The Perfect Corpse

by Giles Milton

  He stopped talking, looked at each of them in turn. He wasn’t getting through.

  ‘Why did they kill the villagers of Dyakova? Random? No. It was because they were sheltering partisans. Same goes for the inhabitants of Vyazma. And why did they kill Jews? Not random at all. They killed them because they were Jews. It was all part of a chillingly rational plan. They killed gypsies because they were gypsies. And handicapped people cos they were handicapped. I can tell you one thing for sure, there’s a reason why he killed Ashton Brookner.’

  He drained his glass.

  ‘I just don’t know what it is.’

  TWENTY-TWO

  Karen took the overnight train from Berlin to Munich, then hired a car and headed for Murnau. The road south was busy. Trucks, vans, holidaymakers, all tail-gaiting out of Munich and heading for the Bavarian Alps. The truck in front was Romanian.

  She stared blankly at the baked landscape. Bleached corn stubble and sunflower fields. It was flat, monotonous, hot. But once she’d passed Penzburg, the land started to fold in on itself. Slopes contoured into hills, woods darkened to forest. It was fairy tale land, all bears and wolves. Even the houses were storybook. Gables and thatch with painted pink facades.

  She stopped for a coffee and pretzel at Obersöchering. The air was spiked with freshness, like breathing through mint. It was the first clue that somewhere to the south, beyond the Zugspitze, lay glaciers and high altitude snow.

  It took her another hour to reach Murnau, baroque, folksy and quaint. It was market day and the main street was filled with shoppers and stalls. Striped awnings sliced shadows across the heaps of onions, potatoes and tubs of picked gherkins.

  The nursing home, Sonnenhof, stood on the eastern edge of town. It had the air of having been dumped in the wrong town, in the wrong century. Nineteen seventies, with two storeys of concrete and sheets of glass in between. The garden was filled with hydrangeas, all blue and pink. Old people’s plants.

  She pushed the main glass door and stepped into an entrance area lit with sunshine. A janitor was polishing the dark melamine floor to a high sheen. Hanging over the reception desk was a plastic sign in red and gold. Herzlich Wilkommen.

  Karin strolled up to the desk, thinking about what to say. The duty nurse, Frau Götte, contrived a smile.

  ‘You’ve come to see - ?’

  Karin explained who she was, what she was doing. She said she was hoping to have a few words with Frau Trautwein.

  ‘Ah, you’re the one that phoned? From Berlin, wasn’t it? Sigrid was telling us last night.’

  Karin made an apologetic face, like, sorry, she shouldn’t have come. Then she hesitated for a second, unsure how to continue.

  ‘Sigrid’s rather strict about visitors,’ said Frau Götte. ‘More than the rest of us, I have to say. And when she heard the word lebensborn -’

  She emitted a peculiar sound, half-way between a sigh and a groan. Then her voice dipped to a conspiratorial whisper.

  ‘I must say it surprised us all. Set us chattering all evening. We only know what they tell us. First time we knew Frau Trautwein had anything to do with lebensborn.’

  There was a pause before she continued.

  ‘Sigrid was very much against you coming. But -’

  She rubbed her hand across the spotless surface of the counter in front of her, as if wiping away imaginary dust.

  ‘I’ll share something with you. She’s not working this morning, it’s my shift, see, and my personal view is that these things don’t do any harm.’

  These things. Karin smiled.

  ‘They love talking about the past. Stimulates the mind. And if I’m honest it’s got me intrigued. But you’ll have to go gently, gently.’

  She paused again.

  ‘That’s her. Over there.’

  She pointed to a day room, all glass and plants. Sunshine was pumping hard from outside, the light falling across the floor in sharp triangles.

  ‘Sitting in the corner.’

  Karin looked. Frau Trautwein was in a high-backed armchair, nineteen-fifties style, the caricature of an old lady. Fragile as china and hair like snow.

  ‘Eighty-nine. Our second oldest.’

  Karin hesitated.

  ‘And you’ll introduce us?’

  Frau Götte nodded.

  ‘But -’ pause - ‘you need to know the problem. She was taken ill last spring. Thought we were going to lose her. Stroke. Diabetes. My word, everything. And ever since her mind’s been wandering. Gets mixed up. Very confused at times. My fear is, she won’t understand who you are. Or why you’ve come.’

