Sirius

by Jonathan Crown

  Bad news on the Stalingrad cauldron. The Führer rolls his eyes. “Jaja,” he says, now and again. Then he bellows: “Retreat? That’s not an option. Persevere, and that’s an order!” Then he hangs up.

  “Herr Wollenhaupt is here,” announces the valet. The Führer’s barber has arrived to trim his moustache.

  *

  Every Wednesday, Sirius goes to Benno Fritsche’s house. The Circle has realised that the dog’s appearance in their lives was a great stroke of luck. His master is the Führer’s personal adjutant and brings home the latest news from the Reich Chancellery each evening – and the dog listens in.

  Now the bearer of this sensitive information just needs to learn how to divulge his knowledge. They remember Kurwenal, the famous dachshund who was able to read and write.

  Why not? Professor Wundt, the expert within the Circle, offers himself as a teacher. As chance would have it, he even once met the founder of New Animal Psychology, Mathilde Freiin von Freytag-Loringhoven. She was the one who taught Kurwenal how to speak via barked Morse code.

  But that won’t work in this case. “Too loud,” Count von Studnitz points out. The neighbours might get suspicious.

  Ted Bloomfield, the American, suggests the construction of an enormous typewriter, with each key large enough for the dog to press with his paw. “Like a piano.” He says.

  “Why not an actual piano?” ponders Wundt. “With every key representing a letter.”

  “Just imagine the clatter it would make,” shudders Count von Studnitz. “An absolute cacophony.”

  “So what?” says Benno Fritsche. “Surely practising the piano is still allowed around here.”

  “Not if it sounds like Arnold Schönberg,” says Bloomfield in amusement. “He had to go into exile after his piano concerto.”

  The Circle decides to give it a go with the instrument. Professor Wundt will train Sirius, on the piano, to be a spy.

  By the time of their next meeting, there is already a black piano in the house. The keys are marked with letters, the hammers fitted with a mute. Sirius is to play con sordino.

  The concert sounds rather strange, admittedly. The professor explains the basic rules of phonetics by uttering drawn-out vocals, and Sirius accompanies him on the piano.

  The others encircle the two musicians, as is befitting of a group called the Circle. They listen eagerly to see how Sirius will take to his new task.

  Will it work? Who knows. In any case, it will be a little while before the dog is even able to spell the word “Hitler” using music.

  When Benno Fritsche bumps into Frau Zinke a few days later, she asks curiously: “Have you taken up the piano recently?”

  Benno Fritsche bows humbly. “One does what one can. Or can’t, as the case may be.”

  “I thought you were playing jazz,” says Frau Zinke. “That would be forbidden.”

  “Jazz?” says Fritsche with theatrical outrage. “No, I only play Beethoven.”

  Frau Zinke has learnt something new again. “Ah, is that how it sounds? I imagined it to be different.”

  Fritsche takes off his hat in farewell, then raises his index finger and says: “Every line etched by sorrow wanes, as long as music’s enchantment reigns. Schiller.”

  *

  “Christmas trees! Christmas trees!” cries the seller in front of the drugstore in Hollywood. “Make you happy. Better than any drug.”

  Rahel pauses and looks at the man. He gives her a friendly nod. She shakes her head, her eyes filling with tears. Without a word, she continues on her way.

  Happiness is a thing of yesterday. Carl and Rahel have lost everything. They stand there empty-handed, just like when they first arrived in Hollywood. Are they at the end? Or the beginning? Who knows?

  Else and Andreas have taken the two of them into their home. Their apartment is really only just big enough for their young happiness. But now the misfortune of the old has to fit in too. The poor parents sleep in the child’s room that was intended for Johnny. His bed is in the living room.

  There is no space left for a Christmas tree. Only for a sprig of fir in a vase at the very most.

  Christmas Eve in the smallest of spaces, in the greatest adversity.

  Georg and Electra come too. They have become inseparable. Andreas fetches another two chairs from the kitchen.

  “Lovely apartment,” says Electra politely.

  “But small,” apologises Else.

