We didn’t recognize each other, and the guards had to introduce us.
Eichmann was writing the story of his life, just as I am now writing the story of my life. That chinless old plucked buzzard, with six million murders to explain away, gave me a saintly smile. He was sweetly interested in his work, in me, in the guards in the prison, in everybody.
He beamed at me, and he said, ‘I’m not mad at anybody.’
‘That’s certainly the way to be,’ I said.
‘I’ve got some advice for you,’ he said.
‘I’d be glad to have it,’ I said.
‘Relax,’ he said, beaming, beaming, beaming. ‘Just relax.’
‘That’s how I got here,’ I said.
‘Life is divided up into phases,’ he said. ‘Each one is very different from the others, and you have to be able to recognize what is expected of you in each phase. That’s the secret of successful living.’
‘It’s good of you to share the secret with me,’ I said.
‘I’m a writer now,’ he said. ‘I never thought I’d be a writer.’
‘May I ask a personal question?’ I said.
‘Certainly,’ he said benignly. ‘That’s the phase I’m in now. This is the time for thinking and answering. Ask whatever you like.’
‘Do you feel that you’re guilty of murdering six million Jews?’ I said.
‘Absolutely not,’ said the architect of Auschwitz, the introducer of conveyor belts into crematoria, the greatest customer in the world for the gas called Cyklon-B.
Not knowing the man for sure, I tried some intramural satire on him, what seemed to me to be intramural satire. ‘You were simply a soldier, were you ĄX ‘ I said, ‘taking orders from higher-ups, like soldiers around the world?’
Eichmann turned to a guard, and talked to him in rapid-fire Yiddish, indignant Yiddish. If he’d spoken it slowly, I would have understood it, but he spoke too fast.
‘What did he say?’ I asked the guard.
‘He wondered if we’d showed you his statement,’ said the guard. ‘He made us promise not to show it to anybody until it was done.’
‘I haven’t seen it,’ I said to Eichmann.
‘Then how do you know what my defense is going to be?’ he said.
This man actually believed that he had invented his own trite defense, though a whole nation of ninety some-odd million had made the same defense before him. Such was his paltry understanding of the Godlike human act of invention.
The more I think about Eichmann and me, the more I think that he should be sent to the hospital, and that I am the sort of person for whom punishments by fair, just men were devised.
As a friend of the court that will try Eichmann, I offer my opinion that Eichmann cannot distinguish between right and wrong ĄX that not only right and wrong, but truth and falsehood, hope and despair, beauty and ugliness, kindness and cruelty, comedy and tragedy, are all processed by Eichmann’s mind indiscriminately, like birdshot through a bugle.
My case is different. I always know when I tell a lie, am capable of imagining the cruel consequences of anybody’s believing my lies, know cruelty is wrong. I could no more lie without noticing it than I could unknowingly pass a kidney stone.
If there is another me after this one, I would like very much, in the next one, to be the sort of person of whom it could truly be said, ‘Forgive him ĄX he knows not what he does.’
This cannot be said of me now.
The only advantage to me of knowing the difference between right and wrong, as nearly as I can tell, is that I can sometimes laugh when the Eichmanns can see nothing funny,
‘You still write?’ Eichmann asked me, there in Tel Aviv.
‘One last project ĄX ‘ I said, ‘a command performance for the archives.’
‘You are a professional writer?’ he said.
‘Some say so,’ I said.
‘Tell me ĄX ‘ he said, ‘do you set a certain time of day aside for writing, whether you feel like it or not ĄX or do you wait for inspiration to strike, night or day?’
‘A schedule,’ I said, remembering back so many years.
I got some of his respect back. ‘Yes, yes ĄX ‘ he said, nodding, ‘a schedule. That’s what I’ve found, too. Sometimes I simply stare at a blank sheet of paper, but I still sit here and stare at it for the whole period I’ve set aside for work. Does alcohol help?’
