Last Stop Vienna

by Andrew Nagorski

  The official stopped in midsentence. “If the fräulein cannot control herself, no wedding will take place,” he intoned solemnly, leaving no doubt that Sabine had offended the dignity of his office.

  I stared straight ahead, afraid to look in her direction. I could hear her trying to stifle more laughter and coughing to disguise it. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I really am.”

  I heard Uwe behind me, coughing through his laughter as well.

  “Maybe everyone here is too sick for these proceedings,” the official added. “Perhaps all of you would be better off recuperating at home.”

  I bit my lower lip, and somehow Sabine pulled herself together. Uwe fell silent.

  “Well, then, let’s see if we can proceed.”

  We barely managed to get through the rest of the ceremony. When it came to the exchange of rings, I was so nervous that I extended my left hand to Sabine instead of my right. She tried to slip the ring on my finger, but it got stuck halfway; evidently the ring finger on my left hand was thicker than on my right, but I still had no idea why she couldn’t get it on. I could see she was trying to suppress a new burst of giggles, and I desperately jammed the ring on myself. Later it would take a lot of painful pulling, with the help of soap, to get it off. By the time the ceremony was over and Uwe and Petra had signed as official witnesses, I was sweating as profusely as the bureaucrat. He brusquely took his documents and left.

  “Haven’t you forgotten something, Karl?” Uwe asked.

  “What?” I asked, and then blushed. Sheepishly, I kissed Sabine.

  Uwe shook his head. “I have to remind that boy of everything.”

  “You’d better keep reminding him,” Petra added with a strained smile.

  Sabine looked as close to radiant as I could remember. Certainly much happier than since she got out of the hospital. “Don’t worry,” she said playfully. “I’ll remind him from now on.”

  Nonetheless, it was Uwe who not only reminded me what to do next but also thought of it in the first place and then made it possible. He had told me to arrange something special for Sabine after the wedding. If the ceremony was going to be simple, he explained, it was all the more important to have a memorable experience afterward.

  I had looked at him blankly.

  “Karl, ever hear of a honeymoon?”

  “Sure, for rich people.”

  “I know, and I’m not proposing anything fancy. But Sabine once told me she’d love to visit Weimar. I’ll fund a short trip: It’ll be my wedding present.”

  “God, Uwe, that’s incredibly generous of you. I’ve never taken her anywhere. But why Weimar, of all places?”

  Uwe read my mind. “It’s not just the place where they wrote a constitution you hate . . .”

  “Yes, of course, I should have thought of it sooner. It’s Goethe, isn’t it? She’s always reading his poems.”

  Uwe punched me lightly on the arm and rumpled my hair. “You’re a real genius.”

  So it was thanks to Uwe that we rode the train north to Weimar, the town where Johann Wolfgang von Goethe spent fifty-seven of his eighty-three years, as Sabine informed me. Countess Anna Amalia brought him and then Friedrich von Schiller to her court, transforming the town along the Ilm River into Germany’s literary capital. It was also a town where Bach played the organs for Saxon royalty, and Liszt served as music director. When Sabine saw how little those names meant to me, she embarked on a crusade to educate me, at least about Goethe, her idol. “They forced me to recite his poems in school,” I protested. “I always wanted to get him off my back.”

  But I dutifully trooped to see his mahogany casket, which lay along with his friend Schiller’s in the crypt of the cemetery chapel. Sabine placed a single red rose between the two caskets, which were simpler but more elegant than the elaborately carved caskets of the local princes and princesses in the same crypt. We walked by the majestic bronze statues of the two writers in front of the national theater, and we went up and down the stairs of Goethe’s house. Sabine admired the classic busts and the views of the garden where the poet’s wife had spent many of her days. The baroque mansion, now a museum, still contained many of his books and art. “It pays to be a poet,” I noted, looking at the lavish surroundings.

  “Oh, Karl, for such a great man, he lived modestly.”

  When we reached the room with the narrow bed where Goethe died, Sabine whispered: “His last words were ‘Open the window and let in some light.’ ” She turned to me. “Do you think the light simply goes out when we die?”

  “I don’t know.” I shrugged. “You’re the believer.”

  But nothing could discourage Sabine from trying to share her sense of wonder about the man and the place. “Just think, he lived within these walls, walked the streets we’ve been walking, admired some of these same houses,” she marveled.

  And when I was less than awed, she began reading me his poems in bed at the small guesthouse that Uwe had arranged for us. She was sitting with her back propped up against the pillows, and my head was on her stomach. We had made love, gently, slowly, somehow more soothingly than we ever did at home.

  “Listen to this:

  “Why do you wander further and further?

  Look! All Good is here.

  Only learn to seize your joy,

  For joy is always near.”

  She leaned over and ran her tongue around my lips. “Isn’t that what we have now?”

  “Yes, your Goethe isn’t all bad.”

  “Or this,” she went on.

  “Hate, begone, and Envy, vanish!

  All that is not joy we banish.”

  “Are you trying to tell me something?”

  “What do you think?”

  “What I’m doing is not about hate, you know. Just justice.”