  “Space is relative,” comforts Electra. An insight that she hasn’t just picked up from the seminars of Bertrand Russell. Her father is Conrad Nicholson Hilton, the hotel mogul. There is always plenty of room at the Hiltons’.

  Carl defiantly launches into a rendition of O Christmas Tree. He puts the emphasis on the word “tree”, not without an undertone of bitterness. Johnny hears his grandfather singing for the first time, it scares him, and he cries.

  The family is together. If not beneath a Christmas tree, then at least next to the sprig of fir, upon which a candle is valiantly trying to cast a festive ambience. The only thing missing is Sirius.

  They remember him with a minute of silence. May God protect him. May his light always shine, wherever he is. The candle flickers, as though their whispered prayer has been heard.

  As it happens, Sirius really is thinking of his far-away family at this very moment. Merry Christmas, he wishes them. Is the sheriff with them again, he wonders?

  No, not the sheriff as well in that tiny apartment, please.

  “Hansi!” calls the stern voice of the Hauptsturmführer, tearing the dog from his thoughts.

  The Wünsches have a Christmas tree, of course. It’s in the garden, and flourishes not only in the summertime, but in the winter too, when it snows. The family pull on their boots and stomp outside. The white finery is the most beautiful decoration the branches can have.

  “Merry Christmas!” commands the patriarch.

  Then they have roast duck. Another one of the privileges that come with being the Führer’s adjutant.

  The special Christmas programme is on the Volksempfänger radio. It begins with the festive bell ringing of the German cathedrals, then connects the soldiers on the Front and the people back at home in a reverent celebration of Christmas Eve.

  “Attention everyone!” crackles the moderator’s static voice. “I will now hand over to our comrades, who will speak to you from the most far-flung of locations. I am now calling the Arctic harbour of Liinahamari.”

  The soldiers in the Arctic Circle come onto the air, their teeth chattering with cold, and greet their families back home.

  “Attention,” announces the static voice of the moderator once more, “I am now calling Stalingrad!”

  The soldiers in the cauldron wish everyone a merry Christmas.

  The programme continues with greetings from Tunis, Catania, Crete, Marseille, Zakopane and the Bay of Biscay.

  “From all over the world!” marvels Ulrich.

  “You see,” replies his mother proudly. “That’s why it’s called a World War.”

  Next up are the soldiers in the Crimean Peninsula. As if on command, the men strike up the Christmas song, Silent Night.

  The moderator is moved. “This spontaneous gesture from our comrades far away on the Black Sea has now united all the transmission stations around the world.”

  Holy infant so tender and mild resounds out ever more wholeheartedly, with ever more voices joining in.

  “Now they’re singing in the Arctic Circle,” rejoices the moderator. “Now they’re singing in the combat zone in Rzhev. Now we’ll switch to Stalingrad. And now France. Now Africa is singing too.”

  “And now all of you at home,” he cries, “sing along!”

  *

  The Führer has returned from spending the holidays in Upper Salzburg, so the service of adjutant Wünsche begins once more.

  Blondi stays behind in the Berghof for now. Why would the dog want to be in the gloomy Reich Chancellery, when instead he could be out romping in
the open air with Negus and Stasi, Eva Braun’s terriers?

  Perfectly understandable, but now the Führer is sat there without a dog, and that puts him in a surly mood. He loves dogs. Nothing cheers him up like having a dog around to teach bizarre tricks to.

  Even after so much time has passed, he still enthuses now and then about Fuchsl, the little stray terrier he encountered in Alsace back when he was just a simple soldier, on leave from the Front. Fuchsl was smart and quick to learn. Before long, he was able to clamber up a ladder on all fours. One witness of this performance had offered 200 Deutschmarks for the dog. “I wouldn’t give him up even for 200,000 Deutschmarks,” came Hitler’s answer. Soon after that, Fuchsl suddenly vanished without a trace. The column had to go back to the front, the master without his dog. A tragedy.

  Blondi cannot climb ladders. And why would she? She’s a German shepherd dog, not a circus clown. How times change; Hitler is no longer a simple soldier, but the Führer. He needs a dog that represents something. A dog that proudly represents his race.

