Eva's Cousin

by Sibylle Knauss

  Information about the sinful side of life. I haven’t been one of the grown-ups so very long, and this kind of thing still embarrasses me. I have no idea what the world is like, but I begin to suspect that evil is the rule. I’m just too sheltered, too naive, in short too young to understand that sin and depravity are normal. I am not familiar with wickedness. I’ll have to learn. Just as long as I don’t show my weakness.

  Are they? I say.

  They’re glad to have work here, says my companion. Why do you think they came to the Reich? They’re not human like us, don’t forget, he says, suddenly very serious as he turns toward me. They don’t have the same feelings, the same desires, the same, he chooses his word, the same visions as us.

  Visions? I say.

  Yes, he says, dreams. Like you and me. Dreams of a life of dignity. Greatness. Distinction. Pride. Courage. They don’t know anything about that. We are creating a world of high ideals and values. These people are good for nothing but the coarsest kind of work. They can’t do anything else and they don’t even want to. Of course you have to treat them strictly to make them work. Those Easterners are lazy at heart. Well, look at them, he says. See what they look like.

  I look at him instead. He looks good. I go to the Hotel Platterhof with him. We shall spend all afternoon in bed.

  I learn a hateful, a damnable lesson. I learn it too early. I’m too young for it. I learn to separate myself from my body and throw it into the fray on its own. I learn to watch it in the process. I learn to let it do as it likes. I use it. I let it be used. I discover that it enjoys being separate from me. I learn the lesson my body teaches me. It has no conscience, I discover. My body loves what I hate. It lets itself love and punishes me with self-contempt for my wish to despise it. My body, exhausted and sweating on damp sheets, my body, after all, is myself.

  It is a whore’s lesson I learn. I learn it in revulsion, desperate, horrified. It’s not a lesson I wanted to learn.

  I shall never be all right again, I think, I shall never be happy, in love . . . I shall never be anything but lonely.

  What’s the matter with you? asks my lover.

  If he touches me again I shall kill him.

  I have to go home, I say.

  And at that moment Hitler’s Tea House does seem like a home, a refuge.

  But you can stay here, says my lover. We can dine in the restaurant this evening.

  Oh, I can’t, I say.

  My lover laughs. It is an affectionate, relaxed, amused laugh.

  You’re not a married woman with a husband expecting you home, he says. One might think you had someone else.

  Are you going to have me watched? I say.

  Yes, he says. Yes, I am. You’d better not keep any secrets from me. Don’t do it.

  He is lying with his arms behind his head in the tumbled bed, watching me as I dress. Very much my satisfied lover. Very much my owner.

  For instance, why would you want to go to the Tea House this evening? he asks. I’m free until tomorrow morning.

  I hate this mountain. I hate him. I want to get away from here. I hate them all. I hate Hitler. I hate the German Reich. I want the Americans to come and liberate me.

  All right, I say. I just want to go over and change, and then I’ll be back.

  Good, he says.

  On the way I’m able to look in at the Berghof and fetch my supper from the staff kitchen, for Mikhail.

  I thought you’d be eating at the Platterhof, says the housekeeper. But of course we’re here for you any time.

  Thank you very much, I say.

  My life on the Obersalzberg is a fortress that can no longer be defended. Ripe for storming. Ready to surrender. I am waiting for the army that will relieve it. I’m waiting for Eva to help me. She did promise, I tell myself. I am waiting for help from a woman who is arming herself for her marriage to death. I wait in vain.

  DURING THE MONTH OF APRIL things changed on the Obersalzberg. They changed imperceptibly, changed while, in an oppressive way, they still remained the same. The anticipation of disaster did not prevent us from going about our usual daily business. A day before the end of the world we were still eating breakfast, setting store by punctuality, noting our expenses.

