Mr. Monday and other tales of Jewish Amsterdam

GENERAL EISENHOWER CALLED HIM 14 7

׳THE GREATEST LIVING EXPERT ON SECURITY׳

He was daring me to do it and I saw the importance of his dare magnified a thousand times. So it was I who went to those people in the end and made the pitch. But in fact it wasn't really me who hypnotised those victims, it was the other way around... I was the one who was hypnotised, because I was obsessed by the fear that they would see through my cowardice.

"Have you ever played with a loaded gun?" he asked me then. "Have you ever felt the tingling sensation that you have to put that weapon against your head and pull the trigger? You haven't? Well, I have. It is a sensation gruesome and voluptuously seductive at the same time. It's like dancing on the edge of a cliff, it's hypnotising. And then the triumph when you can put that cold thing down and know that you are stronger than that killing machine.

Oreste Pinto also exercised a strange effect on animals. I myself have witnessed the weird attraction he had for them. During the war, when we were both in England, he used to visit our house in Stoke Poges, west of London. I don't know of a more appropriate word than "creepy" to describe the emotions of myself and my family when Oreste "talked with the cat."

Most normal people caress a cat and whisper something in it's ear. But not he. When he opened the gate to enter our garden, pussy jumped out of the house. The creature just ran to meet him. From its mouth came a constant current of uncommon sounds. Somehow you got the impression that the dumb animal wanted to report everything that had happened since our guest had been with us last. Then Oreste squatted and "talked back" (I cannot find a better description) in non-human sounds.