“And she laughed. ‘You are a bastard.’ It was hard to keep a straight face, confronted as I was with my own bullshit. I told her that I don’t have the kind of life I could ask anyone to share and she laughed even louder. ‘Liar. You’re so rotten! I just can’t quite believe it.’
“I nodded emphatically. ‘That’s what I’m talking about.’ I had intended to keep on talking, explaining, but she closed my mouth with a kiss. When I tried to speak a second time and was again kissed into silence I just gave up and Hannah, smiling with increasing confidence, took my arm as we walked across the Rosenheimer Platz. The walls had been white-washed but they had a sticky brown cigarette stained look and the slanted slate roof had turned a throbbing purple with its accumulation of oily smoke. Suddenly, I wanted to go home, I just wasn’t quite sure exactly where that was.
“A wooden sign over a stone arch in a brick wall announced that we had reached the BürgerBräuKeller. There was a dispirited garden beyond the wall. We walked in and stopped, uncertain which way to turn. From out of nowhere, two SS men were walking toward us. They looked over eight feet tall and carried parachute model Schmeissers: Art Nouveau machine guns. The taller SS man reached us first. He could have been the Schreckgespenst that many parents use to torment their children into submission. He asked us, ‘May I assist you?’ with a bloodcurdling smile.
“Hannah wiggled and cocked her head, goofy and ingratiating. ‘Heil Hitler!’ and he seemed to grow even taller. ‘Heil Hitler.’
“She was positively brimming with enthusiasm. ‘We came to see where the Führer is going to speak.’ I looked around, across the square. All the windows in all the buildings had their blinds down and the windows were closed, so I asked, ‘Why are all the windows closed?’
“The tall SS man smiled at me like a werewolf. ‘Security. For the Führer.’ As I looked at the rooftops, SS men appeared on every roof abruptly, pointing their Schmeisser machine pistols at me. Hannah said, ‘We are glad to see that the Führer is so well protected!’ and the tension was gone. The rooftops were suddenly empty again.
“‘Yes,’ the tall SS man had said, doing a shy and boyish routine, ‘we have a most important job.’ He probed the air with his nose, like a cat, and straightened his back until his septum pointed at the sky.
“‘Georg!’ Hannah clapped her hands. ‘Take his picture!’
“So I pulled out my worn Leica M1 and took a photograph while the SS men posed grotesquely. Behind them a troupe of Reicharbeitdienst schlepped by in broken formation, with shovels on their backs; they looked like refugees from the Thirty Years War.
“‘Don’t take a picture of that,’ the other SS man had said. ‘That’s British propaganda.’ Hannah and I gaped and then we were all laughing. I kept that picture pinned to the wall at the foot of my bed. Their blank jubilant expression, the features congealed into a mask of office, the eyes fixed stiffly with an insect’s empty alertness. I looked at that photograph whenever I had doubts, studying it, thoughtfully, as though I could somehow understand it all if I could tease meaning out of that rigid empty face. The face told me that there was nothing to understand, there was no one there, that our country had been overrun by automatons.”
“I know exactly what you mean,” said Nebe. “The look in the eyes, that’s where the criminal mentality always shows itself. It’s not anything positive, it’s a lack. You look into their eyes and there’s no one there, just a pit where there was supposed to be someone. The problem is, I look into your eyes and there is someone there. It’s obvious to me that you’re not a criminal. How do you explain that?”
Georg could not answer, or perhaps thought he wasn’t expected to.
“You thought of shooting him, didn’t you?” said Nolte. “The Führer, I mean.”
Georg shook his head bewildered. “No.”
Nolte hated it when somebody refused to support his theories. “Sure you did. That’s why you checked the windows and the roof. Why kill all the bystanders just to get to one man.”
“I was never a marksman. One shot with no time to aim?” Georg continued to shake his head; the idea was just too absurd. “It never would have worked.”
Nebe gazed indulgently at Nolte. “That is precisely the point at which most amateur assassins give up. I’m sorry I called you an assassin, Georg, but that’s what you are, isn’t it? That’s the word for it: assassin.”
In German, the word for assassination is attentät, meaning literally, “the attempt.” The word for assassin is attentäter, meaning “the attempter.” That made it sound almost spiritual.
