‘A toast, Nehmann.’ He smiled. ‘To Providence.’
‘Providence? This is where the message came from?’
‘Indeed. Our people are primitive. With a little of the right kind of help, Nehmann, they believe in the sublime. They acknowledge a higher calling. In a setting like this, words fail us. Even you, Nehmann, even you with all your gifts might be challenged. Is it a deity we reach out to? A god? Or should we simply be grateful that he’s taken human form and moves among us?’
Nehmann held his gaze, appalled. Madness, he thought.
‘You’re talking about Hitler?’
‘About the Führer, Nehmann. About the voice of Providence.’
‘And that will take care of Stalingrad?’
‘Of course, Nehmann. And of everything that follows. I’ve known it since the early days. Our apostle of truth, Nehmann, our helmsman, our voice in battle, our exemplar, our Leader. In two days’ time he will launch the Winter Appeal in the Sportpalast. It will be an opportunity, Nehmann, for the nation to draw its breath and check its bearings. Do we need clothing? Sturdy boots? Woollen greatcoats? Of course, we do. But we need something else, Nehmann, infinitely more precious. We need faith, a shared belief in our destiny.’ He got up and stepped behind the desk. From a drawer, he produced a handful of typed sheets. ‘The first draft, Nehmann. That’s why I’ve called you back. I want you to be the first to read it. I need your thoughts, your opinions. Then, together, we can start work on the second draft and – if need be – the third. The Führer will have a day or so to make his own mark. He may decide to rip the whole thing up. He might want to make a fresh start. But something tells me that won’t be the case. Listen, Nehmann. Bear witness. Be with us when we conquer our demons.’
His body shifted slightly behind the desk, a tiny movement that Nehmann only remembered later, and then, through the still-open door, came piano chords from somewhere deep in the house, sombre at first, then more playful, teasing out this first theme before exploding in a wild cascade of notes. Nehmann listened, spellbound. Beethoven, he thought. The sonata Maria called the Pathétique.
‘Go and find her, Nehmann.’ Goebbels gestured towards the door. ‘Reintroduce yourself. Make yourself known. Enjoy…’
Nehmann left the study. Another passage led deeper into the house. The music was growing louder and louder, the playing as deft and delicate as ever, and finally he came to another door, likewise open, and he pushed softly, making no noise, no disturbance, as the music built to a crescendo and then died.
This was the far end of the big dining room. There was a mirror on the wall and Maria had watched the door opening. She got to her feet and stepped across to him. She was wearing an embroidered waistcoat over the same blue skirt he remembered from that final Sunday when they were to take a boat and sail away across the Wannsee.
He kissed her, held her, ran his fingers through her hair, kissed her again. Then he nodded towards the piano.
‘Don’t stop,’ he murmured. ‘Play the rest for me.’
They rejoined Goebbels half an hour later. He was still in his study, bent over the speech Hitler was to make in the Sportpalast. He barely lifted his head as Nehmann appeared at the door.
‘The car’s still outside.’ He gestured at the draft speech. ‘Come to the Ministry tomorrow.’
Nehmann nodded. He had one question.
‘The article,’ he said. ‘On the pillow.’
A frown briefly clouded Goebbels’ face. He seemed to have forgotten about the death at Montparnasse. Then he looked up.
‘It was Guramishvili, Nehmann, that friend of yours. I understand he upset some of those French swine. If it’s any consolation that apartment of his belongs to us now. Consider yourself our guest, eh?’
*
The driver took them back to the Wilhelmstrasse. Nehmann and Maria sat in the back of the big Mercedes. He held her close, his hand in hers, her head on his shoulder, saying very little, knowing that whatever passed between them would find its way back to the Promi.
He still didn’t quite believe that Guram – so enterprising, so clever, so aware – could have found himself under a train in the Paris Metro. Georgians knew how to look after themselves. They recognised the smell of danger. Emptying French cellars of countless cases of fine vintage wine would never have endeared him to the Resistance but Guram would have known that from the start. So, if he was really dead, there had to be another explanation.
