74 Stalls
147
"May I help you? What are you looking for? What do you want? See what we have and come in." You could hear everywhere the Phoenician market anthem. Women and men were selling all sorts of goods. Merchants like them, sharing the second most ancient trade of the world.
"Good heavens! Where in the world does this stud come from?" shouted a woman selling chickens. "These are the best eggs you have ever seen!" she would add, as a compliment to Carlos. For his part, a man selling cheeses addressed Elena: "Darling, your mother certainly fed you with the purest of milk!" A man selling avocados would not stay quiet either. "I have a bone as stiff as that of the fruit." "Pepe, take a look at the girl escorted by that gringo," shouted a man selling brown " tapa de dulce"75 to his pal selling " chayotes." As they passed by, the merchant offered Elena his eternal love: "My heart is like this chayote, hard outside and tender inside." But the most daring was the woman selling bananas.
"Blondie‖ she said to Carlos, ―where did you buy that bunch of bananas you are carrying in your pocket?" The stall proprietors came out to find out the reason for the uproar; it was like Jesus himself coming into the temple.
"What in the hell is going on?" asked a woman selling children's clothes to her friend, who sold umbrellas. "A couple just went by. They were so handsome all these degenerates around here went completely berserk!"
The smells filling the sinuous paths of the Market soon deteriorated. They were near the urinals and the toilets. Customers relieved themselves in simple holes dug in the earth, without any other sanitation than a weekly layer of lime over the excrements. This barely attenuated the smells. "35 cents for a toilet and 10 cents for the paper," read a sign posted on the wall. A woman using one of these toilets was screaming: "For God's sake, someone help me! My purse fell in the hole and I need help! I need help, please, someone!"
The stores nearby were the poorest and the least favored by the customers. But their owners were no less flowery than the others. " Mamacita 76, with you around all I can smell is perfumes," said the owner of the butchery store to Elena. A woman at the fishery would not keep quiet either: " ― Papacito 77 of my life, delicious blond, come inside and I will peel you all." David's store was located exactly diagonal from the urinals and across the stall selling incense and natural remedies.
Carlos should not get closer. Nonetheless, Elena's father noticed the man escorting his daughter. Carlos had escaped being noticed, but could not hold back his emotions: "Miss, I must see you again. Do not tell me no because I will not be able to resist it." All this was new to him: A desire pouring uncontrollably, for the first time in his life putting his heart at the mercy of a kid of fourteen. It was a completely unusual event.
75 Sugar bars
76 Dear little mother
77 Dear small daddy
148
"I must say no. My father is watching me and he is horrified. If I were to see you again he would kick me out of my home and of the country. He would say the quadish 78 in my memory and would never forgive me."
"Why call the demons at this perfect moment?" Carlos answered.
"The hell with all!" he added.
When he returned to his store, away from the Market and the poor, no longer smelling those terrible and wonderful smells, Carlos was like in a trance and in the midst of a terrible inner conflict. The girl could not be older than fourteen, although she looked more mature. Carlos thought she was a woman reincarnated, coming from a very distant land, so distant than no one could know her origins. "But, why am I feeling we have met before, why do I feel we have always been twin souls?" Carlos thought. She would not let him visit her but it did not matter. Now he knew where to find her, at her father's store. "I will go there every day until it all explodes, like a volcano. Most probably, our love will be like an overflowed river, like the earthquake of 1910.‖
"But, damn!" he repeated once and again in his mind. "Why did God send me a Jewess?"
78 Prayers for the dead
149
XVII
As expected, that Monday evening the phone rang exactly at ten o'clock. It was the usual call from La Paz. Max had taken care to be alone at the German Consulate; no one should know about these conversations. His partner at the other end of the line had warned him there would be spies behind every door: "Our dealings must be kept absolutely private."
Their main concern those days was tallying the figures. The cocaine shipment sent to Panama arrived there weighing less than what it originally did in San José. Ernest suspected someone had kept part of the revenues. Since the drug was sent from Bolivia to Puerto Limón, apparently the problem occurred in this last place. "They report to San José a smaller quantity than what I originally sent. Somebody is keeping between 10 to 15 per cent of the stuff in Puerto Limón," said Ernest. Max was not so sure. "Sometimes we must give some to the customs officers, to make sure they let the merchandise get in," was his response. Still, he promised to look into it.
