“Happened upon you?” Hoffner repeated. “Oh, I see what you mean. Well, no. Not exactly. A friend said I might want to hear what you have to say. I hope that’s all right?”
“And who might this friend be?”
Hoffner glanced at the eyes that were staring across at him; he wanted to make sure he was playing the neophyte with just the right degree of hesitation. He looked back at Eckart and said, “Oster. Erich Oster. He was handing out pamphlets. We chatted.”
The name produced a knowing nod. “Erich,” said Eckart. He waited, then said, “Good man. Welcome.” Eckart poured himself another drink and went back to the faithful.
It was remarkable to see a man speak with such energy to so small a group. The hand movements alone were almost athletic, pumping fists and sculpting hands, his pauses equally mesmerizing: the sweat on his cheeks glistened as he lifted the glass to his lips. It hardly mattered what he was saying, not that Hoffner could follow much of it. He had been expecting the usual Freikorps claptrap: that the Reds had lost them the war; that the socialists were now denying them their rightful jobs; that the old Germany was being sold off to placate the bloodlust of the French and the English, so forth and so on. This, however, was something entirely different. Eckart spoke about things far more elusive, a German spirit that had been lost to “the struggle with the anti-life.” He seemed obsessed with the ancient tales of Fenrir the Wolf and Tyr the Peacemaker, Wotan and Freyer, Asgard and Ragnarok: this was where nobility was to be found, where courage and purpose spoke in a language known only to the “adepts.” Hoffner half expected to hear a hushed chorus from Parsifal or Lohengrin rise up from the men sitting around the table.
It all seemed to be leading somewhere, when Eckart suddenly stopped and began to examine his glass; like the bottle at its side, it was now empty. With practiced ease, he looked to his audience and said, “But the glass is empty. And when the glass is empty, the wise man knows to quiet his mind.”
Hoffner was not familiar with this particular aphorism, nor was he prepared for the response. Without a word, the group calmly began to get up. Whatever Hoffner thought had gone unsaid was evidently not as pressing to the men now gathering up their coats. One of the younger ones—a student, judging by his clothes—rushed over with a few questions, but Eckart made quick work of him. It was clear, though, that Eckart was still very much aware of Hoffner. When the boy had moved off and the table was again empty, Eckart turned to him. It was only then that Eckart seemed to notice Lina. He leaned to one side so as to get a better view and said, “And another friend, I see.” Lina produced a pleasant smile.
Hoffner said, “I hope we haven’t been the cause of an early evening?”
Now Eckart smiled. “There are no early evenings, mein Herr.” He waved them over. “Come, sit with me.” Hoffner and Lina joined him. “I’m drinking schnapps,” he added. Instantly, Hoffner turned around to call over a waiter. Hoffner ordered a bottle.
Eckart said, “You sit patiently. You listen and wait. So what is it that interests you, Herr . . .”
Hoffner resurrected the name from earlier this evening. “You speak with great passion, mein Herr.”
“And passion is enough for you?”
“When there’s something behind it, yes.”
Eckart liked the answer. “And what do you imagine lies behind it?”
Hoffner had several choices. He could follow the Freikorps trail, although he doubted more than a handful of recruits were finding inspiration in the retelling of childhood fairy tales; the pamphlets, of course, were the most telling feature—where there were pamphlets, there was organization; and where there was organization, there was money—but it was too large a risk to venture into something he knew nothing about, which left him with Eckart’s enigmatic stopping point. Hoffner said, “I thought I was about to find out.”
The response seemed to surprise Eckart. The pleasant grin became a look of focused appraisal. “Did you?” he said. Hoffner thought the conversation might be heading for a quick close, when the bottle arrived and the waiter began to spill out three glasses. Without hesitation, Eckart downed his and held it out for a refill. The waiter obliged and then set the bottle on the table. Eckart slowly poured out his third as Hoffner pulled out a few coins to pay. This time Eckart let his glass sit. He waited for the man to step off before saying, “The German people lie behind everything, mein Herr. Sadly a German people now struggling to find themselves.”
