Independence was no ménage of sawdust, spittoons, high stools. A long vaulted space, ashine with gilt and glass, candelabra, a spread, central chandelier, was filled with the ‘maggot developers’, as Eeva’s group called them, fast-talking, swilling, choking, at crimson tables, reflected in sham-baroque, false-gold mirrors, their frames glutted with sickly cupids and trumpets, aspirant European millionaires receding into an infinity of multinational enterprise, advertising deals, idyllic prospectuses, equivocal handshakes, punning on Baltic freedom in hectic ostentation, a hurry to gobble the wild-boar stew, grilled pork, mounts of tiered, creamy pastry, explosive draughts of Rhenish wine, goblets of raw spirit, upheaval of pleasurable expectations.
The row of mirrors briefly detained me: invitations to vanity lightly smeared by my plain jacket and gimcrack trousers, at odds with the polished hair, glistening suits, artist-designed ties. Hamlet, I guessed, must have cherished a mirror, Lady Macbeth spied from bright surfaces. The sheen of electric lamps, cutlery, the latest shirt was fumed by cigars, heavy breath, liquor.
The head waiter, rotund Storm Prince, braided, sashed, waylaid me with the suave hostility of a traffic cop, offended by my disobligation to wear a tie, until mention of my host startled him almost into parade attention. The name was passport to eternity. He drew breath, he bent, he melted, escorting me down the resplendent avenue of tables, his formal coat wagging behind like a horse’s tail, to the best station of all, beneath a plastic Gothic canopy, with blue, cushioned chairs, perquisite of republican royalty, in a recess windowed with a view of sumptuous gardens, astir with pink-and-white blossom, like daintily torn coloured umbrellas.
The Herr General awaited me, in full regimentals: dark, double-breasted suit, cold blue tie, his air of authority reinforced by a half-circle of waiters, satraps awaiting his nod. My own award was a cursory handshake, delivered without him rising, then permission to be seated, before announcing, as if from a court circular, that he had allowed himself the privilege of ordering the luncheon. Then he frowned, not at me but at the sound of pager, which at once ceased.
Though courses were finely cooked, deftly served, I barely noticed them, though drinking imprudently.
He resumed advice, brusque apologetics, confidential asides as though we had never parted. His eyes, caught between the sunlit window and artificial glare, were watchful, perhaps expecting me to escape. Eeva would have distrusted him on sight. To the voracious feeders, I must merely have been his tame aide or stand-in.
‘We may both be vain, Erich. Neither of us is conceited. Politics, minefield, enforce continuous readjustments, Umsturze. My soul is not tormented nor my zest abated. We are not mentally deranged because our grandmothers ate rats in 1917 or from failing to save a plough-boy from a watermill wheel.’
He murmured to a waiter, lifted a hand twinkling with a chunky ring. His words, measured as a thesis, yet reached me intermittently, as if in a damaged movie, for, eating well, he was constantly ordering different wines, while drinking sparingly with connoisseur’s appreciation, leaving me to gulp unmanneredly.
‘Life’, he was saying, ‘is susceptible to false moves, for which we must pay but can also be set to work. Imprisoned at Kharkov, I studied books on the Chechenets, those Ingush peoples of North Caucasus, and indeed contributed an article, doubtless long superseded, not for inaccuracy but from policy, for the Soviet Encyclopaedia. In 1941, encouraged by the Reich Abwehr, they attempted revolt, led by a young, very passable poet, Kharsam Israelov. Misjudging the Pact, mistiming their plan, they suffered. Survivors were dispatched east, to hard labour. Fatally hard. This was not my concern, but their customs, language, art had interest, and I was regretful when changed circumstances provided offers from the KGB – many German scientists were already suitably, and gainfully, employed. After the war, I eventually graduated to a commission from the Washington State Department. I was one of the first to realize that Stalin’s agents had given, or sold, him the date of the Normandy landings. Thus he could win salient Berlin approaches, outfacing the Allies. We were all tardy in discovering the top Soviet dupes in England, though I knew and respected Professor Blunt, despite his rather unwelcoming manner. He needed someone, not myself, to share his fears. He reminded me of a deep-sea diver, highly skilled but uncertain of his locale. His witticisms were like Nero’s, shrewd but not funny. He despised cowards, but may have been one. Very profitably for myself, we discussed Poussin and Claude Lorraine. Disappointing for him, I fear.’
Profitably was two-faced. His arrogance, his complacency, was stretching me tight, though he might now suspect loss of my fidelity. To call him Father would nauseate. The UN, the EU, must clamour for his like: he would not end decrepit in some Terre Gaste, one of the lonely in the dead, vengeful centre of a ruined self. Simultaneously, he had much that I wished to know. This would be my chance, only chance, of hearing it. My first question gratified him; he raised his glass, perhaps to me, perhaps not.
‘Goering? A Thor with hammer mislaid. He had drug-addict’s vision in which things were both real and unreal. In a world dangerously balanced on a hill. Insane but not clinically so. His physique confirmed Einstein’s discovery that the more swiftly an object travels the heavier it becomes. He always demanded everything at once. Women, jewels, dogs, but all he saw was himself, from different angles. Millions always excited him. Millions of marks, animals, casualties, like a child who promises Mama a million kisses. He had few hopes of the war, shrewdly quailing from the risks but fearing his employer more. He became the star actor-dramatist, forgetting his lines, improvising wildly, but with the requisite tone and gestures to lull the audience. A sleepwalker. Massive but not grown-up. A sponge, sucking in offices, gifts, uniforms, cocaine, praise, swelling into a soggy mess, eventually squeezed into nothing.’
He was silent. I waited, but he had not ceased. ‘His study was a veritable Valhalla, the framed text on his football-field of a desk belied the founder of the Gestapo. Whoever injures Animals injures German sentiments. I was surprised by his inordinate desire for Cranachs, though for art, as art, he felt almost nothing. He would stand staring at stolen masterpieces, footmen’s nudes, flashy junk, as if they were identical. Possession, not value, was his mania, unceasing, while the Reich he had sworn to defend crashed around him. He mistook dire warnings for rich promises, inhabiting opera.’
Not appearing to notice my inability to enquire further, he glanced outside at tinted blossom, blue sky. ‘An Englishman, Mr Ruskin, advised an artist, hypothetical genius, that were someone to fall dead, his business would not be to help him but to note the colour of his lips. The Reichsmarschall would have done neither. He would have tripped, in haste to step over the body. He was very much the Grand Huntsman. He once, rather wistfully, confessed his hankering for Cretan bullfights, dangerous but usually bloodless. He thought the bull symbolized earthquake, destructive but magnificent. By mastering the bull, the performer, more dancer than butcher, could tempt yet master the earthquake and achieve stature. Hermann both shrank from earthquake and was thrilled by it. At Nuremburg he regained reality, after so much sloth and absurdity, a fraudulent horse-dealer, though occasionally…’
His voice dropped. He did not finish but shed his small-arms trainer’s poise for another, very slightly attempting to ingratiate. ‘He could be like you, when, years ago, resenting an order to go outdoors, you blamed not your parents but your overcoat. I wonder now whether our New Europe will render obsolete such as he. A rather grubby astrologer, from Hamburg, Herr Wulf, warned that he might, to his disadvantage, die.’