by Chris Petit
‘Which Anton then bartered in exchange for you sparing him.’
Maurice nodded. Schlegel asked what that had been about.
Maurice’s drunken, rambling explanation boiled down to the rivalry between Maurice and Himmler. This had culminated with Himmler expelling Maurice from the SS after proof emerged of his Jewish background. The Huber scoop was offered by Anton as immunity against Himmler making any further moves against Maurice.
‘A talisman, he called it.’ Maurice shrugged. ‘Well, he was right about that. I told Heini to fuck off and if anything happened to me there would be consequences.’
Maurice slumped back, dazed by the effort of the explanation.
‘Who did Huber hold responsible for Raubal’s death?’ Schlegel asked, curious.
Maurice snorted. ‘He didn’t really. He only wanted to demonstrate that the Führer was in the apartment when the girl died.’ Maurice shrugged again. ‘It didn’t actually prove anything. Looking back, I’m not sure if it was even a fair exchange.’
‘Where is it now?’ Schlegel asked, thinking of the dark green folder he had been shown in the archive basement.
‘The thing is, it disappeared.’ Maurice seemed to find the idea amusing.
‘Did that bother you?’
‘Not especially. The Führer, after leaving me to sweat, eventually made up his mind that I had his protection regardless. Old loyalties still count among those who matter.’
Schlegel was reminded of schoolboy crazes where an intense interest, like a collective fever, seizes everyone before burning itself out, leaving everyone mystified about the original attraction.
‘And what did you report back about Anton Schlegel’s death?’ he asked.
‘That the job was done. It was all say-so anyway. It was treated like a weekend shooting party . . .’
*
At one point in the night, Schlegel, Fräulein Braun and the fat thug were the only ones awake. She came over and asked him to show her the rules of the patience game. ‘I have a lot of time on my hands,’ she said simply. He explained how it worked and in spite of appearing dazed she was a quick learner, though easily bored.
‘I have a favour to ask,’ he said. ‘Would it be possible for you to show me the Führer’s library?’
‘I don’t think so. It’s private.’
‘Of course,’ said Schlegel. ‘It’s only that a relative of mine was involved in furnishing it.’ As a guess, it seemed a reasonable one.
‘Who was that?’ she asked out of routine politeness.
He told her and could see the name meant nothing. She looked tired, he thought, in that way of someone who has just travelled a long distance.
‘It would be a privilege and an honour to see it,’ he went on. ‘Something to tell my grandchildren.’
It seemed the only way, playing by the general rules of her household, with its pretence of manners, sentimental decorum and doing the right thing. He continued to butter her up, seeing it as his one chance of getting past the fat thug on the door. Eventually she stood and said, ‘Please,’ gesturing that he should follow.
The thug was forced to defer to her, saving a hostile look for Schlegel as they passed.
She led the way upstairs to a room more like a studio apartment than a study, with an expansive sitting area with a sofa and armchairs, a huge carved desk, another enormous tiled stove and expensive pale wooden panelling with inset shelves of books. Fräulein Braun explained how the building had started out as a modest holiday chalet until expansion became necessary. From what Schlegel could gather, the original building was still contained within all this gargantuan madness. Fräulein Braun, surveying the huge expanse as though it were no more than a cosy nook, declared that she thought it came closest to reflecting the Führer’s modest personal taste. ‘He is, in the end, a man of contemplation,’ she said.
By day, the Alpine views through the tall windows would be spectacular.
‘May I . . .?’ asked Schlegel, pointing to the books at the end of the room.
Fräulein Braun appeared momentarily distracted, as though struck by the pointlessness of her position as mistress of an abandoned household. ‘Please do,’ she said, reverting to being the courteous hostess. Schlegel hadn’t expected to feel sorry for the woman.
He made a show of studying the books, moving slowly towards the shelf indicated by Tieck, and there it was, The Adventures of Pinocchio, exactly where it was supposed to be, on the top shelf on the far left, clearly having lain undisturbed for years. Did he risk filching it? He turned to see if Fräulein Braun was watching. She was. He said, ‘There’s a book here, am I allowed to touch it?’