Did it involve Goebbels? Was this scrap of newsprint yet another piece of theatre he’d conjured out of thin air? Did it serve his purposes to gradually, item by item, strip Werner Nehmann of everything he held dear? First the woman he loved? Next, his oldest friend? And now the apartment he’d dared to call home?
Nehmann didn’t know, could never be sure, and what made this bombshell so especially painful was the knowledge that he and his master were fellow practitioners in the same dark arts. What was true, and what was false? Was Guram really dead? And if not, would he – Werner Nehmann – ever be certain where the truth lay?
The truth.
He and Maria were back in the apartment. It wasn’t late, barely ten o’clock, but Nehmann had opened one of Guram’s few remaining bottles and taken it to bed. She lay in his arms. He was right about the broadcast he’d heard on the radio. She hadn’t set foot in Austria. The whole interview had taken place not in the Promi, as Nehmann had suspected, but in another facility in the Ufa studios across the city.
‘And that village of yours? Down near the border?’
‘A fiction. It exists, of course, but not in my life.’
‘You’re really from Warsaw?’
‘I am.’
‘And your name?’
‘Maria. It’s on my ID. I can prove it.’
‘Your family name?’
‘Gaetani.’
‘So who gave you the ID? Who sorted out your papers?’
‘Goebbels, of course.’
‘And you’re happy being Maria Gaetani?’
‘Of course. She was my idea from the start. Szarlota Kowalczyk would have put me in a camp.’
‘Like your mother?’
‘Yes.’
‘You saw that coming?’
‘My father did. He gave me the new name, the Austrian village, everything. He got me out, too. He taught music at the university in Warsaw, but I think he really wanted to be a novelist. He told a good story when he’d had enough to drink and when it came to this one, he put me in the middle of it. I saw him last week. He’s an old man now. What happened to my mother broke him.’
‘The Nazis broke him. We broke him.’
‘Not you, Werner.’
‘How can you say that? I work for these people. I tell lies for them every day. I make all that shit of theirs smell sweeter.’
‘No.’ She moistened a fingertip and traced the shape of a heart across the bareness of his chest. ‘You belong to no one. I knew that from the start. No one.’
‘I belong to you.’
‘You think you do. For now.’ She laughed softly.
‘Forever,’ he insisted.
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘You’re a beautiful man and I’d like to think you’re my beautiful man but if there’s one thing this war teaches you, this city maybe, certainly this life of ours, is never make assumptions. Assumptions bring nothing but grief. Do you believe me? Do I sound Georgian enough? All you have to say is yes.’
‘Yes.’
Her face was very close. Nehmann kissed her, told her he couldn’t help himself. Whatever the word meant, he loved her.
‘That’s nice.’
‘That’s everything. Believe me. Without it, without you, here, you, me, us, there’s nothing. Ask Goebbels. He knows.’
‘The man’s so lonely. And it shows. He’s been kind to me, believe it or not, and I appreciate that.’
‘Because he’s made you famous?’
‘Because he’s been honest with me. I haven’t got the talent he needs, not
to get to concert standard.’
‘That’s not the purpose you serve.’
‘I know. He’s honest about that, too. That’s why he brought me out to Bodensee this afternoon, had the piano installed, and the buzzer thing, too.’
‘Buzzer thing?’
‘The button under his desk. It rings a buzzer in that huge reception room. It told me when to start playing.’
Nehmann nodded. He remembered Goebbels seated behind his desk, the spell that Hitler still cast on him, and then that tiny moment when he’d delivered his speech, appeased the gods of Providence and pressed the buzzer with his knee. So theatrical. So perfectly contrived. No wonder the man was fascinated by the movie business.
‘He says you’ve got a letter of his.’ Maria had abandoned the love heart on Nehmann’s chest.
‘He’s right.’ Nehmann nodded.
‘What sort of letter?’
‘It’s a letter he wrote recently to Baarova. She was his mistress once.’
‘I know. He talks of no one else. Why you? Why have you got the letter?’
‘He asked me to take it to her. In Rome.’
‘And?’
‘I failed. The letter is deeply compromising. This is a man the Führer has ordered to be in love with his wife. The letter suggests he doesn’t obey orders. That’s a capital offence in this city.’
