From the hotel, I sent a telegram to Werner Best in Denmark, telling him I was ready to accept a position in his administration. Then I waited. My sister didn’t call back, and I didn’t try to contact her, either. Three days later they brought me a letter from the Auswärtiges Amt; it was Best’s reply: the situation in Denmark had changed, and he had nothing to offer me for the moment. I crumpled the letter up and threw it out. Bitterness and fear were welling up; I had to do something to avoid collapsing. I called back Mandelbrod’s office and left a message.
MENUET (EN RONDEAUX)
It was Thomas, as you might have guessed, who brought me the letter. I had gone down to listen to the news at the hotel bar, along with some officers from the Wehrmacht. It must have been around the middle of May: in Tunis, our troops had carried out a
voluntary contraction of the front in accordance with the preestablished plan; in Warsaw, the liquidation of the terrorist bands was proceeding without obstacles. The officers around me listened glumly, in silence; only a one-armed Hauptmann laughed loudly at the terms freiwillige Frontverkürzung and planmässig, but stopped when he met my anguished gaze; like him and the others too, I knew enough to interpret these euphemisms: the Jews who had revolted in the ghetto had been resisting our best troops for several weeks now, and Tunisia was lost. I looked around for the waiter to order another Cognac. Thomas came in. He crossed the room with a martial stride, ceremoniously gave me a German salute while clicking his heels, then took me by the arm and drew me toward a booth; there, he slipped into the banquette, negligently throwing his cap on the table, and brandished an envelope that he held delicately between two gloved fingers. “Do you know what’s inside?” he asked, frowning. I made a sign that I didn’t. The envelope, I saw, bore the header of the Persönlicher Stab des Reichsführer-SS. “I know what’s inside,” he went on in the same tone. His face cleared up: “Congratulations, dear friend. You play your cards close to your chest. I always knew you were smarter than you let on.” He was still holding the letter. “Take it, take it.” I took it, broke it open, and pulled out a sheet of paper, an order to present myself at the earliest opportunity to Obersturmbannführer Dr. Rudolf Brandt, personal adjutant to the Reichsführer-SS. “It’s a summons,” I said somewhat stupidly.—“Yes, it’s a summons.”—“And what does it mean?”—“It means that your friend Mandelbrod has a very long arm. You’ve been assigned to the Reichsführer’s personal staff, my friend. Shall we celebrate?”