“Did you know a Swiss student named Maurice Bauvaud? No? He tried to shoot the Führer outside the BürgerBräuKeller in 1938. He was there the same time you were. You might have even seen him. No? Well go on then Georg, tell us about Munich.”
“… Outside the BürgerBräuKeller. It was a public restaurant but I didn’t realize how big until we went inside; a gigantic place, a mass of interlocking dining rooms that took up a full city block. It was noon and all the dining rooms were crowded, the tables full of tradesmen, heads down and shoveling it in. No one even noticed as we checked the rooms, one by one until, by elimination, we found the ballroom where Hitler was going to speak. I took out my Leica and took pictures of the pillars from several angles. Hannah said nothing. Perhaps, she thought I was finally taking an interest in politics. I took out a tape measure and wrapped it around one of the pillars. Its circumference was 3.14 meters, the value of pi. The pillar was one meter thick.
“‘What are you doing?’ said Hannah.
“I smiled at her. ‘Oh, these little details make it more real. There’s more to remember.’ She gave me her worried goofy smile and we walked back, working our way through the building until we found a dining room with an empty table. I had ordered Königsberger Klopse, meatballs in cream sauce. Capers had given it a green tinge and for a second after I saw the color I was frightened that I was going crazy. I looked across the table at Hannah. She had a lamb shin bone, a clump of brown-black meat, and she savaged it.
“We had to stand in line for the cashier and while we did, a thickset man with a walrus mustache walked in the front door and out of the back. The central hall ran the depth of the block. I handed over the money with the check. ‘That man, he left without paying.’
“But the cashier smirked at us. ‘Oh, no. The hall runs through to the next street. People use it as a shortcut.’
“I thought that over and nodded, then bought that souvenir postcard of Hitler speaking in the ballroom. Hannah started for the front door but I took her by the elbow and led her out the back way. The next street faced a set of brewery yards with windowless walls. We were completely unobserved. There was no place from which anyone could watch us. I grinned happily; delighted like a child on Christmas morning. Dutifully, Hannah decided that she was happy too and she leaned her head on my shoulder.
“We’d gone to the library and then taken the train back to Heidenheim. I was staring at the postcard with a carpenter’s eye; Hannah was placidly looking out the window as the train rolled through the dense and dirty industrial suburbs. She turned to smile at me. ‘I’m so glad you’re taking an interest in the Party,’ and turned back to the window.
“‘Ah, yes.’ She probably thought I agreed but my mind was elsewhere. I took out a pencil to draw a circle on the postcard, on the right-hand pillar just above the balcony.
“There was a delay outside of Augsburg, halfway to Heidenheim. We were alone in the compartment and the train wasn’t moving. Hannah was doing an occasional wiggle of impatience, peering out the window then questioningly at me then back to the window again. There wasn’t much to see, a ragged forest on a black night with only a sliver of moon. I was about to make a decision, something I did not enjoy, when she spoke. ‘How long has the train been stopped?’
“I looked at my watch. ‘Twenty-three minutes.’ Then I deliberately and self-consciously lit a cigarette. Hannah pointed to sign in four languages. ‘The
re’s no smoking.’
“I inhaled deeply but kept the smoke in my mouth, then I blew a smoke ring, the first time I had ever tried it but it seemed to come naturally. ‘I’m not supposed to be smoking, but the train is supposed to be moving so it’s a breach of contract and all obligations are void.’ Hannah looked at me in astonishment.”
“Bible stories? The moral is always: If thy brother offends thee, then cut his throat. Are you going to pretend to believe this shit?” Nolte was adamant but Nebe maintained an otherworldly composure.
“Sooner or later, he has to talk about the one thing on his mind.” Nebe said.
Brandt sighed, stretching his fingers and cracking his knuckles. “It’s already later, isn’t it?”
Nebe looked from one to the other with a curdling stare. “I seem to recall that I sign off on your payslips gentlemen, let’s not waste any more of the tax-payers’ money because you don’t have the courtesy to do your jobs. Go on, Georg. What happened next?”