Max also wanted to know how did the talks with Hitler develop. "He wants me back in Germany. I said I will think about it," answered Ernest. He was making a fortune with the Bolivian cocaine crop. Via Costa Rica, he exported it to Panama, where he bought opium and heroin, in turn to be distributed throughout the region. Thus, he was not sure returning to Germany was such a good idea. Besides, the drug business was "politically correct,"
since he had abated the costs and now the drug was available to the working classes, both in the United States and in Latin America. "It is a way of fighting Communism," he used to claim. Before hanging up the phone, Max warned him about the Costa Rican press. Incited by the United States, almost every day the local newspapers made a big fuss about the heroin addiction among the local working classes. "Thus, we need to be covered,"
concluded the German diplomat stationed in San José.
The only person with access to Max's accounts was Lady, his mulatto lover. As was usual for both Max and Ernest, there was not a clear-cut division between business and sex.
Ernest had taught him no trustworthy man would reach the highest levels of the S.A.
without first passing "the inspection." Besides, the former Captain of the German Army had found a major ally in the 20th century technology, namely, the photographic camera. Thanks to this device, he owned the largest pornographic photo collection depicting the most powerful men in the Nazi Party. They all posed for him buck-naked.
It was not surprising, therefore, to find a very large number of handsome young men occupying powerful positions in the S.A., even if they did not have any military experience whatsoever. They were thankful and eventually bribable by the voracious Ernest. Max did likewise in the tropics. Since he returned to San José, once the road construction in Miraflores was abandoned, this woman, Lady, had helped him, both in bed and in the business, to make many of his dreams come true. The young woman was a veritable exponent of her race's beauty, attractive to both men and women.
Bad schemes, when effective, are passed from teacher to pupil, as if in the best ancient Greek scholarly tradition. Thus, Max had started his own photographic collection of Costa 150
Rican politicians and " gamonales 79. He had lured them with the help of Lady's accountant William to the most memorable bacchanals. On such occasions, he was able to take many compromising and candid photographs, once these characters were under the heavy effects of cocaine, marihuana and heroin, the drugs of choice during the 1920s in San José and Limón.
Lady was good bait for heterosexual men, while William Pop, her accountant, served a similar purpose for bisexuals. This young man was able not only to keep the books, but also to take to bed dozens of men. In turn, these sexual partners would help him smuggle in the country as much drugs as possible. Lady trusted William with her bed and her checking account, since the two of them maintained a secret relationship. For his part, every time Max visited Puerto Limón he had intimate relations with this "beautiful exemplar of manhood." But he had never suspected William was madly in love with Lady and, moreover, was actually making plans to run away with her.
But it did not take long for Max to figure out William was stealing from him, with Lady's full knowledge and participation. Questioning a friendly customs officer in Limón, Max found the exact amount of drugs actually arriving from South America on the German ships, as well as the tiny amounts used for bribes. The difference between the actual figures and those reported to him, he inferred, was deposited in Panamanian banks in the accounts of "Pop & Company." Moreover, together with William Pop, Lady was the only other person allowed to deposit or withdraw funds from that account. "Ah, but I swear these two scoundrels will pay dearly for this!" he said to himself.
Two weeks later Max and Ernest again talked on the phone. They decided to "put an end"
to this issue during Ernest's coming trip to Germany. Hitler had insisted on Ernest's return to his homeland and, for his part, Roehm was willing to abandon his lucrative businesses, provided these could be managed through trustworthy employees. If things went wrong in Germany, Ernest needed a place to return, as well as a business to make a living. Bolivia produced plenty of cocaine and its rough landscape offered secure refuge in case of persecution. Therefore, it was an ideal place for the kind of operation Ernest was engaged in. For its part, Costa Rica was very close to Panama and had not fallen under direct United States control, making it an excellent "bridge" to access the North American market. Both men agreed to "solve" the issue with Lady and William in December 1930.
A few weeks before his trip, Ernest told Max that Hitler had offered him the top position at the head of the S.A again. Max was supposed to travel back with him, but Ernest decided not to take him since he wanted him to stay and oversee their Latin American operations. In this way, they would both have a refuge in case things went sour in Germany. Using his diplomatic immunity, Max could travel from San José to La Paz to look after their cocaine plantations. He could also travel to Berlin any time he wanted. Nevertheless, before initiating this new business adventure they had to put their house in order, "settling" the affair in Puerto Limón.
79 Local economic-political bosses
151
Neither Ernest nor Max used to start or to complete a transaction without sex. Ernest believed being discreet was a characteristic of cowardice among inverts and effeminate men, unbecoming to virile men like themselves. When meeting with Party members, whether in Munich or in Berlin, he usually took them to homosexual bars, publicly displaying himself and his comrades. It was not a secret that important Nazi elite meetings took place at the Bratwurstglockl bar. Thus, to solve the problem with their partners in Costa Rica, the best Ernest and Max could think was to organize a "farewell" orgy.