  As before I was spending the mornings with my physics books, drawing diagrams, solving the model exercises in the supplements that led to preparation for the preliminary diploma. I would have passed the exam. I was well prepared. I was sure of my facts. I acted as if the coming trial I must face was a physics exam. I was preparing blindly for the unknown toward which I was making. One had to do something to arm oneself. I studied with a kind of furious sense of duty. I gave myself up to the coasting sensation of autistic keenness. Nothing could exceed the correctness of my results. I would not let the slightest carelessness get past me. I didn’t have to compel myself. I was under compulsion already.

  Meanwhile, more and more guests kept arriving on the Berg. Suddenly it was crowded. The Platterhof and the Berchtesgadener Hof down in the village were fully booked. The guestrooms in the Bechstein house and the Berghof itself filled up. Every day the limousines of the car pool brought new arrivals: SS men, escort parties, orderlies. . . . It looked as if this was an advance guard, the vanguard of a vanguard, quartermasters preparing for those who would follow, the real VIPs. The camp followers arrived. Wives who didn’t understand, disoriented, still hit hard by parting from their children, left behind somewhere with grandparents. Why? What were they doing here? What did it all mean?

  My cousin Gretl, heavily pregnant with the child she was to have in May, Aunt Fanny, and Uncle Fritz also arrived at the Berghof. Gretl was absentminded, distracted, almost out of her mind with fear. She was haunted by the notion that her baby would be born dead. Aunt Fanny couldn’t leave her alone for a moment. As soon as she stood up Gretl reached for her hand.

  Aunt Fanny herself no longer seemed able to find anything amusing in the situation. She talked of nothing but Eva. She was waiting for her. I never again saw a human being wait so intently for anyone as Aunt Fanny waited for Eva then. She was like a mother whose little girl has been abducted and who is now waiting for a message from the kidnappers. I felt sorry for her.

  Eva’s friend Hertha suddenly turned up, too. Now the entourage was complete. Only Eva was still missing. Everything seemed to suggest that she would soon be back. The court was assembling again. That must mean something.

  For the last time, the Berghof ideal was revived: the Berghof as the invulnerable core of what we were defending, our innermost war aim. The Berghof ideal was truth, beauty, permanence in the world now collapsing before our eyes. It was meant to be immune to the evil now imminent, an indisputably solid value, a sense of patriotism that could be experienced even by those whose emotional traditions were not of the Alps. They were now withdrawing here. To this place, where they meant to live on into a future that they hoped must after all be theirs, as one always expects the future to be. There is no other.

  They believed they could survive at the Berghof. They were glad to find it so well fortified. They praised Bormann for making sure that so many of them could take shelter in its bunkers. He’s done an amazing job, they said. That was all part of their mental survival kit, too: the miracle of German capability and efficiency. If they were to be defeated, then at least let it be here.

  They didn’t just want to survive. They wanted to save something of themselves for the new life that would come after them, and which they knew there was no stopping now. Something must remain. The Berghof core of their world. They gathered around it like the inhabitants of a besieged castle around the last hearth where a fire still burns.

  At the same time, it was the center of the Nazis’ emotional life. They warmed themselves here, and gathered strength. They felt at home here. They had withdrawn so deep into the place that they thought, against all reason and in defiance of all appearances, that they would be safe from their enemies and could not be found here. The phantom of a fortress of
Alpine stone that now no longer meant only the Obersalzberg but the whole mighty mountain range at the heart of Europe, as if, defying any militarily precise defense strategy, they could finally withdraw into the mountains, that phantom was a delusion so closely corresponding to the desire in their hearts for warmth, security, and some kind of reliability in all they saw breaking up around them that they gave themselves up to it without resisting, congratulating themselves on being safe in their refuge, while really nothing but a little theatrical mist concealed them when enemy reconnaissance planes flew overhead, mist that made the precise location of their refuge obvious on clear days: It was just below the spot where the mists were rising.

  I say “they.” But what had Eva said? You’re one of us here.

  We drew closer together.