‘I think it only seems to ĄX and only seems to for about half an hour,’ I said. This, too, was an opinion from my youth.
Eichmann made a joke. ‘Listen ĄX ‘ he said, ‘about those six million ĄX ‘
‘Yes?’ I said.
‘I could spare you a few for your book,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I really need them all.’
I offer this joke to history, on the assumption that no tape recorder was around. This was one of the memorable quips of the bureaucratic Genghis Khan.
It’s possible that Eichmann wanted me to recognize that I had killed a lot of people, too, by the exercise of my fat mouth. But I doubt that he was that subtle a man, man of as many parts as he was. I think, if we ever got right down to it, that, out of the six million murders generally regarded as his, he wouldn’t lend me so much as one. If he were to start farming out all those murders, after all, Eichmann as Eichmann’s idea of Eichmann would disappear.
The guards took me away, and the only other encounter I had with the Man of the Century was in the form of a note, smuggled mysteriously from his prison in Tel Aviv to mine in Jerusalem. The note was dropped at my feet by a person unknown in the exercise yard here. I picked it up, read it, and this is what it said:
‘Do you think a literary agent is absolutely necessary?’ The note was signed by Eichmann.
My reply was this: ‘For book club and movie sales in the United States of America, absolutely.’
30: Don Quixote …
We would fly to Mexico City ĄX Kraft, Resi, and I. That became the plan. Dr. Jones would not only provide us with transportation, he would provide us with a reception committee in Mexico City as well
From Mexico City we would go exploring by automobile, would seek some secret village in which to spend the rest of our days.
The plan was surely as charming a daydream as I had had in many a day. And it seemed not only possible but certain that I would write again.
Shyly, I told Resi so.
She wept for joy. For real joy? Who knows. I can only guarantee that her tears were wet and salty.
‘Did I have anything to do with this lovely, this heavenly miracle?’ she said.
‘Everything,’ I said, holding her close.
‘No, no ĄX very little ĄX ‘ she said, ‘but some ĄX thank God, some. The big miracle is the talent you were born with.’
‘The big miracle,’ I said, ‘is your power to raise the dead.’
‘Love does that,’ she said. ‘And it raised me, too. How alive do you think I was ĄX before?’
‘Shall I write about it?’ I said. ‘In our village there in Mexico, on the rim of the Pacific ĄX is that what I should write first?’
‘Yes ĄX yes, oh yes ĄX darling, darling,’ she said. ‘I’ll take such good care of you while you do it. Will ĄX will you have any time for me?’
‘The afternoons and the evenings and the nights,’ I said. ‘That’s all the time I’ll be able to give you.’
‘Have you decided on a name yet?’ she said.
‘Name?’ I said.
‘Your new name ĄX the name of the new writer whose beautiful works come mysteriously out of Mexico,’ she said. ‘I will be Mrs ĄX .’
‘Se?ora’ I said.
‘Se?ora who?’ she said. ‘Se?or and Se?ora who?’
‘Christen us,’ I said.
‘It’s too important for me to decide right away,’ she said.
Kraft came in at this point
Resi asked him to suggest a pseudonym for me.
‘What about Don Quixote?’ he said. ‘That,’ he said to Resi, ‘would make you Dulcinea del Toboso, and I would sign my paintings Sancho Panza.’
Dr. Jones now came in with Father Keeley. ‘The plane will be ready tomorrow morning,’ he said. ‘You’re sure you’ll be well enough to travel?’
‘I’m well enough right now,’ I said.
‘The man who will meet you in Mexico City is Arndt Klopfer,’ said Jones. ‘Can you remember that?’
‘The photographer?’ I said.
‘You know him?’ said Jones.
‘He took my official photograph in Berlin,’ I said.
‘He’s the biggest brewer in Mexico now,’ said Jones.
‘For God’s sake,’ I said. ‘The last I heard, his studio got hit with a five-hundred-pound bomb.’