by Therese Down
“What is all this? What is all this?” Hedda closed her eyes in frustration that Walter was already in the room. Anselm became quiet, but he lay on his side on the floor with his eyes tight shut and the offending jacket crumpled beneath him.
“Anselm doesn’t want to wear his jacket – that is all.”
“Anselm!” Walter’s voice was loud, and the child opened his eyes but did not move. “Get up at once and put on this jacket, or you will have me to answer to. At once!”
Hedda coaxed the child gently, pulling on the arm uppermost, but he pulled it away from her petulantly and remained on the floor.
Suddenly, Walter crossed the room, took hold of his son’s arm and lifted him with one hand, then planted him roughly on his feet. “Do not ignore me, little man, or it will be worse for you. Now, you will get this jacket on – do you hear me? Pick it up and give it to me.”
“I will get it, Walter. We don’t have time…”
“No! Anselm will pick up the jacket and hand it to me, Hedda. Do not undermine me, please. Anselm, get the jacket – now!” The last imperative was shouted and the child visibly jumped and began to cry again, but he did not move towards the garment.
There was a good-humoured klaxon sound from outside the house.
“Walter, the car is here. Please, let me bring the jacket and I will deal with this in the car. He may be too hot in it anyway. Let us see. We can sort it out on the journey.”
Agnette covered her ears and closed her eyes at her mother’s persistent defiance, for she knew well what could happen in such circumstances. Walter approached his wife and his upper lip curled on one side in a sneer of contempt. He spoke menacingly into her face while she lowered her eyes lest she be accused of further defiance.
“Shut up, Hedda. Now, make the boy pick up the jacket by the time I count to three, or…” He did not finish his sentence, but it was clear from the fierce iciness of his eyes what would follow if he were not obeyed.
“Anselm, darling – Anselm, please, listen to me, sweetness. Daddy and Mummy need to get in a nice big shiny car – would you like to see it? I can show it to you. Would you like to get into a great big shiny car, sweetheart? Would you like that?” Anselm shook with the occasional sob, but he was quiet and nodded solemnly through his tears and snot. A chubby finger went up to his mouth and he hooked it over his lower teeth. “Now then, if you want to get in the car, you must get the jacket from the floor and bring it to Mummy. OK? Will you do that for me?”
Anselm nodded, and still heaving occasionally from the grief of it all, turned from her and walked to the jacket, bent his chubby knees and picked it up.
“There’s a good boy! Thank you, Anselm. Shall we put it on now and then go to the big car? Hmm?” The klaxon sounded again, less good naturedly this time.
“Oh, for the love of God, Hedda, put the goddam jacket on the boy and let’s get out of here! Herr Goering himself has sent a car for us and we have the discourtesy to be late. Anselm…”
“Please, Walter. Please. Dear Walter, go to the car with Agnette and I shall bring Anselm directly. He is such a good boy, I am sure he will put his jacket on now, hmm?” Hedda looked imploringly into her son’s wide blue eyes and smiled. He nodded again and extended an arm. Hedda closed her eyes, this time in relief, and the jacket was applied without further remonstrance.
“About time. Anselm, there will be punishment for this, you can be sure. Come on – Agnette, come. We are late.”
Fighting the hatred for her husband that whirled in her breast, Hedda took a handkerchief from the clutch bag she had put in readiness on Anselm’s bed and wiped his face, made him blow his nose, before throwing the handkerchief on the bedroom floor and taking her son’s hand, heading for the stairs.
The bright July sunshine and the flirtatiously wide smile of the chauffeur who doffed his cap and opened the car door for Hedda were in giddy contrast to the darkness of the previous moments, and Hedda struggled to regain poise. Anselm was not disappointed by the big shiny car and gasped and gabbled his awe, clambering over the ample leather seats and scrambling in an effort to climb the smooth back seat to see out of the rear window. Agnette sat passively as her brother knocked and bumped her in his exuberance, and Hedda curled her body as far as she could away from both of them, staring out of the window in an attempt to shut it all out and snatch a little peace. In the front passenger seat, Walter, in full military uniform, chatted amiably with the chauffeur about the car and the route to Carinhall, smiling and laughing as if, thought Hedda, he were a nice man.
