The Kaiser's Last Kiss

by Alan Judd

  The first few clocks were straightforward; all were slow and had faces that opened easily. As with anything concerning accuracy, it was a satisfying task. He knew little of clocks, but enough to know that these were very fine, the best craftsmanship the old Germany could produce. His father, whose uncle had been a clockmaker, had known more about them and would have been delighted to handle such workmanship. As he edged the delicate hands forward, Krebbs felt he was trespassing upon them, although in a good cause. When he reached the grandfather clock in the yellow salon, however, he paused. It was fast by a full three minutes and he recalled his father saying that you should not, on such pendulum clocks, move the hands backwards. You had either to open the face and move the hands forwards by twenty-four hours minus three minutes, pausing on each hour to ensure that the chime remained synchronised, or you had to stop them until the correct time had caught up. There was something else you could do, something to do with removing the weight, if only he could remember. As it was, he could not even stop this clock because the case was locked and there was no sign of the key.

  It was an elegant piece with an ornate head surrounded by nymphs and cupids. It narrowed to a neck before broadening into shoulders, from which the decorated case narrowed again to its feet. The tick of the pendulum was quiet but clear. Krebbs searched behind, beneath, on top for the key, then the mantelpiece, and finally the window-sill where he paused to look down at the moat. The sun had broken through again, glistening on the wet lilies and showing up the slow dark shapes of fish in the water. A blue dragon-fly floated up to the height of his window, then abruptly vanished. On the corner of the terrace one of his soldiers stood looking across towards the orangery, his rifle properly supported by its shoulder-strap. At the side, on the narrow wooden drawbridge that the Kaiser had built, stood Akki, looking down into the water. A few ducks loitered hopefully beneath the bridge.

  She was bare-headed and wore a light grey short-sleeved dress. She stared into the water a few moments more, then crossed the bridge and walked slowly along the far side of the moat before turning across the grass towards the beeches and oaks some distance behind the house. She walked unhurriedly, as if going nowhere in particular. One of the dachshunds, Wei-wei, trotted across the bridge after her.

  Krebbs caught up just as she entered the shade of the beeches. He had walked as fast as he could without, he hoped, appearing to his sentries to hurry. Not that that would stop them having a joke about it; no matter; he had her to himself. Anyway, he had legitimate official business with her.

  She seemed unsurprised by his appearance, facing him as he approached and shading her eyes against the sunlight slanting through the leaves.

  ‘May I join you?’ he asked.

  She indicated the wet hem of her dress. ‘You are better prepared for a walk than I am, Untersturmführer. I had not realised how wet this long grass would be.’

  It was not so much the careful precision of her German that struck him now but that she sounded so educated. She spoke with assurance. Wei-wei gave Krebbs a cursory bark and resumed his snuffling beneath some brambles.

  ‘I saw you on the bridge, looking into the water as if you had dropped something.’

  She turned back to the path through the trees. ‘I was thinking.’

  ‘May I ask what your thoughts were?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘I may ask later, then?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  He hoped her thoughts might be about him. ‘But I must ask you another question, an official question. I am required to ask you the date of your arrival here and your address in your home town and the full names of your parents.’

  ‘Why?’ She seemed amused.

  ‘It is occupation regulations.’

  ‘For everyone?’

  ‘Yes, but for everyone here especially. It is for the protection of His Highness.’

  ‘From what?’

  It was absolutely against regulations to divulge such information to those who did not need to know but he wanted her to see that he was important enough to possess it. ‘I cannot tell you. Let us say, from disaffected elements.’

  They were approaching a bench by a pond. ‘Do you have your officer’s special notebook and pencil?’

  ‘Of course.’

  They sat. She answered his questions calmly and he made his notes carefully, in his best script. Her voice sounded as if she were quietly mocking, trying not to laugh, but whenever he looked up she was serious. His knee was very close to hers, not quite touching. When they had finished he left his notebook on his lap and leaned back, stretching his arm along the top of the bench behind her and edging his knee a fraction closer. ‘His Highness himself has a curious attitude towards his cousins, our English enemy. He says he hates them but at the same time he seems to admire and feel part of them.’

  She leaned back, looking into the pond. She must, he thought, be aware of how close she was to his arm. ‘He is,’ she said. ‘He says that in Germany he was never trusted because of his English sympathies and English mother and that in England he was never trusted because he was German and made bellicose statements. He is probably happiest here, in Holland. It is the only permanent home he has ever had.’

  He moved his arm so that his fingers and the edge of his wrist just touched her shoulder. They both stared at the pond. He feared that if he moved closer she would feel his heart pounding. ‘Is he happy that the German Army is here now, do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know. He accepts it, certainly, as he accepts most things now.’

  ‘You sound as if you have studied His Highness’s history.’

  He spoke jokingly but she turned to him seriously. ‘He talks to me sometimes, that is all. He is lonely.’

  She remained facing him, very close. He kissed her on the lips. She was passive but unresisting. He prolonged the kiss, holding her shoulder and pulling her to him, his other hand on her knee. She smelt of some perfume, or soap, something nice anyway that he had not smelt for a long time, and she was soft and warm. The problem, he was thinking behind his closed eyes, was what to do next, when the kiss stopped; how to move to the next stage, if there were to be one. He wondered, too, why she was letting him do it, but did not want to break momentum by asking.

