Last Stop Vienna

by Andrew Nagorski

  Otto explained that this anger was misdirected: It needed to be focused on the big capitalist bosses who were really responsible for exploiting the German workers’ desperate situation. That was the message he continued to espouse in his publications that I was both guarding and distributing. Although our circulation was smaller than it had been before the break, Hitler and Goebbels still treated us like dangerous enemies—which only convinced us that we should fight harder and that we might yet succeed in bringing more party members over to our side. Hitler denounced Otto as a Bolshevik, and Goebbels even claimed that he was working for Moscow.

  If the Black Front didn’t succeed in recruiting many more members from Hitler’s party, it did begin to attract some younger men who shared our hatred of the Weimar Republic and capitalism but had always remained suspicious of the Nazis. We were patriots, we insisted, dedicated to our country, not one man. Instead of “Heil Hitler,” we greeted one another at meetings with “Heil Deutschland!” I may have envied the Nazis their growing success and recognition, but I felt part of a new fraternity and didn’t regret my decision to remain at Otto’s side.

  Not even when we were attacked. Otto and I were returning one evening to his apartment from a Black Front meeting when we were surrounded by a group of young men. Someone threw pepper into my eyes, blinding me. I took several punches to the stomach and face, and I felt the sharp edge of a knife graze my arm, which I had been flailing about. “The first man who moves is dead,” I heard Otto shout.

  The punching stopped. I managed to open one eye and saw Otto crouched with his Browning pistol pointed at our attackers. One of them brandished a club and another a knife, but they had no guns. They ran. Otto fired a shot in the air and came over to me. “They won’t get rid of us so easily,” he declared, still pointing the Browning in their direction. “Not so long as I’m carrying this. From now on we should be armed at all times.”

  After that incident, Hitler and Goebbels continued to attack us in their publications, but remarkably, we weren’t assaulted physically. My life began to feel almost normal—back to the routine of standing guard, distributing publications and attending Black Front meetings. I can’t quite explain what happened, even now. Maybe Hitler had decided that, at a time when he was seeking to present a more respectable image, he didn’t want to be associated with violence as before. Maybe he didn’t consider us as much of a threat, since our group remained small and fairly isolated. Whatever the case, I sometimes felt like a soldier without a real war.

  —

  “Here’s something for you,” Otto said, handing me a letter. “It came to my address: Maybe your wife has decided she wants you back.” I looked at the handwriting; it was familiar, but it wasn’t Sabine’s. I retreated into a corner and tore it open.

  Dear Karl,

  I don’t know if this note will reach you, since I don’t have your new address, and no one here wants to talk about you. But I know that you’re together with Otto Strasser in some sort of party that opposes my uncle, and it wasn’t difficult finding out where Otto is.

  I can’t write much here. But I want to talk to you, if that’s possible, if you can ever come to Munich. I’m sorry about the way we parted. I can’t stand the thought of your thinking badly of me. If you do come, don’t come to the apartment. Go see my friend Renate, who lives where I lived before—on Thierschstrasse. She can be trusted.

  Yours, Geli

  “So she wants you back?” Otto asked.

  “Maybe—I’m not really sure.”

  I read the letter again, and then once more. When I finally looked up, I felt that my face was flushed. Otto was smiling. “There’s only one way to find out, you know. Go to Munich and talk to her. We’ll manage without you for a couple of days—and maybe she’ll decide to move here with you. You didn’t take a vow of celibacy when you joined the Black Front.”

  “Thanks.” I nodded, feeling less than honest about what I was doing. I doubted Otto would care if he knew the letter wasn’t from Sabine, but I couldn’t imagine that he’d react the same way if he knew it was from Hitler’s niece.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I heard so many of Hitler’s speeches, so many of his declarations and exhortations. But the one that stuck in my mind was “There is no higher justice, only the right that man himself creates.” I had felt inspired by this proclamation at first. But then I began to recognize that Hitler was replacing the concept of “man” with himself, and that he was using this credo to justify destroying anyone who tried to stand in his way. Now I can only wonder why it took me so long to catch on.

