Nebe looked over at Georg who didn’t look bored. “What is reality?” asked Nebe, loving the sound of it.
“The scene of the accident,” answered Nolte, “that which is out of control.”
“I thought that was passion,” said Nebe. The girl had stopped in front of Nolte, imperiously pointing to the toe of her boot. She tapped it in impatience. She made a sickle-shaped feline lick of her tongue by way of explication.
“Passion is the only reality,” said Nolte.
“Fear is good too,” Brandt pointed out.
“Hate is better. It gives you a little backbone,” said Nebe and waved the girl off. He turned to Georg. “You see anything you like, you just tell me.”
“Oh, I will,” said Georg.
“Nothing you like?” asked the Madame.
“We’d like to see them all,” said Nebe, “if that is permitted.”
She smiled indulgently. “Everything is permitted.”
The next girl was tall and blonde, squelched into a shiny black corset strapped to black nylons and wearing black patent leather high heels. Her hair was ash-blonde, gray as cast tin, in an upswept hairdo lacquered hard as vulcanized rubber. Her forehead was high. The girl had been sweating and her face was unpowdered and full of highlights. Georg liked shiny things.
“I want that one,” he said.
“Then proceed.” Nebe directed with a magisterial gesture.
Georg stood up uncertainly. The girl took his hand and smiled in reassurance. “My name is Ingrid,” she said.
“Yes, yes, it is.” Georg said somewhat inappropriately but it was spontaneous, she fit right into his fantasy. They went off together.
“How bourgeois,” complained Nolte.
Nebe raised an eyebrow at him. “What the hell did you expect?”
Nolte seemed genuinely disappointed. “Nothing. But I had hoped that he’d go off with a hard-edged Gypsy girl who did Flamenco on the table top.”
Brandt was astounded. “Whose side are you on, anyway?”
“Just trying to find fulfillment in my job,” said Nolte.
“That’s always a mistake,” said Nebe and shook his head.
Nolte was sitting huddled and miserable. The man’s sexuality was troubled and uncertain, but at least he was fighting it, so you couldn’t hold it against him. He had compulsive fantasies about cutting open a woman’s belly and holding sexual congress in the wound. He was far too responsible to do anything about it but, sooner or later, you do whatever you have to do to get off, so there was a continuing risk of his becoming an embarrassment.
Nebe had arranged for him to watch surgery at the SS-Krankenhaus. His receiving oral sex while watching an appendectomy had seemed to be the solution to his and, therefore, Nebe’s problem. The problem with the solution was that Nolte was insulted and indignant. You would think that, desperate as he was, he would be anxious to make any kind of a deal but, perhaps, he wasn’t that desperate and, therefore, it wasn’t that much of a problem. Meanwhile, Nolte continued to maintain the fiction that he had a wife and he was still talking.
“So trite, so superficial. I had real hopes for this one,” said Nolte.
Perhaps if Nebe raised the conversation to a philosophical level he could get Nolte bored enough to snap out of it. “Male sexuality doesn’t respond to messages, it responds to signals. And the hornier you are, the more blurred the signals can become. They show that with pigeons. He starts off humping a stuffed pigeon and then a block of wood and finally he’s doing his mating dance to a shadow cast on a wall. I think we’ve all done that one.”
“I’m going to do that one right now,” said Nolte and went after Georg and Ingrid up the stairs. Brandt looked worried, the one expression he did well.
Ingrid’s bush was blonde too and that was comforting. Georg wanted to use his hands on her, but she said she didn’t like back rubs. He kissed her, starting at her knees. He did her slowly. Her eyes were closed and her mouth was pursed in concentration, but there was no sign of rapture. She held him in her fingertips and moved his head a fraction this way and that. That was sweet and he knew she was paying attention, but no rapture. He didn’t want to enter her until she was close to coming, but it didn’t look like it was going to happen. He entered her and it was unbelievably comfortable.
