“Paul, the difference between you and me is that you chase women, whereas I just tell them what to do. You’re like all the others I hear here at the house, talking fancy words, but never getting any cunt. Whereas I have no fancy words, but more women than I can handle. Believe me, women all need to be told what to do and like being told what to do.”
Paul glowered and said nothing.
The house was entirely empty—no kitchen staff, no butler, no gardeners. Even the SS Life Guard—resplendent in their new Hugo Boss uniforms—had been excused; a lone pair of sentries remained at the main gate, and that was a good ten minutes’ walk from the house. Only Eva remained; what she did all day Bormann did not know, nor cared to know.
Bormann had—as always—taken a few liberties. He had stocked his prized new Electrolux Einstein-Szilard refrigerator in the nearby pantry with his favorite weizen bier, without realizing the inventor of the new ‘fridge was a German physicist who had fled to America; no matter—the wheat beer was ice cold—that is all that mattered to Bormann; Bormann was a practical man.
He had checked on Eva that morning and found her in her room and as they were the only two living souls in the house had told her to find him if she needed anything. And the house was as if it was in the city of the dead; the birds outside were the only sound of life. It was a pleasant and relaxing change from the bustle and constant activity when the Chief was at home.
After checking on Eva, he roamed the empty house, it was like a deserted ski hotel that had closed for the summer—a little musty and damp in the carpets on the stairs. He entered the master bedroom and snooped and spied, opening drawers as he had done so many times before. Regardless of how often he did this, he always felt a small frisson of excitement at this petty sacrilege. He proceeded to the master bathroom, a very small and boring affair for such as great man of state as his boss was. He weighed himself on the Chief’s bathroom scales, and, leaving the door open in an act of petulance, he proceeded to use the Chief’s toilet to move his bowels. Afterwards, he weighed himself again on his boss’s scales and was pleased to see he had lost almost half a kilogram.
It was hotter than Hell—the day was one of the hottest of that very hot summer. Bormann sat at the long table in the great hall. The monster was a full four paces long and had six, not four legs, and the surface was a deliciously cool marble, not one slab but three triangular pieces the Chief had personally selected from a very, very nervous Swiss stone merchant; what was the Swissie frightened of—the Swiss had been neutral for over 200 years? The delicious coldness of the marble was a refreshing contrast to the day’s heat.
The great hall where Bormann sat was still, cool, and completely silent. At the long table, he had set up his store of ledgers and pencils; he never used ink—too hard to change. The large table sat along the far wall facing the picture window; he had used the electric switch to automatically raise the steel shutters so he could enjoy the panorama of the mountains from the huge floor-to-ceiling picture windows. Not for the first time sitting alone in the long room, he imagined himself as the lord—as the king of the manor, and why not; he was the Chief’s right-hand man, after all? Here, he slowly and carefully checked the figures of deliveries and of produce delivered; “you can never be too careful with peasants—they are the shiftiest of all of God’s creatures.” In truth, he was simply playing at working—he had succeeded in terrifying all the peasants with threats of damnation or worse if Bormann was overcharged by as much as a pfennig.
A noise at the door made him look up. It was Eva. Apparently, she had been exercising on the small side terrace under the shade of the long canvas awning as she was wearing her customary silk gym slip and top—a delightful soft peach pink.
“I hope I am not disturbing you, Martin. Am I?”
He stood up at the table, and bowed slightly.
“Of course not, Miss Braun; how can I be of assistance?”
(Always keep the tone with heavies very formal, was a Bormann dictum. He always kept this slightly stilted formality even when they both knew they were the only two in the house.)
“Oh, I was just so hot and thirsty so I thought I would ask you for a glass of water from the pantry.”
“Certainly, would you like some ice, Madam? It’s so hot today.”
He knew his boss was a very busy man, busy with the affairs of state, busy with international affairs, and—understandably—had no time for the softer affairs of the heart. On a more practical level, Bormann knew from the housekeepers that the owner rarely, if ever, made any visits to Miss Braun’s room—“you can always tell if two people have slept in a bed,” the grizzled head housekeeper had confided. The sad truth was that the chief’s eye had moved to the more buxom starlets in Berlin that little Paul was able to supply in large numbers as controller of the Reich’s film industry. As happened with many men, Bormann’s boss was able to maintain the little wifey at home while getting a roster of new, fresh and exceedingly nubile young starlets in Berlin, all looking to please to further their careers; “after all, it is just the same as eating or shitting,” one of the girls from the provinces had proclaimed with charming candor.
Even from the doorway, Bormann could see Eva was already excited and Bormann loved to savor the observation of an excited woman. Thousands of conquests let him sense it like a prize fighter relishes an opening in his opponent’s defense. Some boxers were close to perfect with just a tiny flaw, but that tiny flaw—if exploited properly—would put them on the canvas, or at least put one knee down. In Eva, it was her modest chest, or more specifically, her nipples—the light reflected on her silk top and he could see clearly two bumps which she made no attempt to hide. Why should she—they were completely alone?
And he knew from the housekeepers’ discrete observations that Eva’s monthly was only two or three days off—she was in high heat, like a cat screeching at night for relief.
“Madam, would you prefer a cold beer? I have an exceptionally good cloudy German wheat beer with an excellent after-taste.” (Bormann had heard Albert drone on and on about wines. So Bormann had decided to use the same approach with his beloved beers—it would certainly make Bormann look smarter; at least Bormann thought it would.)
“Oh yes! My husband told me he loved the German wheat beer when he was in Munich in the early days. He was drinking this beer with chicken the day when that terrible, terrible thing happened with his niece in his apartment. But that is all in the past now, isn’t it? I mean my husband has you and me now, doesn’t he?”
Eva used “husband” all the time around the house to everyone from the maids to Bormann, even though there had never been any ceremony. It was her way to assert an ascendency over all in the house. And it worked with everyone apart from Bormann, as he was the Chief’s right hand, and Eva knew this.
“You know, beer is far more refreshing in summer,” he lied.
He rose and returned from the pantry. He brought a coaster as well. I was one of the cheap, coarse leather coasters he had made by the hundreds, with the party insignia and “Wachenfeld” stamped on it. As with all supplies to the house, Bormann skimmed his normal eight percent.