Ulrike pulled out a cigarette and offered me one. I shook my head but lit hers with one of the matches I had bought from a disabled veteran that afternoon. She exhaled slowly, locking her eyes on mine until I looked away. “You don’t have to tell me stories, Karl. I know what I look like.”
I shivered in the cold.
“Hey,” she said, “you must have been standing here for a while. Come on, let’s go inside.”
I hesitated.
Her face stiffened and her eyes narrowed. “Embarrassed to be seen with me?”
“No, no,” I protested.
“Can’t afford a drink?”
When I didn’t reply, her face relaxed. “I’m buying—for old time’s sake. It’s not often I see anyone I knew in those days. Besides, I always liked you.”
“You did?”
She laughed and put her hand lightly on my shoulder as she guided me through the door to a corner table in the back of the bar.
We sat there for I don’t know how long. I certainly wasn’t in any hurry, and to my surprise, Ulrike wasn’t, either. “A night off,” she said. “I deserve it. Besides, these days there’s only a fifty-fifty chance of making anything on the street.” She looked at me across the table, under which our knees touched. “Do I shock you?”
I shook my head.
“Don’t lie. Look, this is the way it is now. Foreigners come here and buy up whole blocks of buildings because our money is worthless. People sell their apartments and then commit suicide if the buyer is a week late with the payment, because by then the money they get isn’t worth anything. The rest of us just survive any way we can. That’s the way it is. You think my mother would be alive today if it wasn’t for me? She’s sick and couldn’t find work even if she were well.”
“You don’t have to explain,” I said. “Really. I know what’s happening here. It’s all the same—in Berlin, in Munich and I guess everywhere else.”
We drank some more, and Ulrike ordered me a thick sausage. As I looked at her, I couldn’t help thinking about Jürgen and his talk of “the Ulrike treatment.”
Ulrike met my gaze. “What?”
“Nothing, nothing at all.”
“That’s what I liked about you: You were always a bad liar.” She wiped the beer foam from her lips with the tip of her fingers. I noticed her bitten-down fingernails. “Time to go,” she added. She stood up and paid the bill.
I followed her out the door. “Thanks,” I said. “That was great.”
Ulrike smiled, but she looked less certain than she had all evening. “Take me home,” she said softly. My eyes betrayed my confusion. “I know, you’ve got a girl. But just this once. I haven’t wanted to be with someone—I mean for me, not for work—in so long.”
So I found myself on the familiar tram to Neukölln, after all, not to my mother’s place but to Ulrike’s tiny room. I don’t want to talk about any Ulrike treatment, but she did things Sabine had never done and I had never dreamed of. I guess she had learned her trade well, but that night I tried to blot out those thoughts. It was only I, she told me, who made her so excited. And for those few hours, I believed her as much as I had ever believed anything. As much as I believed my own inner voice saying that this would be just this once, that Sabine didn’t ever have to know, that it wouldn’t hurt her. I’ll make it up to you, I silently promised her, by never being unfaithful again. It’s just this once. God, she was good.
—
I made my way back to my grimy room in Wedding around four in the morning, but when I woke up at ten I felt determined, energetic and no longer afraid of my old haunts. If I ran into anyone else I knew, so be it. It wasn’t as if many of them, or any of them, could boast that they had made much more of their lives. At least I had traveled, lived in another city, fought for a cause—even though that cause was lost. And I was no longer an inexperienced boy but a man, a man who knew something about women, different kinds of women. But when I thought briefly about fulfilling my promise to Sabine by visiting my mother, I felt a flicker of the old doubt. I’ll do that later, I decided. First I needed to focus on the reason for my coming, Otto’s summons.
Otto had kept his political activities discreet enough not to jeopardize his day job at the Reich Food Ministry. Since it was Saturday, I didn’t need to wait until evening to find him at home. When I knocked, I heard a shuffling of papers and a chair scraping the floor, and then he was there in the open doorway, his arms stretched out and grasping my shoulders in greeting. “You’ve grown up,” he said, sizing me up with bemusement. “Looks like Munich hasn’t treated you all that badly.”