He labored with concentration, but still no rapture and finally he came. Usually, his orgasms were near the tip, but this was two inches behind the base. It was an explosion of light that exited his body in all directions, but it seemed that light was really the darkest half of the sphere. He was entirely convinced that he could move, if he wanted to, but he couldn’t think of any reason why he should. He moved his arm to his surprise and opened his eyes. Ingrid smiled benignly and said, “Take as long as you like. It’s all paid for.”
Georg and Ingrid had finished for the moment. She lay back on the bed with a smirk of proud accomplishment. The bed spread was a non-secular blue-green with a pattern of gold oak leaves like an epaulette. Georg was sitting on the edge of the bed, naked, with his hands between his knees and watching her with incredulity. “You’re fantastic,” he said finally.
“You mean, we’re good together,” Ingrid said with natural courtesy. “We’re fantastic.”
“I never knew it could be like that,” Georg was still saying. “Not even when I was twelve and thinking about it, before I knew what it was like.” Ingrid laughed and reached, competently, for the inside of his thigh. Georg admired competence above all things.
Nolte was watching Georg and Ingrid through a two-way mirror. He had a movie camera, which was working and a wire recorder, which had jammed. He watched with detached interest, too detached, there was something spooky about it and he knew it. He worried about that, absently. Georg and Ingrid mimed silently behind the glass.
They finished a second round and were sitting there looking at each other. Georg didn’t know what to say. “You make me feel shy.”
Ingrid was surprised. “Well, you certainly didn’t act shy before.” She sounded indignant.
“Well,” said Georg, “before, I knew exactly what I had to do and how to go about it.”
“Had to?” she asked, genuinely touched.
“I don’t express myself very well,” Georg admitted and averted his face. The room was the same deep non-secular blue-green as the bed spread a soothing color. The girl was blazing white in the middle of the bed and she reached for him.
“You can learn,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be the last time.”
“No.” But Georg knew that it was.
“You can learn to talk,” she said. “If the politicians can do it anybody can.”
Georg made a sudden decision. “I’ll send for you.”
“From Hell?” The girl was laughing.
He smiled. “No. Heaven! Geneva.” She started caressing him. He sat and stared at her for a moment, looking ashamed before reaching for her suddenly.
Once Nolte had rejoined Nebe and Brandt, they moved to the bar. Nebe looked Nolte over appraisingly. “Was it really that dull?”
Nolte scoffed. “Even worse than watching my parents.”
Brandt seemed genuinely alarmed but Nebe just chuckled. The bar was Hansel and Gretel kitsch, but the beer flowed freely. After draining his first glass, Brandt excused himself; the man couldn’t hold his liquids.
The minutes ticked by and Nebe peered around, then back at Nolte who was sitting across the table in the booth. He started to ask a question. His eyebrows and one forefinger were raised and his mouth was half open but then he knew the answer and froze, trying to find a question to go with the gestures. Nolte was raising his eyebrows in concert with him, tilting his head inquisitively, right then left, in theatrically attentive silence. So Nebe said it anyway. “What time is it?” asked Nebe, looking at his watch.
“It’s two pitchers of beer since Brandt went to the toilet.” Nolte’s voice had an edge to it.
Nebe was more gregarious. “Maybe something happened
to him.”
Nolte’s tone was hard and flat. “I’m sure it did. Is your fly open?”
Nebe checked. “No, why do you ask?”
This had the logic of a nightmare. He shrugged his shoulders experimentally and his shirt stuck to his back. He was sweating, had been sweating for minutes.
“Well,” said Nolte, “there are some ferret-faced citizens at the bar who keep staring at us. I was wondering why.”
Nebe looked over and recognized them. Gestapo costumes… “I don’t believe it. This is ridiculous.”
Nolte tried on cynicism. “You’re perfectly right. It is. And, therefore, it can’t be happening. And you’re right not to believe it.”
“I really don’t like you,” said Nebe, saying it slowly like a sentence that would instantly be carried out.
“So what?” said Nolte. “That isn’t going to make a difference.” The sense of unreality was complete now. Nebe felt himself moving back along a tunnel, inward from his eyes, until the pinpoint of consciousness in the center of his head was the only thing he believed in.
“If we can reach headquarters…” he heard himself say.