In contrast with previous occasions, this time it would be just the four of them. As usual, the place for the event would be the popular Wellington Hotel in Puerto Limón. Its owners were absolutely discreet and the employees knew perfectly well they were supposed to look the other way, and then clean the rooms. "Silence is a golden rule,‖ read a sign posted behind the reception desk. Any employee making comments about the parade of underage girls and boys coming in and out of the place, or about the strange noises heard in the rooms, or about the syringes on the floors, would not remain much longer on the payroll.
Moreover, some indiscreet employees ended their days in the jungle nearby the port, devoured by coyotes, wild dogs or cats.
Lady asked why this time they were not to invite young boys and girls. Although she did not suspect her boss had found out about her and her secret lover, nonetheless she was suspicious of changes. Max's answer was that Ernest had had a long journey from Bolivia and was tired. Moreover, added her boss, Ernest could only stay for two days in town.
"Besides," said Max, "you know I am terribly attracted by William's huge member and I want to enjoy it fully one last time, before leaving for Berlin."
William's spirits were flying very high that evening, given the "excellent" quality of the merchandise he was pushing those days, guaranteeing him fat revenues. If things continued like this, he would soon be able to return to his native Jamaica. He had promised this to his brother Miguel, a young man working in the banana plantations: "One of these days I will take you to our homeland. There you will work your own land where the miserable United Fruit Company will not exploit you any more."
At first, the night went like any previous ones. They started drinking some good Old Scotch preferred by Ernest. Then they aspired a few cocaine lines, "to awaken desires." At first, Ernest was just an onlooker, playing with his camera as a frustrated professional.
"Come on, William, show to the camera how much you have," he ordered. "Lady, give that wonderful tool a good French kiss." For his part, Max moved back and forth, in and out of the room, bringing all sorts of things, "to stimulate the passions," including whips and scrubbing brushes, the latter ones much appreciated by the German soldier. "Excellent!
Give me a back rub with it!" Ernest ordered Lady. One hour later the four of them got more heroin shots and lighted their first marihuana " puro"80 "We brought this hashish directly from Kingston, just for you," said Lady. Ernest inhaled several times and then withdrew into the bathroom. Max told William to make love to the woman "as if it was the last time."
80 Cigar
152
His partner returned to complete his photographic session, carrying a bottle of champagne shrouded on a towel, to celebrate William's "coming."
Probably Lady suspected something when Ernest told her, sarcastically, that her loyalty to him was one of nature's main "gifts." But she was so high with the drugs that she could not pay much attention to the remark. She knew the German soldier was a strange and temperamental man who sometimes would speak stupidities. Nonetheless, she was fully convinced Ernest had been "bewitched" by her partner's loving skills and that he would never kill "the hen of the golden eggs." "Besides," she thought, "since he has been hanging out with a sodomite from San José, I have lost interest... Oh well, that is probably the best that can happen! I am tired of sadomasochism in our relations."
She was not surprised that she and William would be the only ones to play the ―theatrical scene‖ of the evening. This was usual when they had these orgies with her boss. Sometimes he just wanted to take pictures. Max seemed uncomfortable but, again, he was always anxious. Rather than becoming suspicious, Lady chose to fully concentrate in the theatricals of their sexual performance.
When the two were reaching or faking an orgasm, Ernest pulled a long knife from the towel. William could not see it because he had his back turned. But Lady did see it coming.
She shouted, combining a rising terror with the tremendous pleasure she was experiencing:
"No! No! Please! No!" was all she could utter. William continued his joyful ride, not reacting to the scream, unaware of the knife entering him from behind.
"Coming is a way of dying! Coming is, in a way, dying!" said Max. At the same time, he pulled one other knife from under the bed and used it to cut Lady's throat. Almost in unison Ernest was stabbing William's strong and wide back. The big man was barely able to softly complain about the first thrust. His executioner pulled out the weapon and used it again and again, one, two, three, four, five times. At the same time he shouted: "No one steals money from me and remains alive to tell about it!"
The two victims died falling one on top of the other, bleeding and suffering for some minutes. "Please have mercy," said Lady before expiring, "push the knife through my heart!"
But the two Germans were not merciful. "Take pictures of the bodies and then use them to warn the next son of a bitch wanting to rip us off," concluded Ernest. "Now call our men and the confidential employees to clean this mess," he ordered.
