The Story of Henri Tod

by William F. Buckley

  “What if the legal interpreters in the United States and Great Britain and France decide that their understanding of freedom of movement throughout Berlin is the correct understanding?”

  “We would need to disabuse them, Caspar. We would need to disabuse them.” Walter Ulbricht looked out his window in the direction of the border. “I see there,” he said, “a great wall.”

  “Oh Uncle, walls don’t work anymore. Walls were for Chinese, way back when.”

  The Chairman paused, considering whether to expand on his thoughts in the matter. He decided against doing so, and instead called the meeting to a close. “Tell your mother I am expecting her tonight at the reception at the House of Ministries for the winners of the bicycle tournament. She is to present the main cup. She should be here”—the Chairman looked down at the time schedule on his desk—“not later than 5:45. I am lunching with the Polish Ambassador, and we are conferring during the afternoon. I won’t be back here until tomorrow. Get done whatever work you have pending, and take the afternoon off.”

  “Thank you, Uncle Walter.”

  “Is that you, Caspar?”

  “Yes, Mother. He let me go early today.”

  “Well, sit down and read. Lunch will be ready in a half hour or so. No, don’t sit down and read. Fix the light in the radio. I’ve asked you to fix it ten times. It’s an awful bother at night to tune it.”

  “I don’t have the right bulb for it.”

  “Did it ever occur to you to go get the right bulb for it?”

  “Yes, Mother. It has occurred to me, but it has not occurred to the German Democratic Republic to requisition any bulbs of that kind. I would need to go to the other side.”

  “Well”—Mrs. Allman materialized in the doorway of the kitchen, wearing an apron. Her hair had been blond. She was stoutly built, like her brother; and, like her brother, was of imperious turn of mind. But in her face there was a softness that showed through the lines. She looked at her son while slowly, almost absentmindedly, rubbing the frying pan with a little ball of steel wool.

  “Darling Caspar, a week ago I said I wouldn’t bring it up again, but how are you going to accomplish anything in your life with your present attitude? The only thing you know is language. If it is necessary to go to the other side—to West Berlin—to get a light bulb for the radio, why do you not go to the other side? The radio the other day said that there are an average of 250,000 crossings every day. Why cannot there be 250,001? I talked with Walter about you just yesterday, and he tells me that you loaf your way right through the day in the office. You are clearly not aware of the advantages you have as a young man working for your uncle, right in his private office. He has always been very indulgent toward me, and he tells me that he likes you personally. But you cannot expect him to tolerate you forever unless you are actively helpful to him. You do understand, don’t you, Caspar? You are almost twenty-one years old, and except for your languages, you failed your work in the university. Your father—” but instantly Ilse Allman sought to make her way back: Caspar’s father’s name was not mentioned in the household. Someday, perhaps, she would talk to her son about his father. Perhaps. For now, she would depersonalize her reference to his dead father. “—Your father’s people, you know, were all very industrious. Four brothers, one doctor, one architect, one engineer, one academician. It isn’t as though you had been genetically deprived.”

  “Yes, Mother,” Caspar said. “I will certainly try to please my uncle. Remember that I read the Russian and Polish papers for him. And since we have the afternoon off, I will go this very day to Müllerstrasse and get that bulb. What is there for lunch?”

  Ilse Allman looked down at her son and returned to the kitchen, the frying pan still in hand. Her voice, the tone resigned, floated back: “Roast pheasant, fried chestnuts, pâté de foie gras, and will you be taking champagne or burgundy?” Caspar smiled and sauntered into the little dining room, a magazine in hand, and sat down, ready to be waited on with the sausage and sauerkraut.

  After lunch, Caspar told his mother he was going out “to walk around a bit.” She looked at him, exasperated, as she dried the dishes. “And I’ll try to get a chance to go to the other side and get you that light bulb.” Caspar’s young face, with the elfin ears and small, pointed nose, brightened, in his search of indulgence. “Say, Mother, could I borrow a hundred marks?”

  His mother put down the dishes, walked upstairs to her bedroom, and came down with the money.

  “Stay away from you-know-where and from you-know-who.”