At last, they reached the stately portals that marked the entrance to the estate. Many soldiers stood guard at the gatehouse. Hedda was unprepared for the splendour of Carinhall and, as the Mercedes in which the family was travelling swept up the drive and into a large courtyard, she could not but exclaim aloud at the magnificence of this palatial hunting lodge. Luxurious cars glinted in the sunshine and the chic elegance of those who emerged from them was unsurpassed in Hedda’s experience. It was as though they had arrived at a hunt ball or a state occasion. Hedda recognized one or two of the women who stepped daintily from the glossy cars to be saluted by the SS officers holding open the doors. She recognized these women’s husbands as colleagues of Walter and former dinner guests at her house, but she could not recall their names. The cars were driven away to be parked by household servants in tailored black butler suits, and a line of neat maids in black and white greeted guests at the door and offered to take their wraps or conduct ladies to cloakrooms.
Walter waited beside the Mercedes and ushered his wife and children before him to the grand doorway of Carinhall. They passed a magnificent statue of a recumbent stag and either side of the doorway were electric mock torches, their heads encased in glass. Antlers protruded from the portal archway and at intervals along the façade of the palace. Above the door was a balcony on which three soldiers presenting rifles stood sentry.
The Gunthers were shown into a magnificent hall. This was the Jagdhalle, 215 feet long and lined from floor to ceiling with timber. The walls displayed yet more antlers, still attached to the skulls of many hapless stags, and before a huge brick canopy fireplace that featured midway along one wall was a bearskin, glossy and ten feet in length, prostrate as if in submission before the shrine of some great hunting god. For the rest, the hall was made merry and festive. Round tables covered in fine linen cloths and glinting silver cutlery were arranged with apparent casualness throughout the room, but each featured carefully prescribed place name cards inscribed in italicized silver ink. Each table was adorned with an arrangement of freshest red roses half in bud among springing gypsophila. Hedda was reminded of a lavish wedding feast.
In a far corner a quartet played Beethoven’s allegro con brio in F Major, unobtrusive yet distinctively lifting the mood to gaiety. Many guests looked in tingling anticipation at the champagne flutes flooded with light from a picture window. Goering circulated jocularly among his guests, laughing loudly and frequently, urging them to take second glasses of schnapps from the many trays held aloft by bowing menservants. Within half an hour of the Gunthers’ arrival at Carinhall, the Jagdhalle was full of chattering and laughing SS and Fallschirmjäger officers of various ranks from Oberstleutnant to Generalfeldmarschall, their wives, children and sweethearts.
Anselm and Agnette were soon running between people, finding other children and crawling beneath tables. Hedda watched her children anxiously, lest they should annoy or bump into anyone, while Walter forgot them and laughed and toasted with his fellow officers. His flirtatious and ostentatious kissing of women’s hands Hedda regarded levelly and without the slightest jealousy. She had long suspected that Walter was not faithful to her and the indignation and anger this had first caused had ceded to an icy contempt. She had readjusted easily to sleeping alone most of the time and could not miss a comradeship and intimacy that had never really been there. She noted with interest, however, the admiring looks she drew from many men in the room, and ackn
owledged their admiration with gracious and increasingly coquettish smiles. The schnapps, the sunlight, the laughter, the exquisite music lightened her mood and reminded her of what it had been like to be twenty and highly desirable. For the first time in her recent memory, Hedda was enjoying herself. She ceased to worry about her children, for maids had appeared from nowhere and were coaxing them into beautiful gardens, where swings and slides and even a mock castle big enough to contain several children at once provided a ready playground. Goering’s daughter, Edda, just two years old, was supervised by her nanny and played happily with Anselm and other children near her own age.