Four of their trusted men took the bodies wrapped in canvas bags to the jungle, some twenty miles south from Limón, to the Bananito River. There, the bodies were taken out of the bags and thrown into the murky crocodile plagued waters. The evidence disappeared in a few minutes.
Once they arrived in Germany, Ernest again occupied his former position at the head of the S.A., transforming it into a military force larger than the Army itself. By 1933, these storm 153
troops included two and a half million men. Most of the Vikingkorps (the Official Command) cadres, recruited personally by Ernest, were homosexuals, friends and acquaintances from the Turkish baths or private orgies. The Füehrer knew about this but apparently did not mind it. "After all, he had spent some time alone with another homosexual, Rudolf Hess, imprisoned at the Landsberg jail," boasted Ernest. "They became intimate, to the point that when Hitler was released he used Austrian pet names to complain because Hess had to remain behind bars: Ach mein Rudy, mein Hesserl (It is terrible that he is still there!)"
"Their relation became so close," Ernest continued telling Max, "that every time the Nazi supreme leader received a present he liked, or the scale model of a building, he would rush to show it to Rudolf. Hess was known as Freulein Ana.81 Sometimes the two of them looked like a pair of transvestites." Max also learned Hitler kept as a major treasure, a love letter sent by King Ludwig II of Bavaria to his lover and squire. "I do not know if Hitler practices homosexuality," added Ernest. "But in any case, he is surrounded by queers and will not persecute us because of it."
Notwithstanding this favorable outlook, Hitler and Roehm started to fall apart. Max would later find out a reason for this in Jorg Lanzś and Guido Von List's intrigues. Lanz was once a Cistercian monk, expelled from his monastery due to homosexual practices. He then created an occult organization, Ordo Novi Templi 82 where Tantric sexual rites were practiced. Lanz warned Hitler about Roehm's rival power, adding Ernest had crossed the boundary separating virile homosexuality from pure degeneration. "It is one thing to pursue the love between two men according to the ancient Greek tradition," he would tell Hitler,
"but it is something quite different to offer his ass to each and all the S.A. soldiers."
Something else was even more worrying to Hitler. After all, for a number of years he had known about Roehm's "degenerate" practices. But Lanz added: "Roehm has the potential power to control the entire German Army and the military are ready to give you a coup d´ètat to prevent it." Hitler came out from this "spiritual" session more worried than relieved.
Max himself was anxious concerning Ernest's indiscretions. During a party at the house of the Nazi propaganda chief, Goebbels, Ernest organized an orgy, inviting Hitler's bodyguards to participate. Later, Heinrich Himmler complained to the Führer: "It is vox populi that positions in the S.A. are granted on the basis of sexual favors. What determines whether someone will get a good position is not loyalty, manliness, or skills, but the size of his sexual organ." According to Himmler, Ernest took to bed many of his own trusted men, in order later to have proof against them. "My adored Führer," added Himmler, "you must do something now. In the Army they claim the only widening German territory is the sphincter..."
Max had warned Ernest to stop visiting the Turkish baths and to destroy his photographic collection. "Your position is similar to Hirschfeldś," said Max, "since you own sensitive 81 Miss Anna
82 Order of the New Temples
154
and explosive information." But Ernest would not pay attention. His appetite for Arian boys from high schools in Munich was insatiable. He once asked his old classmate, Peter Granninger, to bring him eleven beardless high school students. Moreover, Granninger was added to the payroll with a monthly salary of 200 Marks. His sole task was providing Ernest with "fresh meat." One of these "meals" was held at the apartment he shared with Max.
When Max returned home, he found Ernest totally naked taking pictures of young men, some of them children of high-ranking Army officials. This time Max was beyond himself and created a major scandal. He started hitting the terrified boys and threatened to send them naked to the street. He then turned to Ernest. "Heroin is making you mad. All you do these days is search for boys and men to fuck you. And the worst part of it all is that now you cannot stop taking photographs, because you have become completely numbed. Do you not realize some of these shit boys are the scions of well known Party politicians and Army officials and their fathers, sooner or later will want to take revenge?"
The S.A. chief was not in the mood to quietly accept jealous reprimands from his lover and at that very moment kicked Max out of the apartment together with all his belongings.
Escalating his rivalry with Roehm, Hitler determined to implement a particular "final solution" for him. In February 1933, he prohibited all homosexual pornography in the Reich, closed the Turkish baths, the bars and the organizations promoting the rights of the homosexuals, like Hirschfeldś Scientific Committee. On May 6, the Nazi Party troops broke into the Sexuality Institute and destroyed its library, burning thousands of books and documents and almost beating the secretary to death.