Rex jumped up in greeting, and I dropped down on one knee to pet him. He gleefully offered me his stomach. “Hey, I’ve got a dog, too, now. Or at least my girlfriend does. I gave it to her.”
Otto grinned. “Yes, Munich is treating you well.”
Looking up, I saw a small table overflowing with a typewriter, papers, books and pamphlets. Some I recognized as Nazi publications from Munich, but many of the others didn’t look familiar. The Capitalist Menace, one proclaimed. Another read: The Case for Nationalization.
Otto motioned me to sit and followed my gaze. “Yes, I’m still working on the socialist part of the agenda. I hope you didn’t forget that down in Munich, with all the talk about just the nationalism part.”
I shrugged, still playing with Rex, who had followed me to my chair. “Well, I’m not sure either part matters much anymore. It’s pretty much over, I guess.”
“Look who’s the pessimist now,” Otto said. “In your letters, you were always saying Hitler was really on to something, that his movement could succeed, and I was the skeptic. You’re almost as bad as Hitler himself.”
“What do you mean?”
“You haven’t heard about your führer’s second great moment after fleeing Munich?”
I shook my head, and Otto told me the version of events that he had somehow already learned from his other sources in Munich, clearly ones a lot higher up than I was.
Hitler, it seemed, had taken refuge in Uffing, in the Hanfstaengls’ house. I had heard stories about Ernst “Putzi” Hanfstaengl, or “the American,” as we called him. He was a member of a wealthy Munich family of art publishers, and he had introduced Hitler to many of his rich friends. His wife, Helene, a tall elegant woman, was the one with the real American family background, but Ernst had studied at Harvard and entertained Hitler by playing university sports songs on the piano. Anyway, Otto explained that Ernst and several other Hitler advisers had already fled across the border to Austria when they got word of the shoot-out. So it was Helene who was at home when Hitler arrived, still in pain from his dislocated shoulder and deeply despondent.
“You know, I think Hitler may be a bit in love with Helene,” Otto said, chuckling. “He’s always been in awe of some women, and she seems to be one of them. In any case, word was out that the police were already approaching the house when Helene found him standing in his bathrobe and holding his pistol. I don’t know whether he actually pointed it at his head, but she was convinced he had decided to kill himself. She lit into him: She told him he didn’t have the right to abandon his followers that way, that he’d better not take the easy way out. And she actually took the pistol from his hand. After that he accepted his arrest peacefully when the police came. He just threw his trench coat on over his bathrobe and made sure he had his Iron Cross pinned on it. The police treated him with a lot of respect, as if they were escorting a patriot instead of a criminal.
“So what do you think of that?”
I shook my head. “Not exactly encouraging. If Hitler was thinking about shooting himself, what are the rest of us supposed to feel?”
“You’ve missed the point,” he lectured me. “Sure, there have been plenty of arrests. My brother, Gregor, marched his men back to Land-shut and faced down a Reichswehr detachment that wanted to stop them. ‘Make way or I fire,’ he told them—and they backed down. But he, too, was arrested at his own home the n
ext day. Although, as in Hitler’s case, the arresting officer was almost apologetic about having to carry out such an order. The point is that a lot of people consider von Kahr and the others the real traitors here. They were going to back our revolution, and then they turned on it. We may have lost this round, but I’ll wager we’ve gained a lot of sympathy.”
I still wasn’t convinced, but I was impressed by Otto’s passion, his strong belief that the Nazis had a chance to stage a comeback.
“What’s crucial here is how everyone behaves at the trial,” Otto continued. “We can use it as a platform. We can put the government on trial instead of it putting us on trial. But that depends on how smart Hitler is, whether he’ll know what to do.”
No matter what happened, Otto insisted that he’d keep producing propaganda for the movement—or simply against the government. In fact, he told me, he was thinking of quitting his bureaucratic job and devoting himself full-time to writing. So much needed to be done, he explained, and the written word was so important.
“What can I do? Can I stay here and help you out? There’s nothing left in Munich.”