  I rushed back to the small room Otto had rented for me, stuffed a few belongings into my knapsack—along with my Browning, which I wrapped carefully in a shirt—and caught an overnight train from the Anhalter Station.

  By the time the train arrived in Munich the next morning, I must have reread the letter a hundred times, especially “I’m sorry about the way we parted. I can’t stand the thought of your thinking badly of me.” Was she saying she wanted me back? Or that, as she had written, she just wanted to talk to me? It had to be the former, I decided. She wouldn’t otherwise have risked a letter to a known opponent of her uncle. And if that was the case, was she free of her uncle’s spell?

  I made my way through Munich’s familiar streets to Thierschstrasse, barely noticing my surroundings, although I remained vaguely alert to the possibility that I might run into Sabine. But I didn’t see anyone I recognized, and I quickly entered Geli’s old building and took two steps at a time up to the third floor.

  I knocked and waited. There was no response. I knocked again, louder, and heard a shuffling behind the door. A bleary-eyed, tall young woman in a brown robe opened it partway, keeping her right hand firmly on it. “Who are you?” she asked. “Do you know what time it is?”

  I suddenly realized it wasn’t even seven yet. In my rush from the train, I hadn’t considered the time. “My apologies,” I said. “But if you’re Renate, I had instructions to contact you. I’m Karl Naumann.”

  “What instructions? From whom?”

  “Geli.”

  The woman opened the door the rest of the way and stepped back, revealing the bed I remembered so well. “Come in. I wasn’t prepared for company at this hour, but you’re more than welcome.” She smiled for the first time. “You’ll just have to examine the wall for a few minutes while I get dressed.”

  I happily did so, already envisaging Geli coming to meet me.

  “You can turn around,” Renate said. Now sporting a dark skirt and a loose cream-colored blouse, she looked strikingly attractive as she reached for a brush and began stroking her long dark hair. “I’ll be out of your way in just a couple of minutes. I’m going off to work, but I’ll let Geli know you’ve arrived. You’ll wait here?”

  “Of course I will.”

  She looked at me with amusement, still brushing her hair. “Of course you will. For Geli, who wouldn’t?”

  When she left, I walked around the small room, peering repeatedly out its window, watching the trams rattle along Thierschstrasse at regular intervals. I strained to see as far up and down the street as I could, figuring that I would spot Geli as she approached.

  I lay down on the bed, trying to keep my imagination in check. Nothing worked. I kept imagining Geli rushing in and throwing herself on me, and in a moment I was back at the window, disappointed that there was no sign of her.

  One hour went by, then two, then three, and I began to wonder if I’d see her at all that day. Maybe she’d had second thoughts; maybe she hadn’t meant what she wrote in her letter, or had written it as a lark. Maybe Hitler had somehow found out I was here and was arranging for his thugs to take care of me. What if she had lured me into a trap?

  In the middle of the afternoon I reluctantly opened the door and peered down the stairs. I closed it again and paced back and forth in the narrow space between the bed and the wall, telling myself that she wasn’t coming but still delaying in the hope tha
t she would. Just then I heard the door open and spun around. There stood Geli, with her keys still in her right hand and a harried look on her face that was instantly replaced by a flirtatious grin. “So you really came. Was it just for me?”

  I nodded and opened my arms, but she only pecked me on the cheek. “You’re so good to do this.”

  “Why are you so late?”

  “I know, I’m sorry. But I couldn’t get away sooner, you know how it is.” She looked around the room with a distracted air. “You must be starving: Did you have anything to eat?”

  I reached for her shoulders and made her face me directly. “I don’t care about that—I came to see you.”

  I tried to pull her close, but she took my hands off her shoulders, drew them together and put her lips to them. “Karl, wait.”

  I wasn’t listening. I cupped my hands on her face and kissed her, pulling her tightly to me. She tried to push back, but I wasn’t going to be stopped. I kept my arms around her, kissing her harder than before; her mouth remained semiclosed for a moment, then yielded fully and filled mine with the pungent taste I associated with the woods where we had played hide-and-seek. She didn’t resist when I maneuvered her onto the bed, where our bodies fused as explosively as the first time and the dream I had been dreaming ever since I had boarded the train to Munich became reality.

