Max

by Sarah Cohen-Scali

  As the ceremony was to be filmed for a short documentary, a crew was setting up in the Home all morning. Mother and I, the stars of the film—after the Führer, of course—had to do lots of rehearsals. A technical advisor explained to Mother exactly how she had to hold me in her arms so that my face would be angled towards the camera lights. She was shown precisely how she had to walk, her torso held straight, and the way to smile and greet the Führer, curtsey, etcetera. And I was kept busy, too. The cameraman was all over me, watching my every gesture, every funny little expression. He was supposed to catch me smiling: you know that innate, angelic smile babies have. He explained to Mother that he had to stockpile lots of my smiles, so that, if there was a problem during the filming, the director could adjust some of the shots in the editing. It was awkward in the beginning: the blinding camera lights annoyed me, and it’s not that easy to smile to order, especially in the middle of such commotion. But I think by the end he’d snapped a few pretty baby smiles.

  They also filmed a whole lot of different sketches: Mother changing my nappies, or feeding me, me gurgling happily, or sleeping peacefully. Modesty got the better of us a couple of times: Mother objected to any part of her breast being filmed; and I wasn’t that happy about having my dick, my bum and my dirty nappies on show. But through sheer determination and endurance we ended up doing it. Then they filmed in the main reception room: a close-up of the flowers, cakes, coffee, champagne, and a zoom of Mother walking in a dignified manner towards the Führer so he could hold me. Except that, for now, an ugly technician was standing in for the Führer.

  What an exhausting morning. After the midday feed, I slept deeply so I’d be in good shape for zero hour—which finally came.

  The guards opened the large metal gate at the entrance to the property and…gliding along the central driveway was the Führer’s private car.

  The Mercedes 770K. The only one in the world. Made to measure just for him. Let me describe in detail to you this jewel of modern technology. Length: 6 metres. Width: 2.20 metres. Motor: 8 cylinders, 400 horsepower with turbo-compressors. Dual ignition. Front and rear split hydraulic break systems. Armoured bodywork, special glass with ten layers of bulletproof bond on the windows, electromagnetic door-locking, puncture-proof tyres. A complete armoured fortress on wheels! In the back is a special raised seat, thirteen centimetres high, which can release a pedestal where the Führer stands during parades. It’s a black convertible. The Reich’s flag graces the bonnet of the car, to the left of the chauffeur. I hope one day some toy manufacturer comes up with the idea to design a miniature model of this car. I can already see myself playing with it when I’m older, pushing it along the floor. Vroom, vroom!

  The car behind is also a Mercedes, a more current model. Both vehicles park in front of the entrance. All the staff line up: Josefa at the head of the nursing team, Marina and the secretaries, the manager and his gardeners. Doctor Ebner, wearing his best SS uniform, opens the car door himself to greet the Führer. No sooner has our guest stepped onto the gravel than all the arms are raised: Heil! The Führer replies with a relaxed wave. Smiling, he gives Ebner a warm embrace, while the other guests get out of the second car and join them: Reichsführer SS Himmler, Max Sollmann (the director of the Lebensborn program, the one I mentioned before I was born), as well as Doctor Karl Brandt and his wife. Herr Brandt is the Führer’s personal doctor. His aim is to revamp modern medicine—and we represent such a very important part of the medicine of the future, so his presence today is indispensable. Apparently he’ll soon be promoted to the Reich’s High Commissioner of Health. His wife, Anni Rehborn, a champion swimmer for Germany, is a role model for German youth.

  The little group gathers. While Ebner gives a quick run-down on our establishment, the Führer surveys the grounds, then admires the building’s façade, lifting his gaze to the upper storeys. Our nursery is on the second floor, and it’s as if the Führer’s gaze travels through walls and settles on each of our bassinets. Obviously we can’t greet him outside like the rest of the staff, and neither can our mothers. Josefa instructed them to stay with us. Every mother has to stand up, ramrod straight, next to her baby’s bassinet. As for the missing mothers, the ones sent to munitions factories or ‘relocated’ (Bertha, Heidi, Gisela and a few others), actresses have been substituted for them.