Hoffner heard the first tinge of political disenchantment; he took a sip of his schnapps and nodded. “I lost a son in the war,” he said, opting for what had been working so well tonight. “The Frulein a husband. I don’t imagine this is the Germany he thought he was giving his life for. It’s not the Germany I knew.”
Eckart understood. “It’s still there, mein Herr. It simply needs some guidance.” Hoffner now expected the full weight of the Freikorps credo to come spilling forth; what came out was therefore far more startling.
According to Eckart, the stories of nobility and strength were not meant to be followed in the abstract: they were meant to be fully realized in the “rituals of rebirth and order.” With a few more well-chosen—though equally impenetrable—phrases, Eckart began to show himself for what he was: no ideologue, he was a self-proclaimed mystic. His gift was an understanding of the “core animus” of the German people, a spirit that separated them from all others and thus granted them a greater sense of nobility. He called it the “Thulian Ideal”—a gift from the lost island civilization of Thule—all of it in the pamphlets if one knew how to read between the lines. Hoffner nodded with each subsequent glass that Eckart tossed back. There were other Thulians, he was told, with access to other discrete bits of knowledge, all of whom recognized that the war and the revolution had ripped the soul from the German people, and who now saw it as their duty to rekindle that spirit and order.
Hoffner might have dismissed it all as the harmless, if slightly loonier, cousin of those societies he had so eagerly avoided at university—the image of a naked Eckart running through the Black Forest was disturbing to be sure—were it not for the fact that he had not simply happened upon Eckart and his devotees. The line that had led him from Rosa to Wouters to Oster, and now to this, was too firmly drawn: six women brutally—and perhaps ritualistically—murdered; the dying Urlicher willing to take his own life at Sint-Walburga; Hoffner himself still having trouble breathing from his beating; and the Cavalry Guard thugs Pabst and Vogel hardly the messengers of some imagined Teutonic mythos. There was a reality to this that had led him to a Munich wine cellar. What was more frightening was that it clearly led beyond it.
Hoffner now needed a better sense of that reality. “And to achieve that order, mein Herr?”
Eckart nodded as if he had been anticipating the question. “Remove the cancer from the body,” he said. “Purge it of the disease.” The politician had returned.
Hoffner stated the obvious. “The socialists,” he said.
Eckart looked momentarily confused. “The Jews, mein Herr. The elimination of the Jews, of course.”
Hoffner stifled his reaction. It had been said with such certainty. With no other choice, Hoffner nodded. “Of course.”
They begged off at just after midnight. By then, Eckart had been slurring his words and had long since drifted from talk of nobility and strength to his favorite topics of racial superiority and purity—“Every great conflict has been a war between the races, mein Herr; that’s the truth that the barking swine Jew doesn’t want you to know”—a fitting capper to the evening. He had even explained to Lina why her husband’s death had been at the behest of the Jews: “A war for the profiteers to destroy a generation of German youth; your Helmut’s blood is on their hands, Frulein.”
Lina and Hoffner were both stone-cold sober when they stepped out into the night. They walked in silence as Hoffner wondered how much of this had been new to her. He, of course, had heard his fair share of Jew-bating over the years, especially in the
south, but this was something different even for him, something more fully conceived, and without so much as a trace of restraint. A good anti-Semite usually had the sense to show a little subtlety in his jabs. Eckart’s demonization was completely unabashed.
Lina was the first to speak: “So, any more charming drinking partners tonight, or are we through playing?”
Hoffner was glad for her cynicism. She was still so young, and men like Eckart relied on that vulnerability. At least here, Lina was showing none. “Not what I was expecting,” he said, matching her tone. “Two cafés tomorrow, then, to make up for it.”
The streets were deserted as they walked, Munich after midnight no better than a provincial town, taller buildings, wider streets, but everyone safely tucked away in their fine Bavarian beds. No wonder Eckart felt so at home here. At the hotel, Hoffner had to ring twice before the concierge came to open the door. The man looked slightly put out. His guests were usually in their rooms by eleven.