It was the wrong thing to have asked. She came over and stood next to him.
‘Probably not,’ she said. ‘It’s a private collection.’
He pointed to the book in question. She perked up when she read the title on its spine and said, ‘Oh, yes, we screened the film of it here several times. We all enjoyed that.’
‘You see, the book belonged to my father,’ Schlegel said. ‘He lent it to the Führer.’
‘This very copy?’ Fräulein Braun laughed and exclaimed, ‘And he didn’t return it!’
‘How did you know?’ asked Schlegel, going along with her mood.
She appeared pleased to be able to indulge the memory.
‘He often used used to joke about how he was always being fined by lending libraries for overdue books in the days before he had two coins to rub together.’
She laughed again in desperate merriment and reached up but the shelf was too high for her. ‘You’re tall,’ she said flirtatiously.
Schlegel got the book down and held it in his hands: a well-worn copy of a slim volume, which like a lot of children’s books had seen its share of wear and tear. He knew nothing of his father’s childhood, which his mother had never mentioned. He opened the cover and there, written on the inside fly leaf in a child’s unformed hand: ‘This book belongs to Anton Schlegel.’
He showed her, still wondering how to pocket it or whether he would have to try and come back later. Fräulein Braun took the book, not appearing that interested. The strangely intimate moment between them had passed. She opened the book at random. It was an illustrated edition and Schlegel found himself looking at an engraving that appeared straightforward but became increasingly disturbing.
A sticklike Pinocchio was being arrested and manhandled by two soldiers wearing old-fashioned uniforms. The image, unsettling in itself, was lent an enhanced cruelty by the arresting soldiers being given dog faces and paws instead of boots. One had a long tail protruding from under his tunic and the other’s eerily human hand was clamped over Pinocchio’s mouth, emphasising the exaggeratedly elongated nose.
It struck Schlegel as an example of everything that was frightening about childhood, which was perhaps why the page had been scribbled over in crayon, presumably by a very young Anton Schlegel. Fräulein Braun appeared upset and snapped the book shut. With a shiver she passed it back and exclaimed, ‘What a horrible, beastly drawing!’
Schlegel made to return the book to the shelf but she quickly recited in a formal, automatic way, ‘It doesn’t really belong here. It’s a scruffy copy anyway. Take it, please, as a souvenir of your visit and perhaps you can give it back to your father. We should go downstairs now.’
The book fitted comfortably in Schlegel’s pocket and he made a private decision not to return it to his father.
*
Downstairs, everyone was still asleep, apart from the cadaverous thug who had replaced his colleague on the door. The collective spell cast over the room retained its hold, with everyone still laid out and mysteriously incapable of going to bed. Schlegel found himself succumbing to the room’s heavy torpor. He resolved to destroy or get rid of the book, thinking it would give him a mean pleasure to spoil Tieck’s plans, whatever they were. With that, he fell into a deep and exhausted sleep, afraid of what he might find in his dreams.
He woke at fir
st light, fretful. Fegelein was already up and prowling, guarding the room and looking hungover. Outside was invisible for a dense fog that hung over everything. Schlegel watched Anna Huber wake and look around the room with a calculating air, as if planning her getaway. The Braun sisters lay abandoned on their sofas, the dogs asleep with them. A telephone rang somewhere in the house. Fegelein shook the two thugs awake, told them to come with him and they left. Führer Bobby snored on. Maurice jerked awake, stood up and announced to no one in particular that he was going to the garage to work on the Führer’s car which wasn’t running quite right. Schlegel suspected that tinkering with cars was about Maurice’s natural level – that and violence – and everything since was a sinecure. He watched Maurice stumble off then he got up and motioned for Anna Huber to follow him onto what he presumed was a terrace. He held open the door and stepped after her ghostly silhouette into the milky opaqueness.
She asked where he had gone with Fegelein and Emil Maurice. Schlegel said Fegelein had got it wrong thinking he had the confession.
The fog was like embalming fluid.
‘Why are you here?’ Schlegel asked.
‘I am in the process of being dumped by Hermann. He likes to show off his assets, me to his wife and her to me. But the sister-in-law has read the riot act.’