The men present at this luncheon were those esteemed by Goering and the Führer himself. Many had distinguished themselves in combat during the Weserubung offensive. Hitler, though, was relaxing at his home in the Bavarian Alps and would not be present.
“So this is the beautiful Frau Gunther! Walter, you are a most fortunate man.”
Hedda turned from a light conversation with someone’s wife to find herself being solicited by Goering himself to offer him her hand. He took her pale fingers in a firm grasp and bent them to lay flat her upper palm, upon which he bowed to plant an enthusiastic kiss. Hedda’s heart jumped giddily, and for a moment she was unsure how to respond, but years of slick Tiergarten etiquette soon came to her aid.
“What an honour to meet you in person, Reichsmarschall Goering. Your estate is completely stunning and you and your wife so hospitable.” She smiled warmly into his blue eyes, knowing her own were dazzling him with their crystal beauty.
“As gracious as she is beautiful. Really, Walter, I cannot understand how you ever tear yourself away from her. I think I could almost forgive you for deserting.”
Hedda blushed obligingly and curtsied slightly, while Walter, basking in praise and warmed by schnapps, smiled and bowed in acknowledgment.
“I am indeed a lucky man, Reichsmarschall Goering.”
“Tell me,” Goering continued, withdrawing his gaze reluctantly from Hedda’s brilliant smile to face Walter, “have you told your lovely wife just how heroic you are, Walter, or are you too modest?”
Walter coloured a little – more at the assumed intimacy with his wife than the flattery, for he shared little of anything with Hedda. When neither responded, Goering turned back to Hedda, whose expression was now quizzical, one perfectly pencilled eyebrow raised in anticipation of elaboration on her husband’s warring credentials.
“He is quite ruthless in his duties, you know, my dear.” And, moving closer to Walter, reaching an arm around his shoulders, Goering became serious. “I have seldom seen such… single-mindedness, such lack of hesitation in the execution of orders, such pure courage as your husband exhibited in Denmark, and then again in Norway. He is quite remarkable.” And Goering squeezed Walter’s shoulders, took his arm away, but slapped Walter’s back gently as he did so.
“I can quite imagine that, Reichsmarschall Goering,” replied Hedda. “Walter is very determined in all he does.”
“Good, good. Well, if you are ready I think we are about to eat – I am famished! Walter, after lunch I should very much like to talk with you. I have a proposition to make, which I think you will find interesting.” Goering looked meaningfully and with great seriousness into Walter’s eyes so that Walter raised his hand to his forehead and brought his heels together in full Nazi salute.
“It would be a privilege, Sir.”
And with a final beaming smile and nod in Hedda’s direction, Goering left to give the master of ceremonies the command to bang a burnished bronze gong and announce that lunch was about to be served.
Lunch was a splendid affair, from the cold cucumber and potato soup appetizer, through the succulent selection of grilled meats with potato dumplings and sauerkraut, to the raspberry custard kuchen and richly layered and spiced fruit torten served with cream. Fine Spätburgunder and Riesling wines filled glasses to overflowing throughout the meal, while the quartet rendered appropriately paced excerpts from Opus 18. Hedda, seated next to a garrulous, overweight SS general on her right, maintained an apparently effortless charm for the duration of the luncheon, but her head began to ache somewhere near dessert and she grew increasingly irritated by the way in which his moustache caught flecks of food and sauces as he chomped and talked with relentless and equal enthusiasm during and between courses.
