by Ron Hansen
When they got to cell 7, the guard unlocked the door, hollered “Heil Hitler!” and kissed Angela’s and Geli’s hands in good-bye, just as it was Hitler’s habit to do.
They heard Hitler talking when they walked inside, but he was behind a closed door. Angela was surprised to find that the cell was like a white-walled gentleman’s club and filled with so much food it looked like a fancy delicatessen. Well-wishers from all over Germany had mailed Hitler fruit baskets, homemade strudel and tortes and cakes, Rhein and Mosel wines, Westphalian hams, brown rings of sausage and salami, Andechs and Franziskaner beer. Angela lifted off her veiled hat as she went to a four-paned window of old glass and iron bars and saw a fine but wrinkled view of frosted trees along the Lech River and a garden on the first floor. An old Remington typewriter was on a walnut secretary against one wall, and a ream of white bond paper was beside it, patiently waiting for words; the four chairs were made of cane and rattan, and a bookcase held works by Bismarck, Nietzsche, Ranke, Treitschke, and Marx. A crown formed with sprigs of green laurel leaves was tacked onto one wall, and on the floor was an old front page of the London Times, obliterated with Hitler’s offended comments and juvenile caricatures of Jewish faces. One of the Landsberg prisoners knew English, Angela saw, for he’d translated into German a journalist’s opinion that “the Hitler trial has proved that a plot against the Constitution of the Reich is not considered a serious crime in Bavaria”—about which the prisoner offered a fairly obvious and vulgar joke on the constitution of the queen. With time on their hands, Angela thought, men turn into boys. She heard her daughter say, “What a lot of loot!” and she turned.
Geli, too, was now hatless. She’d tucked a pink sugarcane in her cheek as she held a mandolin she’d found and strummed a chord with a plectrum. “We have been far too law-abiding, Mother.”
“Are you thinking we ought to trade places?”
“Aren’t you?”
Angela said, “We’d be in a tailor shop here. We’d be doing dishes. Adolf has always had a way of getting extra consideration.”
A tall, fierce, officious man in loden-green hiking clothes looked out from the room where Hitler was talking. “You are the Raubals?”
“Yes.”
Angela briefly saw Adolf holding forth before the man softly shut the door behind him. He held out his hand to her. “Herr Rudolf Hess,” he said. “His personal secretary.” He shook her hand hard once while formally bowing. And then he did the same to Geli.
They felt like Prussian officers just in from the front. They both gave their first names.
“The leader is conferring with Count Rudinski,” Hess said, as if they’d surely know the name. “Won’t you please sit?”
They did, as did he, effeminately crossing his legs at his thighs but holding himself firmly upright with an air of stiff-backed confidence, his square-jawed head tilted high. His hairline was receding, but his black hair flowed back from his forehead in waves that women got by marcelling theirs with hot irons. Angela had never seen eyebrows that were so much like heavy objects, that so darkly shaded his deep eyesockets that his irises were as obscured as brown pebbles dropped in snow. His mouth was a wide, thin line and tightly shut in order to hide the buckteeth and overbite that stole from him the look of high intellect he wanted. Ill at ease with their silence, he offered, “Would you like some food?”
“Shall we hire a truck?” Angela asked.
Geli giggled behind her hand.
Hess faintly smiled, as though he’d missed the humor, and then he lifted and seemed to weigh a Thüringer cervelat in his hand. “We get these gifts, and I know we aren’t finished. The party is forbidden in Germany now, Hitler is forbidden to speak, the hierarchy is in disarray; and yet we find such public sentiment in our favor that we can only look at our prison stay as a mild interruption in our heroic march toward destiny.”
“You sound like Adolf,” Angela said.
“You flatter me,” said Hess. And then, in the Nazi way, he began talking at length about himself, saying he’d been born in Alexandria, Egypt, five years after Hitler, the son of a wholesale importer. He had gone to business school in Switzerland, and had worked in Hamburg for his family. Then the archduke and his wife had been killed in Sarajevo and he’d become a lieutenant and shock-troop leader in the First Bavarian Regiment before joining the air corps. Losing interest in commerce after the armistice, he had enrolled at the university in München and had had the good fortune to have as his mentor Herr Professor Karl Haushofer of the Geo-Political department, the author of the theory of Lebensraum.
