried to stop him as he pushed past them and ran out into the street.
It was almost totally dark now, even in late afternoon, as though charcoal dust had been sifted down over the city. Crowds moved past him, jostling him. Only the pale purple glow of the dead Nazi war criminals who walked slowly past him provided illumination.
He saw them all, one by one, as they walked past, strolling in both directions, free as the air, saying nothing, hands empty, wearing good shoes.
He tried to grab one of them, Wichmann, as he came by. But the tall, dark-haired Nazi shrugged him off, smiled at the yellow armband Fenton wore, smiled at the six-pointed star on the armband, and shoved past, walking free.
“Changed at Ellis Island!” Fenton screamed at Wichmann’s retreating back. “I had nothing to do with it!”
Then he saw the purple glow beginning to form around him.