Nolte resumed, hard and flat, “We won’t. They’ll have the streets cordoned off. They always do. It’s supposedly one of the things they do with competence.”
Nebe braced his hands on the table and half stood up. The sharp-faced men at the bar turned toward him and unbuttoned their suit jackets. They were double-breasted suits and, unbuttoned, the long cross-over lapel flapped and drooped. It looked silly, thought Nebe; a man should never wear a double-breasted suit with a shoulder holster. Nebe sat down again. “I just don’t understand, why now?”
Nolte was bitter. “Does it really make any difference? I doubt they’re here to argue.”
“I can take anything so long as I know why.” Nebe was nearing the verge of hysteria but maintaining a plausible veneer and Nolte was realizing that his sarcasm wouldn’t keep the situation at a distance. One way or the other he was running out of sarcasm.
Then Nebe had a sudden thought. “There’s a chance, just a chance, that this is only surveillance.”
Nolte was wary. “What about Brandt?”
But Nebe was actually clinging to that sliver of hope. “Maybe they thought he was trying to run. Maybe he did run, he’s pretty alert, tactically. If we can get out of here, if we can get back to headquarters, we interview Elser’s family at Konstanz, to investigate the location where he actually designed the bomb. It’s sprinting distance from the border. We might as well try.”
Nolte was skeptical. “What about our families?”
Nebe was incredulous. “Fuck ’em!”
“We could at least kill the two weasels at the bar.” Nolte was having a fit of caution, so Nebe felt obliged to snap him out of it.
“That wouldn’t change anything; the only chance is to brass it out.” Good man in the crunch, thought Nebe, he’d get him a promotion, if they got out of this, once they joined the Swiss Police. There was always a need for experienced men, thought Nebe as he got up to go.
Just at that moment Brandt came back from the restroom buttoning his fly. “The girls had the bathroom staked out. They were in there for 45 minutes. I had to find the kitchen and piss in the sink.”
Nebe laughed, perhaps a bit harder than appropriate.
Crisis averted, Nebe, Nolte and Brandt moved back to the waiting room of the whore house, smoking cigars and feeling like executives. Time passed. Too much time passed. “What the hell is he doing up there?” Brandt complained. “It seems like hours.”
Nebe shrugged. “Perhaps we underestimated him.”
Nolte nearly choked on his cigar. “You’re kidding! The way he fucks is just as colorless as everything else about him; he’s probably bored the whore to death by now!”
“Won’t he try to escape?” worried Brandt.
“Not for at least half an hour,” Nebe said then thought again. “Besides, the building is surrounded.”
“Oh?” said Brandt without enthusiasm.
“You did take care of that?” Nebe inquired.
“I thought they just always did that …” Brandt false started.
Nebe stared at him for a long menacing moment then shook his head. “Bah, he’s not going to escape,” he said. “It hasn’t even occurred to him.”
Brandt wasn’t entirely convinced. “You sure this was a good idea?”
Nebe blew a smoke ring. “The best,” he said. “Give him a taste of freedom. Remind him what it’s like. That’s the cruelest of all. Hope was the last scourge out of Pandora’s Box. Men go on hoping when there’s no reason for it. No reason at all.” Brandt looked at him oddly but said nothing.
Nebe longed to scratch his head, but it would undermine his authority. He had severe dandruff and it was a secret pleasure. Just that morning he had torn off a piece of scalp the size of the nail on his little finger. It even had three hairs sticking out of it. He kept the head of a department store dummy in his bottom desk drawer, behind the files and his bottle of schnapps, a blandly pretty girl who should have been blonde, but her wig was missing. Nebe carefully glued the supersized dandruff flake to the crown of the mannequin’s head. It was almost covered by pieces translucent brittle skin with hairs attached. He had sighed in complete satisfaction. Everyone over the age of five has something to hide.
They were back in the interrogation room at Gestapo HQ and starting on their sixth liter of schnapps, anemic light leaked into the room but it was impossible to say for sure what time it was. Nolte had progressed from crying to borderline suicidal. Brandt was staring at some imaginary horizon. Nebe had a hangover, but was still drunk. He had forgotten that was possible. It was the kind of hangover that made you drink liters of water without relieving your thirst.
