The Cover Age: Nazi Crimes, Chapter 5

I was in Orono, Maine, in the fall of 2001. I was there as a matter of coincidence, when Ostwald was there, too, in his role as a poet, participating in a workshop at the university, as a “celebrated Chilean.” The business that had brought me back to the United States was a few years ahead, but I was already involved, already entangled in matters that I still have yet to fully understand, but there was little confusion as to my purpose then, on the hunt for Ostwald, the golem, whom I believed at that point to not only have been interested in vampires but for all intents and purposes to be one himself, at that point. I never worked it out, myself, never got a chance. Events spiraled out of control, and at any rate, as I’ve said, Ostwald turned out to not been involved after all.

Nonetheless, I was there when the attacks happened, when the details emerged that some of the terrorists had passed through the nearby city of Bangor, and for a moment, I convinced myself that Ostwald was involved, but...

The problem was, the Nazi menace had died. Even if there remained fanatics, the Reich itself was defeated, never to arise again. I had turned Ostwald into a vendetta.

Ostwald gave his reading, and I sat in the audience, until the moment I entered the room unaware that he was even there, and yet there he was, and I realized with awful clarity that it was starting all over again, and I imagined him watching me the whole time. Students sat enraptured, or sleeping. They had no idea what he was talking about, but it was less difficult for me to decipher. His verse spoke elegantly of Chile, as we had known it, a man in a white suit. But where others might see tragedy, I heard mourning. This is what Ostwald had been reduced to, lamenting a lost cause, because of course that is what it was, and what it would ever be, a dream for sadists, perhaps, but nothing more. Just something to hang window dressing on.

I shuddered to think of it.

I said nothing. I didn’t clap when he finished, and I avoided him, the man I had so eagerly pursued across years and continents, full of momentary clarity, but it didn’t last. I lost myself in the madness once more. But after that I vowed it would never happen again.

This Ostwald was not worth my time, but perhaps my pity. Anything more would be tragedy of a different order entirely...