Eva's Cousin

by Sibylle Knauss

  Eva’s cavern opposite looks the same. The door to her bedroom is open. A wailing sound emerges.

  My cousin Gretl is lying on the double bed. Her belly is a mountain beneath which she lies as if buried. It is a terrible sight. The baby disfiguring its mother and making her suffer like this must be a monster.

  Her parents sit to right and left of her. They look at me as if I, of all people, could save them. A family scene: father, mother, and their child who is having a baby herself, amid this underground nightmare of white matte-lacquered Chippendale-style furniture and silk eiderdowns, all bathed in a ghostly dark green light, the faces strange as if on a photographic negative.

  Is everything all right? Aunt Fanny asks me. I mean, is it all right up there?

  No, I say. There’s nothing left up there.

  Hush, says Uncle Fritz.

  He raises both hands in a gesture with which he is trying to protect himself against me, himself and the two women. He wants to protect them from me as messenger of doom. And as if on an X ray I suddenly realize what holds them together: the wish to conceal the truth from each other. All their bluster, all their efforts to be on the scene of the action and have a good time, Uncle Fritz’s membership of the Party, his assumption of veteran status, his patriarchal pride, which, late in the day but wholeheartedly, he has reevaluated in terms of Fascism, Aunt Fanny’s cheerfulness, her wit verging on frivolity, the indestructible sex appeal with which she asserts herself against the hesitant beauty of her daughters, Gretl’s touching readiness to do what they all expected of her, marrying a man without a conscience whom she did not love—all this was done to shield one another from the truth, which was that through Eva’s liaison they were in-laws to evil. They do not warn each other, they do not try to save each other, they just close their eyes to it.

  I realize that families are systems intended to hinder true perception, duty bound, for better or worse, to spare each other the truth. Each is aware of it separately, but together they are blind. I see that in the dark green otherworldly light of Eva’s bedroom under Hitler’s mountain, in a family picture that looks like an X ray.

  There’s nothing left up there, I say.

  I see the truth go home to each of them, and I see them hate me for telling them.

  What do you mean? asks Uncle Fritz reproachfully.

  I don’t believe it, says Aunt Fanny.

  Isn’t there a doctor here? says Gretl.

  Hush, hush, says Aunt Fanny soothingly. The baby won’t be coming yet.

  They are obstructing the view of reality from each other again. But Aunt Fanny is right. Gretl’s daughter Eva will not be born for another two weeks. By then the baby’s father will be dead, like her mother’s sister, whose name she bears. The world in which this little girl was conceived in Schloss Fischhorn will be drowned and gone; scarcely anything from it will reach the bank of the future. If it does it will be driven away and sent back to where it belongs, to the Hades of the past, which must have no chance of finding a way to the future—except for these babies conceived under the Nazis and born after the end of the war. An extraordinarily strong generation. There they suddenly were, the children of an infamous population policy. And the children of their parents’ lust for life. Both. And there they still are. They are now becoming grandparents, but my niece Eva Fegelein is no longer among them.

  Eva is not a fortunate name for a child of the Braun family, the only grandchild that the three daughters ever gave their parents.

  She will be born two weeks later in Garmisch. Hertha Schneider will take my heavily pregnant cousin with her when she leaves us on a truck fueled by wood-gas, paying the driver with spirits from the stocks in the bunker. These have become desirable goods: liquor and a lift in an open truck.

  There’s supposed to be a good hospital in Garmisch, with a maternity department where Hertha had her own children.

  Gretl’s parents will try to reach Munich. An empty flat does not stand empty for long these days, if indeed it is still standing at all. They have promised Gretl to join her in Garmisch as soon as possible.

  They will not be able to keep their promise. In Munich they will discover that they have been bombed out and will be sent to temporary accommodations, a small room somewhere in the country. A communal kitchen, an earth-closet in the yard. The luxury of Hitler’s bunker on the Obersalzberg will be the last luxury of their lives.

