Liebermann put his tea down and leaned forward helplessly.
She apologized in her crying.
“It’s all right,” he said, “it’s all right.” A big help. Seven miles through snow he had come, to start this woman crying. Thirteen out of seventeen wasn’t enough?
He sat back, sighed, and waited; looked about dispiritedly at the small streaky-yellow kitchen with its dirty dishes and old refrigerator, carton of empty bottles by the back door. Wild Goose Number Fourteen. A fern in a red glass on the windowsill behind the sink, a can of Ajax. A drawing of an airplane, a 747, taped to a cabinet door; pretty good from where he sat. A cereal box on the counter, Cheerios.
“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Curry said, wiping her nose with the napkin. Her wet hazel eyes looked at Liebermann.
“I’ll only ask a few questions, Mrs. Curry,” he said. “Did he belong to any international group or organization of men his own age?”
She shook her head, lowered the napkin. “American groups,” she said. “The Legion, Amvets, Rotary—no, that’s international. The Rotary Club. That’s the only one.”
“He was a World War Two veteran?”
She nodded. “The Air Force. He won the D.F.C., the Distinguished Flying Cross.”
“In Europe?”
“The Far East.”
“This one is personal, but I hope you won’t mind. He left his money to you?”
Cautiously she nodded. “There’s not too much…”
“Where was he born?”
“In Berea, Ohio.” She looked beyond him, and with an effortful smile said, “What are you doing out of bed?” He looked around. The Döring boy stood in the doorway. Emil, no, Erich Döring, gaunt and sharp-nosed, his dark hair disordered; in blue-and-white-striped pajamas, barefoot. He scratched his chest, looking curiously at Liebermann.
Liebermann rose, surprised; said “Guten Morgen” and realized as he said it—and the boy nodded and came into the room—that Emil Döring and Jack Curry had known each other. They must have; how else could the boy be visiting? With growing excitement he turned to Mrs. Curry and asked, “How does this boy come to be here?”
“He has the flu,” she said. “And there’s no school anyway because of the snow. This is Jack junior. No, don’t come too close, hon. This is Mr. Liebermann from Vienna, in Europe. He’s a famous man. Oh, where are your slippers, Jack? What do you want?”
“A glass of grapefruit juice,” the boy said. In perfect English. An accent like Kennedy’s.
Mrs. Curry stood up. “Honest to Pete,” she said, “you’re going to outgrow them before you ever wear them! And with the flu!” She went to the refrigerator.
The boy looked at Liebermann with Erich Döring’s deep blue eyes. “What are you famous for?” he asked.
“He hunts for Nazis. He was on Mike Douglas last week.”
“Es ist doch ganz phantastisch!” Liebermann said. “Do you know that you have a twin? An exactly-like-you boy who lives in Germany, in a town there called Gladbeck!”
“Exactly like me?” The boy looked skeptical.
“Exactly! I never before saw such a…resembling. Only twin brothers could be so much the same!”
“Jack, you get back in bed now,” Mrs. Curry said, standing by the refrigerator with a juice carton in her hand, smiling. “I’ll bring it in.”
“Wait a minute,” the boy said.
“Now!” she said sharply. “You’ll get worse instead of better, standing around that way, no robe, no slippers; go on.” She smiled again. “Say good-by and go.”
“Jesus H. Christ,” the boy said. “Good-by!” He stalked from the room.
“You watch your tongue!” Mrs. Curry looked angrily after him, and at Liebermann, and turned to a cabinet and yanked its door open. “I wish that he paid the doctor bills,” she said; “then he’d think twice.” She pulled out a glass.
Liebermann said, “It’s amazing! I thought he was the boy in Germany visiting you! Even the voice is the same, the look in the eyes, the moving…”
“Everyone has a double,” Mrs. Curry said, pouring a careful stream of grapefruit juice into the green glass. “Mine is in Ohio, a girl Big Jack knew before we met.” She put the carton down and turned, holding the filled glass. “Well,” she said, smiling, “I don’t like to be inhospitable, but you can see I’ve got an awful lot here that needs doing. Plus having Jack at home. I’m sure nobody shot Big Jack on purpose. It was an accident. He didn’t have an enemy in the world.”
Liebermann blinked, and nodded, and reached for his coat on the chairback.
Astounding, such a sameness. Peas in a pod.
And even more astounding when, on top of the sameness of their gaunt faces and skeptical attitudes, you put the sameness of sixty-five-year-old fathers who were civil servants, dead by violence within a month of each other. And the sameness of their mothers’ age, forty-one or -two. How could so much sameness be?
The wheel pulled toward the right; he straightened it, peering through the wiper’s fast flickings. Concentrate on the driving!
It couldn’t be only coincidence, it was too much. But what else could it be? Was it possible that Mrs. Curry of Lenox (who praised her dead husband’s forgiveness) and Frau Döring of Gladbeck (no model of faithfulness, it seemed) had both had affairs with the same gaunt sharp-nosed man nine months before their sons were born? Even in that unlikely event (a Lufthansa pilot commuting between Essen and Boston!), the boys wouldn’t be twins. And that’s what they were, absolutely identical.
Twins…
Mengele’s main interest. The subject of his Auschwitz experiments.
So?
The white-haired professor at Heidelberg: “Not one of the suggestions made so far has recognized Dr. Mengele’s presence in the problem.”
Yes, but these boys weren’t twins; they only looked like twins.
He wrestled with it in the bus to Worcester.
It had to be a coincidence. Everyone had a double, as Mrs. Curry had said so unconcernedly; and though he doubted the statement’s truth, he had to admit he’d seen plenty of look-alikes in his lifetime: a Bormann, two Eichmanns, half a dozen others. (But look-alikes, not look-the-sames; and why had she poured the grapefruit juice so carefully? Had she been very concerned, and afraid a shaking hand might betray her? And then the quick kicking-him-out, suddenly busy. Dear God, could the wives be involved? But how? Why?)
The snow had stopped, the sun shone. Massachusetts swung past—dazzlingly white hills and houses.
Mengele’s obsession with twins. Every account of that subhuman scum mentioned it: the autopsies on slaughtered twins to find genetic reasons for their slight differences, the attempts to work changes on living twins…