  I don’t need to tell you that I can’t wait another second. I’m seething with impatience. And I can tell Mother is as nervous as hell, panic-stricken. She’s shaking, perspiring, and keeps glancing anxiously at the actress standing in for Heidi, next to Helmut’s bassinet. Something is wrong. Again. Pull yourself together! Come on, pull yourself together! The magic cord is still working at maximum capacity between us. But if Mother wavers, will I be able to save the day all by myself?

  A nurse is stationed discreetly at the window, relaying the happenings below to the mothers so they don’t miss a moment. The Führer is not in uniform, she tells them; he’s wearing black pants and a beige jacket with a swastika armband on the right sleeve. (The masculine version of Mother’s outfit, so they match in the film! What a good idea. That’s Herr Ebner’s attention to detail for you.) The nurse announces that the Führer is shaking hands with the staff and addressing a few kind words to each of them. Apparently Josefa is turning crimson and is almost apoplectic. It’s the first time she’s met the Führer in the flesh. She already goes into a trance whenever she hears him on the radio, so how will she survive this? Not to mention that if today doesn’t unfold exactly according to Doctor Ebner’s instructions off she goes to the munitions factory.

  The guests enter the Home. They are touring each room, one by one. The living rooms, the birthing rooms, the kitchens, the laboratory, until they finally reach the nursery.

  It takes a long time. Too long.

  The wait is unbearable, the tension is rising. One woman has left her post and heads to the window to powder her nose in the daylight, another claims to have a pressing need and charges to the toilets, a third decides on the spot to redo her bun. Women! Actually the babies are scarcely better: one has an attack of colic and is writhing in his bassinet, bawling for all he’s worth; another is hungry, his mother in a panic because she can’t breastfeed him while standing to attention. There he goes…Oh no, one baby has diarrhoea! That bitter, acidic smell. What a stink. Quick! Quick! Change him! Air the room! Let’s pray he doesn’t do it again in the next few minutes. Fortunately I did a perfectly shaped poo just after the midday feed, to be on the safe side…

  Now what’s up? The nurse who was providing the commentary on the Führer’s arrival has just realised that she forgot Josefa’s final instruction: to put the bassinets of the brown-skinned babies—Ebner keeps a few—in the third row, so that they aren’t in the camera’s field of vision. All hands on deck! She asks the mothers to help her redo the whole arrangement. In all the panic, they better not end up putting me with the brown-skinned babies.

  Here we go. Footsteps on the stairs to the nursery. The hammering of boots draws nearer. The wooden floor shudders. The door opens.

  Heil! shout the mothers and the nurses all together.

  The guests enter. The filming starts. The group examines the first row of bassinets. The Führer stops in front of one, then another. Handshake. Congratulations. Smile, baby! It’s nearly my turn. My little heart is pounding in time to the rhythm of the boots, thud thud thud. Mother keeps her hand on my belly, as if she is afraid I will fly away. Her hand is cold. Heavy. Oppressive. She’s stifling me. Hey! Take your hand off. That hurts! I can’t even scream to let her know. The pain is stopping me from giving my best smile, like I did this morning with the cameraman. I must look horrible.

  The boots have stopped. Phew! Mother has taken her hand off me to shake the Führer’s hand. He’s talking to her. Quietly, so quietly I can’t hear what he’s saying. His voice is not at all like it is on the radio. On the radio, he yells, his sentences are staccato, each word emphasised. Now it’s nothing like that. I can feel Mothe
r relaxing, and me along with her. Then Ebner hands my record book to the Führer, so he can see everything, from the genealogical tree of my parents to now, the details of my conception and birth. I feel like I’ve already lived a very long time because it takes him so long to read the pages. But suddenly a cluster of faces is leaning over me. Himmler, Ebner, Brandt, Frau Rehborn. Move aside! Come on, move aside! I can’t see my Führer! Brandt undoes the top of my romper suit to study my torso, then extends my legs and arms, and palpates my skull. Hey, guys, you’re not going to put me through a whole new selection process! I’m the star exhibit and you better not forget it! Next thing Frau Rehborn is smiling at me and tickling my feet. It’s unbearable. The faces all merge together in a sort of swaying motion and I feel dizzy.