“What was the girl’s name?” asked Nolte. “The one at the whorehouse? The one I liked.”
This time Nebe ignored him and Nolte began to cry again. “Georg, just shut up,” said Nebe.
Georg stared at him. “I didn’t say anything.”
“The war is over,” observed Nebe. “The British were just looking for a way to save face.”
“That was the problem,” Georg explained. “I kept waiting for them to do something and what did they do? They sent Chamberlain to Munich. Chamberlain! The kid who always got beat up coming home from school and they sent him to stop a war!”
“So then they sent you!” said Nebe and started to giggle, then scowled and pushed his glass across the table. Georg was watching with animal caution.
“A little more schnapps, Georg?” Brandt suddenly rejoined the here and now. He poured a double shot into Georg’s glass. He held the bottle out to Nebe who shook his head. Then Nebe changed his mind and poured himself a triple. They looked inquiringly to Nolte, he made a face like a gargoyle then ignored them.
“The war is over,” Nebe pointed out. “Secret negotiations are going on, right now, on the Dutch border.”
“Georg’s doing a better job of interrogating you!” snarled Nolte.
“Perhaps,” said Nebe. It was what he always said when someone told him he was full of shit.
“Can you put it into words?” asked Brandt, resuming the conversation after a decent interval.
“No,” Georg answered sorrowfully.
“Then you haven’t thought it through thoroughly,” Brandt argued.
“Something had to be done,” said Georg. “I thought that through.”
“Georg,” said Nebe while trying to focus his eyes, “the war is over, so why did anything have to be done?”
“Not this phony war, the next one. I know they won’t fight about this one.” Georg drained his glass. Brandt refilled it. Georg continued. “Like the way a street fight starts: ‘You took my place!’ He’ll keep on taking their places until we have all of them against us.”
“All of them?!” squealed Nebe, his voice breaking and tweaking off into an upper register. “We’re not fighting the Americans and Russi
ans like last time. It’s not a mistake we’d make twice.”
Nolte slammed his glass down on the desk. “We make every mistake twice, trying to prove it wasn’t a mistake the first time.”
“Perhaps …,” prompted Nebe.
Nolte stuck out his hands in a Christ-like pose. “We’re going to end up like the Jews; intellectual whores to the world with no country of our own.”
Nebe suddenly looked sober with no transition. “Where did that come from?” he demanded in a level voice.
“An interrogation in 19 … 36,” answered Nolte and rested his forehead on the desk.
“That was a good year,” Brandt confirmed wistfully. They stopped and zoned out contemplating their memories.
“We don’t seem to be getting anywhere. Are we getting anywhere?” asked Nebe, suddenly wide awake.
“I’m having a good time,” whispered Brandt and reached for the bottle.
“Oh, yeah,” said Nolte still face down.
“Georg,” Nebe started again, “if we have a war it’s because we all want to. You’re not going to stop it by killing one man.”
“I had to try,” said Georg. “Anyone else would have to be better. He’s the worst. He’s a pig-headed lunatic.”
Nebe jumped to his feet. It was clear that he wasn’t as sober as he seemed to think he was. He struck an oratorical pose.
“I know,” agreed Nebe. “I know he is. But you don’t understand. It’s not the fanatics that cause all the trouble. It’s the sane, sensible men like Chamberlain! With dirty little compromises that leave everyone feeling cheated, guaranteeing another war. This will be the last war one way or another!” He was screaming now, his voice breaking and clogging and clearing with a quick grating cough, just like the Führer, just like all the party hacks. “Anyone can sacrifice his life for his country!” he bellowed. “I’m willing to sacrifice my soul for my country.”
Nolte picked his face up; his features seemed to be wandering at random over it. He suddenly picked up the typewriter and walked to the window. He opened the window and threw the typewriter out onto the cobblestones two stories below. Brandt gazed at him with an expression of hurt wonderment. It made a magnificent noise but it didn’t attract attention, noises coming from Gestapo HQ never did.
The Führer Must Die Page 20