‘Why?’
‘Fräulein Braun found letters I wrote that Hermann left lying around. She is a terrific snooper and Hermann is careless. Anyway, she is jealous because her sister is married and she is not, and for all her elevation she is as trapped as the niece she despised.’
‘Despised?’
‘Because she was everything she is not. Spontaneous. Impetuous. Probably good in bed.’
Schlegel supposed Huber was better in bed than he was. Distracted by her unsettling presence, he struggled to the point, saying, ‘I believe you have something that is supposed to be for me.’
She shook her head as if to say she didn’t know what he was on about.
‘I saw your brother give it to you. Now give it to me.’
She stood there undecided, until he said, ‘Or I tell Fegelein, who will probably not be so polite. I expect he can be nasty to women.’
Anna Huber rattily said, ‘Oh, have it your way then.’
She took an envelope from her jacket and thrust it angrily into his hands just as Fegelein called for her from inside. After telling him where she was, he came out and upon seeing them asked suspiciously, ‘What are you two whispering about?’
‘Talking about our love lives,’ Anna Huber said tartly.
Schlegel stood with his hands behind his back, holding the envelope, which from the feel of it had a wax seal to stop it from being unofficially opened.
‘Breakfast. Eggs Benedict,’ Fegelein announced.
*
Schlegel stabbed his egg yolk and thought he might heave. Breakfast was courtesy of the two thugs, another surprise, who stood basking in Fräulein Braun’s praise.
‘These really are very good,’ she said and asked where they had learned to cook. The cadaver had been a chef at Hecker’s Deele in Berlin before the war.
Fräulein Braun approved. ‘Good hearty fare. Sauerkraut. Knuckle of pork.’ She looked at the fat one. ‘And you?’
‘Catering corps.’
‘Bravo. Come and work for us. We’re lucky to have you. I gave the kitchen staff time off, not expecting this impromptu gathering.’
Schlegel saw she was doing her best, like a good little hausfrau, to reassert domestic order after the previous night’s debacle. Best manners, properly laid table, which she had done herself. She played the good hostess to indifferent guests. Fegelein’s eyes looked yellow. The bruise was coming along nicely. He had put it about that he had walked into a door after one too many and announced himself pleased as it made him look piratical. For Schlegel it was a nasty reminder of whatever Fegelein might be cooking up in revenge.
His wife complained of a crashing hangover. An unpleasant scene followed when Fegelein mixed two raw eggs and whisky, one for him, the other which he forced her to drink when she didn’t want to. Fräulein Braun tried to intervene, saying she needn’t. Fegelein said sweetly, ‘I know what’s best for Frau Fegelein.’ It was a battle for property: sister or wife. Fegelein won, his face set as he watched his wife swallow the mixture before running gagging from the room.
Fräulein Braun said, ‘Hermann, that wasn’t necessary.’
Fegelein swatted the remark aside. ‘She shouldn’t drink so much. Not becoming in a woman.’
Anna Huber concentrated on her plate of food as if her whole world were reduced to that, eating birdlike portions. She avoided Schlegel’s eye.
Feglein asked, ‘Where’s Bobby? We’ll need him.’
Nobody knew.
‘Gone walkabout?’ asked Fegelein, who seemed amused by the idea. ‘Ah, look who’s here,’ he said getting up.
*
Morgen and Tieck were shown in by the fat thug. Everyone politely ignored that Morgen’s clothes were covered in blood. Fegelein greeted them like long-lost friends. Fräulein Braun laid two extra places and showed them to their seats. For a few minutes the scene was like a normal breakfast. The coffee was praised. Fegelein asked what had kept them.
Tieck recounted the adventure of their journey.
‘I didn’t know a stag could scream. Like nothing you have heard in your life. A miracle we weren’t speared by its antlers. How was your evening?’
‘Grand,’ said Fegelein. ‘Well, so-so actually.’ He looked at Morgen. ‘That explains why he looks like he has just come from an abattoir.’