  When her time comes my cousin Gretl will be left standing in the street outside the hospital.

  There’s no room in this hospital for the likes of you, she will be told. Understand? We’re full. What? There must be somewhere, must there? Do you still think all doors will be opened for you just because of who you are?

  And my cousin Gretl, in labor and alone, will lie down by the roadside, obeying the law of all women bringing a baby into the world: when their time comes, it will come.

  Soon afterward a military vehicle will stop beside her, a U.S. army officer will get out, see what the matter is, pick her up and drive her to the gates of the same hospital.

  You’ll take this woman in! he will say. Is there no humanity in this country anymore?

  It will make no difference whether the nurse on duty at reception understands English or not. The language of the victors is always understood. It gives the orders: that’s enough.

  So my niece Eva Fegelein will be born in a sterile delivery room after all, not in a ditch beside the road, and her mother will call her after the only person who ever meant anything to her.

  The baby will not want for anything. Nor will her mother lack anything she needs to sustain life: peanut butter, cigarettes, chocolate bars, chewing gum, whisky, male protection. The officer will become a kind of godfather to little Eva. He will be captivated by the charm of his role, the role of victor who is also the protector of the defeated, generous, superior, and humane in the manner of victors. Gretl and her baby will be, so to speak, his little substitute transatlantic family, a tender temptation that he cannot resist, the source of his happiness as a member of the occupying forces.

  And Gretl? I shall see her again at some point in Garmisch, when I attend a sporting occasion with her, one obviously meant only for American guests. I shall find that, for her, nothing has changed. She is still living in a system of dependency and protection, and living well in it again.

  Gretl is a clinging vine, Ilse once said.

  Yes, Gretl is a clinging vine.

  She has a clinging vine of a child. An enchantingly pretty child with dark curly hair who, at the age of twenty-seven, will kill herself over a man. Clinging vines can never support themselves out of their own strength. They need a host plant. Eva is not a fortunate name for a child of the Braun family.

  A child who will find out, one day, the identity of the aunt after whom she was named. Who it was that her aunt loved, and how she died.

  In the green light of the bunker world I see the contours of this future life stand out, rising from the earth and growing. Like a freshly dug grave.

  Schaub has brought Gretl a letter from Eva. It is a farewell letter, dated April 23.

  “The end could come for us any time now,” she writes. She asks Gretl to destroy all her correspondence, particularly “the business matters.”

  What business matters?

  “Frau Heise’s bills must not on any account be found.”

  Frau Heise is her dressmaker. It is the last will and testament of a clothes-buying addict. That is the trace of herself she wants wiped out. That is what bothers her. She wouldn’t like posterity to know about the one sin she is aware of having committed.

  And then I know she has finished with life.

  I am sure you will be seeing Hermann again, Gretl reads out to me in a faint voice.

  She puts the letter down on top of her huge belly.

  I shall not be seeing Hermann again, she says firmly.

  How do you know? I say.

  From this, she says, pointing at two exclamation marks after the
sentence.

  When we were children, she says, we agreed on the meaning of signs like this. Only the two of us knew about them. Two exclamation marks at the end of a sentence meant that the opposite was true.

  She looks content, peaceful as a child who has just been listening to a bedtime story.

  She doesn’t want to see him again, I think.

  Later I shall learn that when Hitler had Fegelein shot in a fit of suspicious fury two days before his own death, Eva didn’t lift a finger to save her brother-in-law. Two exclamation marks at the end of a sentence. No one knew those two sisters as well as they knew each other.

  Music comes out of Hitler’s cavern again. The record collection was stored in a side room. Although there are hundreds of records, someone keeps putting the same one on.

  How all our hearts now Surge like a river! How all our senses So joyfully quiver!

  And the cognac is passed around.

  Someone shouts: Turn that Wagner off! Can’t a man even get drunk in peace here?