The S.A. leader did not see this move as directed, in the last resort, against him. In his opinion, all the evidence against homosexuality of thousands of Nazis, including his and Max's, was erased when all those files, books and films were burnt. "Hitler is doing this to protect us," Ernest would claim. Moreover, the fact that "masculine" homosexual organizations like the Society for Human Rights (SR) had not been affected, assured him in his belief. "This is a purge against effeminate queers, not against virile homosexuals," he argued.
Early in 1934, Max left for Costa Rica to look after their business. He was worried by the Jewish immigration into the country. He did not want to be accused of being "soft"
regarding the archenemies of the German nation. The Jewish presence in Costa Rica demanded more energetic policies from the part of the Nazi Party he had helped to organize. One of these tasks would be to create a common front together with the merchants affected by the peddler's competition. Besides, it would be good for him to breathe different air. His relation with the S.A. leader had deteriorated since their last quarrel. Moreover, Ernest had dozens of new boys to console himself with since his departure. "The only thing he now wants from me is that I take care of his lucrative drug trafficking," thought Max.
155
He would receive the biggest surprise of his life in May 1934, in the bucolic town of San José. A German woman had requested an urgent appointment with him, in his capacity as Chargé dÁffairs at the German Legation. She would not disclose in advance the issues to be discussed and asked the appointment be held "in absolute privacy." She only gave her first name, Claudia, but did not want to say her last name. The next day, at three o'clock in the afternoon, this lady came into his office.
"Welcome, Ma'am. I have been told yours is a very urgent business and so dangerous that you would not even tell us your last name. What may I do for you?" asked a curious Max.
"Your name is Max Gerffin, right?" she answered with another question.
"That is correct," Max responded, now more intrigued and noticing something familiar in the lady's face.
"Max, I would have liked to do this in a more gradual fashion and not in this rush. I have come from Hamburg just to meet you. I have trusted neither letters nor telegrams nor any other means of communication. What I must say is strictly private. May I trust you will keep confidential what I have to say?"
Max was even more surprised now. His mind was frantically trying to relate the woman's face to his memories of German ladies he had met among the Nazi elite. Max wondered if she was bringing him some secret news from Ernest. "Is she his messenger?" Meanwhile she got up from her chair and came closer to his desk. Max said:
"Absolutely, ma'am, you may tell me anything, knowing I will never betray your trust." He now got worried, anticipating bad news.
"Well, you see," continued Claudia, "some of my friends are officials close to my former husband. He is a retired General still maintaining numerous connections in the political and the military spheres. In some parties and gatherings I have heard that in certain powerful groups there exists a strong animosity against your friend, Ernest Roehm. The rumors say Herr Roehm wants to take control of the Army and that Hitler fears a coup by the armed forces and wants to prevent it from happening. In order to win over the officials, I have been told, Hitler is planning something against the S.A. leader," confessed the mysterious woman. She lit a cigarette and proceeded to smoke it slowly and with rare intensity.
"What you are saying is very serious," Claudia. "But, how can I know you are telling the truth if I do not know anything about you?" he said.
"Oh, but you do know me, dear Max. And please forgive me for disclosing this to you in the midst of such difficult circumstances. I am your mother..."
This explained the feeling of familiarity he had been experiencing in her presence. He then felt shocked by the realization of what was meant. Unable to say a word, Max got up from his chair and went to the window, as if the blue sky outside and the green trees over the street could calm him down. The news was so overwhelming he could barely breathe.
Was this woman really the mother he had not seen since he was five? Is she the degenerate his father had forbidden him ever to see or talk to? Could she be lying? Could all this be a trap organized by Hitler's secret agents? Or perhaps she was a British or a Jewish agent?
156
While these and many other thoughts passed by his troubled mind in a matter of seconds, she continued talking:
"I realize it must be terrible for you to hear this in the present circumstances. I suppose your father has told you terrible things about me. But I want to tell you that I never abandoned you willingly and that, if now I have come to help you, it is simply because I do not want you to get hurt." While she was saying this she put her right hand over his and looked straight into his eyes.
"This is all so sudden... I do not know what to say," Max answered, practically speechless.
"Let me convince you," she added. "Do you remember the lullaby I used to sing in the evenings when you were about to fall asleep? Let me sing it and in this way you will know I am who I say I am."
Her voice was very sweet and the lullaby made Max shiver with forgotten warm memories.
He did not know what to do, whether to hug or t