In Search of Klingsor. Jorge Volpi

dark brown hair worn in a military-style haircut, pale eyes, and an angular nose which he rather liked. He fancied himself as a man who wore his uniform with panache (actually, he was a bit stiff), and he went to great pains to display his various decorations, despite the physical discomfort they produced. Upon his shoulder he bore a bulky military backpack that contained almost all his earthly possessions: a few changes of clothing, some photographs (which he hadn’t dared look at since leaving New Jersey), and some old copies of Annalen der Physik, one of the more important journals in his field, pilfered from some or other library he had passed through.

      In reality, Bacon had not gone to Nuremberg specifically for the executions. Initially, only thirty people had been granted permission to witness the event, but then General Watson invited him a bit later on, and he accepted enthusiastically. Bacon had been referred to Watson by General William J. Donovan, founder of the OSS and, for a few weeks, special assistant to the U.S. chief prosecutor at Nuremberg, Robert H. Jackson. (Not long before, in the wake of an acrimonious misunderstanding with Jackson, a veteran justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Donovan had been forced to resign for having interviewed Hermann Goering without Jackson’s permission.) Bacon, however, was on a different, perhaps more pedestrian mission: His job was to study the recorded minutes of the copious testimonies relating to scientific research under the Third Reich, and ferret out any and all “inconsistencies,” to use the term favored by his superiors—that is, contradictions in the many statements made by the defendants.

      The Palace of Justice was one of the few public buildings in Nuremberg that had survived the wartime bombings, and had recently been restored by Captain Daniel Kiley, a young Harvard architect also under the command of the OSS. Upon reaching the city center Bacon had little trouble identifying the building: Once protected by an ample plaza filled with trees, the large group of buildings featured archways on the ground floor, huge picture windows, and a series of pointed towers. The prison, located toward the back of the building, consisted of four rectangular blocks set in a half-moon, its exterior protected by a high semicircular wall. The Nazi prisoners were housed together in cell block C, steps away from a small chamber that was once a gymnasium but was now a gallows.

      It was 9:15 when Bacon finally reached the security guards at the entrance to the Nuremberg military prison. After reviewing his credentials, the soldiers announced that they were under orders to bar all access to the building—most specifically, the gymnasium—until the executions were over. Bacon tried to explain that he had come on General Watson’s invitation, but the guards were impassive, and refused his request to summon Gunther Sadel: “General Rikard’s orders” was their only response.

      Scores of journalists swarmed about the scene. Aside from the International Military Tribunal’s official photographer, only two reporters—chosen by lottery—were granted access to the gymnasium. All the others were forced to wait, just like Bacon, for the press conference that would announce the deaths of the war criminals. In an effort to scoop the story, several newspapers had already published early editions. The New York Herald Tribune, for example, had given the news a full, eight-column headline:

       11 NAZI CHIEFS HANGED IN NUREMBERG PRISON: GOERING AND HENCHMEN PAY FOR THEIR WAR CRIMES

      The executions were scheduled to take place in the afternoon, so Bacon still had a few hours to locate someone who might help him get in. Before anything else, however, he would go to the Grand Hotel, where a room had been reserved in his name. But bad luck seemed to dog his every step; when he arrived at the hotel, the manager declared that there were no rooms available. After patiently explaining that he was there on a special mission, Bacon asked to speak to the supervisor in charge, and a pompous bell captain cleverly rose to the occasion, becoming the de facto hotel manager for a moment, and quickly solved the problem: The hotel had not expected Bacon until the following day, when several rooms would be vacated (“The show ends today, you know?”). Since it was only for one night, however, room number 14—“Hitler’s room”—could be made available.

      Bacon climbed the stairs and settled into the immense suite. The luxurious appointments of the Nazi days were long gone, but they were nevertheless the most sumptuous accommodations Bacon had been offered in recent months. Although it did seem like some kind of bad joke that the walls now surrounding him had stood guard over the dead body of Adolf Hitler. Who would have ever thought? What would Elizabeth say? Oh … it was useless to even think about that: For better or for worse, Elizabeth wanted nothing to do with him. Bacon flung himself onto the bed, but it produced an illicit, morbid sensation, as if he were desecrating a sacred space. The idea of urinating on all the furniture crossed his mind, but then he thought better of it: Why should the hotel’s housekeeping staff have to pay for his capricious behavior? He got up and walked into the bathroom. He studied the spacious tub, the sink, the toilet, the bidet. Hitler’s greasy skin had surely rubbed up against all those shiny surfaces. He could just picture Hitler, naked and defenseless, admiring his flaccid member before submerging himself in the water; Bacon could even see the Führer’s defecations, sliding down the hole that he now found himself peering into….

      Bewildered, Bacon studied himself in the mirror. Two large circles under his eyes dominated his face; not only had he matured, but he seemed to have grown old. He ran his hands through his hair and, in an attempt to concentrate on something, located one or two gray hairs and decided they were proof of his imminent decline. He was no longer a boy wonder, a child prodigy, or any of those things that had always kept him at the margins of society. As he began to take off his uniform, he mused at how very different it was from the one he used to wear. Trapped within the privileged walls of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, he had very nearly married a woman he didn’t love. There, his life had been a sheltered one, protected from the outside world, just like that of an insect pinned to the inside of a glass case in a museum. His departure from Princeton had been nothing less than a spectacular scandal, but it was also a miracle, a revelation. For the first time ever he sensed that life was a tangible presence that he could feel upon his skin, far from all the desks and blackboards, and the tedium of all those conferences and colloquia. He never would have dreamed that he would derive such satisfaction as a soldier fighting for his country, but now he was certain that he had made the right choice. He would have plenty of time, at some point in the future, to return to the world of science—but then it would be as a hero, not as a fugitive.

      He turned on the faucet and waited for the hot water to pour out, but nothing more than a weak stream of lukewarm droplets emerged from the tap. “The Führer wouldn’t have stood for this,” he laughed to himself, and proceeded to bathe with the help of a towel and a freshly opened, pungent cake of soap. When he was finished, he went back to the bed and, before he knew it, fell into a deep sleep, though the unsettling dream he had nearly asphyxiated him: There he was, in the middle of a dark, rainy forest, when suddenly Vivien appeared out of nowhere. Vivien, the young black woman from Princeton with whom he had maintained a secret relationship for so long. Ruefully, he noted that his life was strewn with puddles and potholes; in fact, it seemed to have evolved into something more like a moldy, threatening swamp. In the dream, he tried to kiss Vivien when suddenly he found himself face-to-face with his ex-fiancée Elizabeth instead. “There’s lipstick on your mouth,” she said to him, and proceeded to wipe it off with a handkerchief. “You shouldn’t do that,” she reprimanded him. “It’s bad, very bad.” By the time Bacon managed to extricate himself, it was too late: Vivien had already disappeared.

      It was almost three in the afternoon when he awoke. He kicked himself: This was the worst possible thing he could have done. Not only had he neglected his work, but he had done so thrashing about in Hitler’s bedsheets! He quickly put on his clothes, scurried down the stairs, and ran as fast as he could to the pressroom at the Palace of Justice.

      A few hours later, he was informed of the news which would soon travel to the rest of the world like an infectious disease. From the crumbling streets of the ancient medieval burgh, the communiqué was sent out that the Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering—the highest-ranking Nazi prisoner sentenced by the International Military Tribunal—had been found dead in his cell a few hours before Sergeant John Woods was to carry out the hanging for which he had been sentenced. According to the rumors, Goering had ingested a capsule of cyanide, a cruel, eleventh-hour joke which allowed