‘You’ve read it? The letter?’
‘Of course, I’ve read it. At Goebbels’ level you’d never survive by playing the rules.’
‘And?’ She was up on one elbow now, hungry for more.
Nehmann kissed her again, said it didn’t matter. Just here, just now, there were more interesting things to do than discuss Goebbels’ love life.
‘Tell me.’ She pushed him gently away. ‘Just tell me what’s in the letter. Is it passionate?’
‘Of course.’
‘Romantic?’
‘Very.’
‘Undying love?’
‘Definitely.’
‘And does he mean it?’
‘I don’t know, and that’s the point because I don’t think he does either. If you want the truth, the letter is pathetic. It’s not about love at all. It’s about loneliness, about lostness, about need. In the hands of his enemies, it would kill him. That’s why he wants it back so badly. It’s like I have a gun, pointed at his head. Goebbels can’t live with that. No man could.’
‘Kill him?’
‘In here’ – Nehmann took her open hand and placed it over his heart – ‘where it matters.’
Maria nodded. She seemed to understand.
‘So where is it?’ she said at last. ‘This letter?’
Nehmann looked at her for a long moment, and then smiled.
‘There’s a water tank on the roof,’ he murmured. ‘If anything happens to me, look underneath.’
They made love. In the middle of the night, Nehmann awoke. Maria’s face hung over him, concerned, even fretful.
‘And the East?’ she said. ‘Stalingrad?’
Still groggy, Nehmann thought about the question.
‘Horrible,’ he managed at last, closing his eyes again.
26
BERLIN SPORTPALAST, WEDNESDAY 30 SEPTEMBER 1942
Nehmann had never liked the Sportpalast. Recently, talking to Schultz in Stalingrad, he’d likened it to something you’d find in Goebbels’ kitchen. It was a cooking pot, he said. It was a favourite utensil you’d fetch out for those special occasions when you wanted to whip up something irresistible to keep everyone happy. You put together the recipe from what you knew and trusted. A little of that intimate frenzy from the Bürgerbräukeller days in Munich. Plus a huge helping of spectacle and mass adoration from the Zeppelinfeld at Nuremberg: hanging banners, roving spotlights and a sound system that would put Hitler’s rasp and Goebbels’ chest-thumping roar into every German heart. When the national pulse showed signs of faltering, a couple of deafening hours in the Sportpalast always did the trick.
The trick.
Nehmann had spent the best part of an entire morning with Goebbels in the ministerial office, going through the first draft of the speech line by line. It was about the war in the east. At first, foolishly, he’d assumed he was there as an act of reconciliation. For the sake of the Promi’s credibility, he told himself, Goebbels needed to find a compromise between the usual torrent of visionary drivel and the smaller truths about what was really happening in Stalingrad.
Wrong. The Minister’s starting point turned out to be the way the British had consistently managed to turn defeats into victories. First at Dunkirk, and more recently after the botched attempt to land a force of Canadians to create mayhem at Dieppe, London had refused to be humiliated. On both occasions, as Goebbels knew only too well, German forces had chased the Allied troops back into the sea, and yet London had somehow managed to repackage both events as magnificent examples of pluck and resilience against impossible odds. Nehmann was already aware of Hitler’s quiet admiration for the British. What came as a surprise was Goebbels’ envy of their propaganda talents.
‘Stalingrad’s a mess,’ he’d told Nehmann yesterday. ‘So far this war has been too kind to us. We need to take a lesson from the British.’
And so the draft was written, and rewritten, and Goebbels prevailed upon Nehmann to add a little of his trademark lustre to lift the speech where it was in danger of sagging. Nehmann did his best to retain a cautionary note or two about the unexpected depth of Soviet resources but was ignored. In late afternoon, the most senior of the secretaries in the outer office typed up the final version which was hand-delivered to the Chancellery. Would the Leader take the slightest notice of any of this? Probably not but – as Goebbels was the first to point out – it paid to keep a finger in the Führer-pie. If the demanded note of triumph was misplaced, so be it. No one prospered in this regime by telling the truth.
