As the war worsens, Adi talks more and more about dogs. Magda encourages this neutral subject especially at meals. Goebbels tells Adi about accidentally stepping on Blondi’s food dish and how she backed him threateningly up against the dripping concrete wall and wouldn’t let him move for ten minutes. Adi said: “You seriously offended her.”
I tried to make friends with Blondi since she was a pup. At the Berghof, I walked her for hours in the mountains while Adi conferenced with his officers. Her doggy rear was often rubbed bare and bleeding, and she insisted on coating her sides with bars of blood as she wagged her tail. Now Adi has her wear a little wooden splint on her tail. A chronic barker from the beginning, she likes to lie on her side and be dragged. My arms still ache from that.
Adi speaks of Odysseus’ dog that waited 20 years for him. He loves loyalty. Odysseus wept when the dog recognized him. One dog story leads to another. In World War I, when he was a corporal, he saw a war dog killed, its back and stomach torn away so that the dog’s still beating heart was exposed. Adi wanted to touch that little beating heart, but it seemed profane. He watched it reverently as it slowly came to a stop like an old pocket watch. Then he buried the heart. The body itself was unimportant.
There were some good times with Blondi, pre-Bunker times. Once the three of us climbed the hills taking a trail through the thick fir forest to come out on a stream-crossing still slippery after rain. We stopped, tasted the water, then Adi gave me a bath like my mother did when I was a child. He moved his hands tenderly over my body, then between my thighs, water cupped in his palms, cool water on my hairy lips that never drink. Adi took a soft leaf to dry me in what he called my hoary marmot, his mustache grazing me. Blondi licked my feet. I startled and suddenly peaked. And Adi rinsed me loose.
Adi and I are mountain people. Die von dem Berg. We love spotting mountain goats, bighorn sheep, and fresh bear tracks. I like to lie down and rest in sword lilies listening to the wild geese while deer and elk stare at us. We’d find a place with no trails where snow can block a path even in June. But September is the best time at the Berghof, especially strolling through the flowery basin where occasional hikers go by in their caps decorated with edelweiss. They are SS hikers as Adi wouldn’t let any unauthorized people in the area. These SS don’t salute. Among intimate German wilderness friends, it’s not necessary.
I loved the deep green grass, and I remember my childhood school nuns telling me that a saint would lean over each and every blade praying, “Grow… grow.” Though it’s an amusing story, Adi hates to hear such things as religion is idiotic to him.
Making me stay off the trails during my monthlies, Adi explains that animals are infuriated by such a scent though he adores my blood. With a “survivor’s bleed,” I can withstand any crisis. Women triumph by bleeding, Adi says. Now, even little Helga will possess this strength.
Yes, that’s what I miss the most, the Berghof. We’d walk holding each other’s baby finger as it was too distracting for Adi to hold hands. Grouse in the trees, an osprey or loon appearing, a golden eagle soaring over… they’re our wilderness pets. As the sun went down, we’d lie on wild roses and bear grass, in the Viennese manner, our legs stretched out in opposite directions, our heads touching—my head against miracles.
Adi would stop and watch the beavers, holding Blondi close to him on a leash, mule deer nibbling close by. It was half a mile to some huckleberry patches where we’d spend an hour berry picking. Adi was enraged when General Krebs told him he had woodpecker soup on this very spot, boiling the pathetic creature in spring water and adding some mountain lilies for flavoring. “There’s no need to kill animals,” Adi says, “no need to fish and hunt when there’s so many berries to pick.”
Adi announces, “This is it. This is the only wilderness we’ll ever have. There will be no more added to the earth.”
We follow closed-off logging roads and scramble up goat trails where lupine bloom with elderberry, fireweed and bluebells. Being strict about sanitary conditions in the wild, we bury our feces and Blondi’s stools at least 400 feet from any waterway and cover the mess with a foot of soil.
Walking in a cow-column along country roads was something he did as a schoolboy working on a farm one summer. Klara cooked for the workers. He and Klara were united in smells of the earth’s wonderful raw odor. In the winter, Klara would help him make snowshoes from thick hickory limbs and rawhide. In the evenings, he would draw and paint as she baked.
He never painted people. Nein. If he looked into their eyes, he’d have to persuade them and that would divert his mind from working. So he sketched bowls, chairs, the simple dross of life. Ebony paint was human enough. He killed color by using black. He learned from being an artist that the first thing you paint you make awkward. Those artists who follow can turn what you did into something more symmetrical because what they are making symmetrical you have already twisted. Daring! That’s what it’s all about. Every decision he makes is daring. Leaders deserve luck only if they accept the hazards of an action. These were the things he’d tell me on our hikes.
We once came across the body of a stray sheep in the woods. The starved animal lay on its side in bunch grass—bloated and out of recognition with its legs straight out. Adi was devastated by the death of this loyal working creature that gave its wool so willingly. Using our hands, fingers and a flat stone, we buried it in the softest dirt we could find. As Adi’s palms were blistered and raw, I licked the blood and dirt from his hands. Later, back at the Berghof, Adi sent an SS patrol to place a marker on the little sheep’s grave. I soaked Adi’s palms in warm salt water, jealous of the water drops that lingered in each dented vee of his hand.
Handing me a pansy, he’d say, “When I see a flower, my hand sees it first.” That’s how much he misses those painting days when he wouldn’t sketch people. He was right to concentrate on blossoms that could never betray him.
If we came across wildflowers he didn’t know, we’d give them names. I would start: “This is a Russian loser.” He’d add, “Rommelous Vainous.” And we’d laugh.
From painting, he learned about politics. The space around an object is there for the taking. Space. Untouched. Vulnerable. Brush in his hand, he could be anything. Paint couldn’t see him, but he could see paint. There was joy in sending one line running into the next—lines like soldiers, one depending on the other. He’d command strokes to look long when they were short, approach at one angle, then withdraw, make things brighter when they were dull. He moved trees from place to place. Those artist hands painted words even when he gave speeches, his gestures drawn so fully and colorfully. “Paintings are such splendid lies,” said this once poor artist who lived in an attic room on Schleissheimerstrasse.
Blondi’s bark would intercept any further thoughts on art. She’s always interrupting, something my two little Scotties never do. Smelling of dried urine, she oozes spittle on her jowls. She pivots in place like an idiot toy, turning around exactly seven times before lying down. Her mouth hangs open and her tongue droops to the side like a lecherous old prostitute. With a funny crate-nose, cold and wet, she also has wiry hair that makes her look bulky. She has chronic problems with irritated anal glands, a condition that gives off an awful oily smell. Because she’s always biting at imaginary insects like a horse chewing on its flank, the base of her tail is getting thin. Even when I divert her with a bone, she eats stones. Hot spots, areas of moist irritated skin, are on her back and hips—Adi calls them “Berghof sores” and treats them with iodine. Most irritating of all, she’s such a stupid pacifist she’ll sleep right next to a cow or cat if you let her.