  Officially, the Führer poses happily with Blondi. But in secret, he longs for Fuchsl.

  “Ah, Fuchsl,” sighs the Führer woefully. “Bring me the map of the world, Wünsche.”

  Wünsche brings the map of the world. The Führer pushes his index finger across Alsace, murmuring place names from long-forgotten times, Sundgau, Mülhausen, Schiltigheim.

  “Here!” he calls, “Horndorf! That’s where I lost him.”

  Wünsche stands there in sympathetic silence. He contemplates in all seriousness whether the erstwhile stray Hansi could possibly be Fuchsl, having trotted from Horndorf to Berlin in the search for his master. No, that would make Hansi – wait a moment – thirty years old. Impossible. Or was it?

  “Thirty years,” ventures Wünsche. “Maybe he’s still alive,”

  “Nonsense,” grumbles the Führer. “You know nothing about dogs.”

  Wünsche, timidly: “I have a dog.”

  “Oh really?” says the Führer. “What kind?”

  Wünsche describes Hansi. The shaggy fur, spotted white and brown, the perky ears, the long snout, the cheerful tail.

  “Like Fuchsl!” cries the Führer, moved.

  Wünsche permits himself to respectfully make the observation that the Reichsmarshall himself declared Hansi to be a good dog, commenting on the pedigree that stretches back to the twelfth century.

  “That’s very impressive,” says the Führer. “Bring Hansi by to see me when you get the chance.”

  Has Wünsche heard correctly? Adolf Hitler, the Führer of the German people, the greatest field commander of all time, has personally addressed him, Erwin Wünsche? From one dog lover to another, so to speak? His chest swells with pride.

  Hansi should get a nice reward for making this possible. The cook agrees and hands over a big piece of sausage. Führer sausage.

  That evening, it is handed over ceremoniously.

  “My dear Hansi,” begins Wünsche in a solemn tone. “Your name came up today during a conversation with the Führer.”

  Gertrud claps her hands over her mouth in disbelief.

  “The Führer and I,” he continues, “we talked about you. And I’ll emphasise that point: we talked. You brought us, the Führer and I, closer together on a human level. I emphasise again: on a human level.”

  As a sign of his appreciation, he unwraps the sausage and lays it by the dog’s feet.

  Ulrich and Rudi stare entranced at their father, who has suddenly taken on historical dimensions. The Führer and I. The dog, too, they see with new eyes. He is the hero of the day.

  “And wait for it!” says the father. “The Führer wants to make your personal acquaintance, Hansi!”

  Gertrud expresses her amazement by dropping her jaw and sitting there open-mouthed. She is speechless.

  The dog which no-one at home knows what to do with is suddenly a welcome guest in the Führer’s headquarters.

  *

  Dr. Joseph Goebbels, the Minister for Propaganda, has the floor. He is addressing the German people in the Berlin Sportpalast.

  “The German people,” he says, “have to defend their most holy assets: their families, their women and children, their beautiful and pristine landscape, their towns and villages, the two-thousand-year legacy of their culture, and everything that makes life worth living.”

  Then he becomes enraged. At the Lords and Archbishops in London, at international Bolshevism, at the sham civilization of Judaism, at the stampede of the Steppe towards our honourable continent. At everything.

  “I ask you,” roars Goebbels, “do you want total war? If necessary, do you want a war more total and radical than anything that we can even imagine today?”

  The answer is a tumultuous “Ja!” from thousands of throats. A hurricane of applause.

  The speech is being broadcast on the radio, which, in the words of its orator, means that “millions of people are connected to us here in this room over the airwaves.”

  Including the Circle.

  “Now they have truly lost their minds,” says Count von Studnitz, shaking his head.

  “We have just been listening to the devil,” declares Benno Fritsche. “Mephisto.”

  “The devil’s mouthpiece,” calls Bloomfield. “Hitler is the true devil!”

  Sirius flinches. He still has the scent of that sausage in his nose. Was it the sausage of the devil? Does the devil himself want to meet him? A shiver runs down his spine.

