It all seemed to be leading somewhere, when Eckart suddenly stopped and began to examine his glass; like the bottle at its side, it was now empty. With practiced ease, he looked to his audience and said, “But the glass is empty. And when the glass is empty, the wise man knows to quiet his mind.”
Hoffner was not familiar with this particular aphorism, nor was he prepared for the response. Without a word, the group calmly began to get up. Whatever Hoffner thought had gone unsaid was evidently not as pressing to the men now gathering up their coats. One of the younger ones-a student, judging by his clothes-rushed over with a few questions, but Eckart made quick work of him. It was clear, though, that Eckart was still very much aware of Hoffner. When the boy had moved off and the table was again empty, Eckart turned to him. It was only then that Eckart seemed to notice Lina. He leaned to one side so as to get a better view and said, “And another friend, I see.” Lina produced a pleasant smile.
Hoffner said, “I hope we haven’t been the cause of an early evening?”
Now Eckart smiled. “There are no early evenings, mein Herr.” He waved them over. “Come, sit with me.” Hoffner and Lina joined him. “I’m drinking schnapps,” he added. Instantly, Hoffner turned around to call over a waiter. Hoffner ordered a bottle.
Eckart said, “You sit patiently. You listen and wait. So what is it that interests you, Herr. .”
Hoffner resurrected the name from earlier this evening. “You speak with great passion, mein Herr.”
“And passion is enough for you?”
“When there’s something behind it, yes.”
Eckart liked the answer. “And what do you imagine lies behind it?”
Hoffner had several choices. He could follow the Freikorps trail, although he doubted more than a handful of recruits were finding inspiration in the retelling of childhood fairy tales; the pamphlets, of course, were the most telling feature-where there were pamphlets, there was organization; and where there was organization, there was money-but it was too large a risk to venture into something he knew nothing about, which left him with Eckart’s enigmatic stopping point. Hoffner said, “I thought I was about to find out.”
The response seemed to surprise Eckart. The pleasant grin became a look of focused appraisal. “Did you?” he said. Hoffner thought the conversation might be heading for a quick close, when the bottle arrived and the waiter began to spill out three glasses. Without hesitation, Eckart downed his and held it out for a refill. The waiter obliged and then set the bottle on the table. Eckart slowly poured out his third as Hoffner pulled out a few coins to pay. This time Eckart let his glass sit. He waited for the man to step off before saying, “The German people lie behind everything, mein Herr. Sadly a German people now struggling to find themselves.”
Hoffner heard the first tinge of political disenchantment; he took a sip of his schnapps and nodded. “I lost a son in the war,” he said, opting for what had been working so well tonight. “The Frulein a husband. I don’t imagine this is the Germany he thought he was giving his life for. It’s not the Germany I knew.”
Eckart understood. “It’s still there, mein Herr. It simply needs some guidance.” Hoffner now expected the full weight of the Freikorps credo to come spilling forth; what came out was therefore far more startling.
According to Eckart, the stories of nobility and strength were not meant to be followed in the abstract: they were meant to be fully realized in the “rituals of rebirth and order.” With a few more well-chosen-though equally impenetrable-phrases, Eckart began to show himself for what he was: no ideologue, he was a self-proclaimed mystic. His gift was an understanding of the “core animus” of the German people, a spirit that separated them from all others and thus granted them a greater sense of nobility. He called it the “Thulian Ideal”-a gift from the lost island civilization of Thule-all of it in the pamphlets if one knew how to read between the lines. Hoffner nodded with each subsequent glass that Eckart tossed back. There were other Thulians, he was told, with access to other discrete bits of knowledge, all of whom recognized that the war and the revolution had ripped the soul from the German people, and who now saw it as their duty to rekindle that spirit and order.
Hoffner might have dismissed it all as the harmless, if slightly loonier, cousin of those societies he had so eagerly avoided at university-the image of a naked Eckart running through the Black Forest was disturbing to be sure-were it not for the fact that he had not simply happened upon Eckart and his devotees. The line that had led him from Rosa to Wouters to Oster, and now to this, was too firmly drawn: six women brutally-and perhaps ritualistically-murdered; the dying Urlicher willing to take his own life at Sint-Walburga; Hoffner himself still having trouble breathing from his beating; and the Cavalry Guard thugs Pabst and Vogel hardly the messengers of some imagined Teutonic mythos. There was a reality to this that had led him to a Munich wine cellar. What was more frightening was that it clearly led beyond it.
Hoffner now needed a better sense of that reality. “And to achieve that order, mein Herr?”
Eckart nodded as if he had been anticipating the question. “Remove the cancer from the body,” he said. “Purge it of the disease.” The politician had returned.
Hoffner stated the obvious. “The socialists,” he said.
Eckart looked momentarily confused. “The Jews, mein Herr. The elimination of the Jews, of course.”
Hoffner stifled his reaction. It had been said with such certainty. With no other choice, Hoffner nodded. “Of course.”
They begged off at just after midnight. By then, Eckart had been slurring his words and had long since drifted from talk of nobility and strength to his favorite topics of racial superiority and purity-“Every great conflict has been a war between the races, mein Herr; that’s the truth that the barking swine Jew doesn’t want you to know”-a fitting capper to the evening. He had even explained to Lina why her husband’s death had been at the behest of the Jews: “A war for the profiteers to destroy a generation of German youth; your Helmut’s blood is on their hands, Frulein.”
Lina and Hoffner were both stone-cold sober when they stepped out into the night. They walked in silence as Hoffner wondered how much of this had been new to her. He, of course, had heard his fair share of Jew-bating over the years, especially in the south, but this was something different even for him, something more fully conceived, and without so much as a trace of restraint. A good anti-Semite usually had the sense to show a little subtlety in his jabs. Eckart’s demonization was completely unabashed.
Lina was the first to speak: “So, any more charming drinking partners tonight, or are we through playing?”
Hoffner was glad for her cynicism. She was still so young, and men like Eckart relied on that vulnerability. At least here, Lina was showing none. “Not what I was expecting,” he said, matching her tone. “Two cafes tomorrow, then, to make up for it.”
The streets were deserted as they walked, Munich after midnight no better than a provincial town, taller buildings, wider streets, but everyone safely tucked away in their fine Bavarian beds. No wonder Eckart felt so at home here. At the hotel, Hoffner had to ring twice before the concierge came to open the door. The man looked slightly put out. His guests were usually in their rooms by eleven.