  It was she who broke off and moved back a little. ‘Herr Offizier, your gun is uncomfortable.’

  His holster was squashed between them. He shifted it creakingly on his belt. Her head was still turned away but she remained leaning against his arm. ‘And we were discussing His Highness, I think,’ she continued.

  ‘Of course, yes, for a moment I was forgetting about His Highness. I cannot think why.’ He traced the line of her eyebrow with the tip of his middle finger. ‘He is a confused man, clearly, but at least he is sound on the Jewish question.’ She looked thoughtful in repose, with an inwardness he yearned to plumb. She was twenty-nine, he knew now from his questions, six years older than himself, more mature than the girls he was used to. An older woman, more experienced than himself. Perhaps she was using him in some way; he didn’t mind, it was exciting. ‘His mind is not divided on that subject, at least. He would kill them all.’

  ‘He wouldn’t kill anyone. He is all words. He is really quite soft.’ She stood and walked to the pond.

  ‘You are fond of him? You like him?’

  ‘He is a complicated man who does not know himself.’ She turned and continued along the path through the trees without waiting for him.

  He had no sooner caught up than he realised they were no longer alone. Their path curved gradually back towards the house and was joined on the way by another, along which some woodsmen, carrying saws and axes, were walking. Their voices echoed through the trees. ‘Akki,’ he said, keeping close and speaking quietly, ‘is it possible that we may meet again?’

  ‘Is it possible that we shall not?’

  ‘I mean alone, so that we can talk. I should like to talk more to you.’

  ‘Would you, Martin? Really?’
r />   It was thrilling, quite ridiculously thrilling, to hear her use his name. It made him feel they were closer, despite her still slightly mocking tone.

  ‘I should like to talk and talk and talk. May we meet again like this?’

  ‘If you wish.’

  The woodsmen were nearer now. ‘I shall arrange it,’ he said.

  For the rest of that day Krebbs felt full of energy. When he wrote up the staff details the mere transcription of her name gave him secret pleasure. He was unexpectedly successful in securing a motorcycle despatch rider from headquarters to pick up his signal that same afternoon, and he got the man to take back his soldiers’ letters home instead of waiting for the next post pick-up. He reorganised the guard rosters and got up a scratch game of five-a-side football for those not on duty. He played himself, in goal. Afterwards, he took a few volunteers for a long run. He felt he could take pride in his new platoon now. They had shaken down together and got used to him, even though he was an attached officer. They were fit, eager, lively, jokey among themselves, almost as wolfishly ready for action as his own SS platoon had been when they moved into Belgium and France. They didn’t quite have the edge of Waffen SS troopers, of course, not those few final percentage points of missionary zeal, but their improvement in the past week or two was evident from their bearing, their fully-alive eyes, their promptness and turnout. He was struck again by the seeming paradox that soldiers were at their best in the business of death – their own or their enemy’s – when themselves most vividly alive. His chief worry now was that they would go off. Whatever efforts he made to enliven and vary their routine, long periods of static duty were not good for soldiers. He wanted to lead them into battle and then return to Doorn. Between bouts of focus and concentration, he daydreamed of their being sent off to some fighting like that they had had around Dunkirk and of his then returning, battle-scarred but triumphant, to Akki. Only this time a proper, textbook battle with no unexpected rehearsals and no unpalatable aftermath.

  The Kaiser was writing in his study when Krebbs returned to his desk in the early evening. Seen from the door, he was largely backside, leaning forward on his saddle seat to write at his white sloping desk, a cigarette smouldering in his ashtray. Later, Krebbs heard him wheezing and sighing as he dismounted; next he heard the shuffling of books on shelves, then the creaking of an armchair and more exhaling. It was odd that the old, who had less breath, should breathe so much more loudly than the young. Krebbs felt supple and relaxed after his exertions that afternoon. It was not good, he felt, for the young to be around the elderly for too long. Age might be contagious.

  ‘Are you there, Untersturmführer?’

  Krebbs went in. The Kaiser sat with a book open on his lap, a fresh cigarette between his nicotined fingers. ‘Do you read?’ he asked, without looking round.

  ‘Yes, your Highness.’

  ‘I mean, do you read books – novels?’

  Krebbs could not recall the last novel he had read. It must have been in his childhood. He preferred real things to novels, though he liked films.

  ‘You should,’ continued the Kaiser, without waiting for a reply. ‘They tell you about life. Not just about what happens, which is what history tells you, but about life itself. They make you see it. We have some very fine German novelists, even some of those who have deserted Germany now like that man Feuchtwanger who wrote Jew Süss. Do you remember that? Probably you are too young, but it was also a film. You can learn all you want about power and Jewishness from that book, more than from any history. Whatever else one may say about them, they are remarkable people, remarkable.’

  ‘The Jews, your Highness?’