She hadn’t heard of it.
“Simply that the future of a culturally dominant but land-starved country like Germany necessitates the annexation of states in eastern Europe.”
“I see.”
To make a long story short, in 1920 a German millionaire who’d fled to Brazil but still had great love for his country had offered a significant cash prize to the most worthy essay on the theme: “How must the Man be constituted who will lead Germany back to her former heights of glory?”
Angela got up and took an orange from a basket. She began peeling it.
“Eat, yes. We have so much,” Hess said. And then he continued, “It was precisely that question that was preoccupying me in my political studies, and so on paper I constructed a messiah who would lead the Aryan race to its rightful place in the world. He would strike one at first as an ordinary man and have his origins among the masses so he could understand them psychologically, but he would be a genius, of course, with superb talents and intellect, and would have nothing in common with them. He would be a fantastic public speaker, all fire and personality. Currents of electricity would flow from him. Worrying about nothing, not even the fate of his friends, he would not shrink from bloodshed but would unhesitatingly march forward with hardness and an iron will, trampling whoever blocked his path in order to achieve his goal in all its purity.”
“Did you win the contest?” Geli asked.
“Certainly, Fräulein Raubal. With much praise.” And then Hess fell into distraction as he watched her licking the sugarcane.
She smiled. “What did you buy with the money?”
Hess shook his head free of the question and got back on track. “The point of the story is that quite soon after the competition, I happened to attend one of Herr Hitler’s speeches for the first time ever, and I was absolutely stunned. He was sheer genius, pure reason incarnate, everything I’d hoped for and imagined—but here, now. Tears streaming down my face, I ran home to my fiancée and screamed in ecstasy, ‘I have found the man!’”
Then the office door opened. Hess hurtled to his feet. Count Rudinski was chuckling as he walked out of the office in a sable coat and hat, wrapping his neck twice in a long orange scarf. Hitler was just behind him, in knee-high woolen stockings, leather lederhosen, and a collarless white shirt, his hands holding the gift of The Collected Poems of Stefan George. “Rudi, you must listen to this,” Hitler said, then stiffly held the book far out from his face to try to read the front-matter inscription without his glasses, but couldn’t. “Well, you read it,” he said.
Rudolf Hess announced, “From Frau Winifred Wagner in Bayreuth: ‘Dear Adi, You are the coming man in spite of everything. We all still depend on you to pull the sword out of the German oak.’”
Count Rudinski smiled. “A lovely sentiment from a great lady.”
“It’s a glorious inscription,” said Hess.
“You think? And true, too. Count Rudinksi just now brought it to me.”
Hess took the book from him and shoved it among the others. The good-bye lasted a full minute more, during which time Hitler offered no acknowledgment that his half-sister and niece were there. Only when the count was gone did he grin at Angela and give her his hand. “Good evening, Frau Raubal!” Then he gently touched Geli’s light brown hair. “And to you, Fräulein. I’m happy you’re here.”
“We like your pantry,” Geli said.
H
itler winced and held his hands to his soft belly. “Oh, it makes my stomach ache! Look at how fat I’m getting! I can’t fit into my pants!”
Angela failed to argue the point; he looked paunchy. “Aren’t there prison sports in here?” Angela asked. “Or gymnastic exercises?”
“Well, yes,” he said, “but what would it do to ideals and discipline if I joined with the others in physical training? A general cannot afford the affront of being beaten at games by his infantrymen. Anyway, I shall again get the weight off by speaking.”
“What jobs are you forced to do?”
“Oh, I’m far too busy for labor.” Hitler lifted off the lid from a box of marzipan sweets and popped one in his mouth. “Are you in communication with Alois?” he asked.
She tore off an orange section and ate it. “Our brother, Alois? It’s been fifteen years.”