  “Mother!” Caspar smiled at her, pecked her on the cheek, took up his wool jacket and, before closing the door, called out: “Have fun at the House of Ministries. Don’t get run down by any bicyclists!”

  Caspar walked out to the quiet, drab street, and to the stationery store on the corner with its public telephone. He nodded to the old lady behind the counter, who declined to return his greeting even as she had declined to return anyone’s greeting since that day, eleven years ago, when she was informed that her stationery shop had become public property and that she was to stay on but as a civil servant on fixed salary. She had made it a point to reverse exactly the habits of a lifetime, arriving now fifteen minutes late, and leaving fifteen minutes early. Caspar went to the far corner of the shop and opened the telephone door. He dropped a 10-pfennig piece and dialed Claudia’s number. The central operator at the Railway Division of the German Democratic Republic, Berlin Division, answered, and he asked to be put through to Claudia Kirsch, in the office of Herbert Kohl. She answered the telephone.

  “Office of Mr. Kohl, Miss Kirsch speaking.”

  “Is this the most beautiful twenty-one-year-old girl in the socialist world, by any chance?”

  “Mr. Kohl is busy at the moment, sir. Might I take a message for him?”

  “Yes. Please ask Mr. Kohl if he has any objections if the handsomest boy in East Germany makes love to the handsomest girl in East Germany at 5:30 this afternoon because, frankly, the handsomest boy in East Germany simply cannot be kept waiting any longer.”

  “I will deliver that message, sir. And where can he find you?”

  “He will be waiting in the usual place. He would find it most convenient if Miss Claudia were to bring along a bottle of wine. Say a Johannesberg ’59? It should be chilled. There will not be time to chill it before 5:30. In fact, by 5:30 it will be impossible to chill anything. Mmmm. Mm-Mm-Mm—” Caspar smacked his lips into the mouthpiece, but quieted down when he noticed that the old lady was looking suspiciously in his direction.

  “I am sure he will do what he can.”

  Claudia put down the telephone, reached in her purse for her lipstick, and felt her heart beating. She opened the middle drawer on the left, felt with her fingers under the pile of type B envelopes, and pulled out his picture. She stared at the boy, standing in his swimming trunks, his left hand raised, leaning casually against the birch tree, the head slightly bent. He was smiling that languorous smile she found irresistible. His hair was long, and framed his pleasant young face. She looked gracefully over his young, lithe body. “Ah, Caspar,” she whispered. “At 5:30. And again at 6? Who knows.” She shivered with anticipation, and found herself wondering whether the stallmaster at the commissary would let her have the wine today, even though the week’s coupons did not mature until the following day.

  But where had Caspar called in from? Hardly the office. He had a marvelous knack for idleness. He seemed never in a hurry—well, except when experiencing certain undeniable, understandable needs. She reflected that she did not know much about him, really, except that he worked for a government bureaucrat somewhere, and lived alone with his widowed mother, whom she had never been invited to meet. They had been seeing each other ever since meeting at Beetzsee the preceding summer, and she suspected that notwithstanding his age, he had got about a bit as on one occasion, answering the questions of a British tourist, he had spoken to her in English; and, inside Sans Souci, the former summer resi
dence of Frederick the Great, he had translated for her Latin and French inscriptions on a number of objets, though when she asked him about his language skill he would smile and lazily change the subject, though once he muttered that an uncle, an academician, had taught him a few words in other tongues. He seemed to have no interests other than self-indulgence—and the car. At first this struck Claudia as decadent. But Caspar’s good nature overcame her, and she found soon that she had ceased caring about what he did outside the little retreat to which they most generally repaired.

  It lay there, forgotten except for its file number, in the northeast quadrant of the old station, on a siding. One of over two hundred similar railroad cars, their exteriors indistinguishable from one another, a dirty, rusty tan. Probably they had all been constructed in the same factory: probably at the Karl-Marx-Stadt Locomotive Works. Claudia did not know when last any of the moldy old cars had actually been pulled out of their siding. They were deemed antiquated. They had been pressed into special service during the war, and were not suited to such traveling as was encouraged since the foundation of the socialist state.