  Geli rested her head on my chest. “Karl, Karl, Karl,” she murmured. “It’s been so long.”

  I would have stayed that way, just basking in the warm afterglow. But she rolled to her side and, before I could pull her back to me, spoke up in a very different tone, soft but insistent. “Karl, I need to talk to you.”

  “Talk. I’m here.”

  “You said before that you weren’t scared of my uncle, or not much anyway. What about now—now that you’ve broken with him?”

  Something in her voice shattered whatever was left of the spell. “No, not scared, but careful,” I replied, now fully alert.

  “Careful in what way?”

  “I help guard our facilities. We don’t take anything for granted.”

  “Have his people tried to hurt you?”

  “Once they did. But we defended ourselves, and since then they haven’t tried anything.”

  She was lying back on the bed, her arm tucked under her head as she stared up at the ceiling. I wanted to reach for her but thought better of it. “Geli, what’s bothering you—what’s happening between you and your uncle?”

  “I’m planning to leave him, to leave Munich,” she said softly. “To go back to Vienna. It’s about time.”

  “Have you told him yet?”

  She shook her head. “When he isn’t giving speeches, he’s busy with that Eva,” she said irritably. “I saw a letter from her two days ago, thanking him for a lovely evening at the opera. Can you believe that—he took her to the opera instead of me?”

  I hesitantly ran my finger over the blanket covering the contours of her body, but she didn’t seem to notice. “Isn’t it better that he’s thinking about other girls? Maybe now he’ll leave you alone.”

  She abruptly buried her head in my chest. I let my right hand move down her back, across her buttocks and lower. I felt her tongue flicking across my chest and her hand reaching down until it found what it was looking for. I wanted to slide under her, but she abruptly pushed herself away from me and slipped off the bed. “Come,” she said and turned to the wall, planting her hands against it. I was up in a second and roughly thrusting myself into her. “Hey, slow down, gently.”

  I obeyed, momentarily. But then she was the one who pushed back, and her body arched again and again until we both couldn’t hold it anymore. She pressed herself against the wall, and I slipped my hands in to cup her breasts, kissing her neck and shoulders. She turned, took my hands and pulled me back to the bed, where we dropped, facing each other.

  She stroked my face, and when the words came out, I barely heard them. “I can’t stand it anymore.”

  “Stand what?”

  She didn’t respond.

  “What do you want to tell me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What does he do to you—is it what we quarreled about last time?”

  “Yes, no, I mean, it’s not what you think.”

  “Is it better or worse?”

  Her eyes darted away from mine. “Worse than you can imagine. He makes me do these things . . .” She stopped and shook her head impatiently. “I don’t want to talk about them.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I don’t know.” She was on the verge of tears, and I took her hand, kissing her fingers as she continued talking. “I hate those things, but they aren’t what bothers me the most. It’s just that he’s always trying to prevent me from doing what I want, from seeing other people. He can do anything with me, with that Eva, with anyone else he feels like. And that Maria earlier, but she’s disappeared.”

  “How disappeared?”

  “Vanished, gone. I don’t know what’s happened to her, but there are rumors I don’t want to even think about.”

  “What kind of rumors?”

  She ignored my question. “I’ve had enough. You and those others broke with him; I can, too.” She turned toward me with pleading eyes. “Isn’t that right?”

  “Of course it is,” I assured her.

  “Will you help me? I don’t know anyone else who has stood up to my uncle.”

  “I’ll help you, Geli.”

  She snuggled against me, and we lay still for a long time. When she began speaking again, I tried not to move, but I had to strain to hear her. “You remember your dream, the one we quarreled about last time?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, imagine the dream continuing. He commands the girl standing over him to crouch lower and lower, until he can see every detail—every detail that he’ll then be able to draw. But before he gets to that stage, he wants more than just water to splash all over him. ‘Let yourself go,’ he begs the girl, and his face looks more and more contorted, twisted—I can’t describe it. He is thrashing below the girl, holding himself and waiting desperately for the girl to obey. ‘Hurry, hurry,’ he shouts. The girl wants to escape but can’t. She knows the only way she can get out of there is to follow his orders. When she hesitates, he reaches for his whip and—”

  She tensed. “He doesn’t have to use it, never has, as far as I know. It’s enough that he reaches for it. And so she releases the stream he has been waiting for, and the happier he is when she does so, the more she hates herself, the more she dreams of being anywhere else.” Geli drew a sharp breath, and a shudder worked its way through her entire body, which trembled even after it was gone. “That’s her dream within the dream.”