To her left, Walter engaged with practised aplomb the attention of Annaliese Hoecker, wife of a senior SS officer said to be a great favourite of the Führer, and so Walter admired her tastes in literature and her preferences for Mozart over Beethoven. Her love of opera placed Mozart firmly at the top of her Liszt – if Walter would excuse the pun. Walter could. Though he knew little of music, he had been exposed, thanks to his mother and father, to enough classical works to be able to hold a superficial conversation about the relative merits of the great Eastern European and German composers. He had been with his family to watch Strauss’s Der Zigeunerbaron performed by the Berlin State Opera in 1930, and when he was a child his mother would often regale him with the stories behind great operas and operettas, though his father preferred his music without what he called “that infernal soprano warbling”. Der Zigeunerbaron he had tolerated for his wife’s sake, as it was her fiftieth birthday, and for this reason Walter too had consented to sit through what he could see was an accomplished production, though he found it tiresome. Nonetheless, his Prussian background and borrowed critiques impressed Frau Hoecker, who resolved to invite the Gunthers to dinner.
The children had been devouring a sumptuous party lunch in blissful chaos in a room decorated for the occasion. After dessert and before the speeches, Hedda rose from her table, excusing herself from the overweight general’s company by expressing her desire to check on her children. One glance into the room decked with balloons and streamers, full of busy maids and frenetic children all wearing plastic aprons covered in cream and jelly, told Hedda all was more than fine with her children. Anselm was sitting on the floor, concentrating hard on manipulating some toy or other. One child was curled up on the floor, evidently asleep.
The children’s room opened through patio doors onto the lush lawn and swings, and there Agnette ran from a dark-haired boy who chased her. Her mouth was open, one plait clinging across it, the other flying behind her as she turned to estimate the proximity of her pursuer. Hedda stepped into the summer light and watched her daughter. How tall and lithe and fair she was; how carefree. And Hedda’s heart ached suddenly. She could not estimate the damage being done by the indifference and violence that marked their home lives. She did not want to contemplate the dents and fractures in the mould of this child’s personality that would shape and set her eventual character; the slaps to her mother’s face she had witnessed, the icy terror of her father’s temper, the inability of her mother to engage with her emotionally.
Hedda sobered suddenly from the wine and social giddiness of lunch, and the usual numbness dulled her heart. She was still only twenty-seven, but it seemed her life was over. Apart from a brief awakening to possible dreams when she was nineteen, the rest was a sort of detached somnabulance. She was married to a man whom she would soon irrevocably hate; a man who ignored her when she tried to reach him emotionally, or who slapped her if she dared express her frustration at his negligence. She had two children with whom she knew not what to do. She could dress them and read to them and listen to them for short periods, but her cook had a better relationship with Anselm and Agnette than Hedda did.
Now, watching her daughter play and laugh was like watching a cine film. Hedda could no more determine Agnette’s eventual happiness than she could step into a love story with a tragic ending and redirect it. The sudden grief that brought tears to her eyes was the most genuine emotion Hedda had felt in a very long time. She turned from the brief tableau of her daughter’s playfulness and made to rejoin her husband in the Jagdhalle. Even from here, she could hear the clang and surprise of clinking glass as the tables were cleared
and bottles of vintage champagne and fresh crystal flutes were placed on each one in readiness for toasts.
“Excuse me.” The voice was a man’s, gentle and enquiring in tone. Hedda instinctively kept her head lowered while her hands flew to her face and she brushed away tears as discreetly as she could, sniffing with minimum inelegance. When she looked up, it was into a familiar face, but she squinted with the effort of placing it in a context that might yield a name. “I don’t expect you remember me – I am pretty sure it is you, though – Hedda? Forgive me…” He smiled and extended a hand. “My name is…”
“Karl! Is it Karl? My goodness, yes, I remember you!” Hedda smiled and shook his hand, recalling all the time the dark, strange young man with whom she once shared dinner and then an evening at the Moka Efti jazz club – long ago when things were possible and there were surprises, like a sudden fight between a Jew and a drunk SS officer. “How are you, Karl?”
“It is you! Hedda, yes? I was certain you wouldn’t remember me at any rate – it seems a long time ago that we met.”
“Yes, it does. I have children now – I have just been looking at my daughter.”
“Oh, yes? And which one is she? No – let me guess. She must be the prettiest one. There! The one with the plaits and brilliant smile.”
“Yes, that is Agnette, but you saw me looking at her, I think.”