Reichsvereinigung Kohle, the Coal Board, where they also played a role. There was no plaque on the entrance. In the lobby, my papers were checked by a young woman with long light brown hair pulled back, who wore charcoal-gray clothes without any insignia, but cut like a uniform, with men’s pants and boots instead of a skirt. Satisfied, she escorted me to a private elevator, which she started up with a key hanging around her neck on a long chain, and accompanied me to the top floor, without a word. I had never come here: in the 1930s, they had another address, and in any case I usually met them in a restaurant or in one of the big hotels. The elevator opened onto a wide reception room furnished in wood and dark leather inset with polished brass and frosted glass decorative elements, elegant and discreet. The woman who escorted me left me there; another woman, in identical costume, took my coat and hung it in a wardrobe. Then she asked me to hand her my service revolver, and holding it with a surprising naturalness in her beautiful carefully manicured fingers, she put it away in a drawer, which she locked shut. I wasn’t made to wait any longer; she led me in through a padded double door. Dr. Mandelbrod was waiting for me at the rear of an immense room, behind a large reddish mahogany desk, his back to a long bay window, also of frosted glass, that let a pale, milky light filter through. He looked even fatter than at our last meeting. Several cats were strolling about the carpets or sleeping on the leather furniture and on his desk. He pointed with his pudgy fingers to a sofa on the left, in front of a low table: “Hello, hello. Have a seat, I’ll be right there.” I had never been able to understand how such a beautiful and melodious voice could emanate from so many layers of fat; it still surprised me. With my cap under my arm, I crossed the room and took a seat, displacing a sleek tabby cat with white paws, who didn’t seem to hold it against me, but gently slipped under the table to settle down elsewhere. I examined the room: all the walls were padded with leather, and aside from the stylish ornaments such as those in the antechamber, there were no decorations, no paintings or photographs, not even a portrait of the Führer. The surface of the low table, on the other hand, was made of superb marquetry, a complex labyrinth in precious wood, protected by a thick glass plate. Only the cat hair clinging to furniture and rugs disfigured this discreet, hushed décor. A vaguely unpleasant smell pervaded the room. One of the cats rubbed against my boots, purring, its tail up; I tried to get rid of it with the tip of my foot, but it didn’t pay any attention. Mandelbrod, in the meantime, must have pressed a hidden button: an almost invisible door opened in the wall to the right of his desk and another woman came in, dressed like the first two, but with completely blond hair. She walked behind Mandelbrod, pulled him back, swiveled him around, and pushed him alongside his desk toward me. I got up. Mandelbrod had in fact gotten fatter; whereas before he got around in an ordinary wheelchair, he was now settled in a vast round armchair mounted on a little platform, like an enormous Oriental idol, placid, bovine, colossal. The woman pushed this massive apparatus without any visible effort, probably by starting up and controlling an electrical system. She set him in front of the low table; I walked round to shake his hand and he scarcely brushed me with the tips of his fingers while the woman left through the door by which she had come in. “Please, do sit down,” he murmured in his beautiful voice. He was dressed in a thick brown wool suit; his tie disappeared beneath a breastplate of flesh hanging from his neck. A rude noise came from beneath him and a horrible smell reached me; I made an effort to remain impassive. At the same time a cat jumped onto his knees and he sneezed, then began caressing it, then sneezed again: each sneeze came like a little explosion that made the cat jump. “I am allergic to these poor creatures,” he sniffled, “but I love them too much.” The woman reappeared with a tray: she came up to us with a measured, assured step, placed a tea service on the low table, attached a tray to Mandelbrod’s armrest, poured us two cups, and again disappeared—all as discreetly and silently as the cats. “There’s milk and sugar,” said Mandelbrod. “Help yourself. I don’t take any.” He examined me for a few minutes: an impish gleam glinted in his little eyes almost drowned beneath folds of fat. “You have changed,” he declared. “The East did you good. You have matured. Your father would have been proud.” These words touched me to the quick: “You think?”—“Certainly. You’ve done some remarkable work: the Reichsführer himself took note of your reports. He showed us the album you prepared in Kiev: your chief wanted to take all the credit for himself, but we knew the idea came from you. In any case that was a trifle. But the reports you wrote, especially these past few months, were excellent. In my opinion, you have a brilliant future before you.” He fell silent and contemplated me: “How is your wound?” he asked finally.—“Fine, Herr Doktor. It’s healed, I just have to rest a little more.”—“And then?”—“I’ll resume my service, of course.”—“And what do you plan on doing?”—“I’m not sure, actually. It will depend on what they offer me.”—“It’s really up to you to receive the offer you like. If you choose wisely, doors will open, I assure you.”—“What are you thinking of, Herr Doktor?” Slowly, he raised his teacup, blew on it, and drank noisily. I also drank a little. “In Russia, I believe you concerned yourself mostly with the Jewish question, isn’t that right?”