“In Heidenheim, Hannah and I were on our way to the cinema. We had passed a newsstand; the headlines announced that Germany had invaded Bohemia and Moravia, the rest of Czechoslovakia. That would have made it the end of March; six months after the beer hall reconnoiter with Hannah. I read her the cover story, ‘It was clear to me from the first moment,’ the Führer was quoted as saying to his generals, ‘that I could not be satisfied with the Sudeten German territory. It was only a partial solution. My decision to march into Bohemia was made. Then came the establishment of the Protectorate over Czechoslovakia and with that the basis for the invasion of Poland was laid.’
“It hadn’t happened yet, but the Führer was talking about it as if it were already in the past, it was that certain. The British didn’t believe it; they thought he was trying to bluff his way into a better deal on the Polish Corridor. But I believed it and it meant I had to start soon, actually I should have started already.
“An alley cat was staring at me from out of a doorway: a scrawny black cat with a long horse face, a lumpy pink nose, and mournful yellow eyes. It had a big red scratch down the middle of its big pink nose and looked like the unhappiest cat in the world. It stared at me without hope or fear, just staring with its gold-leaf eyes asking me to look back. Ugly and soulful, it had the look of a Madonna in a country church. Hannah was shouting behind me that if I wanted to take the cat to the movie instead, she wouldn’t stand in our way. In front of the movie theater Hannah had walked up to the ticket booth and paid for both of us, glancing at me over her shoulder. ‘Do you mind?’ But it wasn’t a question. I took her arm as we went in.
“The film was a rerun of Morgenrote, a UFA film about the adventures of a submarine commander and his crew in the Great War. The climax was that the sub was sinking and there were only eight escape suits for ten men. The captain and the first officer offered to go down with the ship. The crew refused. ‘Either everyone or no one,’ they said.
“The captain replied, ‘We Germans may not know much about living but we’re great at dying.’ I spat on the floor between my legs which wasn’t like me at all. Then the newsreel started depicting the triumphs of the regime.
“THE NIGHT OF THE LONG KNIVES: The SA leadership was dragged out and killed in scenes of strange informality. One SA leader was thrown in front of a firing squad wearing a white satin corset. He was Heil Hitlering frantically, hopping from one foot to the other, the corset garters slapping against his thighs as the machine gun caught him in the stomach and his body exploded from internal pressure. The corset burst and the stays fluttered like eye lashes. The audience laughed and screamed; even I was smiling.
“KRISTALLNACHT: The windows of all the Jewish stores were being broken. Elderly shopkeepers were crying and pleading. One of them was beaten over the top of the head until his brains ran out his nose. I was the only one who stopped laughing. I began to watch the crowd right and left out of the corners of my eyes.
“ANSCHLUSS: The German Army marched into Vienna. All the pretty girls were waving Nazi flags and smiling but all the smiles were identical. It was a horrible movie but the crowd around me was cheering even louder.
“THE INVASION OF POLAND: But that couldn’t have happened yet then, it was only March and the invasion of Poland didn’t happen till September 1939. I must be combining the two memories; that had to have been a different night. … Yes, now I remember, the 4th of September. The newsreels had been back within 24 hours, and were in the theaters within three days. I can’t remember whether Hannah was next to me that night. Polish cavalry charged against Mark I panzers with machine guns. The results were predictable. There was one Mark I with a mounted flame thrower. A white stallion was caught in the fire stream, leaping, reeling, every inch of its skin burning. I felt like my skin was burning too. For what? Invade Poland and what do you get? Polacks. The invasion of Poland made no sense unless the true intention was to invade Russia. The Führer had been talking about that for 20 years. Invade Russia and what do you get? The same thing that everyone had gotten who had ever invaded Russia: a round trip to Moscow. Come, take our famous walk! And the results of that were predictable too.
“I knew I had to start immediately. I’d put it off as long as I could, longer than I should have. I had to quit my job the following day and get on with the attempt. I’d only saved 400 DM but, if I had to, I could go without eating for up to a month. I’d been on a 30-day fast before, involuntary but it had been kind of interesting, especially toward the end. Meanwhile the horse was still burning. The crowd was delirious with joy, howling in a Maenadic frenzy. I looked around, then got up and walked out. Two men shouted insults and waved their fists at me.