  New arrivals came to the mountain daily. They came and they stayed. On April 20 the Berghof was prepared for a possible birthday party. People were claiming to know that today, his birthday, Hitler would be back from Berlin. These rumors were persistent. Flowers were brought in, tables laid, champagne chilled. The kitchen of the Platterhof was ready to prepare a buffet. But the day passed, one of the last few days before the destruction of what we knew as the Berg, and Hitler did not come.

  Nor was the hiding place in his Tea House discovered. Nor was I found out. Nor did they take the boy away and kill him.

  I told him it wouldn’t be long now before people came to liberate him.

  Who are they? he asked.

  The Americans, I said.

  And the Poles? he said. Are the Poles coming?

  The Poles? No, I said. The Russians. The Russians are coming, too. They’ve already taken Vienna, and they’ll soon take Berlin.

  Vienna, he said. Is that far away?

  Not as far as Berlin, I said.

  I did not notice at first how horrified he was.

  The Russians—then he must get away, he said.

  I promised him the Americans would be here before the Russians. Where are the Americans?

  In Nuremberg, I said. That’s quite close. They could get here in two days, I said.

  I had no idea what would happen then. I would no longer allow myself to think about it. Like everyone else, the generals, the fighting troops, the army staff officers, the domestic staff, the concentration camp overseers, the antiaircraft auxiliaries, the Gestapo officials, the gauleiters, block wardens, air-raid wardens, Red Cross nurses, field hospital doctors, secretaries, steely Nazi administrators, representatives of the Reich women’s organization, holders of the Mothers’ Cross, Hitler Youth—like everyone else I simply carried on as before. Hitler carried on as before. So did Bormann, Himmler, Goebbels, Keitel. They all carried on as before. Hitler gave orders that no one obeyed now. Bormann prompted him, offering bad advice whenever necessary. Himmler led his Death’s Head units. Goebbels talked grandly, his own emotion moving him to tears. For some time Keitel had been only the empty shell of a field marshal, poring over maps he could no longer read. They were already as they would be when they entered Hell, already entirely prey to a diabolical repetition compulsion, always repeating the same actions, carrying them out with the same pointless fervor—crime and punishment together. They were resistant to redemption.

  Who is that man? a Dante of the future will ask a future Virgil. The man clenching his fists in front of his face, the man who has shouted himself hoarse and can’t stop shouting now? And who are those others?

  Don’t you know them? Virgil will ask. Everyone knows who they are.

  And the two will pass swiftly on.

  Then, in the last days of the Nazi period, we were all under the spell of that repetition compulsion. We had Nazi habits, Nazi anxieties. Nazi ambition was still as lively and strongly motivated as ever. Wehrmacht soldiers were still bursting with pride as they received the Iron Cross. Promotions came thick and fast: from sergeant-major to lieutenant, from colonel to major-general. The social standing of intricately related families still depended on such things, and they still aroused resentment. Intrigues were plotted, alliances forged.

  No one said: Another twenty . . . eighteen . . . fifteen days and we won’t be here anymore. No Cassandra raised her voice, warning us to consider our own destruction.

  There were still another four days to go there on the mountain, in our royal citadel, our Nazi Troy, when Göring arrived the day after Hitler’s birthday. He came with a great retinue, Chief Adjutant von Brauchitsch, Reichsleiter Bouhler, Reichsminister Lammers, the whole court of satraps. Emmy and her daughter were with us on the Berg, too.

  I happened to be looking toward the Hintereck when the column of cars came driving up toward Göring Hill. I recognized the Reichsmarschall himself in one of the cars. He, too, I thought. He’s coming to the Berg, too—what does it mean? What did they all mean to do here? Were we to survive or to die with them?

  I would only have needed a close look at the uniform the Reichsmarschall was wearing to tell me the answer, at least so far as Göring was concerned.

  Did you see Göring? my lover will ask, for he, too, is here with us at the end. Didn’t you notice anything striking about him?

  What am I expected to notice that’s striking about Göring? Göring is Göring. Everything about him is striking.

  Exactly, says my lover. That’s why it’s particularly striking when he doesn’t want to attract attention.

