1

NEIGHING, THE STALLION REARS, OBLIGING THE Horseman to dig his stirrups in. Eventually he slows. Still in the highlands, emerging from the dense forest to scan the scrub below, he strains to find the unmarked road that winds into the jungle, between Puerto San Vincente and the border fortress of Carlos Antonio López.

In Frankfurt, the Horseman sits in the court presided over by Judge Hofmeyer.

A witness remembers Mengele.

“Exactly the way he stood there with his thumbs in his pistol belt. I also remember Dr. König, and to his credit I must say that he always got very drunk beforehand, as did Dr. Rohde. Mengele didn’t; he didn’t have to, he did it sober.”

Dr. Mengele was concerned about the women’s block.

“… The women often lapped up their food like dogs; the only source of water was right next to the latrine, and this thin stream also served to wash away the excrement. There the women stood and drank or tried to take a little water with them in some container while next to them their fellow sufferers sat on the latrines. And throughout it all the female guards hit them with clubs. And while this was going on the S.S. walked up and down and watched.”

Bodies were gnawed by rats, as were unconscious women. The women were plagued by lice.

“Then Mengele came. He was the first one to rid the entire women’s camp of lice. He simply had an entire block gassed. Then he disinfected the block.”

Mengele’s pitch, his most cherished place, was on the ramp with the Canada detail. The Canada men unloaded prison transports and collected the baggage of new arrivals. Watches, pocketbooks, blankets, jars of jam, sausages, bread, coats. These valuables were lugged to storehouses with the collective name Canada, so called because of the country’s reputation as a land of immense riches.

“Mengele cannot have been there all the time.”

“In my opinion, always. Night and day.”