Hitler, to Goebbels’ considerable relief, appeared to be on form. A week or so ago he’d received a personal note from the Führer’s operational headquarters in East Prussia. The handwriting, he told Nehmann, was that of an old man: scratchy, wayward, senescent. Now though, back in Berlin, he seemed buoyant and newly energised. The weather out at Rastenburg, Goebbels’ concluded, was bleak enough to put years on any man. Why should the Führer be exempt?
The Sportpalast was packed, an audience of thousands, all of them devotees of their adored Leader. Hitler stood at the rostrum, flanked left and right by Party chieftains, and beat the drum for the Fatherland’s military prowess, each savage chop of his hand tallying yet another triumph. German troops occupying the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk. German troops on the French Channel coast tossing the Canadians back into the sea. And now a German U-boat dropping mines in the busy sea lanes leading into Charleston, North Carolina, taking the war to the very edge of the vast American continent. Nowhere on earth, the Führer seemed to be saying, was safe from the reach of the Greater Reich.
Nehmann knew that much of this was old news. The winter, in reality, had been full of disappointments and the campaign in North Africa was going badly wrong but the vast audience didn’t care. They’d come to hear the Führer exultant, the Führer all-powerful, the Führer mocking the drunks and warmongers among the nation’s enemies, and he didn’t let them down. Churchill was a buffoon. Roosevelt sat in the lap of the Jews. The British lived on a thin diet of defeat after defeat, fooling themselves that a disaster like Dunkirk was somehow the path to victory. This was a line that had survived from the final Promi draft and Nehmann sat back, wondering whether Goebbels’ hunger for recognition, for some tiny crumb from the Führer’s table, had been satisfied.
But then Hitler turned his attention to the east where, he assured the doting multitudes, only time stood between the Fatherland and the untold riches of the Caspian basin. Army Group ‘A’, he promised, would thrust down through the Caucasus and cut the Soviets off from their precious oil. In the meantime, he roared, the battle for Stalingrad was virtually over. The city o
n the Volga, the diamond in Stalin’s crown, lay in German hands. He paused, mopping his face with a handkerchief, his body slightly bent as if he, too, had been part of this monumental feat of arms. Then he stiffened and looked out at the sea of faces. He wanted his people to celebrate. And he wanted to offer a guarantee. ‘If you can be sure of anything,’ he roared. ‘You can be sure of this. That no one will ever get us away from this place again!’
The auditorium erupted. Thousands were on their feet, their arms outstretched, bellowing the Führer’s name. Textbook Nuremberg, Nehmann thought, noting the broadness of the smile on Goebbels’ face.
Minutes later, after an appeal for clothing and other comforts to carry the nation’s warriors through the coming winter, the speech was over. The Führer departed, attended by his Minister for Propaganda who half turned and signalled for Nehmann to follow.
He caught up with them in a smallish anteroom behind the stage. Space was tight and Nehmann found himself beside Hitler. He was still perspiring after the speech and Nehmann caught the rank sourness that came in waves as he shifted his weight from foot to foot. It was a smell that would stay with Nehmann for the months to come, the smell – as he interpreted it – of a body in revolt, of a man taking leave of his senses, of the stench of megalomania seeping ever outwards.
Goebbels was on hand with a fresh handkerchief. He introduced Nehmann, who had never met the Führer before.
‘A colleague from the Ministry, Mein Führer,’ Goebbels said. ‘I think I mentioned him earlier.’
Hitler nodded. His eyes were still glazed, a man in a trance. Then he blinked and gave his forehead a final wipe with Goebbels’ handkerchief. He seemed to recognise Nehmann’s name.
‘Stalingrad, Nehmann. The Minister passed on your impressions. He told me how well we’re doing out there. I’m grateful. Keep up the good work, ja?’ His hand briefly fell on Nehmann’s shoulder. Then he was gone.
*
Maria had listened to the speech at the apartment. A car from the Ministry was already waiting at the kerbside, waiting to take her out to the airfield at Tempelhof. Goebbels had secured her a seat on one of the Führer Squadron’s Ju-52s. She was flying down to Munich where this evening she’d be playing at a special concert to launch the Winter Appeal in Bavaria.
Last Flight to Stalingrad Page 23
