"Paul-Loup Sulitzer - The Green King" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sulitzer Paul Loup)

He and Klimrod met in front of the Castel Sant' Angelo, at the end of the morning.
"How in the world did you know that I was in Italy? I found your message at Bertchik's just in time. I'm leaving Rome tomorrow."
Klimrod explained that he had gone to Bertchik's "to talk to someone about Mossad or Haganah" and that, in order to make himself known, he had to give the names of men who would answer for him.
"Yours was one. And Bertchik told me that you were in
Rome. Do you have two hours to spare? I would like to show you something."
He took Bainish into a little street leading to the Via Crescenzio, right next to Saint Peter's Square, and showed him a plaque, in Italian and German.
"The escape route leads to this place. They leave Germany through Lindau and Bregenz on Lake Constance, or by the Reschen Pass, which you and I took, two years ago. They travel by car, sometimes by bus, and spend their nights in Franciscan monasteries. I've made a list for you. One of the men who arranges the convoys is named Arni Schaide. There is also a woman, Gerda Huber. There's also a list of them. In Rome, they are taken in charge by Monsignor Heidemann, a German, who runs an official organ of the Vatican. Heidemann furnishes them with passports from the Red Cross. Some of them are even given cassocks and false papers belonging to Jesuits. They leave Italy through Ban or, mostly, Genoa. Some of them go to Spain, Syria, or Ethiopia, but many embark for South America. Hundreds have already escaped this way."
Bainish was stunned.
"Why this sudden avalanche of information?"
"I found out about all this while looking for something else. I had to tell someone about it."
That last sentence implied that he had no superiors or organization to whom he had to answer. Bainish (whose career was progressing: it had finally been recognized that he was too intellIgent to be a dynamiter and he was being assigned more delicate missions) knew that his former road companion had severed all ties with the Zionist organizations. Someone had spoken to him about a certain Klimrod who was working for "those crazies in Nakam."
He asked: "Are you still with them, Reb?"
"No. Not for a long time."
"And Lazarus?"
"Dead."
Nothing else. They were walking along the Tiber. Bainish examined Klimrod and found him changed. Not so much in size or weight, though he might have grown a little more and gained a few pounds. But he still had the silhouette of a daddy longlegs, that same apparent slowness of step, and the same
depthless gaze. The change was elsewhere: there was a greater hardness and an apparent certainty of a destiny.
"Did you find what you were looking for, Reb?"
"Almost."
Silence.
Then Bainish said suddenly: "I've always felt a great friendship for you. Really. If there is anything . .
"Thank you, nothing."
And again silence.
To fill it, Bainish began to talk about this country that was being born on the banks of the Tiberias and the Jordan, where they would finally have their place, he and Reb and so many others who had come or were coming. He was getting excited talking about the great adventure to be lived, even in the Negev desert, which they were beginning to conquer.
The answer came, slowly but definite.
"Without me," said Reb.
"You are almost as Jewish as I am. To be Jewish can also be a choice."
"I am nothing. Nothing."
Bainish took down the list, needing almost twenty pages, even with his small handwriting, the names, the monasteries, the relay stations, all the information Reb had gathered while "looking for something else."
Strangely uncomfortable, Bainish started to laugh.
"It's as if you were giving us a farewell gift."
"In a way," said Reb.
And then a warm, friendly look came into his eyes, and he began to smile. He wrapped his large hand around Bainish's shoulder. "Thank you, thank you for everything." He left and crossed the Tiber.

In Tangiers, Henri Haardt also saw Klimrod again, around this same time, "mid-April, I think."
"He came to see me as if he had seen me the night before, asked me if I would agree to carry out a few operations with him. He had some money, about six thousand U. S. dollars, and wanted to invest it all in a single trip, in a sort of double or nothing.
"He looked about twenty-two or twenty-three years old. His
second stay in Tangiers lasted four months, and during this period we made four trips together, all successful. Not counting expenses, that left us with a profit of a little more than fifty dollars per case. One hundred and twenty cases were his during the first trip, and after that he had two hundred each time. The calculations are simple: he netted close to thirty-five thousand dollars.
"As for his departure from Tangiers, it was as simple as his arrival. He merely told me that our collaboration had been 'both extremely pleasant and agreeable'-he really spoke like that, slowly and softly, with an almost old-fashioned courtesy
-but that the time had come for him to leave. I told him of my regret and that I had a great feeling of friendship toward him, almost affection. And I also told him that we could have made a fortune together. He smiled at me and told me that that did not interest him.
"I don't know where he got it, but under his arm he was carrying a small painting, unwrapped, which he showed me, asking me whether I liked it. I have never been an authority on painting and all I could see were spots of color. I told him so, and he started laughing, but the laughter never reached his eyes, which widened ever so slightly.
"'The signature belongs to a man named Kandinsky, who died three years ago,' he said. 'A very great painter. One can kill for a painting, Henri, but one can also be killed by it. . .
"On Boulevard Pasteur, he bought a cloth bag the exact size of the painting. And, as far as I know, that was the only baggage he took with him when he left Tangiers, at the beginning of August 1947, for a destination unknown to me. That painting and those two books that he was always dragging around with him . .

7

At the time, Arcadio Almeiras was fifty-six years old. He had dreaded becoming a painter, but had been one for five or six years in the early nineteen-twenties with Emilio Pettoruti. He had gone as far as Berlin to meet Klee. As for Kandinsky, he remembered very well the three or four times he had visited him in Weimar. That was when he hoped to have a little, a very little, bit of talent. "Not even a little bit. The Gobi desert."
He asked: "And whose is it, in your opinion?"
The tall young man shrugged his shoulders.
"A name like Kondinjki. But it's worth a lot of money, I'm sure. At least a thousand dollars."