  “I’ve told you I don’t understand politics,” she said. “But I think I do understand Goethe, and I love his approach to life. Maybe you’ll like this more.” And she began reading me “The Diary,” which, she explained, wasn’t included in the regular Goethe anthologies.

  My eyes had begun to close, and I only half heard the beginning, something about the narrator having to spend the night in a hostelry rather than return home to his wife because of a broken wheel. But then a young girl serves him dinner, and Goethe finds her every movement irresistible.

  “A heavenly promise blossoms from her eyes;

  I watch her rounded bosom’s splendid swell

  As it is filled with little half-checked sighs;

  And to her ears and throat and neck as well

  I see the fleeting rosy love-flush rise.”

  Sabine paused, her eyes laughing at me. “You like that, do you? Not exactly what you remember from your school days, is it?”

  “No,” I conceded. “Don’t stop now.”

  Sabine read on. Goethe described how the lovely creature came to his bed at midnight, confessing her love—but explaining, too, that she was a virgin. She settled her “sweet body” into his arms, allowing him to do whatever he wanted. He was at first delighted, then tormented.

  My master player, hitherto so hot,

  Shrinks, novice-like, its ardor quite forgot.

  The virgin falls peacefully asleep, satisfied only with kisses.

  So the dear angel lies, and as if all

  The bed was hers, spreads each commodious limb,

  While he, still powerless, squashed against the wall,

  Must forfeit what she freely offered him.

  “You mean nothing happened?” I asked, now more awake than ever.

  She read to the end of the poem, from the girl’s scurrying away from the bed as soon as she awoke in the morning, to the departure of the poet who was “soon homeward and wifeward bound.”

  “Ah,” I said. “Now I think I understand.”

  “Bravo,” Sabine responded. “In case you didn’t, here’s the translation of the message in Latin at the beginning of the poem: ‘I held another woman in my arms, but as I was about
to take my pleasure, Venus reminded me of my lady and deserted me.’ ”

  She pushed the pillow from behind her head and lay back. “Meet your lady,” she said, opening her arms. I rushed into them with a new urgency, and she held me tightly as our bodies fused again, this time faster, more explosively, than before. With her arms still wrapped around me as I lay spent on top of her, she laughed gently. “And watch out for those young maidens.”

  “I will,” I promised. “I will.”

  —

  I wrote to Otto, explaining that I was no longer sure what to believe and was thinking about dropping out of the party altogether. In his reply, he asked me not to make any firm decisions until we had the chance to talk. He was planning a brief visit to his brother’s house in Landshut and asked me to meet up with him there.

  I agreed, although Sabine tried to talk me out of it. We didn’t quarrel, but she didn’t hide her disappointment when I insisted on going. “I’ve talked to Uwe about a job,” I said. “He’ll probably know something when I get back.”

  She didn’t respond.

  “I’ll take Leo with me. He’ll keep me company on the train.”

  “Keep an eye on him, Leo,” she said, a trace of a smile creeping back across her face. “Make sure he behaves.”

  “I will,” I said, leaning over to kiss her.

  Gregor was out when I reached his house, but Otto was waiting for me. He greeted me with a bear hug and motioned me into his brother’s study. He greeted Leo just as enthusiastically, mentioning that he had left his Irish setter in Berlin with a friend and missed him already, although he’d be away for only a few days.

  As always, Otto exuded an edgy energy as he paced around the small room. “Look at these books,” he said, proudly pointing to several well-worn volumes with indecipherable lettering. He picked one up. “Do you know what this is?”

  I shook my head.

  “Homer, in the original Greek. My brother may be the big warrior to a lot of people, but at home he likes to be the scholar.” He tapped the book’s cover. “This is where he gets his inspiration. No one should underestimate him.”

  We settled into two comfortable armchairs, but Otto was up in a moment to offer me tea and strudel. “Sorry not to have anything more elaborate, but Gregor had to go off on an urgent trip, and no one else is around at the moment. So tell me, what’s the mood in Munich?”

  I told him briefly what I knew, that Hitler was working to rebuild the party and had staged the first big rally since his release from prison, putting on a show of unity with most of the movement’s major figures who were attending to lend their support. Otto listened with a distracted air; this obviously wasn’t new information for him. When I asked him why his brother hadn’t been at the rally in Munich, he brushed the question aside. “That doesn’t matter now,” he declared. “There’s something more important to talk about. I’ve joined the party.”

  Otto grinned broadly, relishing my surprise.

  “What made you finally do it? You no longer have doubts about Hitler?”

  He shook his head. “It’s not that. Gregor asked me to help him by signing up. You see, Hitler has asked him to organize and lead the party in the north. Since Hitler can’t make public speeches, he needs someone like my brother to be the public figure, especially in areas where he’s less known. You know how the workers love Gregor. They know he’s on their side.”

  “And you’re convinced Hitler is on their side, too?”