“But I’m getting ahead of myself. Outside the cinema, with Hannah, it was still March 18th, memorial day for the dead of the Great War. A brass band was playing the 2nd movement of Beethoven’s 3rd; there was a lot of crying with shrill shouts and marchers with oversize Nazi flags that wrapped around their bodies in an oddly sensual way, like a naked woman caught in the act of wrapping her body in a sheet.”
Georg suddenly went silent. Nebe sighed heavily; Nolte and Brandt exchanged puzzled looks. Frozen in a momentary wave of panic, Georg thought to himself, They are right, no matter how confused it is it’s still too linear to be reality, but that’s the way I remember it. Even if I tell them a hundred times, they still won’t believe me. The three men were staring at him as if he were challenged in some way. “Sorry, what was that?”
“Come on, Georg, it was a simple question. You have shed light on an age-old debate: that art imitates life which imitates art. We thank you, but now to the point! Your next step was?”
“I got fired. It was an argument with Office Manager Schulz. He said stupid things to me too many times.” Georg was doing his best to be cooperative, however ineffectually, and that was driving Nolte round the bend.
“We talked to him. He said you were ‘fired’ by request.”
Georg blushed. “Well, yes. I didn’t want to involve him.”
Nebe stifled a laugh and opened his arms in a sweeping magnanimous gesture. “Involve anyone you like. It’s in your interest. Tell us all about it.”
“Well, Schulz had walked me back around the great white shed of the munitions plant with the Bauhaus frosted glass walls. The milky light of the softly clouded sky gave it the glow of a hospital. Schulz had his arm around my shoulders, as though he were supporting a convalescent on his first day out of bed, and kept talking. I didn’t listen. I knew Schulz was pleading but he gave up, dropped his arm, and walked ahead of me into the office. He sat down behind his desk and I stood in front of it, an established ritual. Schulz pulled a piece of letterhead stationary out of a drawer and picked up a pen. He sighed. ‘Nothing I can do to change your mind? You’re determined to leave?’ I was silent and he went on. ‘You know I can force you to stay. It’s illegal for a worker to change jobs without permission.’
“His insistence was almost touching but I told him, ‘I know that, sir.’
<
br /> “‘Yes, well, you were wasted in an office anyway.’ He held up his hands and flexed them. ‘I’d give you a skilled job here but there aren’t any. This is all mass production.’ Schulz sighed again and began to write me a letter of recommendation. He stopped and looked up. ‘It’s hard to give a convincing letter of recommendation when I’m supposed to have fired you. I’ll have to say that you were fired for insubordination. That sounds bad but it isn’t really. Employers will take a chance on a worker who showed a little too much spirit if he’s capable.’ He actually laughed at the idea of me ever showing too much spirit but he continued writing. I looked out the long windows at the sky. It was lead gray as usual.
“The next milestone in my employment record was most definitely a step backward, but for a purpose. The management office of the quarry was just a shack 100 yards from the artificial cliff that had been cut into the side of a granite mountain. The foreman was a foot taller than me. He had his face screwed up and his lips puckered in concentration as he tried to decipher the flowery language of Schulz’s letter.
“‘But why would you want to work in a quarry? You were a cabinet maker and a junior executive; you’ll ruin your hands.’ In the quarry beyond the window there was a juicy explosion followed by a rumpling cascade of rock. The foreman chuckled. ‘You get used to it. After a while, you may even get to like it. You’re not the only one you know. We’ve got a PhD in mathematics out there, 110 pounds and glad to have the job. Was a professor at Heidelberg, or used to be. But you’re not Jewish or anything. It doesn’t make sense.’
“‘I just need a job.’ I smiled and the foreman shrugged.
“‘Alright, let’s see what you can do.’
“An hour later, I was trying to make little rocks out of big ones with an eight-pound sledgehammer, but without much success. A small man, even smaller than me, walked by, stopped, took the sledge out of my hands and split the rock with one blow. He bowed and handed back the hammer. ‘Your motion is inefficient. Swing the hammer in a circular arc and strike perpendicular to the rock surface.’ He bowed again. I bowed back and watched him walk away. And, that’s why mathematics is so important.
The Führer Must Die Page 10