  Then someone lifts me up really high. I feel like I’m in an aeroplane, my insides churning. I feel sick. Then off we go, down again, as rough as the ascent. My heart is in my mouth. I can feel something moist on my cheek. The camera is rolling, rolling. They’re not missing a second of what’s going on.

  What’s going on is that…I’ve finally worked it out: I’m in the arms of the Führer! The Führer just kissed me! I’m frightened that, with all this emotion, I’ll ‘purify’ myself: I’ll have a cardiac arrest, sudden infant death syndrome, whatever. Why didn’t Ebner think to give me some vitamins?

  The ceremony downstairs in the main room proceeded without a hitch. There were so many people. Loads of them. The staff, the mothers, other mothers from Homes all over the country, the SS officers recruited for the special-meetings building next door, and all the stand-in actors and actresses—so it looked like a real crowd. Because our Führer loves to address a crowd, he doesn’t like to speak to small groups. He needs a crowd; in order to communicate his passion, to find the words that rouse people, make them spontaneously raise their arm and salute. The applause at the end of each sentence inspires him for the next sentence. The whole audience thrills to the sound of his voice, and men want to take up arms and there and then carry out the great future projects he is describing. Women, too, are eager to offer him everything: their bodies, their lives, their souls. Some of them even faint under the emotional impact of his speech. The Führer explained how we, the children of the future, pure-bred Aryans—of which I was the only representative in the room, the others were still in the nursery—are going to populate not only Germany, but all of Europe, once the Reich’s expansion is underway and the war gets going and the Jewish Question has been sorted out. We are going to mount a holy war against foreigners, in order to safeguard the racial purity of the German people.

  It was a momentous, awesome occasion. Hilter was so eloquent that we could envisage, right there in front of us, this new world stripped of degenerates.

  At the end of the speech, at a sign from Doctor Ebner, Mother stepped forward to join the Führer on the dais. Well, what a transformation! No more nerves, no doubts, no remorse. She finally realised that it had all been worth it, gritting her teeth that night in the cold, overlit room in the meetings building. It had been worth a painful birth. It had been worth putting up with Doctor Ebner and Josefa’s rules. Heidi was no longer in her thoughts. Mother was ecstatic. As if hypnotised, she seemed to glide through space, her feet no longer touching the ground. And I was like an angel from heaven in her embrace.

  Except…there was one little incident all the same. When the Führer took me in his arms to christen me, out loud, with my official name, I…peed myself. His speech, although fascinating, exhilarating, was very long. I tried to hold on, but I couldn’t. The vein on Ebner’s bald head was raised and throbbing: I thought he was going to ‘purify’ me on the spot, in front of everyone. Two nurses rushed over to sponge the Führer’s sleeve, but he politely brushed them aside, laughing. The whole gathering imitated him, including Ebner, whose vein immediately receded.

  Next there was a photo session. Mother and I had the privilege of posing with the Führer. Mother received a copy of the photo later, signed by the Führer himself. After that I was taken back to the nursery. With the music, champagne, coffee, cakes, I think they all had a great party. At least the guests did. The Führer retired to the laboratory with Herr Himmler and doctors Ebner and Brandt to speak about medical practices of the future, to organise the great scientific discoveries that will take place under the auspices of the Third Reich.

  As for me, phew! Beddy-byes. I was exhausted.

  Hang on! I forgot to tell you the most important thing: I have a name now.

  My name is Konrad von Kebnersol. Two Ks, as in ‘Klein Kaiser’. K, as in Krupp. As in the 770K, the Führer’s Mercedes. They made up my surname from the syllables in Doctor Ebner’s and Herr Sollmann’s names, and they added the ‘von’ to make it sound high-class.

  Konrad von Kebnersol. The Führer wrote it in my record book. It sounds good, doesn’t it?

  So I dodged Max, the name Mother would have chosen.

  My nose is running. I’ve got diarrhoea. I’ve lost my appetite. I feel queasy.

  What’s wrong with me? They say the morning after a party is hard. Quite right. You’d think I was hung-over, like those nurses who drank too much champagne after the Führer’s speech. But my christening was a long time ago. Two months already…I hate being like this. Sluggish, grumpy. Like Heidi’s son, Helmut.

  Deep down, I think I know why I feel lousy.