Upstairs, she was undressed and in bed before Hoffner had managed his way out of his pants. Not that she was in any great hurry for him; a bed this size was simply new to her: Lina wanted to take as much time in it as she could. She made an effort to reach over and help, but Hoffner seemed to work through his pain better alone.
When they were finally lying naked side by side, she propped herself up on an elbow and said, “You know, you’re really quite good at what you do.”
He was on his back, staring up at the ceiling, and smiled at her apparent surprise. “Thank you.” He had a sudden taste for a cigarette, but the pack was in his jacket across the room: too much of an effort to get up for it now.
“You know what I mean,” she said. She took hold of his hand and began to thumb across his open palm. “It was good fun to watch.” He stared down at her as she used her nail to pick at a bit of dead skin that was on one of his fingers. “I don’t imagine Hans is nearly that clever.”
Hoffner had not been expecting Fichte to make an appearance tonight, but here he was, casually tossed onto the bed with them. She seemed easy enough with it; Hoffner was happy to follow suit. “He might surprise you,” he said. He could only guess at what the boys on the fourth floor had in mind for young Fichte.
She was busy with his finger as she shook her head. “Not Hans.” She brushed away a few flakes of skin and looked up at him. “You think it’s strange that I’m talking about him.” It was a statement, not a question.
Hoffner did his best with a shrug. “Something we have in common.”
Lina drove a nail into the thick part of his hand and said with a rough smile, “Ass. Yes, lying naked in a bed, and that’s what we have in common.”
Hoffner tried to pull his hand away, but she was too quick. She brought it up to her mouth and kissed the bruised skin and he felt her tongue dabbing at his palm. “You were the one to bring him into the room with us,” he said.
“He’ll be all right in a few days. Boys like Hans always are.” For some reason she had needed to tell him this. “So . . . what’s this pact I’ve heard so much about?”
The question caught Hoffner completely off guard. “The what?” he said.
“The pact,” she repeated. “Hans told me. He said he heard about it when he was in Belgium.” She stopped, her expression momentarily less animated. She had reminded herself of Fichte’s recent cruelties. Evidently her own recovery would take a bit longer than the one she had imagined for him.
“Oh, the pact,” Hoffner cut in quickly. Not that he was all that keen to bring it up, but better that than to allow Fichte’s stupidity any greater sway over her. With a careless shrug he said, “Not really that interesting.”
He watched as she gazed up at him; without warning, she was on her knees, leaning over his face, her thumbnail hovering menacingly above his cheek. “Really?” she said with an impish grin. “Not that interesting?”
Hoffner lay there calmly. “Not really.”
Lina’s eyes flashed and, in one fluid movement, she was on him, pressing her hands down onto his shoulders and tightening her thighs around his chest.
All of this would have been quite wonderful, and the prelude to some really exquisite bed time, had Hoffner’s ribs not forced him to shout out in intense pain. Lina at once realized what she had done and frantically pulled herself off him. Her knee grazed his abdomen and Hoffner let go with a second, stifled groan.
She was lying perfectly still at his side when he finally managed to say, “We’ll try it this way. You promise not to move and I’ll tell you about the pact. Fair enough?”
Lina began to nod; she stopped herself and, barely opening her mouth, said, “Fine.”
Hoffner kept his eyes on the ceiling as the throbbing in his chest receded to a dull ache.
It had been a long time since he had sought out these memories, three blind-drunk Germans sprawled out under a half-moon on the most perfect Tyrolean hillside he had ever known. He let himself recall the grass under his neck, the taste of the olive trees on his tongue, the sound of Knig’s laughter as it had echoed into the vast nothingness of the valley below. Mueller had been whole then, dancing in the darkness on two good legs, a bottle in each flawless hand, spilling more booze than he could drink. It was life as Hoffner had never known it—before or since—full and vibrant and unbearably real.