“Not yet,” Otto said. “The time may come soon when you can work for me here, but I need to get my operation going first. And for now you can be my eyes and ears in Munich, much more so now. With Hitler and the others arrested and about to face trial, we’ll need to send messages back and forth and watch every step of these proceedings. And see how Hitler really performs. He may not have been much of a leader when the shooting started, but the real battle is just beginning. And words are going to be just as important in this battle as bullets. You can travel back and forth, but I want you most of the time in Munich.”
We talked about the kinds of information Otto would be looking for, and as I was leaving, he solemnly shook my hand. “Look, I’m not saying everything is going to work out. But maybe because I’m far enough from what happened in Munich, I can see the possibilities. Don’t give up. And yes, don’t give up on Hitler. You and Gregor were right: He does know how to reach people. Now he’s got to show that he can do that even from a courtroom or prison.”
—
I didn’t lie to Sabine about Ulrike when I returned to Munich; I just didn’t say anything. I felt almost virtuous in my conviction that what had happened was and would be the only exception. The first night after I returned was almost like our very first nights together, both of us finding that we couldn’t get enough of each other, our brief separation pulling us even closer together. But when we had exhausted ourselves and I was already half asleep with my arms tightly around her, Sabine asked: “So how is your mother? What did she say when she saw you?”
“She’s fine,” I said sleepily. “I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.”
Sabine pushed back to look at my face. “You saw her, right?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Good, I was worried there for a moment.”
One lie of omission and one direct lie, I thought. But no need to hurt or disappoint her, no need to be stupidly honest. What happened didn’t really matter, I told myself. It was just a delayed initiation into manhood that I almost had earlier, before I ever met Sabine, except for the fact that I wasn’t ready for it then. As for my mother, I’d see her the next time.
In the morning I was saved by the fact that we woke up late and both of us needed to rush off. Sabine was going to work, and much to her disappointment, I had my first assignment—to make contact with members of the now underground Nazi movement in Munich and to plan coordination with Landsberg, the town west of Munich where Hitler and the others had been imprisoned. Otto had been precise: I was to report on the prisoners, how they were treated and what they were doing. If he was going to commit himself to the party—he hadn’t formally joined yet—he wanted to know how they dealt with the setbacks as well as the victories.
One thing became clear quite early: The authorities weren’t going to mistreat Hitler and the other Nazi prisoners. Word came that Hitler’s cell number seven was comfortable, bigger than his small room on Thierschstrasse. Its window had the requisite double bars but offered a pleasant view of trees and bushes. His colleagues were allowed to visit him and to talk as long as they wished.
The real worry, however, was not the conditions but his state of mind. Alfred Rosenberg, whom Hitler had designated as the Munich leader of the party during his absence, was distressed by news that the prisoner wasn’t eating. A German who had grown up in the Baltic city of Reval, Rosenberg was an intellectual, one of the smartest men we had. But he also knew he could hardly fill Hitler’s shoes. That’s probably why Hitler had chosen him. He wouldn’t be a threat.
He was loyal and genuinely concerned. “They say he’s pale and listless and that he hasn’t eaten in almost two weeks,” he told me. “He just stares out the window. The doctor is warning the others that they’d better get him to eat or he’ll die. I want you to go there and try to talk to them. And, if you can, to him. I’ll give you a letter for him. You have nothing to worry about: They have no specific charges against you and probably won’t have any idea who you are.”
I set off for Landsberg the next morning, hitching a ride with a driver who dropped me off near the small town wedged between steep, wooded hills. I crossed an old wooden bridge over the Lech, more like a small stream than a river at that point, and headed for the prison complex. It sat atop a hill and was surrounded by imposing stone walls.
As I approached the gate, I tried to remain calm, but I felt warm and sweaty under my worn jacket despite the early December chill. It was one thing to say that I wasn’t in any danger and quite another to test that theory. Was it true that the authorities had no interest in arresting any more of us?
“Your business?” the guard asked, his florid face impassive behind elaborate waxed whiskers.
“I’m here to deliver a letter to Adolf Hitler.”
His expression didn’t change. “All right, hand it over.”