  It happened two nights ago. I was fast asleep when I heard noises. Muffled footsteps, frightened whispers. What was going on now? The nursery really isn’t a quiet place, you know, and the bawling of one or other of my buddies is not the only regular commotion. That’s normal; I’m used to it, no problem. On the other hand, what’s disturbing, for example, is when a mother, on a sudden whim, rushes down to see her baby. The night nurses spot her straightaway and try to take her back to her room, which just ends in interminable discussions. Best-case scenario. Because sometimes…there’s no baby! The mother finds an empty bassinet.

  ‘Don’t worry, your child was unwell, nothing serious. He’s in the infirmary,’ they tell her.

  ‘I want to see him!’

  ‘You can’t right now. He’s contagious. We’ve quarantined him.’

  ‘You’re lying! You’re lying!’ screams the hysterical mother.

  She’s in a total frenzy; the nurse calls for assistance and she’s given a shot to calm her down. How am I supposed to get back to sleep after a racket like that?

  Especially when it stays in my head. I wonder if ‘infirmary’ and ‘quarantine’ are new code words I don’t yet know the meaning of? Some nights, it’s Josefa who prowls the nursery. She wears a big black cape as if she was going out, and there’s a man with her. She inspects all the bassinets and stops in front of one or another and says, ‘This one! This one! And that one!’ The man takes the babies she’s picked out and puts them in a large sling and soon I hear the rumbling of a motor and a van takes off and disappears. Just like all the vans that deliver food early in the morning. Except there’s only one van on those nights.

  The next day, the bassinets are still empty, a dummy or a rattle the only signs of their former tenants. If the mothers are still living at the Home, there’s sure to be a huge scene; if they’ve already left and been replaced by a wet nurse, it’s not an issue. Anyway, within a few hours, the empty bassinets are home to new occupants.

  So where do they go, those babies who vanish in the night? It bothers me. I wonder if there’s some kind of trafficking going on? Could Josefa—honest Josefa, so devoted to the Home, Josefa, Doctor Ebner’s right hand—be selling them? Our Führer assures us we’re worth our weight in gold, so you’ll understand why I panicked when, on this wretched night, Josefa’s footsteps stopped at my bassinet.

  Why mine?

  I was sure I was headed for the delivery van.

  ‘I’m doing you a favour, Frau Inge,’ Josefa murmured nervously. ‘I’m making an exception because you have an excellent track record here. But, for your own sake, keep this short.’<
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  Frau Inge? So it wasn’t the man with the sling. That was a relief. Especially when I recognised Mother’s smell as she took me in her arms. She hugged me and I immediately felt that tension she gives off when she’s upset. She was shaking, weeping. Floods of tears. Some landed on my face and, since my nappies were soaking, I felt even colder.

  ‘Come now, Frau Inge,’ protested Josefa. ‘You’re making it harder for yourself. Here, this will cheer you up.

  You left it on your bedside table. Put it in your bag.’

  Mother said nothing. Her tears prevented her from uttering a word, other than Max, Max, Max. (She’s stubborn: even though I was baptised Konrad, she insists on calling me Max.)

  ‘Really, Frau Inge,’ Josefa continued, ‘this photo is wonderful. Signed by the Führer, how lucky you are!’

  It was the photo from my christening. They could have shown it to me!

  When Josefa realised that Mother wasn’t going to respond, she stuffed the photo in Mother’s bag and signalled to the two duty nurses. They rushed over to flank Mother, who still held me tight, not wanting to release me, kissing my hands, cheeks, nose, eyelids, smothering me in her embrace.

  ‘Can I write?’ she asked. ‘Will you send me another photo of him? Send me news about him?’

  ‘You know very well that’s against the rules,’ Josefa replied, tight-lipped. ‘Rules that I am already breaking right now, may I remind you, Frau Inge.’

  ‘Oh, please, I beg you!’

  ‘Don’t make me tell Doctor Ebner,’ Josefa threatened.

  She tore me from Mother’s arms so roughly that I came away with a few strands of her hair that my fingers had been tangled in. The nurses each took Mother by an arm and dragged her to the door. She kept crying, screaming, in the stairwell, outside. Until the growl of a motor drowned out her wails. A car started, drove off. Then there was nothing but silence, total silence. All the more noticeable after so much weeping. It was unbearable.