“And this great moment seems to have come. The room fills up with people. No one hears them or sees them coming. They jam in. The room fills up like a pond with an underground source. Where one person was standing there are now three. Three heads stick together to hear the translations out of earpieces of antediluvian headphones from shot-up tanks or crashed airplanes or sunken U-boats, tangible testaments to the reality of the horrible. What will he say now, the defendant Rudolf Hess, the deputy of that “Üch” of March 1938 in Vienna? Will he reveal that the accused of Nuremberg are drugged? Or that they were drugged in the days of the Third Reich? Or the judges? The prosecutors? People wait in utter suspense.

“The defendant Rudolf Hess once again raises his small, white worm of a forefinger. This time for the oath. He pronounces the formula. He swears to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help him God.

“And even though the black-robed torso of LORD JUSTICE Lawrence at the judges’ table opposite him clears its throat, reminding him paternally that the defendant need not say the oath again, since all his statements here in the courtroom are under oath anyway, the defendant declares that he nevertheless wants to tell the truth this time and nothing but the truth.

“Then, he starts talking. He tells about his flight to England and the way he was received there after landing; his reception was at first formal and reserved, and then he was interrogated and taken to a camp, where he was treated with utmost courtesy and solicitude. In particular, his physician, a man named Dr. Johnson, soon grew so close to him and was so unreservedly friendly that he, the not yet accused, the as yet still interned Rudolf Hess, finally told him, Dr. Johnson, something that had been on his mind for some time: all the people he had come into contact with, all the officers and functionaries who had interrogated him, as well as all the guards in the camp, had strangely radiant blue eyes, as clear as water . . .

•

“Now, they all feel shudders up and down their spines: Everyone knows who had such strangely radiant blue eyes, as clear as water. Aryan eyes, the eyes of pretty much everyone in the Greater German Reich, and they know that those eyes supposedly exerted an irresistible fascination on everyone who encountered their gaze. Is this what the defendant Rudolf Hess is aiming at?

“Even though it’s not altogether clear, is he ultimately trying to say that when he was in England, he realized that Adolf Hitler, the man who led Germany to destruction, had been under the influence of drugs? Or was he the involuntary tool of the secret service or some far more obscure and anonymous power in the background? The Freemasons perhaps? Or the Elders of Zion? Or some mysterious Mr. X? Or the Jews themselves? . . .