“They’re a bunch of idiots.” Helga runs to Adi’s open arms.
“There, there,” Adi says, stroking her head and looking at the other children. He’s happy seeing his Nazikinder, his wonderful blond Nazi children.
“Morons. All of them.” Helga whines, her face buried in his tunic.
“There, there,” Adi whispers, looking at us with a knowing smile. “Perhaps you would like to take a little rest in Uncle Führer’s room, my schönheit. My beauty.”
“Can I?”
“Only during my situation briefing with General Krebs.”
“That old stink-pot!”
“Helga! Don’t talk like that in front of the Führer.” Magda is finally upset.
“She’s quite right. He’s a stink-pot,” says Adi.
“See. I told you so.”
“Still, you must wait until I finish with him,” Adi says.
“Will you come in and fix my hair? Like you always do?”
“Der Führer is much too busy for that,” I say.
“There are a few minutes here and there,” Adi offers. His patience and loving pats make me envious.
Holding Helga’s hand, Adi leaves. The hair net she wears to be grown up is tight and mashes down her golden curls so she appears bald. The little bald lady looks back at us smirking. Magda cherishes those smirks, her glory transparent as her daughter goes to the Führer’s room to lie on his bed and wait for him.
“Now there’s your answer,” Magda tells Der Chef Pilot. She picks up a popular children’s book titled Mama, Tell Me about Hitler to read to the children.
Hans looks sadly after his Führer who left without addressing the breakout. Saying nothing, he leaves the room for the iron staircase. I watch him slowly spiral to the top.
After Adi settles Helga in his bed, he’ll go to the bathroom and swab his buttocks with antiseptic lotion because he leaned against the map table. Who knows what his generals bring in from the war?
It’s disturbing to the Führer to think in terms of negotiating a truce. Hess’ maneuver in May of 1941, flying off to try and make peace, is a stupid act that has nothing to show for itself but the wreckage of a perfectly good Messerschmitt and his imprisonment. His wife influenced him, trying to make Hess a hero with his flying stunts and war record. She did it hoping he’d get special treatment after the war from the Allies.
Maybe Hans’ plan for a breakout from the Bunker is another crazy Hess idea.
The Russians are close and fighting on top is fierce. As a Catholic schoolgirl I was taught that St. Thomas Aquinas pronounced war perfectly acceptable when waged for the right reason. He seems the only smart saint. His wisdom soothes me though Adi hates religion and its false concepts.
Adi’s spirits go up and down so rapidly these days that I try to think of something other than battlefields. War hinders pleasant thoughts. Yet Adi is near me, and that’s what is important. I’m mistress of this Bunker and have furnished our home and done little things for him that would be impossible to do if we weren’t hunkered down below. Simple things that one might find silly. Like taking shells apart to decorate picture frames. Sometimes I imagine I smell new lumber and fresh varnish the way a bride might smell in her new house in another time. I look at white concrete and try to see golden pine and cushioned window seats of creamy velvet. That’s idle dreaming like those elegant patisserie shops I long for on Kurfürstendam or the Schlosscafe with plenty of schnapps and jolly waitresses. When will I ever see my Adi at the Berghof in his short leather pants and Bavarian hat with its saucy little feather? With the sound of stags rutting, we would amble with Blondi, Negus, and Stasi, pausing by the marsh marigolds, the daisies, and the pink sweet peas as trees exposed their crotches to us wantonly. Grasshoppers would snap their wings like a Nazi salute as we walked by. The dogs tried to catch the play of sunlight on the leaves of mountain maples, Stasi leaping like a greyhound. I’d pick purple asters and pin them in my hair while Adi told me Mozart was influenced by birdsongs. And in the winter months, Adi would kneel before “frost flowers” marveling in their petals of flat ice crystals. What happened to those times?
After several hours, Magda and I sneak into my room and peer through the half opened connecting door to see Adi and Helga on his bed. She calls him the “pigtail king” for only he can put five perfect pigtails in her hair. Removing her hairnet, he carefully parts the golden mop of curls into five sections and twists them into little braids. As she nuzzles her head in his lap, he tells her the story about finding an orphan puppy that he had to feed with a little tube of milk. She leaps up and sucks on Adi’s ear wanting to be fed like the doggy. After she slurps loudly for a full ten minutes, Adi mumbles Brahms’ “Lullaby”:
Adi leaves for the map room steering a sated Helga to her bedroom. As she goes happily to her cot, Magda follows and I’m left alone in the dining room thinking: Was I ever like Helga? Could I have ever been so awkward and childish? So skinny and silly?
I imagine myself as a little girl burying my face in Adi’s waist, my hands innocently around his thighs. My fingers find his pleasure, and I make him happy not even knowing it.
But who wants to be a child? It will soon be my wedding night. But I worry… is Hans right? Should we stage a breakout? Perhaps after we’re man and wife? But Adi tells me he has other plans.
Wearing riding breeches and carrying a whip under his arm, Josef Goebbels comes from the map room walking erect in his leather jacket with silver armbands that now look like the color of concrete. His face is bloated red with rage so that the pox scars on his cheeks are clearly visible. He has high blood pressure and when agitated, which is mostly every day, he becomes scarlet down to his scrawny neck. As the doctor has no patience with so ordinary an affliction, Dr. Morell injects him with a sterling silver syringe for everything but blood pressure.
It’s obviously not going well in the map room. It never goes well these days.
“Is he shouting?” I ask.
“That a man like the Führer has to shout after suffering the horrors of Dresden. Think of it, bombing a city that’s a showcase of historic treasures. Is that what Churchill calls civilization? Our children are singing,
He rubs his sweaty forehead and then scratches his tense neck. He tells me his voice is strained as he just gulped undiluted adrenalin for energy.
I think of the Dresden vase in my bedroom at the Berghof falling and breaking into pieces, and the Rilke line Goebbels often quotes: “Be a ringing glass that shatters as it rings.”
“Why are you smiling?” he asks.
“We Germans will ring as we shatter.”
“You remembered Rilke.”
“You’re the one who gave me my Rilke lessons.”
“Poets will remember our Führer. But will the common worker also realize how great he is?” Goebbels asks.
“Most German houses still have Führer niches in their bedrooms, little Führer-altars with paper roses and his portrait. Though badly damaged, the Wertheim Department Store sells glass frame photos of Hitler.”
“Ach ja! As they should,” he tells me.
“Remember how Magda always played gramophone records of the Führer’s monologues after dinner? At the Berghof?”