The Kaiser's Last Kiss

by Alan Judd

  Again, the Kaiser nodded his acknowledgement, the Princess beamed and there was a general raising of glasses, except for Krebbs who still awaited his. Von Islemann, who during the Reichsführer’s speech had appeared preoccupied with the Meissen porcelain vases on the mantelpiece, folded his arms after the toast and looked down at his polished shoes, as if trying to recall something.

  ‘And the children?’ he asked quietly, before anyone else responded. ‘The children of these Jewish people who have accepted the necessity for relocation and reduction?’ He emphasised, by exactness rather than loudness, the last word. ‘I have heard that special measures may be required to deal with children since, like the aged, the infirm and idiots, they are classified as commercially unproductive units. Is this a problem for which the Reich has identified a solution?’

  The Reichsführer touched his pince-nez and turned towards von Islemann. ‘This is a serious question to which we have given much thought. The relocation or disposal of economically unproductive units is at once a simple problem – in the sense that it is fundamental – and a complicated one. The answer must be as radical as the question. It must be bold and fearless. I am happy to say that we believe we have achieved it. Our method is to divide those classified as economically unproductive into two groups. In the first group are those who can, with application and with some ingenuity, be made productive. There is a surprising number of these, all of whom would have been lost to the Reich had we not thought carefully about the problem. That leaves the residue, children included, who are unsuited to any productive employment and can only be a drain on those who are. For these we have designed a system offering a merciful and rapid release.’

  The only sounds in the room were the clink of icecubes in the water-jug and the rustle of Akki’s long black dress as she crossed the carpet with Krebbs’s whisky on a tray.

  The Reichsführer sipped his own drink. ‘Our experiments prove that a 5cc dose of concentrated phenol injected directly into the heart guarantees a very rapid release. Our best operator is a man I have met. He is called Oswald Kaduk. The children love him. He smiles and plays with them and gives them a red balloon which distracts their attention. Twenty-three seconds later the process is complete, the only sign being a tiny speck of blood beneath the left nipple. With his assistant, Stefan Baretzki, he can process ten a minute. They look as if they had died in their sleep.’

  Krebbs hesitated over whether to add water to his whisky, deciding against. Akki, expressionless and unmoving, held the tray before him. She remained after he had indicated he wanted no water, as if she had not realised, or had simply decided to stand by him. Eventually she rustled back across the carpet.

  ‘Thank you, Herr Himmler.’ The politeness in von Islemann’s voice, and his use of the Reichsführer’s name, cut the silence like a stiletto. He remained with his arms folded, staring at Himmler.

  The Kaiser put down his cigar and picked up the book Akki had brought him. ‘So, I shall now read you some good examples of the humour of the English,’ he said. The women smiled. ‘The author, who is very well known in England, is called Wodehouse.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said the Reichsführer, smiling again, ‘he is well known in Germany, too. We have him in Berlin. He was captured trying to escape in northern France when his car broke down. He needed his humour then, I think.’

  Everyone laughed. The junior of the two adjutants, Sturmbannführer Macher, walked casually across the room to Krebbs. ‘He is called von Islemann, yes?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Macher nodded. ‘We shall remember him.’

  ‘The book is called Full Moon,’ the Kaiser announced. ‘It is one of my favourites, featuring Lord Emsworth of Blandings Castle and the Empress of Blandings. It is very funny indeed. Listen carefully.’ He read the first two or three pages in fluent but guttural English, stopping at the point where Lord Emsworth forgets the name of his own sister. He laughed and looked around. ‘The scene with the Empress of Blandings is one of my favourites in all literature. It is at once absurd and believable. Just as it is quite absurd, and quite believable, that a man who is bothered by too many sisters can mistake their names. It is a sign that, deep inside, he does not wish them to exist, you see.’ He chuckled and nodded. ‘But perhaps not everyone here has a good understanding of English?’

  No one had. ‘No matter,’ continued the Kaiser. ‘I will read it to you again in German.’

  The men stood and the ladies sat upright while the Kaiser translated, sometimes pausing between sentences to laugh, at other times explaining the humour of a phrase before repeating it to smiles and acknowledgements. When he had finished he put the book down and re-lit his cigar from a silver lighter shaped like a trumpet. ‘You see?’ he said, grinning through the smoke. ‘No people that produces this can be all bad. At the same time, they undoubtedly need saving from their own complacency. The Empress of Blandings is, of course, a pig. But I am sure you understood that. So, best wishes, Herr Reichsführer, in your campaign against Juda-England.’

  There was another general raising of glasses, with more nods and smiles.

  The Kaiser then abruptly bade everyone goodnight, and took up his book again. ‘I shall read this in bed tonight. Once started on a Wodehouse I can never stop. This will be my eleventh time with Full Moon. Goodnight.’ Puffing on his cigar, he walked in slow state from the room.

  There was a feeling that the company, or part of it, had somehow been rebuked. No one commented on it, and possibly no one defined it, but the sense of it was palpable. Leave-takings were subdued and brief, though the Princess spent some time ensuring that the Reichsführer and Fräulein Potthast – to whom she made a point of being gracious – had everything they wanted.