—“Yes, Herr Doktor,” I said, slightly annoyed. “But not just that.” Mandelbrod was already going on in his measured, melodious voice: “From the position you were in, you no doubt could not appreciate the full extent either of the problem or of the solution being applied to it. You have probably heard rumors: they are true. Since the end of 1941, this solution has been extended to all the countries in Europe, insofar as possible. The program has been operational since the spring of last year. We have already recorded considerable successes, but it is far from over. There is room there for energetic, devoted men like you.” I felt myself blush: “Thank you for your trust, Herr Doktor. But I should tell you: I found that aspect of my work extremely difficult, beyond my strength. I’d rather concentrate now on something that corresponds better to my talents and knowledge, like constitutional law or even legal relations with the other European countries. The construction of the new Europe is a field that attracts me very much.” During my little speech, Mandelbrod had finished his tea; the blond Amazon had reappeared and crossed the room, poured him another cup, and left again. Mandelbrod drank some more. “I understand your hesitations,” he said finally. “Why take on difficult tasks if there are others to do them? That’s the spirit of the time. During the other war, it was different. The more difficult or dangerous a task was, the more men strove to carry it out. Your father, for example, thought that difficulty in itself was reason enough to do a thing, and to do it to perfection. Your grandfather was a man of the same mold. These days, despite all the Führer’s efforts, the Germans are sinking into laziness, indecision, compromise.” I felt the indirect insult like a slap; but something else in what he had said was more important to me: “Excuse me, Herr Doktor. I thought I understood you to say that you knew my grandfather?” Mandelbrod put down his cup: “Of course. He too worked with us, in our early years. An amazing man.” He stretched his swollen hand out to the desk. “Go look, there.” I obeyed. “You see that morocco portfolio? Bring it to me.” I went over and handed it to him. He put it on his knees, opened it, and took out a photograph, which he held out to me. “Look.” It was an old sepia photo, slightly yellowed: three figures side by side, in front of a background of tropical trees. The woman, in the middle, had a chubby little face, still marked by the plumpness of adolescence; the two men wore light summer suits: the one on the left, with narrow somewhat fluid features and a forehead streaked with a lock of hair, also wore a tie; the shirt of the man on the right was open, beneath an angular face, as if engraved in precious stone; even a pair of tinted glasses didn’t manage to hide the joyful, cruel intensity of his eyes. “Which one is my grandfather?” I asked, fascinated, full of anxiety too. Mandelbrod pointed to the man in the tie. I examined him again: unlike the other man, he had secretive, almost transparent eyes. “And the woman?” I asked again, guessing already.—“Your grandmother. Her name was Eva. A superb, magnificent woman.” I actually hadn’t really known either one: my grandmother had died long before my birth, and the rare visits of my grandfather, when I was very little, hadn’t left me any memories. He had died not long after my father’s disappearance. “And who is the other man?” Mandelbrod looked at me with a seraphic smile. “You can’t guess?” I looked at him: “It’s not possible!” I exclaimed. He didn’t stop smiling: “Why? You don’t think I’ve always looked like this, do you?” Confused, I stammered: “No, no, that’s not what I meant, Herr Doktor! But your age…In the photo, you look the same age as my grandfather.” Another cat, who was walking on the carpet, leaped nimbly onto the back of the armchair and climbed onto his shoulder, rubbing against his enormous head. Mandelbrod sneezed again. “In fact,” he said between two sneezes, “I was older than he. But I’ve aged well.” I was still greedily scrutinizing the photo: how many things it could teach me! Timidly, I asked: “Can I keep it, Herr Doktor?”—“No.” Disappointed, I gave it back; he put it away in the portfolio and sent me to replace it on his desk. I came back and sat down. “Your father was an authentic National Socialist,” Mandelbrod declared, “even before the Party existed. People then were living under the sway of wrong ideas: for them, nationalism meant a blind, narrow-minded patriotism, a parochial patriotism, coupled with an immense domestic injustice; socialism, for their adversaries, signified a false international equality of the classes, and a class struggle within each nation. In Germany, your father was among the first to understand that there had to be an equal role, with mutual respect, for all members of the nation, but only within the nation. In their own way, all great societies in history have been national and socialist. Look at Temujin, the excluded one: it was only when he could impose this idea, and unify the tribes on that basis, that the Mongols were able to conquer the world, in the name of this man from nowhere who became the Oceanic Emperor, Genghis Khan. I had the Reichsführer read a book about him, he was very impressed. With immense, fierce wisdom, the Mongols razed everything in their path, to rebuild it all afterward on healthy foundations. The entire infrastructure of the Russian Empire, all the foundations on which the Germans later built, under czars who were in fact also German—it was the Mongols who brought them: the roads, the money, the postal system, customs, the administration. It was only when the Mongols compromised their purity, by taking foreign women generation after generation, and often from among the Nestorians—the most Jewish of Christians—that their empire broke apart and collapsed. The Chinese present an opposite but equally instructive example: they never leave their Middle Kingdom, but absorb and irremediably sinicize any population that enters it, however powerful it may be; they drown the invader in a limitless ocean of Chinese blood. They are very strong. And we shouldn’t forget that when we’ve finished with the Russians, we’ll still have the Chinese to contend with. The Japanese will never resist them, even if they look as if they’re on top today. If not right away, we’ll have to confront them someday in any case, in a hundred, two hundred years. So we might as well keep them weak, prevent them if possible from understanding National Socialism and applying it to their own situation. Do you know, by the way, that the very term