  Professor Wundt is no longer able to stay seated; he paces nervously back and forth, stirred up by the vile speech.

  “We really have to take action,” he says. “Hitler must go!”

  But how? Bloomfield reports on the plans of the Heidinger Circle, friends of theirs, who are plotting to shoot Hitler. Another possibility being considered is a bomb to fire Hitler into the air.

  “All we’re missing is one link in the chain, but unfortunately it’s the decisive one,” says Bloomfield. “An informant close to Hitler. Our man in the Führer’s headquarters.”

  Is it possible that it could be a dog? How Sirius longs to be able to cry out “Me! I’m going to meet the Führer in person soon! He has already sent me a sausage! Maybe I can help you.”

  But he can’t talk. Not yet.

  Excited, he jumps up onto the piano and bashes the keys.

  “He’s trying to tell us something!” cries Benno in amazement.

  The Circle listens, captivated. Professor Wundt translates letter after letter.

  “Hitler. Sausage.”

  “His first words,” whispers Count von Studnitz, deeply moved.

  “What do you think they mean?” asks Bloomfield.

  The men retreat conspiratorially back to their armchairs, light up cigars and ponder. Is the dog’s message to be understood as a commentary on the Führer’s personality, something along the lines of him being a “silly sausage”?

  “He’s right, you know,” says the Count. “But a highly-dangerous one.”

  It is, of course, also plausible that the words are meant symbolically, like a poem in which sausage quite simply stands for something that is worth striving for, like salvation. Save us from Hitler!

  “From the dog’s perspective, that would make sense,” comments the professor. “Think about it – he spoke the words just after we mentioned the Hitler assassination plot.”

  “Or perhaps the dog just means he hasn’t found anything yet. Not a sausage,” says Bloomfield.

  Fritsche frowns. “Then do you think this is going to help us? We need to get some inside information as soon as we can.”

  “I’m just saying,” Bloomfield reassures him. “We have to consider all the possible interpretations.”

  Sirius feels misunderstood. One thing is certain; he needs to learn to express himself more clearly as quickly as he can.

  *

  In Hollywood, fate is turning again, and for the better. The happy twist was prompted by Electra. Quite simply, she electrifies.


  “Do something for the Crowns, Daddy, won’t you?” she asked her father.

  Conrad Nicholson Hilton actually has his mind on other matters. He has just bought the Waldorf Astoria and the Plaza in New York, the two crown jewels, and with them he wants to become the Hotel King of America. He is also newly wed to Zsa Zsa Gabor, which is no easy task in itself. So he has little time to devote to two people who are unable to get over the loss of their dog.

  “For my sake,” begs Electra, “please!”

  Her joyous smile has bewitched philosophers, and now it turns out that even Kings are defenceless to her charms, not to mention fathers.

  “Stop giggling,” says Hilton. “You know very well I can’t say no when you giggle.”

  And it’s a good thing he can’t. Carl Crown, as a result, is now working as a porter in the newly opened Hilton hotel, The Townhouse, in Beverly Hills. For Rahel, the position of hostess was created. She welcomes the guests and tends to their needs. The Crowns live in the hotel now, too.

  Crown wears a Bordeaux-red uniform with gold bobbles, along with a matching cap. Rahel wears a uniform in the same colour, and beneath it a white blouse with the hotel emblem.

  Else is unprepared for the sight when she visits her parents for the first time in their new home. Tears of emotion fill her eyes. The way her father bravely stands tall beneath his cap, the way her mother stands ready to greet guests with the coat of arms on her chest – it’s heart-wrenching.

  “I know,” smiles Crown, “I look like an aubergine.”

  “You both look wonderful!” cries Else. “Like something from a movie. Made in Hollywood.”

  “It really is like the movies,” says Rahel. “We were put out on the street, and suddenly we’re living in a palace with a hundred rooms.”

  Crown nods valiantly.

  The revolving door sets into motion, and in comes a man who scours the room for familiar faces with a practised gaze, before heading towards Crown with his eyes and arms wide.

  “Who is this I see before me?” he cries.