  She wiped the counter again.

  ‘I don’t mind introducing you. But you must be careful not to upset her. Sigrid will explode if she finds out and then we’ll never hear the end of it.’

  She called to a colleague and asked her to cover the front desk.

  ‘Come. Follow me.’

  The day room was oven-hot and when Karin breathed in she smelled the biscuit-like smell of old people. Two lady residents were watching a quiz show on television, maximum volume. Frau Trautwein was looking through a glossy garden magazine. Karin glanced at the cover. Bayern in Blűte.

  ‘Frau Trautwein - ?’

  Frau Götte tapped her shoulder lightly then spoke into her ear. ‘You’ve got a visitor.’

  She looked up, smiled. Her face was radiant.

  ‘For me?’

  ‘Yes. From Berlin.’

  Frau Trautwein extended her hand to Karin, smiled again. A frail hand, all bones and blue veins, yet the tips of the fingers were beautifully tapered, like those of a young woman. Karin looked closely at her face. She must been beautiful in her youth.

  ‘Hello my dear.’ She spoke softly, with a pronounced lilt. ‘Lovely of you to come again.’

  Frau Götte looked towards Karin, frowning. ‘She’s confused, see. I’ll do my best to explain who you are.’

  Karin kept her eyes on the old lady’s face, seeking any hint of understanding.

  ‘This lady, Karin, is hoping to ask you some questions.’

  ‘Good, good -’

  Frau Trautwein turned once again to Karin, smiled.

  ‘How are the children? Of course I know it’s hard for them to come. They all lead such busy lives these days. But they do try and come at least once a week. I had Sabine here only the other day. She brought cake and chocolates. And some flowers. Such lovely flowers.’

  Frau Götte turned back to Karin and spoke in a confiding sort of voice. ‘See the problem? She’s getting you mixed up with I don’t know who.’

  ‘Let me talk to her,’ said Karin. ‘Give me one minute.’

  She positioned herself very close to Frau Trautwein and kept silent for a moment as she thought how to begin. Then she started to speak in loud, clear German.

  ‘I’m making a film about the war. About what life was like back then. I was wanting to try and wind back the clock. Go back to your childhood.’

  She paused for a second. Frau Trautwein was nodding and seemed to understand.

  ‘It’s nineteen-forty-three. You’re eighteen. Eighteen years of age. The war’s going badly, of course, but the Führer still speaks of victory. Even after Stalingrad he speaks of victory. And you - a beautiful young fräulein - you wanted to do something, play your part.

  ‘Remember how you loved to dress in the blue and white uniform of the Bund Deutscher Mädel? The white blouse and the navy skirt. The neckerchief that you all wore like a badge of honour.

  ‘And then there were the vows, the slogans. “Hitler is Germany and Germany is Hitler.” Wasn’t that one of them? “To be one nation is the religion of our time.” You all used to shout it at the meetings you went to. “Anything that undermines our unity must go on the pyre.”

  ‘And the songs. The theatricals. The bonfires to celebrate the summer solstice. “Young nation step forwards, for your hour has come.” The future belonged to you. It really did.’

  She paused.

  ‘An
d there was Lebensborn.’

  Lebensborn.

  The word had a dramatic effect on Frau Trautwein. It was as if the fog had been burned away by the sun, revealing a whole new landscape underneath. Thoughts of non-existent children, of the visit of Sabine, of cake and chocolate, all fell away like scales. Frau Trautwein was eighteen again, a fresh-faced maiden with the Bund Deutscher Mädel, dressed proudly in white and blue. She was back in a schoolroom packed with her girlfriends and they were all being addressed by a stern looking lady in her late forties.

  ‘Yes, yes.’ Her voice was weak. ‘Yes. Nineteen-forty-three.’

  She paused for a moment as the scene turned vividly real, almost seven decades after the original. And then she started to speak.

  ‘Yes, we thought it funny at first, and why shouldn’t we? We were only girls. And innocent ones at that. Not like today’s ones clad in their trousers and what-not. And then this lady came. Rather ferocious we thought her. Addressed us and started telling us we should consider giving a child to the Führer.

