The Kindly Ones

Clemens and Weser came back to see me a few days later, this time having duly made an appointment with Fräulein Praxa, who showed them into my office, rolling her eyes. “We tried to contact your sister,” said Clemens, the tall one, by way of introduction. “But she’s not home.”—“That’s quite possible,” I said. “Her husband is an invalid. She often accompanies him to Switzerland for treatment.”—“We asked the embassy in Berne to try to find her,” Weser said aggressively, swaying his narrow shoulders. “We’d very much like to talk with her.”—“Is it that important?” I asked.—“It’s still that damn business of the little twins,” Clemens ejected with his coarse Berliner’s voice.—“We don’t really understand it,” Weser added in his weaselly way. Clemens took out his notebook and read: “The French police investigated.”—“A little late,” Weser interrupted.—“Yes, but better late than never. Apparently, those twins have been living with your mother since at least 1938, when they began going to school. Your mother introduced them as orphaned great-nephews. And some of her neighbors seem to think they may have arrived earlier, as babies, in 1936 or 1937.”—“It’s quite curious,” Weser said acidly. “You never saw them before?”—“No,” I said curtly. “But there’s nothing odd about that. I never went to my mother’s house.”—“Never?” snorted Clemens. “Never?”—“Never.”—“Except exactly at that time,” Weser spat. “A few hours before her violent death. You see that it’s odd.”—“Meine Herren,” I retorted, “your insinuations are completely inappropriate. I don’t know where you learned your profession, but I find your attitude grotesque. What’s more, you have no authority to investigate me without an order from the SS-Gericht

.”—“That’s true,” acknowledged Clemens, “but we’re not investigating you. For now, we’re interviewing you as a witness.”—“Yes,” repeated Weser, “as a witness, that’s all.”—“That’s just to say,” continued Clemens, “that there are a lot of things we don’t understand and that we’d like to understand.”—“For instance, this business with the twins,” added Weser. “Let’s say they are actually great-nephews of your mother’s…”—“We didn’t find any trace of brothers or sisters, but let’s say so,” interrupted Clemens.—“Hey, you don’t know, do you?” asked Weser.—“What?”—“If your mother had a brother or a sister?”—“I heard talk of a brother, but I never saw him. We left Alsace in 1918, and after that, to my knowledge, my mother had no more contact with her family in France.”—“So let’s say,” Weser went on, “that they are in fact great-nephews. We haven’t found any paper that proves it, no birth certificates, nothing.”—“And your sister,” rapped out Clemens, “showed no papers when she took them with her.”—Weser smiled cunningly: “For us, these are very important potential witnesses who have disappeared.”—“We don’t know where,” grumbled Clemens. “It’s unacceptable that the French police let them slip away like that.”—“Yes,” said Weser, looking at him, “but what’s done is done. No use going back over it.”—Clemens went on without stopping: “Still, afterward, we’re the ones who get stuck with all the problems.”—“In short,” Weser said to me, “if you talk to her, ask her to contact us. Your sister, I mean.” I nodded. They seemed to have nothing more to say, and I ended the interview. I had never tried to reach my sister; it was beginning to become important, for if they found her and her story contradicted mine, their suspicions would be exacerbated; they would even be, I thought with horror, capable of accusing me. But where could I find her? Thomas, I said to myself, must have contacts in Switzerland, he could ask Schellenberg. I had to do something, this situation was becoming ridiculous. And the question of the twins was worrisome.