‘Try opening your eyes the next time you fire,’ I said.
‘Oh’ he said, putting the pistol down, ‘you’re up and around.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Too bad what happened,’ he said.
‘I thought so,’ I said.
‘Maybe it’s for the best, though,’ he said. ‘Maybe well all wind up thanking God it happened.’
‘How so?’ I said.
‘It’s jarred us out of our ruts,’ he said.
‘That’s for certain,’ I said.
‘When you get out of this country with your girl, get yourself new surroundings, a new identity, you’ll start writing again,’ he said, ‘and you’ll write ten times better than you ever did before. Think of the maturity you’ll be bringing to your writing!’
‘My head aches too much just now ĄX ‘ I said.
‘It’ll stop aching soon,’ he said. ‘It isn’t broken and it’s filled with a heartbreakingly clear understanding of the self and the world.’
‘Um,’ I said.
‘And I’m going to be a better painter for the change, too,’ he said. ‘I’ve never seen the tropics before ĄX that brutal glut of color, that visible, audible heat ĄX ‘
‘What’s this about the tropics?’ I said.
‘I thought that’s where we’d go,’ he said. ‘That’s where Resi wants to go, too.’
‘You’re coming, too?’ I said.
‘Do you mind?’ he said.
‘People have certainly been active while I slept,’ I said.
‘Was that wrong of us?’ said Kraft. ‘Did we plan anything that would be bad for you?’
‘George ĄX ‘ I said, ‘why should you throw in your lot with us? Why should you come down into this cellar with the black beetles, too? You have no enemies. Stay with us, George, and you’ll deserve every enemy I have.’
He put his hand on my shoulder, looked deep into my eyes. ‘Howard ĄX ‘ he said, ‘when my wife died, I had no allegiance to anything on earth. I, too, was a meaningless fragment of a nation of two.
‘And then I discovered something I had never known before ĄX what a true friend was,’ he said. ‘I throw my lot in with you gladly, friend. Nothing else interests me. Nothing else attracts me in the least. With your permission, my paints and I would like nothing better than to go with you wherever Fate takes you next.’
‘This ĄX this is friendship indeed,’ I said.
‘I hope so,’ he said.
29: Adolf Eichmann and Me …
I spent two days in that queer basement ĄX as a meditative invalid.
My clothes had been ruined in the beating I’d taken. So, from the resources of Jones household, I was given other clothes. I was given a pair of shiny black trousers by Father Keeley, a silver-colored shirt by Dr. Jones, a shirt that had once been part of the uniform of a defunct American Fascist movement called, straightforwardly enough, ‘The Silver Shirts.’ And the Black Fuehrer gave me a tiny orange sports coat that made me look like an organ-grinder’s monkey.
And Resi Noth and George Kraft kept me company tenderly ĄX not only nursed me, but did my dreaming and planning for me as well. The big dream was to get out of America as soon as possible. Conversations, in which I took very little part, were a sort of roulette played with the names of warm places purported to be Edens: Acapulco … Minorca … Rhodes … even the Vale of Kashmir, Zanzibar, and the Andaman Islands.
The news from the outside world was not such as to make my remaining in America attractive ĄX or even conceivable. Father Keeley went out and bought newspapers several times a day, and, for supplementary enlightenment, we had the blatting of the radio.
The Republic of Israel stepped up its demands for me, encouraged by rumors that I wasn’t an American citizen, that I was, in fact, a citizen of nowhere. And the Republic’s demands were framed so as to be educational, too ĄX teaching that a propagandist of my sort was as much a murderer as Heydrich, Eichmann, Himmler, or any of the gruesome rest.
That may be so. I had hoped, as a broadcaster, to be merely ludicrous, but this is a hard world to be ludicrous in, with so many human beings so reluctant to laugh, so incapable of thought, so eager to believe and snarl and hate. So many people wanted to believe me.
Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile.
West Germany asked the Government of the United States politely if I might be a citizen of theirs. They had no proof one way or another, since all records pertaining to me had burned during the war. If I was a citizen of theirs, they said, they would be as pleased as Israel to have me for trial.
If I was a German, they said in effect, they were certainly ashamed of a German like me.
Soviet Russia, in short words that sounded like ball bearings being dropped into wet gravel, said that no trial was necessary. A Fascist like me, they said, should be squashed underfoot like a cockroach.
But it was the anger of my neighbors that really stank of sudden death. The more barbaric newspapers printed without comment letters from people who wanted me displayed from coast to coast in an iron cage; from heroes who volunteered to serve in a firing squad for me, as though the use of small arms were a skill known to few; from people who planned to do nothing themselves, but were confident enough in American civilization to know that there were other, stronger, younger people who would know what to do.
And these last-named patriots were right in having confidence. I doubt if there has ever been a society that has been without strong and young people eager to experiment with homicide, provided no very awful penalties are attached to it
According to the newspapers and radio, justifiably angry people had already done what they could about me, breaking into my ratty attic, smashing my windows, tearing up or carting off my worldly goods. The hated attic was now under police guard around the clock.
The New York Post pointed out editorially that the police could scarcely give me the protection I needed, since my enemies were so numerous and so understandably murderous. What was called for, said the Post helplessly, was a battalion of Marines to surround me for the rest of my days.
The New York Daily News suggested that my biggest war crime was not killing myself like a gentleman. Presumably Hitler was a gentleman.
The News, incidentally, also printed a letter from Bernard B, O’Hare, the man who had captured me in Germany, the man who had recently written me a letter with copious carbons.
‘I want this guy all for myself,’ O’Hare wrote of me. ‘I deserve this guy all for myself. I was the guy who caught him in Germany. If I’d known then he was going to get away, I would have blown his head off right then and there. If anybody sees Campbell before I do, tell him Bernie O’Hare is on his way from Boston by nonstop plane.’
The New York Times said that tolerating and even protecting vermin like me was one of the maddening necessities in the life of a truly free society.
The United States Government, as Resi had told me, was not going to turn me over to the Republic of Israel. There was no legal machinery for that.
The United States Government did promise, however, to make a full and open review of my pulling case, to find out exactly what my citizenship status was, to find out why I had never even been brought to trial.
That Government expressed queasy surprise that I was even within its borders.
The New York Times published a portrait of me as a much younger man, my official portrait as a Nazi and idol of the international airwaves. I can only guess at the year in which the picture was taken, 1941, I think.
Arndt Klopfer, the photographer who took the picture of me, did his best to make me look like a Maxfield Parrish Jesus covered with cold cream. He even gave me a halo, a judiciously placed spot of nebulous light in the background. The halo was no special effect for me alone. Everybody who went to Klopfer got a halo, including Adolf Eichmann.
I can say that for certain about Eichmann, without asking for confirmation from the Haifa Institute, because Eichmann had his picture taken just ahead of me at Klopfer’s studio. It was the only time I ever met Eichmann ĄX the only time in Germany. I met him again here in Israel ĄX only two weeks ago, when I was incarcerated briefly in Tel Aviv.
About that reunion: I was locked up in Tel Aviv for twenty-four hours. On my way to my cell there, the guards stopped me outside Eichmann’s cell to hear what we had to say to each other, if anything.