I took a breath. “I’d like to give it to him personally.”
The guard gave me a contemptuous look. “Hand it over.”
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the letter from Rosenberg.
The guard tore it open and read slowly. His face softened for the first time. “Why didn’t you tell me you were one of his people? How was I supposed to know that? We’ve got to guard the prisoners and to make sure nobody gets to them who shouldn’t.” He paused. “I’ll take you to Drexler—he’ll tell you whether you can see Hitler. Follow me.”
We walked down a long corridor until we reached a locked door. The guard drew out a large key and opened it. “This is where we keep the politicals,” he said. He laughed. “Sure beats the other side, where the criminals are.”
I didn’t get to see Hitler that day. Anton Drexler, the original founder of the party that Hitler took over, drew me aside. “He’s resting now,” he said. With evident satisfaction, he added: “He ate today for the first time.”
Drexler explained that he had spent hours in the cell convincing Hitler not to give up. He wanted me to know that his persuasive powers had done the job, with the result that Hitler finally gobbled down some rice. Later, I heard another version of events. Helene Hanfstaengl had intervened again, according to this account, by letter. She told Hitler she hadn’t stopped him from taking his life at her house only for him to do so behind bars. She warned him not to disappoint his supporters, not to take the easy way out. And to ignore all the gleeful press accounts of his political demise. Prove them wrong, she insisted.
Whoever deserved the credit, Hitler’s recovery was remarkable. He not only began eating again and regained his physical strength quickly, his outlook changed radically. By the time his stepsister Angela came to visit from Vienna later in the month, she found him brimming with optimism. His left arm was almost completely healed, and he showed her gifts he had received from well-wishers, including Winifred Wagner, the daughter-in-law of the composer and a great admirer. There were flowers, h
is favorite cakes, books, all delivered without any interference from the prison authorities. “Victory is only a matter of time,” he assured Angela. Those words spread quickly throughout our camp and outside it. While the socialist press continued to ridicule Hitler and his coconspirators, I realized we were far from isolated.
As Christmas neared, I asked Sabine to come with me to a café in Schwabing, Munich’s favorite district for artists. I wouldn’t normally have thought to enter one of those more fashionable cafés, but Rosenberg suggested it, saying that the owners had invited members of our movement for something special.
I wasn’t sure what to expect, and I didn’t explain the party connection to Sabine. But she was happy for a rare night out. When we entered, the café was arranged with a darkened stage near the window at the front; the audience was invited to sit in the back. I recognized a few faces from party meetings, but the crowd seemed to be mostly artistic types.
“What’s this all about?” Sabine asked as we sat down.
“I’m not sure,” I whispered, “but I think it has something to do with Hitler.”
Sabine rolled her eyes.
“Just wait, let’s see,” I pleaded.
A low light was turned on the improvised stage as male voices sang “Silent Night” from somewhere on the side. We couldn’t see the singers. A man was sitting at a table in front of the window, his face buried in his hands. I couldn’t make out who he was, but then I noticed the fake bars in the window as a light snow fell outside. The man slowly turned, and in the dim light, his familiar features, slicked-down black hair and narrow but thick mustache stopped me short. By the time he had turned fully, I knew it wasn’t Hitler, but I still felt slightly in shock. As did much of the audience. I saw several people, both men and women, with wet eyes. Even Sabine seemed oddly moved. “It’s too bad he has to spend Christmas in prison,” she said. “I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”
—
At the end of 1923, none of us could quite figure out what the government was doing, but somehow it managed to halt the crazy inflation and stabilize the mark again. Rosenberg and others warned us not to believe the economic situation had really improved. I took those warnings to heart, I guess, because it was easy to be cynical about anything going right for a change. Nonetheless, I had to admit that life began to feel a bit more normal again. And it was nice to know that when I had a few marks in my pocket—most often from Sabine—they would be worth just as much tomorrow as they were today. But plenty of people who had seen their life savings evaporate weren’t going to forgive the government, no matter what it had finally managed to achieve. There was no doubt that the rage fueling our movement was still there.
Last Stop Vienna Page 9
