THE GREEN KING (part 12)
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The Photographer
from Salzburg
Three times he
went to see him, finding him awake only once; he wanted to question him but was
answered only by the serious and dreamy look.
‘Do you
recognize me? I pulled you from the grave…’ No answer. ‘At least tell your
name.’ No answer. ‘You told me you were
Australian. You must have family you want to get in touch with.’ No answer.
‘Where did you learn to speak French?’ No answer. ‘I only want to help you…’.
The boy closed
his eyes, turned toward the wall.
The next day,
May 8, Captain Tarras arrived from Munich, along with the news of the German
surrender.
George Tarras
was a Georgian, not an American Georgian, but Russian one. At Harvard,
Settiniaz had learned that Tarras was an aristocratic Russian whose family had
emigrated to the United States in 1918. In 1945, he was forty-four years old
and had apparently given himself the task of the convincing the maximum number
of people from planet Earth to take themselves less seriously. He abhorred
sentimentality, had natural passiveness (or at least feigned it marvelously)
When faced with the most extreme examples of human stupidity, and had sarcasm
permanently on the tip of his tongue. Beside English, he spoken a dozen other
languages fluently, among them, German, French, Polish, Russian, Italian, and
Spanish.
His first task
when he assumed command at Mauthausen was to cover the walls of his office with
a selection of the most atrocious photographs taken by Blackstocks at Dachau
and at Mauthausen. ‘At least, when we question this gentlemen, who will lie to
us through their teeth, we can show them the result of their pranks.’
He quickly went
through the few files that Settiniaz had started, leading the questioning
himself.
‘Small fry,
Master Settiniaz. Anything else?’.
TO BE CONTINUED
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I LOVE YOU…
I LOVE YOU…
I LOVE YOU…
I LOVE YOU…
I LOVE YOU…
I LOVE YOU…
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