  I held her until her breathing steadied. “You can escape, Geli.”

  “You really believe that?”

  “Yes. I’ll help you—I’ll go with you wherever you want.” She smiled and put her finger on my lips, as if trying to silence me, but I continued. “I can’t stand the thought of your uncle being anywhere near you. I’ll keep him away from you, I’ll protect you, I won’t leave you. Nothing else matters to me.”

  She sat all the way up in bed, the blanket falling into her lap. She looked more desirable than ever. “Oh, Karl, I didn’t mean that. You shouldn’t take anything I say too literally.”

  “What?”

  She sighed. “You’re so kind, and I do like the idea of your helping me if I need it. But I’ll manage, we’ll manage.”

  I looked at her, still uncomprehending.

  “I have plans. You see, Josef and I are going to get married in Vienna.”

  “Josef?”

  “Yes, Josef. He’s a medical student, and he loves me. We have it all worked out.” She picked up my hand, but if that gesture would have excited me a minute before, it did nothing now. I felt dead inside.

  “Does this Josef have a beard?”

  “Yes, how did you know?”

  “I walked you to the c
afé where you met him, shortly after you moved to Munich,” I said, not hiding the bitterness I felt. “I suppose you were already making your plans back then.”

  “Karl, please, don’t be like this. I’m really happy that I’ll finally be able to lead a normal life. You have to understand that. It’s normal for people to marry. You’re married, remember?”

  “But my dream is to be with you.”

  She stood up and started grabbing her clothes. “You don’t believe in dreams, do you?”

  I stood up, too. “Shouldn’t I believe your dream?”

  Her face betrayed a moment of hesitation. “Look, I get carried away at times. The only part you should believe is that I want to leave my uncle, that I want a normal life.”

  “A life without me?” I said, unable to keep the petulance out of my voice. “Why did you write to me?”

  Geli was buttoning her blouse. “I’m sorry. I thought you could help me, as a friend. Which you did. You helped me make up my mind. I’ll leave him.”

  I stood there glumly, not knowing what else to say.

  Her face softened. “And it means so much to me that I know I can turn to you for help again if I need it.” She paused. “Can’t I?”

  “Of course you can. But I—”

  She put her fingers up to my lips. “I know.”

  I kissed her fingers once more, desperately wanting to find a way to hold on to her.

  She stepped back. “We’re friends, remember, special friends. My getting married won’t change that. It never will.”

  She kissed me quickly, and as much as I hoped against hope that I was wrong, I knew it was for the last time.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Once upon a time, I believed in something. Once upon a time, I felt a part of something larger than myself. And once upon a time, I thought a single life had little or no meaning. Now I know better, and how does this knowledge help me? Not at all.

  The train ride was interminable, although it was a shorter route to Vienna than the others, which went via Breslau or Passau. I watched the stations go by on the way to Prague—Elsterwerda, Dresden, Bodenbach, Bad Schandau and Aussig. I couldn’t read anything but the station signs, and I didn’t eat much except for a couple of rolls with cheese that I had brought along. I wasn’t interested in food, drink or anything else. All I could do was stare out of the window, oblivious to the landscape rolling by, vaguely aware that we were following the Elbe and climbing higher as we approached the border with Czechoslovakia. Someone told me many years later that this was a ride not to be missed for its beauty, but I didn’t see any of it that day. After Prague, I ticked off the rest of the stops—Tabor, Böhmisch Wieland, Gmünd, Schwarzenau, Siegmundsherberg—but they seemed to crawl by even more slowly until finally I saw that we were entering a large city that could only be Vienna.