  Krebbs went outside to check the double guard he had mounted. It was raining, so he put on his cape and tramped through the puddles and wet grass to each sentry position. The window shutters were effective at blacking out the house lights, bar a few cracks and loose fittings. It would not do for enemy bombers to kill the Reichsführer by accident, as it were. After checking the house sentries he walked across the park to the gatehouse, without telephoning them in advance. There, too, he found that all was well, the guard properly mounted, with no slacking or cowering from the rain.

  It rained harder during his return, angled, angry gusts like pebbles hurled in the dark, or sprays of automatic fire. No tracer this time; something to be grateful for. With his head bent against the wind, his cap pulled down over his eyes, he did not see the wrapped, hunched figure hurrying from the house towards him until they were almost on each other. Even then he did not immediately recognise him.

  ‘A fine night for a walk, Untersturmführer,’ said von Islemann. ‘You are walking off the effects of dinner, perhaps?’

  ‘Checking the guard.’

  ‘An officer’s duty is never done. I remember it well.’

  It was easy to forget that Captain Sigurd von Islemann had fought in the previous war. Probably, Krebbs thought, as a staff officer who never got his knees muddy. ‘What were you in?’

  ‘Forty-eighth Infantry Regiment. Nothing as glamorous as yourself, Herr Untersturmführer. You would not have heard of us. We ceased to exist in 1917 at a place called Passchendaele. That’s where I was wounded.’

  ‘I didn’t know you’d been wounded.’

  A vicious gust sent their capes billowing and forced each a step back, but von Islemann seemed in no hurry. ‘Your Reichsführer was very interesting after dinner, didn’t you think?’

  Krebbs was tempted to remind von Islemann that the Reichsführer was now his Reichsführer, too, but said nothing.

  ‘Thought-provoking, didn’t you think?’ continued von Islemann loudly, almost harshly, perhaps to make himself heard above the rain.

  ‘What he said was new to me.’

  ‘Did it make any difference to you?’

  Again, Krebbs hesitated. Von Islemann patted him on the shoulder, in unexpectedly comradely fashion.
‘Don’t worry, you need not commit yourself. Your silence is eloquent. Goodnight, Untersturmführer, and good luck.’ He pulled his coat collar to and stepped past Krebbs into the night.

  The guards outside the house challenged Krebbs correctly on his return. Back inside, in his cosy basement room, he removed his dripping cap and cape but not his boots. They might leave wet marks and they would certainly make more noise but if he were seen in uniform without his boots any explanation he attempted would be hopelessly implausible. At least if he were properly dressed he could pretend to be on some sort of duty.

  His inspection had taken forty minutes but still he did not hurry. He wanted everyone else to be properly out of the way and, besides, he disliked hurrying when there was something he looked forward to, preferring to savour the anticipation. Anything connected with duty, however, or anything he disliked, he accomplished with despatch. To attack such tasks, to storm them, not only got them out of the way quickly but gave sufficient satisfaction to compensate, sometimes, for having had to do them. It was not only the savouring of anticipation that caused him to linger now, however, but anxiety that the Reichsführer’s remarks about Jewish children might have upset her, and put her off.

  The Kaiser, meanwhile, had gone not to his room but to his study. Although it was past his usual bedtime, he felt restless and had pains in his legs again. He knew he would not sleep yet but did not want to spend an hour or so picking over the evening with Hermine. Nor with anyone else. He rang the bell and ordered tea. It was the new girl who brought it and as soon as he saw her he felt better. This was what the doctor ordered, he thought. There was also something he wanted to clear up with her.

  She put the tray on the drum table near his feet. ‘Don’t go,’ he said. She stood looking at him, her hands clasped before her. A pretty thing, certainly, and such hands, hands such as he had never thought to feel again. ‘Sit down,’ he said, indicating the armchair nearest his.

  After a slight hesitation, and a glance at the half-open door, she sat. She returned his smile with a small, knowing one of her own. That was enough; he was sure now that there was an understanding between them. There had been since he first set eyes upon her, he felt. He leaned forward in his chair. ‘Will you be mother?’

  She poured the tea. Her hands were so gentle, so deft. Their fingers touched when she passed the cup. The tea made him instantly feel better, more clear-headed, almost light-headed. ‘I am very old and you are very young,’ he said. ‘You have nothing to fear from me, though when I was young, you would have. I would have married you just to feel your hands upon me, even though you are low-born. Well, almost married you. You know what I mean. You do not mind me saying these things?’ She shook her head, still smiling, still saying nothing. ‘Do you speak English?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When I was reading I could tell you understood. It was in your eyes. Have you been there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And why are you here at Huis Doorn? Have you come to see me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He smiled. It was wonderful that, in age, one could feel such happiness. ‘May I hold your hand?’

  She knelt at his feet and put one hand on his knee. He covered it with his right hand, stroking it and holding it gently. It was wonderful to feel that one was understood and accepted. ‘I know who sent you.’