“Well, he’s in Hamburg now, selling razor blades. He married a woman named…” He frowned at Hess.
“Hedwig Heidemann,” Hess said.
“What happened to Bridget in England?” Angela asked.
“You see, that’s the problem. Alois is still married to her.”
To clarify things, Hess gave the word for it: “Bigamy.”
“Thank you,” Angela told him. “I have a tiny brain.”
Hitler found another marzipan, but on second thought put it back. “The office of the lord mayor of Hamburg has called Alois in for questioning. And Alois has written a letter to his first wife requesting that she have their marriage legally dissolved.” Hitler expectantly held out his hand. Rudolf Hess went to the secretary, got out a sheet of typed paper as well as Hitler’s glasses, and gave both to him. “We have his wording from our Hamburg friends,” Hitler said, and holding his folded glasses up in one hand, shook out the paper. “To Bridget Hitler our older brother writes: ‘Don’t think that I am at present a rich man, for to tell you the truth I am not. But I have got the chance to get rich by the aid of my brother’s reputation. This chance will be lost forever if I am found guilty, and if I am sentenced.’ And he goes on, ‘You must help me or they’ll put me in jail. This bigamy charge is mainly embarrassing, for should the newspapers learn about it they’re going to use it against my brother.’” Hitler handed the page back to Hess. “Quite true,” he said. His face was suddenly as red as a beet and his forehead was throbbing with veins. “By the aid of my brother’s reputation!’ And here I am, in prison, fighting for my life! Alois is destroying my reputation! I cannot have this! I won’t! Any member of my family—”
Rudolf Hess had begun whistling an old regimental song about the flower called Erika.
Hitler glanced at him as if he’d forgotten his part; then he glanced at Geli and remembered. “Would you come into my office, Angela? We have to talk further.”
Angela put an orange slice in her mouth as she went with him, and Hess shut the door, then sat with his hands chafing his knees, his face fraught with shyness and discomfort.
Geli inched up the hem of her funeral dress to look surreptitiously at her shins and ankles. She’d shaved her legs for the first time that morning and worried that she’d done a poor job of it. She decided it would do.
Silence seemed to paint the room a bleaker color. And then Hess finally said, “We have them right where we want them.”
“‘Them’?”
“We hear the people in München are still in favor of a parliamentary monarchy.”
Geli told him, “We were in München for only a few minutes.”
“You aren’t interested in politics?”
Geli shrugged.
“Are you interested in astrology?”
She was only fifteen and not quite certain if there was a difference between astrology and astronomy. She said yes, she was interested in the stars.
“I’m the mystic in the party,” Hess said, and he grinned in a way she thought goofy. “Well, no one surpasses Hitler,” he continued, “but I’m perhaps more adept in The Secret Doctrine and contact with the higher spheres.”
She was trying to decide what she disliked more, his shameless deference to her uncle or his sober prissiness.
“Shall I read to you from his book?” he asked.
“You mean he’s writing one?”
Hess got out a diary from an upper drawer in the secretary. “On the frontispiece is his motto, “Hess said. “I quote: ‘When a world comes to an end, then entire parts of the earth can be convulsed, but not the belief in a just cause.’ And below that he has written: ‘The trial of narrow-mindedness and personal spite is over, and today starts—My Struggle.’ We’re thinking that last bit may be the title. Or: ‘Four and a Half Years of Struggle Against Lies, Stupidity, and Cowardice.’”
“Couldn’t he be more specific?”
For a fleeting, agonizing moment Hess was like a dog besieged with thought. Then he said, “Oh. I see. You’re joking.”
Cell 7’s door was unlocked again, and the guard allowed in a prisoner carrying a high-backed chair that might have been a throne. His red-flannel shirtsleeves were rolled up and his biceps bulged like coconuts. His face turned toward Geli as he hauled his heavy load and she saw that he was a black-haired, handsome man in his late twenties, with a boxer’s tightly muscled build, features that seemed Corsican or Greek, and skin that even in jail was ginger brown. She’d never seen such huge, gorgeous chocolate eyes in a full-grown man. Like a fawn’s. “Where does he want it?” he asked.