  Otto patted Leo, who had planted himself at his feet. “Let’s put it this way. The Strasser brothers, if I may say so immodestly, are now in a position to make sure we build a party that puts the workers’ interests at its center. We want national socialism to live up to its name, to offer real socialism. Nationalism and socialism. I don’t know if Hitler has that in mind, but we do. And now Hitler has to rely on Gregor, and maybe even on me, which means we have the leverage we want. You know what Hitler said to Gregor when he heard I’d joined the party?” Otto laughed softly. “He said: ‘Whatever he does, he’ll do well. Two men like you cannot fail.’ We don’t intend to.”

  “So the two of you are going to steer the party toward socialism?”

  “Not just the two of us. We’re recruiting people. Gregor just converted Goebbels—you’ve heard of him, the one with the clubfoot?”

  I hadn’t.

  “He’s a young Rhinelander, an excellent speaker, even if he’s pretty unpleasant to look at. He was against us, working with our opponents in the movement before. But now he’s on board. And there are others. We need you, too, you know.”

  I hesitated, then summoned my resolve. “Otto, I don’t think so. I’m a married man now.”

  He was up in a flash, pumping my hand. “That’s wonderful news. Congratulations.” He looked me over again. “I thought I detected a new maturity. Yes, now I see—the married man. Excellent.”

  He seemed to forget about his political pitch, busying himself with inquiries about Sabine, our wedding and the honeymoon.

  Only when it was turning dark and I indicated that I needed to take Leo for a walk did Otto return to his earlier topic. He pulled out copies of articles he’d published under the pseudonym of Ulrich von Hutten in the Völkischer Beobachter, the party paper, during the time Hitler was in prison. He also showed me more recent manuscripts. “Seen these?” he asked.

  “Some of them, but I haven’t read everything,” I replied, admitting—not for the first time in my life—that I wasn’t the most conscientious of readers.

  He and Gregor were about to launch publications in the north, he explained, that would offer the opportunity to disseminate their ideas. He slapped his knees and stood up. “Sorry, let’s not keep Leo waiting. I’ll gladly take a walk with you.”

  It was chilly and overcast when we stepped outside. The streets were almost deserted, with everyone probably at home getting ready for dinner. As Leo loped happily along, sniffing his new surroundings, Otto spelled out the ideas he and his brother were propagating. “Call them Strasserism,” he said with a self-conscious smile. “It’s a doctrine based on our opposition to both Marxism and capitalism.”

  Of all the historical models, he explained, feudalism was the closest to what he and Gregor had in mind—of course, feudalism adapted to a modern industrial economy. Big industries should be nationalized. The state would be the sole owner of land, which it would lease to private citizens. The big estates would be expropriated from their rich owners, leased to and utilized by small farmers. People could do whatever they wanted with their leased land except sell or sublet it. This would prevent exploitation and the emergence of another rich class.

  Political power would be decentralized, and Prussia no longer allowed to dominate the other German states. Instead the country would be divided into self-governing cantons, following the Swiss model. There would be only a small professional army, not the Prussian military machine. Germany needed harmony at home and abroad, which meant a fair system that threatened no one, and an end to oppression. Economic oppression was the worst enemy, not any racial group. But, Otto continued, Jews and others who exploited ordinary Germans would be put on notice that their reign was at an end. The new state would care for the well-being of all Germans, with no favors for the rich.

  “An idealistic vision?” Otto asked, not breaking his brisk stride. “Yes. A practical vision? Also yes.”

  “I haven’t heard a lot of those ideas from Hitler,” I ventured. “Not the way you put them.”

  “Not yet, for certain. But we can use Gregor’s position to see that they gain acceptance. We have pretty much a free hand in the north, and we want our publications to circulate in the south as well. That’s where you—”

  It all happened very fast. A blurry black form bolted from the shadows, Leo emitted a piercing yelp and Otto—already a few steps ahead of me—shouted, “Get off him! Get off!” I rushed forward only to see Otto clutching his hand, which he had jerked away from the snarling black dog who had at
tacked Leo. The dog, a rottweiler, quickly turned his attention back to Leo, who had retreated to a hedge with blood trickling down his neck. I tried to reach for him, to pull him away. The rottweiler caught my thumb in his teeth, and I yanked my hand back as the pain surged through my body. As I did so, I realized Leo was next and that I wouldn’t be able to save him.

  Otto stepped in between the two dogs, faced the aggressor and swung his left fist directly at his jaw. The dog lunged, his teeth ripping through the skin on the back of Otto’s hand. At the same moment, Otto brought his right hand down on the back of the dog’s neck, his fingers plunging into the coarse fur. The dog went limp.

  Otto looked up. I must have been a sorry sight: I was holding my torn left thumb with my right hand, which was pressed against my chest, but I couldn’t apply enough pressure to stop the blood dripping down the front of my jacket. Then he glanced at Leo, who was whimpering near the hedge.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing with my dog?”

  I heard the voice before I saw its source, a tall, disheveled middle-aged man who appeared from the shadows.

  I saw something in Otto’s eyes I’d never seen before. Cold fury. He moved his right hand to the prone dog’s chest, found whatever he was looking for and pushed. The rottweiler emitted a low gargling sound before lying completely still.