IV
Vienna. The last tramways glided into the night. On Mariahilfer Straße, we felt fear overcoming us. A few more steps and we would find ourselves on the Place de la Concorde. Take the métro, count off the reassuring rosary: Tuileries, Palais-Royal, Louvre, Châtelet. Our mother would be waiting for us, Quai Conti. We would drink lime-blossom and mint tisane and watch the shadows cast on the walls of our bedroom by the passing river boats. Never had we loved Paris more, nor France. A winter’s night, a Jewish painter, our cousin, staggering around Montparnasse, muttering as he died ‘Cara, cara Italia’. By chance he had been born in Livorno, he might have been born in Paris, in London, in Warsaw, anywhere. We were born in Boulogne-sur-Seine, Île-de-France. Far from here, Tuileries. Palais-Royal, Châtelet. The exquisite Mme de La Fayette. Choderlos de Laclos. Benjamin Constant, dear old Stendhal. Fate had played us a cruel trick. We would not see our country again. Die on Mariahilfer Straße like stray dogs. No one could protect us. Our mother was dead or mad. We did not know our father’s New York address. Nor that of Maurice Sachs. Or Adrien Debigorre. As for Charles Lévy-Vendôme, there was no point calling on him. Tania Arcisewska was dead because she had taken our advice. Des Essarts was dead. Loïtia was probably slowly becoming accustomed used to far-flung brothels. We made no effort to clasp them to us, these faces that passed through our lives, to cling to them, to love them. Incapable of the slightest act.
We arrived at the Burggarten and sat on one of the benches. Suddenly we heard the sound of a wooden leg striking the ground. A man was walking towards us, a monstrous cripple. . His eyes were luminous, his sweeping fringe and his stubby moustache glistened in the darkness. His lips were set in a rictus that made our hearts pound. His left arm, which he extended, tapered to a hook. We had expected to run into him in Vienna. Inevitably. He was wearing the uniform of an Austrian corporal the better to terrify us. He threatened us, bellowing: ‘Sechs Millionen Juden! Sechs Millionen Juden!’ Shrapnel from his booming laugh pierced our chests. He tried to gouge our eyes out with his hook. We ran away. He followed us, shrieking: ‘Sechs Millionen Juden! Sechs Millionen Juden! ’ For a long time we ran through the dead city, this drowned city washed up on the shore. Hofburg, Palais Kinsky, Palais Lobkowitz, Palais Pallavicini, Palais Porcia, Palais Wilczek. . Behind us, in a rasping voice Captain Hook sang ‘Hitlerleute’, thumping the pavement with his wooden leg. It seemed to us we were the only people in the city. After killing us, our enemy would wander these empty streets like a ghost until the end of time.
The streetlights along the Graben help me see things more clearly. Three American tourists persuade me that Hitler is long since dead. I follow them, trailing a few metres behind. They turn onto Dorotheergasse and go into the nearest café. I take a table at the back. I don’t have a schilling and I tell the waiter I am waiting for someone. With a smile, he brings me a newspaper. I discover that last night, at midnight, Albert Speer and Baldur von Schirach left Spandau prison in a big black Mercedes. At a press conference in the Hilton Hotel in Berlin, Schirach declared: ‘Sorry to have kept you waiting so long.’ In the photo, he is wearing a turtleneck sweater. Cashmere, probably. Made in Scotland. Gentleman. Former Gauleiter of Vienna. Fifty thousand Jews.
A young, dark-haired woman, chin resting on her open palm. I wonder what she is doing here, alone, so forlorn among the beer drinkers. Surely she belongs to that race of humans I have chosen above all other: their features are harsh and yet delicate, in their faces you can see their enduring loyalty to grief. Anyone but Raphäel Schlemilovitch would take these anaemics by the hand and beg them to make their peace with life. As for me, those I love, I kill. And so I choose those who are weak, defenceless. To take an example, I killed my mother with grief. She demonstrated exceptional meekness. She would beg me to have my tuberculosis treated. I would gruffly snap: ‘You don’t treat tuberculosis, you nurture it, you cherish it like a dancehall girl.’ My mother would hang her head. Later, Tania asks me to protect her. I hand her a razor blade, a Gillette Extra-Blue. In the end, I anticipated her wishes: she would have been bored living with a fat man. Slyly suicided while he was singing the praises of nature in springtime. As for Des Essarts, my brother, my only friend, was it not I who tampered with the brakes of the car so he could safely shatter his skull?
The young woman looks at me with astonished eyes. I remember something Lévy-Vendôme said: force an entry into other people’s lives. I take a seat at her table. She gives a faint smile of a melancholy I find ravishing. I immediately decide to trust her. And besides, she is dark. Blond hair, pink complexions, porcelain eyes get on my nerves. Everything that radiates health and happiness turns my stomach. Racist after my fashion. Such prejudices are forgivable in a young consumptive Jew.
‘Are you coming?’ she says.
There is such gentleness in her voice that I resolve to write a beautiful novel and dedicate it to her: ‘Schlemilovitch in the Land of Women.’ In it, I will show how a little Jew seeks refuge among women in moments of distress. Without women, the world would be unbearable. Men are too serious. Too absorbed in their elegant abstractions, their vocations: politics, art, the textile business. They have to respect you before they will help you. Incapable of an unselfish action. Sensible. Dismal. Miserly. Pretentious. Men would leave me to starve to death.
We leave the Dorotheergasse. After this point, my memories are hazy. We walk back along the Graben and turn left. We go into a café much larger than the first. I drink, I eat, I recover my health while Hilda — that is her name — gazes at me fondly. Around us, every table is occupied by several woman. Whores. Hilda is a whore. In the person of Raphäel Schlemilovitch, she has just found her pimp. In future, I will call her Marizibilclass="underline" when Apollinaire wrote about the ‘Jewish pimp, red-haired and ruddy-faced’ he was thinking of me. I own this place: the waiter who brings me my alcools looks like Lévy-Vendôme. German soldiers come to my establishment to console themselves before setting off for the Eastern Front. Heydrich himself sometimes visits. He has a soft spot for Tania, Loïtia and Hilda, my prettiest whores. He feels no revulsion when he straddles Tania, the Jewess. Besides, Heydrich himself is a Mischling. Given his lieutenant’s zeal, Hitler turned a blind eye. I have similarly been spared, Raphäel Schlemilovitch, the biggest pimp of the Third Reich. My girls have been my shield. Thanks to them I will not know Auschwitz. If, by chance, the Gauleiter of Vienna should change his mind about me, in a day Tania, Loïtia and Hilda could collect the money for my ransom. I imagine five hundred thousand Reichsmarks would suffice, given that a Jew is not worth the rope required to hang him. The Gestapo will look the other way and let me disappear to South America. No point dwelling on such things: thanks to Tania, Loïtia and Hilda I have considerable influence over Heydrich. From him, they can get a document countersigned by Himmler certifying that I am an honorary citizen of the Third Reich. The Indispensable Jew. When you have women to protect you, everything falls into place. Since 1935, I have been the lover of Eva Braun. Chancellor Hitler was always leaving her alone at the Berchtesgaden. I immediately begin to think how I might turn this situation to my advantage.
I am skulking around the Berghof when I meet Eva for the first time. The instant attraction is mutual. Hitler comes to Obersalzberg once a month. We get along very well. He gracefully accepts my role as escort to Eva. Such things seem to him so futile. . In the evenings, he tells us about his plans. We listen, like two children. He has given me the honorary title of SS Brigadenführer. I should dig out the photo on which Eva wrote ‘Für mein kleiner Jude, mein gelibter Schlemilovitch — Seine Eva.’