Tieck regarded the room with hooded eyes while Fegelein bided his time and Fräulein Braun prattled on. Her sister slipped back into the room, deathly pale. Anna Huber appeared disconcerted by the arrival of Tieck. Schlegel was uncomfortably aware of sharing a table with a stranger who was his father; of the envelope and the book in his pocket; and his unwillingness to do the man any favours.
With breakfast done, Fräulein Braun organised the washing-up rota, using her authority to designate Fegelein and Tieck to do the dishes and Anna Huber and Schlegel to dry. Fegelein joined in the spirit of things, stripping down to shirt and braces, and rolling up his sleeves, cheerfully taking control, telling Tieck to pass the dishes for him to wash while the others dried. He put too much soap in the water and the suds rose in a soft white mound above the level of the sink. He changed his mind about Anna Huber drying and told her to rinse the plates after he had washed them.
‘New to me but my wife insists. Do you rinse?’
‘Generally, yes,’ said Huber.
Fegelein turned to Schlegel and said, ‘It must be a woman’s thing.’
Schlegel sensed Huber’s nerves as Fegelein carried on casually. ‘Now, there’s something we all want, but the question is who has it? Young Schlegel here was meant to but he isn’t a good enough liar to pretend he hasn’t.’
Huber made a fair show of incomprehension. ‘What are you on about, Hermann?’
Fegelein, seeming in even more of a good mood, turned to Tieck. ‘You’re keeping very quiet. Perhaps you’ve hung on to it all along. But then again if you knew where it was you wouldn’t be here.’
Anna Huber held her line. ‘Somebody please tell me what you’re all talking about.’
Fegelein said, ‘Get your handbag, there’s a doll, that way I might know what I am talking about.’
‘She doesn’t have it,’ said Schlegel, trying to decide whether he was being chivalrous. ‘I do.’
Fegelein stared in feigned admiration. ‘Perhaps you are a better liar than I gave you credit.’ He held out his hand for the envelope.
‘Fuck the washing up,’ he said.
*
Morgen, excused kitchen duties, found himself the captive audience of the Braun sisters, who insisted on getting out their photograph albums to show endless snapshots of Berghof parties and distinguished guests in happier days. The fog hadn’t lifted. Fräulein Braun said i
t sometimes came down for days on end.
‘It’s a pity you can’t see anything. The view really is paradise. Look,’ she said, pointing at the album. ‘There’s Minister Speer. So tall and handsome.’
‘The wife’s an old bag,’ chipped in the sister.
Fräulein Braun came back with, ‘Most of them are with the exception of you and Magda Goebbels.’
The sister turned to Morgen. ‘Magda had a huge crush on the Führer.’
‘Gerda Bormann can be quite pretty,’ conceded Fräulein Braun.
‘But a bit of a mooncalf and she pops out another sprog every nine months. How many now?’
‘Lord knows. Eight, nine?’ Fräulein Braun addressed Morgen. ‘What is going on here? Everyone is behaving very strangely and who’s that revolting man with the stick?’
‘Horse trading, I would say. They’re all interested in the same thing.’
Fräulein Braun looked up and said, ‘Oh, Bobby, there you are. Too late for breakfast.’
Morgen did a double take at the extraordinary sight of this strange Führer presence who appeared to have slept in his clothes and was being addressed as though he were a toy.
Fräulein Braun said to Morgen, ‘I want everyone to leave by lunchtime, before not after. I think our hospitality has been sufficiently extended. I am putting you in charge of making that clear to everyone.’
She was the only one who looked like she had made an effort, wearing a twinset and pearls, the face discreetly and immaculately painted on. The sister looked awful. Fräulein Braun produced liver salts, which she mixed with mineral water in a crystal glass taken from a sideboard.
‘We have only Fachinger in the house,’ she said to Morgen, offering him a glass, which Morgen accepted.
Fräulein Braun went on, ‘Fachinger is the premium brand for wellbeing, health, wellness, beauty and mental performance.’
Her sister interrupted. ‘You’re just saying that because it’s not owned by the SS.’
‘No, I honestly believe it.’
Morgen, stunned by the surreal banality of the women, found himself inexplicably chipping in with, ‘I think it’s not widely known that the SS owns quite a lot of mineral water companies. But Fachinger?’