Ten minutes or so later, a scooter pulled up and parked beside the taxi. A muscle-bound young man in white pants and white short-sleeve shirt got off the scooter and motioned for Moses to step out of the car. He spoke to the driver in Portuguese. In broken English, the driver tried to explain something. Moses got the drift and allowed the man to pat him down and search the back of the car. He repressed a laugh at this ridiculousness — instead of enervating him, it relieved his tension.
Following the scooter, they passed garbage-free streets manicured lawns, immaculate parks, graffiti-free walls — practically a Hollywood movie set. They were a universe away from the simmering despair of the sunken shoulders of young women, the anger-clenched fists of street urchins, the stench of silent disease of the favelas, and equally distant from the multicolored explosions and the bikini-clad revelers of Ipanema dancing to the samba beat.
They pulled up to an off-yellow two-story stucco house. A woman in her early forties with neck-length wavy blond hair, hazel eyes, complexion as pale as his, stocky body dressed in jeans and flowery blouse greeted him at the doorway. She spoke in English with an accent lilted with the soft cadences of Brazilian Portuguese. “My father says you are the child of an old friend. I am sorry for the wait but João needed to come and show you the way.”
“Not a problem.”
“My father wanted to be properly prepared. He keeps to his Old World manners.”
Sure, Moses thought, Old World manners where you check your visitors for weapons.
“I wish you had given us prior notice so I could have prepared some food or drink.”
“It’s a business trip, so I didn’t know if I’d have time. Maybe if I come back again.”
“That would be lovely.”
He had imagined meeting his half siblings, but seeing his sister in the flesh still unnerved him. Sweat dampened the armpits and collar of his powder blue short-sleeve shirt. Born Jew or not, he still schvitzed.
“Please come in out of the heat.”
“Thanks.” He grimaced — she’d noticed. It wasn’t all that hot.
“My father suffers from emphysema. So the visit may be short. He’ll see you in his study.”
She led Moses down a hallway. Art hung on all the walls. In one room, he spotted a Salome diptych, a 48″ × 30″ Savant Red and Savant Blue painting. They arrived in a sparsely furnished, dimly lit study. A desk sat in front of a window covered by red silk curtains, and bookshelves lined every wall; no art in here. Two red upholstered chairs, along with a folded walker and an oxygen tank, were arranged around a circular wooden table. A half-smoked cigar dangled off the lip of a ceramic ashtray. Moses and his half sister stood beside one of the chairs as Malcolm moved unsteadily into the room, followed by João, who eased him into a chair and then left. Moses remained fixed in place, assessing his father. Not a Mephistophelean grin or strikingly sinister eyes, but a face fleshy with mottled skin, bald head, a roundish body covered by a nondescript black suit, white shirt, and black tie. The plainness of the man almost stunned Moses. Then he heard his father’s voice, a hiss that scalded like a white-hot branding iron meeting flesh. “Pleased to meet you. You bear little resemblance to your father or mother as I remember them.” Neither one made a move to shake the other’s hand. “Sit.”
Teumer addressed Moses’s half sister in Portuguese. She bent over and pecked their father on his cheek. She reached out her hand to shake Moses’s. He could not resist; he felt her touch, held it too long, hoping — for what? Finally, he released it. “Have a nice chat. João will be outside if you need anything.”
Father and son waited until they were alone.
“You received my letter?”
“Yes.”
“Although it took some time, I am gratified you found the courage to disobey my wishes, to face me.”
Barely able to form words, Moses asked, “She doesn’t know about me?”
“Speak up. Talk like a man.”
Moses repeated the question.
“Why should she?”
“So you assumed I wouldn’t say anything?”
“Yes. And if you did? Would she care? I don’t think so. Now that you are here, what do you want?”
Moses needn’t ask about the letter or medal. He accepted them as mean-spirited, truthful, almost childish — yet effective — ploys to cause emotional turmoil. “Did you really think I might come here to hurt you?”
“One can never be too cautious. I don’t know the depth of your hate or desire for revenge. After all, I was prepared to let you die.”
“From the looks of it, you’ll be dead soon enough. And I’m still here.”
Teumer nodded his head, as if he approved of his son’s combativeness.
“Who told Salome I was stillborn?”
“Not I. Laban and Bickley oversaw the mechanics of the birth and your delivery to Hannah and me.”
“Did you rape Salome?”
Teumer laughed so hard he began to cough. João rushed in and handed Teumer a glass of water. Teumer waved off the need for his inhaler and spoke to João in Portuguese before returning to Moses. A minute later João returned and handed Moses a sealed plastic bag. “Open it. Look closely.”
Moses delicately removed a piece of tissue paper that concealed a brittle black-and-white photograph — the teenage Salome, hair dancing in the Long Island breeze, head turned slightly to the right so her gaze denied the viewer eye contact, white shorts and a half-unbuttoned blouse, her breasts partially exposed. A man in a T-shirt, jeans, sunglasses, and a classic Borsalino hat, self-satisfied grin — Malcolm — beside her, right arm draped over her shoulder, hand cupping her right breast through the open blouse. “If anything, she seduced me. Your mother was voracious in her appetites.”
Moses gripped the photo. He began to sweat again. He closed his eyes, waiting for rage or nausea or the lust for vengeance both he and Teumer expected to well in him. No, those virulent emotions remained almost inexplicably quiescent. He slipped the photo carefully back in the bag and held it out to Teumer, who refused it.
“I no longer have need for it. You keep it.”
Moses placed it on the table and pressed on with his prepared questions. “Why did you behave so terribly to my mom … Hannah?”
“Circumstance and self-preservation. At first, I needed her. But you misinterpret my effect on her life. For almost three years I made her feel more special than she ever had or ever would again. I rescued her from a wretched ghetto life and introduced her to a cosmopolitan world she had only imagined, and where she remained even after I left. I had hoped to take you with me when I departed. Unfortunately, sooner than anticipated, let’s say an old acquaintance recognized me in a Waldbaum’s and caused a scene. So I immediately put into effect a contingency plan.”
“Your Nazi name wasn’t Malcolm Teumer?”
“No.”
“You adopted it from a murdered Jew as your identity along with the story about leaving Temisvar for Germany?”
“Yes, something like that.”