  For all of a sudden he has exchanged his silver-gray uniform for a grayish-brown one. The epaulets, usually five centimeters wide and made of gold braid, have been replaced by a plain mark of rank, the marshal’s eagle, positioned as inconspicuously as possible. If you didn’t know for certain it was Göring you might think you were looking at some American general, says my lover. Or someone who’d like to be an American general, don’t you think?

  I don’t know, I say. I’m not acquainted with any American generals.

  Göring is a traitor, says my lover.

  He should know, because he has arrested the Reichsmarschall. Göring is under house arrest, under his orders. The whole Berg suddenly seems to be under my lover’s orders. He is the man of the moment. (It is April 23, two days before our annihilation.)

  It is late evening. When I am about to leave the Berghof, where I have been playing Catch the Hat with Gretl to give Aunt Fanny a rest from her maternal duty of constant hand-holding, a couple of men from the security service stand in my way.

  You can’t leave here, they say.

  I see the muzzles of their submachine guns. I just don’t believe it.

  This is the first time since last summer anyone has threatened me with a gun.

  The easy life, the luxury to which we have treated ourselves, the holiday paradise of our existence on the Berg—yet they have always been there: guns, to be used at any time, even against us, and men who will turn them against us if ordered to do so.

  Who’s your superior officer? I ask.

  It seems as if this is the right reaction to this turn of events for the part I’m playing. I probably picked it up from a film.

  We have our orders, says one of the men curtly.

  From whom? I ask. I am the Führer’s guest, I add. That’s my ticket for a free ride. My Open Sesame.

  A man steps out of the background, also armed, obviously the one giving the orders around here.

  I immediately change my tune. I do it instinctively. I am a submissive little woman in need of help. But I now pay dearly for my ignorance of army ranks.

  Oh, Gruppenführer, I say. That seems to me about right. It sounds like a rank without too much power, but a rank not without power either.

  Scharführer, the man sharply corrects me.

  Scharführer, I say. Sorry.

  I think I must have underestimated his rank first time. Later I shall discover that by addressing him as Gruppenführer I have put him up there with the lieutenant-generals. He thought you were laughing at him, the man who loves me will explain carefully. He himself can only dream of promotion to Gruppenfü
hrer. It’s his great aim in life.

  Please, I say, Scharführer. I have to go to the Mooslahner Kopf.

  No, you have to stay here tonight, he says. All the buildings in the Führer’s restricted area are surrounded, including the Tea House.

  I must stay calm.

  Who’s your superior officer? I say, trying again. Who gave orders to place us under arrest?

  The Führer, he says, smiling. Obviously he isn’t duty bound to take me seriously.

  I’m a cousin of the Führer’s, I say as firmly as possible. I want to be told.

  The answer I get is my lover’s name.

  I am surprised. I haven’t seen him since the end of March, and I was thinking that Eva had kept her promise to me after all.

  I want to telephone him, I say.

  Not allowed, says the Scharführer.

  Oh yes, it is, I say, you wait and see. Please send a message through that I want to talk to him. I’m sure you can do that.

  Ten minutes later my lover arrives. I see that the security men are deeply impressed by this. They are impressed by the fact that the Obersturmbannführer has a liaison with a cousin of the Führer’s. And they are impressed by me.

  Two days later we shall go under. But we are still the object of admiring glances, a plane of projection for the happiness they envy. We, so close to power. We, so privileged. We, so much in love, so young, so attractive. Whispering to each other after my lover has put his arm around my shoulders and drawn me aside.

  He didn’t have much time, but he quickly told me what had happened. Göring had tried to seize power from Hitler and take his place. He wanted to hand us over to our enemies without a fight, while the Führer in Berlin was boldly defying them in order to defend our capital from the advancing Bolshevists. As a result, Göring had been arrested and forced to give up his offices under threat of the death penalty.

  I thought briefly of Hugh Carleton Greene, and fragments of his broadcasts shot through my mind (“a clique of criminals,” “no mercy on their own kind”). But he would hardly have regarded Göring as our savior.