  It was after their summer meeting, in September, that he had come one day to the Ostbahnhof at noon during the lunch break, with the two sandwiches and the thermos of tea. He had no trouble in gaining access to the large old station, which abutted the offices of the GDR’s Railway Division, with his category Z identification card. They lunched picnic style, sitting on one of many benches near the station’s side entrance. After lunch, Caspar had said to her that he would very much like to have a look at car 10206, if it was by any chance in the station.

  Why? she asked, but he didn’t answer. He simply took her by the hand, and they headed into the dark interior of the sidings in the dusky station, lit only by such daylight as sifted through narrow skylights running along the long sides of the building, revealing only amorphously the shapes of the railroad cars, ancient, abandoned, seemingly immobile. The venerable caretaker appeared to confine the little interest he had in his soporific occupation to the eastern end of the station, near the activity of the office building, and the commissary, in the tunnel between the two structures. Caspar had observed the watchman and, on the three or four occasions when he and Claudia had lunched in the station or the commissary, had made it a point to greet him, however lackadaisically.

  Claudia asked how on earth she would know where car 10206 reposed. Caspar had said there were two ways of finding out. One was for Claudia to search out the relevant office, and establish by looking at the archives where the car in question lay, if it was in Berlin. But probably simpler, he said, would be by touring, and looking at the numbers. He had a pocket flashlight.

  Which they needed, because the dim daylight was insufficient to permit them to read the identifying lettering at the bottom right of each car. It was an exasperating business. There was no evidence of any apparent plan in laying up the cars. No one number logically preceded, or succeeded, another. But, she reflected, in fact it had not taken them very long. The car was the fourth, on the fourth siding from the westernmost. About two thirds of the way in from the office building. On track 22, out of 29 tracks.

  Caspar tried the door, which was locked. He ducked under the coupler and tried the door at the other side. Then he went to the other end of the car and did the same thing. But all the doors were locked. “Well,” he said, “I’ll have to think about that.” Claudia had been amused, but it was time to get back to the office, and so they strolled out together, and Caspar bade good afternoon to the old watchman, seated at a cobwebbed ticket stall, reading his Neues Deutschland.

  The very next day Caspar called to suggest another lunch “at the station—like yesterday, okay?” She noticed that he ate his sandwich less indolently than usual. “You want to go back to the car?” she guessed. Yes, he answered; and again he led her, half-eaten sandwich in her free hand. This time they walked, past two dozen tracks, directly to the car. Caspar took the precaution of establishing that the watchman was nowhere in sight. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a shiny bronze key. It required a little coaxing, but the door opened. He stepped up the gangway and reached down for Claudia. The main door into the car was not locked.

  Inside, it was black, no daylight seeping through. Caspar switched on his little flashlight and they found themselves in a narrow corridor. There was heavy dust everywhere they flashed the beam. With his index finger Caspar rubbed a line along the bulkhead, revealing, beneath the dust, a soft, shiny rosewood. He flashed the light down and lifted the old newspaper on which they were walking. It hid a thick red carpet. She remembered the catch in her throat when Caspar told her, “We are in Hitler’s private railcar.”

  It became their project to clean the car of its sixteen-year accumulation of dust. It transpired that Caspar knew something about railroad cars, and about the means by which they received electricity, because on the Saturday afternoon when Claudia did not need to work they spent the entire time on their adventure, and while she mopped and cleaned inside, Caspar ran an inconspicuous cable from a socket under the car to a ground connection which, fussing over a fuse box opposite the lead car on the adjacent siding, he contrived to energize. Immediately he tested the blinds and discovered, to his satisfaction, that Adolf Hitler’s private railroad car shed no more light today than it had during those nights when the Führer traveled the length of Germany while British and American bombers preyed overhead. They were secure.