  Never in my life shall I be able to hear Wagner without anticipating a golden, lukewarm sense of nausea, without anticipating an insidious, gentle movement like that of a viscous, oily fluid swirled about in a bulbous glass held between forefinger and middle finger.

  Yearning devotion Swelling and flowing, Soulfully loving, Sacred and glowing . . .

  It makes me feel quite ill.

  ON THE FIRST OF MAY the looters are suddenly in our midst. They even come down to the bunkers, intruding into our private caverns. No one tries to stop them now. They come with bags, burlap sacks, suitcases. They pack everything into these containers—food, crockery, cutlery, tablecloths—they strip the beds in which we have been sleeping; they unscrew the bathroom fittings, the lavatory seats; they chisel the tiles out of the walls, roll up the rugs, cut the telephones away from their wires, carry off the gramophone, the records, the books; they begin clearing out Eva’s wardrobes at top speed, and then I join them, too. Suddenly I myself am a looter among looters. I take what I need before others do, and that is probably the nub of it, the market laws prevail now. It’s just a different way, an anarchistic way of packing your bag.

  We have heard that Hitler is dead.

  A great migration has begun, a great removal that appears unplanned and aimless only at first sight. Very soon I recognize new and entirely unexpected hierarchies of command.

  One of the housemaids is standing at the top of the great flight of steps up to the Berghof, directing the removal of pieces of furniture from the house. I know her as a shy girl, anxious not to attract attention by doing anything clumsy. Uncertain eyes. A bowed head.

  All that is past history. She is directing proceedings with great determination. Even the housekeeper obeys her orders. Neither of them acknowledge me now.

  I share this fate with a creature who, in another life, was called Stasi or Negus. I don’t know which of the two is the shaggy animal constantly going around and around in circles on the stones in front of the house, like a cat chasing its own tail. Obviously only one of Eva’s two dogs survived our downfall.

  In this way, still circling around and around itself, the dog approaches the door, only to be kicked every time someone comes out, heavily laden as they all are, and is thrown a little way through the air, whereupon it resumes its strange movement, whimpering quietly.

  I approach it cautiously, putting out my hand.

  Stasi? I say. Negus?

  The dog stops circling. From close quarters I see how dirty and matted its coat is. How thin it has grown.

  Negus! I say. Stasi!

  It bares its teeth and growls at me. I see from its eyes that it has gone mad, and with all the force of that madness is trying to get back to the place where it was at home, back to the paradise of its blissful lapdog days, the world of a spoiled little animal loved by all, fed by everyone, much fussed over.

  Stupid tyke, I say.

  And it begins circling around itself again, as if looking for some way out of the scenario where it has ended up.

  Can’t you give the dog something to eat? I say, turning to the housemaid. It’s one of Eva Braun’s dogs.

  Go away, Fräulein, she says. You’re in our way.

  She is right. I must get away from here. I want to go home. I want to go back to my parents. To my father, who knew what was going on from the start, who can explain all this to me. Whose prohibition I ignored when I came here last summer. I want to go back where I came from, back to Jena, back to my childhood. But there are no trains to take me there anymore. There is nothing now. When I try making plans I go around and around in circles like the dog. I can’t find my way out of this scenario either.

  I hear the loud crash of breaking china from the terrace. It is a cheerful, relaxed sound, high-spirited like the spring twittering of the birds above us sitting in the bare, charred trees that remain. Eva’s china is being smashed, her hand-painted china with her monogram shaped like a four-leaf clover.

  I run that way. I recognize the china. What are you doing? I shout.

  Two security men are there. Two of those who are still wearing uniform, still expecting someone to tell them what to do.

  They explain that anything to do with my cousin’s existence is to be destroyed.

  But she’s still alive, I say.

  All we have heard is the news of Hitler’s death. On the radio, Dönitz said that he had fallen for Germany, fighting against Bolshevism to his last breath. We don’t know anything about Eva.

  It’s orders, say the men.