  Her eyebrows raised very slightly.

  ‘God sent you,’ he continued.

  ‘Perhaps. Not only God.’

  He chuckled. ‘Who, then?’

  ‘Mr Churchill.’

  ‘The boy Churchill? I knew him.’

  ‘He wanted me to ask whether you would like to come and live in England.’

  The clock in the corridor chimed the half hour. The Kaiser nodded slowly, squeezing her hand and looking at her. ‘So, Churchill sent you with this secret invitation? I thought there was something about you. You speak like an educated foreigner. Churchill chose well, eh?’ She let him fondle her hand. Perhaps this was the woman behind all women, the one he had never met but always loved, the one who understood all, accepted all, demanded nothing, the woman who would take his hand in Paradise. ‘But that was a bad business downstairs. It would go ill with you if they knew why you were here.’

  She nodded again.

  ‘So the Churchill boy wishes me to go to England, Hermine wishes me to return to Germany and these shirted gangsters don’t know what they want of me. Well, what a problem for an old kaiser, eh? I shall have to sleep upon it. But I would prefer to dream of you.’ He pressed her hand against his scarred cheek.

  Krebbs could hear no one as he left his room, though a few lights were still on. He saw that the doors were locked before ascending the main staircase in order, he would explain if challenged, to check his desk outside the Kaiser’s study. People had taken to leaving messages on it. There was none, as he suspected, but there was a light still on in the study and he could hear the old man speaking. His voice was lower and more subdued than usual, with none of his frequent declamatory sentences that sounded as if they ended with multiple exclamation marks. The door was ajar.

  Krebbs stood, listening. It was hard to make out anything but he caught the words ‘English’ and ‘our National Socialist friend’, also, once, a phrase that sounded like ‘I would tell that boy Churchill’. Huis Doorn was mentioned several times. There were indistinguishable responses from another voice, a woman’s. Krebbs moved closer to the door.

  It was an error to move during a pause. His belt and boots creaked and the flap of his jacket caught a pencil on his desk and sent it rolling to the floor.

  ‘Who is there?’ demanded the Kaiser, in his normal voice.

  Krebbs pushed the door open. The Kaiser was seated, a cup of tea on the arm of his chair. Standing before him, dressed as she had been at dinner, her hands clasped before her, was Akki. The low light of the table lamp showed more of the Kaiser than of her; she was mainly in the shade, her white hands picked out against her black dress, her face shadowed. He had the impression, though, that her colour was higher than usual. The sense that something had just happened was sharp enough to make him pause before greeting the Kaiser. It was not possible, surely, that she would have sat in his presence, yet the cushion of the nearby armchair was indented.

  ‘As well it is you, Untersturmführer,’ the Kaiser said. ‘Little Akki here has been answering my questions on how it feels to be the subject of an occupying power, and I have been trying to reassure her that Herr Himmler and his friends mean neither she nor her country any harm. But it is not always easy to be convincing, eh?’ His chuckle became a snort. ‘Nevertheless, I do not believe she is about to assassinate me or kidnap me.’

  Akki smiled and said nothing.

  ‘With the Reichsführer, however, it could be another matter. There are plenty who would like to assassinate him. Winston Churchill would send squadrons of bombers if he knew he was here. Already they have tried to kill that man Rauter, the SS chief in Holland. You knew about that, I presume? Two hundred and forty-three bullet holes in the SS Obergruppenführer’s car. That is a serious matter. It will mean, the Reichsführer whispered to me this evening, that two hundred and forty-three Dutch prisoners will be executed, plus a few for good measure. They are thorough people, your SS, very particular as to figures. Official procedure as the simulacrum of legality, eh? I have been trying to persuade little Akki that this does not, of course, mean that innocent Dutch people are in any danger. No danger at all.’

  ‘Will there be anything else, your Highness?’ Akki asked. The Kaiser shook his head. She bobbed a curtsey and went out without looking at Krebbs.

  ‘Sit down, Untersturmführer,’ said the Kaiser, indicating the other chair. ‘I have pains in my legs again this evening. It has happened several times recently. When it is bad it seems to hurt more to watch other people standing.’ He pointed to the cigar box on the drum table. ‘Another for me, if you please. Have one yourself.’

  They were short fat cigars
, mild but with a good taste. Once again the best he had ever had, Krebbs reflected; or might ever have. It felt unnatural to be seated in the presence of the Kaiser but it was something special to be smoking and talking with such a figure of history. On the same day, too, that he had sat and talked with the Reichsführer himself, a man who was making history. And later, with luck, there would be something good to come, though her downcast eyes and manner had not been encouraging. He had not known about the threatened two hundred and forty-three executions, nor about this business of the Jewish children that the Reichsführer had described. It would not be surprising if, being Dutch and Jewish, she were upset about both, but it would be unfair of her to take it out on him. He was not responsible. These were political rather than military matters. However, she had remained by his side throughout the last part of the Reichsführer’s talk, when she need not have. That was possibly a good sign. He imagined undressing her.