  The following Saturday Caspar addressed himself to the problem of heat. He hoped at first to be able to introduce electric heat from the central supply source, behind the fuse boxes; but this would have required a complicated recircuiting operation on the old supply station outdoors, and this he declined to risk. So they settled for four electric portable heaters, which they brought in one at a time, made to look like baskets from which they plucked their sandwiches and apples. “These things burn maybe 150 watts each, that’s 600 watts. Added to what the office building uses, that won’t even be noticed,” Caspar reassured Claudia. So that when it got really cold, in late October, they simply left their electric heaters lit when they left the car. It was mid-November before they deemed their restoration completed. That morning Caspar telephoned Claudia and told her not to appear at the car until five o’clock—she had her own key by now—as he wished to surprise her.

  He certainly had done so. Preoccupied as she had been with details of cleaning and immediately protecting her work with newspapers, she had not really before gazed at the car, now repristinated.

  The car was divided into four areas. At the far end was a salon that could be used as a dining room around whose table twelve persons could sit, or as a meeting room. The woods were of splendid hue, the carpeting, though obviously worn, was rich. Vertical antique brass strips decorated and gave shape to its opulent but utilitarian dimensions. Settees ran along the length of the room on either side of the table, which could open to full length or to smaller sizes and, running on a track almost invisible in the carpet, could slide back behind one of the settees. The second, slightly smaller, area could be closed off by a sliding door or left open. It was a comfortable lounge in which the Führer evidently sat, a wooden desk-tray available to him folding out from its vertical chamber. One of the two seats that faced each other had clearly been the Führer’s private preserve, because an elaborate Nazi symbol, in ivory and red velvet, was fixed just above head level. Opposite were two more padded reclining chairs, and at either end, large bulletproofed windows. Two small but clearly precious chandeliers perched above the two sides of the salon, crystal spiders holding the little prisms rigid, to keep them from jangling. To the right of the Führer’s seat was a cabinet, within which were two telephones and a control panel. Beneath it was room for stationery. And in a drawer lined in green felt there were still papers, which neither Caspar nor Claudia had yet bothered to examine. (“Perhaps they are Hitler’s secret diaries,” Caspar commented teasingly. “In that case,” Claudia said, “we c
ould sell them to an American magazine and be rich!”) Obviously the car had been only cursorily examined by the Russians, and then evidently mislaid, sitting all those years with the ugly duckling troop cars from which it was indistinguishable.

  Now Caspar led her to the bedroom. Two small candelabra sconces at either end of the headboard framed the husky bed, made up now with fresh sheets purloined from Caspar’s mother. The headboard was of red leather with a golden swastika sewn into the material. The foot of the bed pointed in the direction the car was designed to move. It lay snug along the bulletproofed, reinforced bulkhead, though Hitler could, if he wished, open a blind at waist level to look outdoors without ever exposing his face to view. To the right lay a night table with three open trays, the first supporting a signaling device and telephone, the second and third available for books—there were several still there. There was ample standing closet space, a desk, a large bathroom. The walls were lined in leather. They resolved to christen the car “Berchtesgaden” after the beautiful mountain retreat of its nefarious owner.

  The bed was made, the heater lit, the wine chilled. Caspar turned down the near light and tendered Claudia an invitation to go around the world with him. She laughed, delighted, and between the sheets Caspar soon permitted himself to wonder that so much pleasure could be experienced on a bed of a man who had given so much pain: a bed that sat in a railroad car especially designed by Caspar’s late father, for his Führer.

  4

  On March 28, 1961, at 7:45 P.M., the door at the Georgievsky Hall of the Kremlin opened. No one had ever been able to pinpoint the means by which Nikita Khrushchev announced his impending presence. There were no buglers. The lights did not go out. The waiters with the cocktail trays did not suddenly stop. What did happen was that everybody suddenly froze. Not for as long as they’d have done back when Stalin would come into a room. But somehow—whether by smell or by intuition—Khrushchev’s arrival was communicated. And, of course, he was instantly the center of attention. On one occasion, six months earlier, when for over a full hour he had not emerged as the center of attention, he had taken off his shoe and banged it on the desk at the General Assembly of the United Nations, which had served instantly to reorder the Assembly’s sense of hierarchy. There was no need to do that in the Kremlin; indeed, very little need to do that anywhere Khrushchev went.