“We were in the Tyrol,” he said as he continued to gaze up. “A palazzo in the hills. Knig, Mueller, me. I forget the name. August of ’15. I don’t remember how we worked it. They flew in, picked me up. Something like that. Anyway, they were on leave, and we found ourselves on this hillside, two, three in the morning. . . .” He turned to her. “You’re sure you’re interested in this?”
“Yes,” she pressed. “I’m sure.”
“Fine,” he conceded. He adjusted his pillow. “So there we are, two, three in the morning, soused to the gills, and Victor—Knig—starts in on how much he loves life, how much he understands it now that he’s flying over battlefields and seeing bodies and waste and on and on. Until he says that he won’t be coming back. That he knows he won’t be coming back, because he’s been given this extraordinary gift to appreciate it all. And Mueller and I just sit there, and listen, and wait until he’s finished, and tell him he’s an idiot.” Hoffner lost himself for a moment. “Of course, he wasn’t,” he said quietly. Refocusing, he turned to her. “So I say I’m not going to ruin the few days we have together talking about that sort of nonsense. And he says, ‘If you’re so sure it’s nonsense, then make it worth my while.’” Even now Hoffner could hear the arrogance in Knig’s voice. “So I did. If he came home, he came home, nothing else. If he didn’t, then I promised to be faithful to my wife. That was it. The agreement. The pact.” Hoffner remembered the letter he had received, the typewritten t’s that had jumped too high on the line, the word “death” with a little hitch just before the end. He was gazing up at the ceiling again and said, “He was shot down two months later. Mueller and I got very drunk.”
Lina lay quiet. She waited until he turned to her before saying, “I thought it was something else. I wouldn’t have asked. I’m sorry.”
He tried a smile. “No reason to be.”
“Do you regret not keeping it?”
“Not keeping what?”
“Your promise.”
“Ah.” Hoffner nodded slowly to himself. “My promise.” He lay with the word a moment longer. “But I did,” he said. It was now Lina’s turn to look confused. “At least up until a few weeks ago.”
Lina brought herself up on an elbow and gazed down at him. He had never seen this look before. There was a caring and a concern that was almost too much to take in. At once, he regretted having told her. She said, “You never told me that.”
He kept it light. “Not exactly something you bring up, is it?”
“That’s over three years.”
“Yes.”
“And that was it? You’d spent long enough keeping your word?”
He knew what she wanted
him to say—that it had been because of her that he had betrayed Knig—but that would have been no more true than the other. He said vaguely, “I don’t think it works that way.”
“Works what way?”
“The way that makes it more than it is.” He meant it not to be unkind but to protect, even though he knew it was too late. He could see now how this would all fall apart; it would only be a matter of time. They had been safe as long as questions of intent had remained hidden; his story made that impossible: too much meaning, and they would crumble under the weight; too little, and she would feel a different kind of betrayal. For her, the breaking of the pact had hinged on a choice—imagined or not—which even now Hoffner had to admit might not have been so disengaged, or so consciously made, after all.
For several moments she hovered above him, searching for something more. When it was clear that there was nothing more, she lay back. “You were close with him,” she said. “With Knig.”
“Yes.”
“And he knew your wife.” Again, she was stating, not asking.
Hoffner felt the pull of his cigarettes from across the room. “I suppose. Does it matter?”
“He wanted to help her.”
Whether days or weeks from now, he thought, he would always look to this moment as their last. “Do you know where I put my cigarettes?” he said.
“Why did he want to help her?”
Lina was digging with no care for the consequences, and that left him no room to hide. “He didn’t,” he said. He struggled to get himself upright, then brought his legs over the side and sat with his back to her. “He thought he was helping me, which showed how little he understood.” Hoffner got up and moved across to the pile of clothes. “Did I put them in my jacket?”
He was fumbling through his pants when she said, “And what didn’t he understand?”
The sting, of course, was in her feigned indifference, but it was hardly fair feeling the least irritation when it had been his own stupidity that had put them here. The past was kept in strongboxes for a reason; he had removed the lid and had been forced to peer in for himself. How could he blame her for making him rummage through to the bottom?
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