Hess pointed to the crown of laurel leaves. “Under there.” And then he said, “Emil Maurice. His chauffeur. And this is Fräulein Raubal.”
She held out her hand but stayed seated, afraid that if she stood she’d be taller than he was. Emil Maurice grinned with fractured and jagged teeth and said, “Je m’appelle Emil. Enchanté.”
“Et moi,” she replied. “Je m’appelle Geli.”
“She speaks French!” Emil cried.
“She’ll grow out of it,” Hess said. “She’s young.”
They all heard Hitler shouting. They couldn’t hear the words.
“Won’t he ever cease?” Emil asked.
Geli laughed, but Hess was horrified.
In a fair imitation of Hitler’s gestures and voice, Emil held Hess’s face in his hands and said, “Oh, my Rudi! My little Hesserl! Did I offend you?”
Hess flung away his hands, saying, “Quit it!”
Emil smiled at Geli. “We’re tired of each other already, and we have years to go.” Emil flopped into a chair, his knees spread wide, his hands holding the rattan seat in front of his crotch as he stared frankly at the only girl in the fortress.
She was intrigued by him, but embarrassed. She looked at the floor. She heard a squawk from the planking as Emil yanked a free chair next to his own and quietly asked, “Won’t you sit next to me, Geli? We’ll talk.”
“Don’t!” Hess shouted. Whether to Emil or to her she wasn’t sure.
Her face felt hot enough to char paper. She felt afloat on a raft of pleasant wooziness. And then the office door opened and Angela walked out.
“We have to go, Geli,” Angela said.
She got up. Emil winked. “Shall I say good-bye to Uncle Adolf?” she asked.
“We have to go,” Angela said.
Walking outside the fortress, they saw the headlights of the waiting taxi flash on and off. They got in. And when they were on the highway to München and there was only a high horizon of black forest behind them, her mother put a hand on the upholstery beside her, like a purse she could have if she wanted it. Geli tried to find her face, but she was a block of night in nighttime. “We’ll have money for furniture and new clothes,” Angela said. “Others will handle our rent. Paula’s last name shall be Wolf from now on. She’ll have a flat of her own.”
“Why?”
Angela thought for a while, then said, “It is necessary.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
MÜNCHEN, 1925
She visited München for the first time without Angela in April 1925, going t
here on a high school outing with a girl’s choir called “Seraphim.” She knew that her uncle had been paroled in December, so as soon as she and a friend, Ingrid von Launitz, got settled into their room at the first-class Königshof Hotel, Geli tried to telephone him at his Thierschstrasse flat, but she found that his number was unlisted. She then boldly decided that she and Ingrid would walk to the flat, thinking that if she failed to find Hitler there she could at least leave a note.
“And if we do find him?” Ingrid asked.
“Well, he’ll have to be friendly to us,” Geli said. “He’s a politician.”
They found a druggist’s shop at Thierschstrasse 41, but just above it was a three-story town home where they were greeted by Frau Maria Reichert, a friendly widow whose house it was. She was a hale and heavy woman in her late thirties, and the foyer with its white upright Bechstein piano gave evidence that she had formerly been well off. But she confessed to the girls that she was now a Mädchen für alles, a charwoman, and was renting out rooms for an income in these hard times. She told them as she walked to his flat just off the hall that her favorite renter was Geli’s uncle, whom she called “that funny bohemian.” She knocked twice and sweetly called, “Herr Hitler!” then withdrew.
And then there he was. Although it was four in the afternoon, he seemed to have just gotten dressed and shaved, for his starched, collarless white shirt looked like it was just out of its box, he was in purple carpet slippers and freshly pressed blue serge suit pants with leather suspenders, and Geli could smell Chlorodont toothpaste. Ingrid blushed to see the much-talked-about man; Geli stiffly held out her hand and offered him the old Bavarian greeting, Grüss Gott, “You greet God.”