“Now those gramophone records lie smashed at our bombed Brown House in Munich,” he tells me. “Oh, Eva, there was a time I only worried about rectal bleeding. There was a time I thought only of making strong ties to England so that we could intimidate France.”
“How glorious when we put all our occupied countries on Berlin time. I’d sit on the grass at the Berghof thinking, ‘Paris is exactly now.’”
“Yes, my dear girl, the glorious days of the Berghof. Sometimes the Führer would talk to the village people… coming out the side door on an afternoon in his gray, chalk-striped suit… smiling, shaking hands… accepting flowers.”
The Berghof. Dürer’s The Violet in a simple silver frame on the wall. The plain Landhaus country style furniture Adi loves. Sitting on the terrace, the smell of wild morning glories, the sound of shuffling cards. Playing Ping-Pong as we sang Beethoven’s “Ode To Joy,” drinking, laughing, a canary in the cage, the wind a gentle comb to our hair. Mountain knapweed, thimbleberry shrubs, lanterns hanging in the trees. Paths scattered with moon spots and balsam fir. Nature bursting into color like a violent fire. I fought all the wrens for the best blueberries. Ilse Hess would take off her ruby rings one by one (each the size of a parrot’s perch) before playing Bach’s “D-Minor toccata” on the baby grand piano for the Reichstag deputies. Leaving the gold leaf dinner table, Adi would throw a flower to one of the ladies.
“We occupied Athens as the frightened women washed their icons in wine. Their prime minister committed suicide,” I announce proudly.
“Now they’re singing and tearing up occupation money in Athens, and I’m establishing a Werewolf Guerrilla Resistance. But let’s drink to good memories.”
There’s the smell of bland spit and damp leather in Goebbels’ office. He shoves aside papers he tells me were taken from American dispatch riders, papers that will never be evaluated. A bar of Lux soap is on top of a file cabinet stuffed with interviews of Germans repatriated from America. Pouring two drinks in glasses rimmed with specks of faded gold, he says the Americans are occupying Aachen where his mother is buried. He remembers the letter of condolence from Adi when she died, the most sensitive letter ever written about the death of a mother—telling him soon his agony would dissolve into the glorious despair of remembering.
Now… Josef’s hometown, Rheydt, with his dear childhood house on Dahlener Strasse, was handed over to the Americans without a fight.
The concrete seems to sweat more in this room, rivulets clinging and streaking the walls as if even concrete knows where the most important people gather. Goebbels takes a full gulp emptying his glass and pouring another. He talks about the old days, how he marched with workmen, side by side, holding up shining shovels that his adjutant polished like the brass buttons on his jacket, marching brother to brother. Oh, how he loved mingling with the masses, he, who came from their social class but was now a man of letters—a doctor from the University of Würzburg, his diploma with rite superato—singing with people who didn’t know the Mann brothers from any man. Then the Führer passed the Enabling Act dispensing with parliamentary government and in a single stroke brought the workers to prominence. But the trade unions ruined that. Unions getting money from Russia became enemies of the Reich. Moscow gold invaded us. Then we got saddled with too many stupid war generals… such as Rommel, who was like some old medieval manuscript full of errors, superstitions and silly customs. Montaigne’s words are a prediction from the past: “One ought to fear the generals more than the enemy.”
Tears are in Goebbels’ eyes as he tells me how he visited the grave of Adi’s mother two years ago. He arrived in Leonding not far from Linz and stood in that solemn village cemetery where the Führer’s mother rests for eternity. He was overcome with wonder at the humble tombstone that covered the mother of such a genius and recited John Donne’s poem before her grave:
Since then, he keeps a picture of her grave on his desk remembering her cancer and the words of Tolstoy that a woman who has never been ill is a monster. And that’s why he dislikes that American artist Whistler whose famous painting of his mother has the folds of her gown looking very sinister.
After visiting Klara’s grave, he went to the Führer’s boyhood home, picked leaves off the maple trees in the yard as the little Adolf might have done as a child, to make a bouquet to place before the house. Then he stood there inhaling the air of Linz before eating a haunch of wild boar at the Weinzinger Hotel.
Herr Doktor Goebbels waved a carpenter’s apron like a flag with his own hands in all the glory of the people. Those wonderful days when the German workers knew who loved them. He once backed a Communist up against the wall and gave him a bloody nose. He’d done it all for Germany and asked for nothing but poetry in return as he is “Kunstmensch”—a man of art. All those glorious meals at the Horcher restaurant where the Führer had talked to him of Linz. All those stirring chats about Napoleon who admired the silk weavers of Lyon, who built porcelain workshops, encouraged furniture designers, protected historical buildings. How was it possible that a Frenchman so full of pain and so squat and peculiar looking could be so marvelous? The Herr Doktor stops talking abruptly and stares at me. “Napoleon said he wanted to marry a womb. The Führer and I understand that’s the only way for a soldier. Yes, we know what it takes. Our Führer used to carry Schopenhauer in his greatcoat pocket all through the First War. Now he carries Nietzsche.”
Magda nearly divorced Josef embarrassed by the mistresses her husband flaunted on Baldur, his white motor yacht where he poured cheap wine into carefully dusted bottles of Chateau d’Yquem 1910 and gave the women perfume stockpiled from occupied Paris with strange names like Je Reviens. Magda got so angry she couldn’t endure Josef’s presence in the same café. So they divided Berlin’s restaurants between them. Adi put a stop to that and gave Josef a strong lecture on his obligations to the Reich. Off limits were the actresses Jenny Jugo, Luise Ullrich and Lida Baarová. Josef Goebbels had to meekly ask Madga’s forgiveness. Then he gave the Führer a gift of 18 Mickey Mouse films along with Der Schneemann, the cartoon Snowman by Hans Fischerkoesen, as they share a great love of cinematic art. In return, Adi gave Josef an armored Mercedes with bulletproof windows, especially pleased after Goebbels led Brownshirts to see the movie All Quiet on the Western Front and released white mice in the aisles. People ran out of the theatre screaming, and the film was suppressed.
“Where did you get the white mice?” I asked.
“Shipped direct from the old Knickerbocker Hotel off Times Square in New York.”
“Be serious.”
“Ratten hinaus! Donated by the science labs at Dachau where rats are kept.”
“Why Dachau?”
Goebbels has a policy of ignoring questions he doesn’t wish to answer. “I’ve always been careful with film. Enemies can easily hide there. I wrote to six American movie companies with offices in Berlin ordering an immediate dismissal of all Jews working for them—to stamp out that Friedrichstrasse crowd. I consider myself an advocate for natural culture.”
“Did you demand Proof of Descent from every film actress? Even the ones of a more personal interest?”
Again he ignores my question. “It’s always so pleasant to be with you, Eva.”
“I never congratulated you for getting an honorary doctorate from the University of Breslau.”