  ‘Of course we didn’t know what she meant at first. Give a child to the Führer! It didn’t make any sense at all. But then she explained. Told us we’d be taken to a place of luxury, like a smart hotel. Given the best food. Fancy rooms. And then we’d meet the men. Good looking men, too. Men who looked like Heinrich Schroth. We all laughed when she told us they’d be the best looking men we’d ever seen. I think we were all a little embarrassed.’

  There was a pause and then Karin encouraged her to continue.

  ‘We all chatted about it afterwards. It was all we talked about. Some of us rather liked the idea. But most thought it was immoral. It seemed so very strange. You see for the previous three years, more, we’d been taught how to be good hausfrau. Dutiful wives. Running the household and bringing up the little ones. And now we were being told to have a relationship with men before we were married. We were being told to have a child for the Führer.’

  ‘So what happened next?’

  ‘Sorry dear - ?’

  Karin kicked herself. She mustn’t interrupt. Frau Trautwein needed to relive her thoughts by herself.

  ‘Yes, a child for the Führer. I couldn’t help thinking it all sounded terribly exciting. You do at that age, of course. Eighteen and never been kissed. So we made a pact, three of us. Eva, Anna and me. We decided to say yes. We contacted the woman by telephone, I think it was, and then one day a car came to pick us up.

  ‘I only had my father at that time because Mutti was dead. Horrified by the whole thing he was. He didn’t even like me being part of the Bund Deutsche Mädel. But what could he say? They’d have taken him away if he’d tried to say no.’

  Frau Götte glanced at Karin. Their eyes met briefly.

  ‘They came for us in a car. Big black shiny thing it was. Oh, they had lovely cars in those days. I’d never been in anything quite like it. Chauffeur with cap. All leather and walnut inside. I can smell it even now. Leather and walnuts. And we were given tangerines. It was close to Christmas, see. They liked to give us tangerines.

  ‘My goodness dear it was quite a drive. And there was a gatehouse. Soldiers on guard. Of course there were soldiers everywhere in those days. All very smart. Good looking young ones. They had the finest uniforms. Very well turned out. And lots of snow. Yes, there was so much snow that year. It did nothing but snow and snow.

  ‘We were ushered inside. It was -’

  She paused as she searched out the memories.

  ‘Yes, we had forms to fill out. That was it. They bought us forms. Medical ones. They wanted to know so many things. Oh my dear it was such silly things. Did we have illnesses in the family? Tuberculosis? Syphilis? Well you can imagine we all had a good laugh at that. Syphilis! I mean, I’d never even been kissed. And our families, that was it. Parents. Grandparents. Great grandparents. They wanted to know everything about us.

  ‘And d’you know the lady was quite right about the food. Here it was, wartime, and not much meat to be had. Yet we were given schnitzel and great bowls of soup. It never seemed to end. Syrup made from elderberries. It was lovely that syrup. I like elderberries, see. I’ve always liked elderberries ever since I was tiny and we picked them by the Walchensee. And then one day they called us all together and told us that the results had come back and that they were all very good and that we must now begin our work.

  ‘We were all a little nervous. Eva, Anna and I. I mean, I’d never even been kissed. We had the best rooms. Clean linen sheets. A bed so big. I’d never slept in such a bed. My bed at home was no wider than a door. And so much food, of course. Great bowls of soup. And it was strange. I remember lying in that bed and there was the Führer hung on the wall and he was staring down at me. He looked rather stern. He was stern, of course. We’d listen to his speeches on our old Empfänger and he always sounded angry. And I was lying there thinking to myself, “I’m doing all of this just for you.”’

  She paused for a moment, placed her magazine on the table in front of her.

  Karin looked at her. Please don’t stop.

  ‘The first one they sent to my room was tremendously good looking. Just like the lady had said. Bit stupid, I think. Didn’t say much. But a fine face. He was a rough one and I had to keep my eyes firmly on the Führer. Still wasn’t sure if what I was doing was right. We all chatted together later that evening. Eva and Anna came into my room. Eva still thought it was wonderful but Anna had doubts like me.’

  She paused as the door to the day room opened. One of the helpers wheeled in a trolley piled high with cups of coffee. She served the two ladies watching television then wheeled the trolley over to Frau Trautwein’s armchair. It clinked and clattered as it approached.