  And I watch them smashing the green good-luck symbols. I see them shattered into fragments, I see how the men are enjoying it, how destruction puts them in a good mood while they share in the symbolism of the act—an untimely, posthumous wedding-eve party for a couple already dead, complete with the traditional smashing of china—and I find myself wanting to join in, and when there is nothing left secretly regretting that it is over.

  Then I see them bring out Eva’s coats, Eva’s hats, Eva’s shoes, everything that is left of her wardrobe, her silk dressing gowns, her towels, her photograph albums, her fashion magazines, I see them open her books and tear out the flypapers on which she has written her name, and I see them make a fire out of all this, a fire that burns high and can be seen from afar. Eva’s auto-da-fé.

  I stay to the end. I stay until it is all ashes. Until evening, when the last bird falls silent. Until I can no longer warm myself by the glowing embers of the fire of Eva’s life.

  May 1999

  Dear Father

  I have been looking for you for fifty-four years. A few weeks ago I found you through the Red Cross. The Russians released thirty thousand names, and yours was among them. Died in the camp in Frankfurt an der Oder, February 23, 1946. They arrested you for taking part in the attempt to get some of the research equipment from the Zeiss works out of the Russian zone of occupation and into the West. You always did know what you ought to do.

  You were in counterintelligence. That, too, I have only just discovered. It accounts for all your traveling. Your absence, which was more than just a lack of your physical presence. The absence of explanation for anything concerning you. The way I felt you couldn’t be reached even when you were at home.

  Perhaps all young daughters feel like that about their fathers. Perhaps it has to be that way. Or was there something you didn’t tell me? Something I wasn’t to know because it would have been too dangerous for me? Something that perhaps even Mother didn’t know? Was it your intimacy with men like Canaris, Oster, and Hans von Dohnanyi that made you so reserved and cold, so unapproachable to me?

  Why did you never speak openly to me? What did you want to spare me? Anxiety? The necessity of making up my mind? Or did you think I couldn’t keep my mouth shut?

  Oh, I can keep my mouth shut. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, Father, that’s it. I have kept my mouth shut all my life. Not a word about it, my husband said. And I kept my promise as long as he lived.
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br />   He was sixteen years my senior. A clever man. A man who knew all the answers and gave me guidance. The man with whom I ended up, after looking in vain for you so long. Mother and I had no idea what had happened to you, or whether you were still alive. Now, at my age, what was hidden is revealed to me, and I can see the pattern.

  Now I realize that to this day I never stopped looking for you.

  The most bitter insight of all is to know that one has omitted to do something. The most bitter insight to me, Father, is that I would have seen you again if I had come home sooner that summer after the war, in time to see you before they came for you and took you to the Frankfurt camp. The most bitter insight of all is to know that I could have done it. How can I explain why you waited in vain for me?

  I didn’t leave the Berghof until we heard that the first American tanks had already reached the Chiemsee. That must have been on May 4. The last opportunity to get out was on a truck supposed to be taking away Hitler’s valuable picture collection, which had been hidden in a secret tunnel of the bunker, and driving it I didn’t know where. In the end I simply clambered aboard and sat among pictures by Tintoretto, van Dyck, Bordone, and Titian, tied up and packed in covers and sacking, exposed to a bumpy drive over damaged mountain roads.

  Only when we reached our journey’s end did I see where I had been brought: Schloss Fischhorn, near Zell am See. The last refuge of the Nazis. Ministers, generals, anyone who had made it south out of Berlin came here. On my arrival I saw Frau Göring at one of the castle windows high above, wearing a big sun hat and a white dress.

  It was a shock to me. The end of a long odyssey, when you suddenly see that you have been going around in circles, and have come back to the very place you wanted to avoid at any cost.

  For I had been there before. I am sure Mother told you, although all through that time in the past you told her you didn’t want to hear any more about me. What you didn’t know was that I met a man there whom I wanted to see again as little as I wished to return to the place itself.