‘As an immediate gesture of good faith, you are asked to introduce certain measures in accord with the jurisprudence of the Reich… First, confiscation of all wealth… Second, exclusion from any form of cultural and economic activity… And third, the imposition of the Star… They are then to be concentrated and quarantined. Dispatch’ — Absendung — ‘must in due course follow… I come, sirs, from the Wolfsschanze itself!… Solemnly I am charged to deliver a personal salute to Regent Horthy.’ He raised an index card and said with a smile, ‘To uh, His Serene Highness the Regent of the Kingdom of Hungary… Who, when he blessed us with a visit just a couple of weeks ago… seemed strangely impervious to our recommendations… A salute, then, and also a promise… Even if you compel us to utilise the Wehrmacht, we will be having your Jews… We will be having your Jews. Klar? Das ist klar?’
‘Yes, Herr Reichsleiter.’
‘Now you stay there, Neffe, while I see our dignitaries to their motorcade.’
He returned in less than a minute. Dismissing the servants, and retaining the liqueur, Uncle Martin drank a glass standing up and said,
‘There’s nothing like it, you know, Golo. Telling whole nations what to do.’ He took the chair beside me and asked simply, ‘Well?’
I told him I’d compiled a long report, and added, ‘But let me just say that it’s open-and-shut.’
‘Summarise, please.’
The cosmic-ice theory, Onkel (I began), also known as the World Ice Principle, holds that the earth was created when a frozen comet the size of Jupiter collided with the sun. During the trillennia of winter that followed, the first Aryans were cautiously moulded and formed. Thus, Onkel, only the inferior races are descended from the great apes. The Nordic peoples were cryogenically preserved from the dawn of terrestrial time — on the lost continent of Atlantis.
‘… Lost how?’
‘Submerged, Onkel.’
‘And that’s it?’
‘Pretty much. It’s a curious place, the Ahnenerbe. The cosmic-ice theory isn’t the only thing they’re trying to prove. They’re trying to prove that the Missing Link wasn’t an early human but some kind of bear. And that the ancient Greeks were Scandinavians. And that Christ wasn’t Jewish.’
‘What was he then? Is it all like that?’
‘An Amorite. No, they do some excellent work, and they’re well worth their million a year.’
Yes, I thought — worth every penny. The fact that the Ahnenerbe’s employees were considered ‘war essential’, exempting them from military service, was militarily neither here nor there: not one of them would have passed a medical; not one of them, I sometimes thought, would have survived a medical. These certified Aryans had misbegotten faces that seemed to have been dreamt up by misbegotten minds — pop-eyed, buck-toothed, slobber-mouthed, slope-chinned, their noses red and runny. Most were hack researchers or semi-professional hobbyists. I once got a glimpse of the ‘anatomy pavilion’: a severed head boiling in a glass bowl above the Bunsen burners, a jarful of pickled testicles. The Studiengesellschaft fur Geistesurgeschichte — a waxworks, a dream disarray of charts and body parts, of calipers, abacuses, dandruff, and drool…
‘But it’s mostly propaganda. That’s where its value lies, Onkel. Stoking up nationalism. And justifying conquests. Poland’s just part of aboriginal Germania — that kind of thing. But the other stuff? All right, tell me this. The cosmic-ice theory — what does Speer think of it?’
‘Speer? He doesn’t even stoop to give an opinion. He’s a technician. He thinks it’s all shit.’
‘And he’s right. Distance yourself, Onkel. The Reichsfuhrer and the Reichsmarschall can gain nothing but ridicule by supporting it. Forget the cosmic-ice theory. And move against Speer. What’s he got?’
Uncle Martin refilled the glasses. ‘Well, Neffe, in February he claimed that he’d doubled war production in just under a year. And it’s true. That’s what he’s got.’
‘Which is precisely the danger. You see what he’s building, him and Saukel, Onkel? Speer wants what is obviously yours. The succession.’
‘… The succession.’
‘If, God forbid…’
‘Mm. God forbid… It’s all in hand, Neffe. The Gauleiter are with me. Of course they are. They’re Party. So, you know — Speer orders a trainload of machine parts and my boys take half of it along the way. And I’ve planted Otto Saur and Ferdi Dorsch in his ministry. He’ll be stymied at every turn, and all he can do is try and get close enough to the Chief to bore him about it. Speer’s just another functionary now. He’s not an artist. Not any more.’
‘Good, Onkel. Good. I knew you wouldn’t just sit there, sir, and be cheated out of what is rightfully yours.’
A little later, when I mentioned the time of my train, the Sekretar buzzed the car pool and announced that he would accompany me to the Ostbahnhof. In the courtyard I said,
‘This door. Incredibly heavy.’
‘Armour-plated, Golo. Chief’s orders.’
‘Better safe than sorry, eh Onkel?’
‘Get in… See? A limousine that feels almost cramped. That’s the price of power. So how was your New Year’s Eve?’
‘It was very nice. Tantchen and I sat in front of the fire till ten past twelve. Then we drank a toast to your health and sought our beds. How was yours?’
The crouched outriders sped forward to liberate the road ahead; we sailed through the crossings against the light; and then the bikes surged past us once again. Uncle Martin shook his head, as if in disbelief, saying,
‘Ten past twelve? Can you believe, Golo, I sat up till five in the morning. With the Chief. Three and three-quarter hours we had together. Have you ever seen him up close?’
‘Of course, Onkel, but just the once. At your wedding.’ That was in 1929 — when Gerda and I were both on the brink of our third decade. And the leader of the NSDAP looked so much like a pale, pouchy, and cruelly overworked head waiter that every civilian there, I felt, was trying very hard not to hand him a tip. ‘Such charisma. I would never dare imagine any kind of uh, tête-à-tête.’
‘You know, don’t you, for years people were willing to give their eyesight for five minutes alone with the Chief? And I get nearly four hours. Just him and me. In the Wolf’s Lair.’
‘So romantic, Onkel.’
He laughed and said, ‘It’s a funny thing. When I uh, renewed my acquaintance with Krista Groos, for whom many thanks, I felt the same excitement. Not that I… Nothing of that kind. Just the same level of elation. Have you noticed, Golo, that redheads smell stronger?’
For a quarter of an hour Uncle Martin talked of his doings with Krista Groos. Whenever I looked out through the tinted windows I instinctively expected to see a stream of raised fists and rancorous faces. But no. Women, women, women, of every age, and busy, busy, busy, not with the old Berlin busyness (getting and spending), just busy living, trying to buy an envelope, a pair of shoelaces, a toothbrush, a tube of glue, a button. All their husbands, brothers, sons, and fathers were hundreds or perhaps thousands of miles away; and at least a million of them were already dead.
‘I told you she was famous,’ I said as the car pulled up behind the Poland Station.
‘Justly celebrated, Golo. Justly celebrated. Mm, I’ve got you here early for a reason. Before you go I’m going to give you a little treat. The strange tale of Dieter Kruger. I shouldn’t, of course. But it can’t matter now.’