  Not now. Please not now.

  ‘Frau Trautwein. Coffee? Biscuit?’

  Frau Trautwein looked at the lady, pointed a bony finger at the coffee jug. The helper poured it into the cup then offered some to Karin. She shook her head.

  ‘And then?’ asked Karin when the trolley woman had left. She was anxious to resume the story.

  ‘What’s that, my dear?’ said Frau Trautwein, her eyes cloudy and confused. She held out her hand and clasped Karin. ‘It’s so good of you to come again. Sabine makes it so rarely these days you see.’

  *

  She drove south for half an hour, through valleys scooped from the landscape like deep green bowls. Giant cow parsley fringed the steeply climbing road and the trees were charged with purple plums. The ripest had already fallen and were squashed into the road like road-kill. Meadows, baroque domes and spires. Hansel and Gretel traipsing through the forest.

  The mountains, foreshortened by perspective, had become a single mass of rock that brought the green landscape to an abrupt halt. The Zugspitze, Schneefemerkopf and the others whose names she didn’t know. They rose like a wall from the steeply rolling pastures.

  She continued for another five miles until she came to a sign pointing up a sharp incline. Schloss Hohenstein: 3km.

  Karin shifted down to second gear and swung right into a single track lane. There was grit under the tyres. The lane lurched upwards in a coil of switchback bends until it was swallowed by the purple-grey shadow of the mountains. She hoped there was nothing on its way down.

  There was a sudden chill to the air and the clean sky was now under threat from a billow of clouds. She shivered, wound up the window. The high pastures roughened and faltered as the slopes grew steeper then disappeared completely and were replaced by near vertical cascades of mountain scree.

  Each bend in the road seemed to close the vista rather than open it. She’d left the sunshine down in the valleys below. Now she was dodging through cold shadow. Another steep corner, this time hacked from the bedrock and then she swung through one-hundred-and-eighty degrees. A giant cinematic screen unfurled before her, all cliffs and overhangs.

  ‘Wow!’

  She braked hard as she looked towards a near-vertical pinnacle of rock. From its fractured summit, a sheer ret
aining wall rose some thirty metres into the sky. Its top spouted chimneys, towers and spires. Hohenstein Castle.

  At first glance there seemed to be no way up, unless by rope and basket. But when she looked more carefully she could see a faint dark line scoured into the rock. Another five minutes brought her to the beginning of the steepest section of track. It wound around the pinnacle like a corkscrew and eventually led underneath a high stone arch. She found herself entering an enclosed square courtyard that doubled as a car park. On three sides it was encircled by thick stone walls, the remains of a medieval redoubt. The fourth wall had two small windows and a vast double door. The visitor entrance.

  Karin cut the engine and opened the car door. She inhaled deeply, savouring the pure air. It was fresher than in the valleys below.

  She paused for a moment at the information panel by the entrance and read what it said.

  ‘The first mention of Schloss Hohenstein is in 1180, when the surrounding land came under the control of the fiefdom of the Wittelsbach family, Counts Palatinate of Schyrein. Count Rupert Wittelsbach built the white tower, the oldest surviving part of the castle, in order to control the mountain pass.’

  The castle had played its role in the War of Succession, supporting the Duke of Bavaria-Landshut. It had been involved in the Thirty Years War, under the Auenbrugger dynasty.

  The twentieth century was glossed in a single sentence. ‘Schloss Hohenstein served as a garrison training centre during the Third Reich. In 1948 it was restored to the Auenbrugger family, in whose possession the castle has been since the early seventeenth century.’

  Karin’s eyes switched to a smaller panel giving practical information about the place.

  Visitor Hours: May-September, 9.30-16.30.

  October-April, by appointment only.

  Admission: Adults, 8 euros, children, 3 euros.

  Family ticket, 20 euros.

  Guided tours at 10.30, 13.30 and 15.00.

  She walked over to the entrance door, pushed it hard and stepped inside the hall. The medieval gloom smelled of wood smoke. A shaft of light pierced through one of the high windows, dissecting the dust in a faint golden beam. The only other light came from a desk lamp at the ticket desk.