  The Kaiser raised his white eyebrows. ‘Who else? Feuchtwanger is one himself, of course, and a communist, which is the worst combination possible, but his book precisely captures the ambivalence of being Jewish. Only the Jews can write so well about their own bad qualities. When I was young I had a close friend, Siegfried Sommer, who was Jewish. Now, because of this book, I see there was the same thing in him. Then, he was just my friend.’

  Krebbs was unsure what to say. ‘He changed, sire?’

  ‘Changed? I don’t know about that. He was what he always was, only of course I did not see it all. But I prefer Wodehouse, really. Do you know Wodehouse? An English author. He is even better than this Jewish man. Very funny. I shall read you something of his one day.’

  He turned back to his book and continued reading and smoking as if Krebbs were no longer there. After a few moments Krebbs quietly left the room. At his desk he took out his pocket book and began summarising what the Kaiser had said, but before he finished he subsided once again into his own daydreams.

  FIVE

  While Krebbs was still shaving the following morning he was summoned to the field telephone he had had installed in the brick passage outside his room. The gatehouse guard reported a despatch rider with an urgent signal marked personal for Krebbs: should they send him up or would Krebbs come down to the gatehouse? He ordered them to send the man up and cut himself on the right cheek in his hurry to finish.

  The signal was from HQ SS, in the name of Hans Rauter, the lieutenant-general in charge of all SS operations in Holland. It informed him that the head of Schutzstaffel, Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler, was to visit Prince Wilhelm that day, and would stay the night. The principle of such a visit had been arranged through the Princess’s contacts in Berlin, but for security reasons neither she nor Prince Wilhelm knew when it was to take place. The short notice was deliberate, also in the interests of security. Krebbs was to inform them and to arrange for the accommodation of the Reichsführer and his staff in the house. Neither the Prince’s staff nor the Wehrmacht guard were to be told the visitor’s identity in advance. Krebbs was to conduct a thorough security search of the house before arrival and to ban all visitors from house and grounds throughout the stay.

  He hurried upstairs to his desk to check whether he had notes of any visitors due that day. He had not, but that did not mean there would not be any. Without access to the Kaiser’s and the Princess’s diaries, which were kept by von Islemann, he could not be sure. He remained standing by his desk, deliberately calming himself. The thought of dealing with the Reichsführer was unsettling. This man was second only to the Führer, the purest of the pure, creator of the SS, feared by some even more than Hitler, feared even by the other leaders. The Ignatius Loyola of the Party, Hitler had called him. Like Krebbs, he had been born a Catholic.

  Krebbs had never met him, of course, though Himmler had taken the salute at the SS Junkerschule passing-out parade. Now he would deal with him in person, with almost no time to prepare. He remained standing by the desk, his stomach fluttering and the muscles in his legs quivering, as though he had just run hard and was about to run again. It was like before going into battle, waiting to cross the start line. Yet the man was a mere mortal like himself; if you cut him he’d bleed. Or if a shell landed next to him, as had happened to Krebbs’s company commander in France, he would dissolve in a mere shower of blood. Yet still Krebbs trembled.

  There was, in fact, nothing to do yet. The guard had to have their breakfast, as he should his own. The household – the principals, at least – had not yet stirred, though there was activity in the kitchen. The grandfather clock behind him struck six-thirty, already a little ahead of the others despite his attentions. Outside the dew sparkled on the lawns and the sun glinted on the moat. A beautiful day that would pass, like other days, come what may. Whoever we were, we all had to live through days, one after another after another. They were the condition and measure of our lives, even the greatest and most exotic of lives, such as that of Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler.

  To have the security of the Reichsführer in his care, however briefly, was an honour. His father would have been proud; his mother would not know what to think when he told her – if he was permitted. Akki, too, would surely be impressed. And the Wehrmacht adjutant back at battalion HQ would have to sit up and
take notice. But it was necessary to get it right. As soon as he had told the Kaiser and the Princess he would personally search and inspect every room of the house, partly for security and partly to help him decide whom should be billeted where. The Reichsführer, of course, would have the Hessian suite formerly occupied by the Kaiser’s brother, Prince Henry, once a frequent visitor. He would check that first, then go up to the servants’ rooms in the attic, and work systematically downwards. He would have to check Akki’s room, a good thing for other reasons. It was important to know whether she shared a room, or had her own.

  The Kaiser and the Princess breakfasted in the small dining-room. When Krebbs entered the Princess was sitting back in her chair, talking about someone and fiddling with her napkin, alternately crunching it and pulling it apart. The Kaiser sat over his coffee, lighting his first cigarette of the day with a lighter shaped like a small silver cannon. Von Islemann was eating with them, which surprised Krebbs. Von Islemann was staff and therefore not permitted to know that the Reichsführer was coming.

  The Princess smiled and bade Krebbs good morning. The Kaiser simply stared as he exhaled, saying nothing. Von Islemann nodded and sipped his coffee. Krebbs remained by the door, standing at attention as befitted the news he had. He chose his words carefully. ‘Your Highness, your guest from Berlin arrives today. He will stay tonight. I must inspect the house, if you please. Meanwhile, it is requested that the staff are not informed of your guest’s identity in advance.’ He summarised the rest of the signal.