“Do you know something, Carlos?” he said as we went out of the smoking room. “You’re the first German I’ve spoken to since before the war.”

“Argentine-German,” I said, correcting him.

“Yes, of course. Not that I’ve anything against the Germans, you understand. We’re all on the same side now, aren’t we? Against the communists, and all that. You know, sometimes I wonder what to make of it all. What happened between our two countries. The war, I mean. The Nazis and Hitler. What do you think about it?”

“I try not to think about it at all,” I said. “But when I do, I think this: that for a short period of time the German language was a series of very large German words, formed from very small German thinking.”

Freeman chuckled and puffed his cigar at the same time. “Quite,” he said. “Oh, quite.”

“It’s the fate of every race to think itself chosen by God,” I added. “But it’s the fate of only a very few races that they’re sufficiently stupid as to try to put that into practice.”

In the sales hall I passed a photograph of the British prime minister with a cigar in his mouth, and nodded. “I’ll tell you another thing. Hitler didn’t drink and he didn’t smoke, and he was healthy right up until the day he shot himself.”

“Quite,” said Freeman. “Oh, quite.”

Chapter 4

4

FINCA VIGÍA WAS about twelve kilometers southeast of central Havana—a one-story Spanish colonial house set in a twenty-acre estate and boasting a fine view of the bay to the north. I parked next to a lemon Pontiac Chieftain convertible—the one with the chief’s head on the hood that glows when the headlights are switched on. There was something vaguely African about the white house and its situation, and as I climbed out of my car and glanced around at all the mango trees and enormous jacarandas, I thought I could almost have been visiting the home of some district high commissioner in Kenya.