Hilda gently lays a hand on my shoulder. It is late, the customers have left the café. The waiter is reading Der Stern by the bar. Hilda gets up and slips a coin into the jukebox. Instantly, the voice of Zarah Leander lulls me like a gentle, husky river. She sings ‘Ich stehe im Regen’ — ‘I am standing in the rain’. She sings ‘Mit roten Rosen fängt die Liebe meistens an’ — ‘Love always begins with red roses’. It often ends with Gillette Extra-Blue razor blades. The waiter asks us to leave the café. We walk along a desolate avenue. Where am I? Vienna? Geneva? Paris? And this woman clutching my arm, is she Tania, Loïtia, Hilda, Eva Braun? Later, we find ourselves standing in the middle of an esplanade in front of an illuminated basilica. The Sacré-Cœur? I slump onto the seat of a hydraulic lift. A door is opened. A vast white-walled bedroom. A four-poster bed. I fall asleep.
The following day, I got to know Hilda, my new friend. Despite her dark hair and her delicate face, she was a little Aryan girl, half-German, half-Austrian. From her wallet, she took several photographs of her father and her mother. Both dead. The former in Berlin during the bombings, the latter disembowelled by Cossacks. I was sorry I had never known Herr Murzzuschlag, a stiff SS officer and perhaps my future father-in-law. I was much taken by their wedding photograph: Murzzuschlag and his young bride in Bruxelles, intriguing passers-by with his immaculate uniform and the contemptuous jut of his chin. This was not just anybody: a friend of Rudolph Hess and Goebbels, on first name terms with Himmler. Hitler himself, when awarding him the Cross of Merit, said ‘Skorzeny and Murzzuschlag never let me down.’
Why had I not met Hilda in the thirties? Frau Murzzuschlag makes kneidel for me, her husband fondly pats my cheeks and says:
‘You’re a Jew? We’ll sort that out, my boy! Marry my daughter! I’ll take care of the rest! Der treue Heinrich3 will understand.’
I thank him, but I do not need his help: lover of Eva Braun, confidant of Hitler, I have long been the official Jew of the Third Reich. To the end, I spend my weekends in Obersalzberg and the Nazi bigwigs show me the utmost respect.
Hilda’s bedroom was on the top floor of a grand old townhouse on Backerstraße. The room was remarkable for its spaciousness, its high ceilings, a four poster bed, a picture window. In the middle, a cage with a Jewish nightingale. In one corner, a wooden horse. Here and there, a number of kaleidoscopes. Each stamped ‘Schlemilovitch Ltd., New York’.
‘Probably a Jew,’ Hilda confided, ‘but he makes beautiful kaleidoscopes. I adore kaleidoscopes. Look in this one, Raphäel! A human face made up of a thousand brilliant facets constantly shifting. .’
I want to confess to her that my father was responsible for these miniature works of art, but she constantly kvetches to me about the Jews. They demand compensation on the pretext that their families were exterminated in the camps, they are bleeding Germany white. They drove around in Mercedes drinking champagne while the poor Germans were working to rebuild their country and living hand-to-mouth. Oh, the bastards! First they corrupted Germany, now they were pimping it.
The Jews had won the war, had killed her father, raped her mother, her position was unshakeable. Better to wait a few days before showing her my family tree. Until then, I would be the epitome of Gallic charm: the Grey Musketeers, the insolence, the elegance, the made in Paris spirit. Had not Hilda complimented me on the mellifluent way I spoke French?
‘Never,’ she would say, ‘never have I heard a Frenchman speak his mother tongue as beautifully as you.’
‘I’m from Touraine,’ I explained. ‘We pride ourselves on speaking the purest French. My name is Raphäel de Château-Chinon, but don’t tell anyone. I swallowed my passport so I could remain incognito. One more thing: as a good Frenchman, I find Austrian food DIS-GUS-TING! When I think of the canards à l’orange, the nuits-saint-georges, the sauternes and the poularde de Bresse! Hilda, I will take you to France, knock some of the rough edges off you. Vive la France, Hilda! You people are savages!’
She tried to make me forget Austro-German uncouthness, talking to me about Mozart, Schubert. Hugo von Hofmannsthal.
‘Hofmannsthal?’ I said, ‘A Jew, my little Hilda! Austria is a Jewish colony. Freud, Zweig, Schnitzler, Hofmannsthal, it’s a ghetto! I defy you to name me a great Tyrolean poet! In France, we don’t allow ourselves to be overrun like that. The likes of Montaigne and Proust and Louis-Ferdinand Céline have never succeeded in Jewifying our country. Ronsard and Du Bellay are there, keeping an eye open for any trouble! In fact, my little Hilda, we French make no distinction between Germans, Austrians, Czechs, Hungarians and all the other Jews. And don’t talk to me about your papa, SS Murzzuschlag, or the Nazis. All Jews, meine kleine Hilda, the Nazis are the shock troops of the Jews! Think about Hitler, the little runt of a corporal wandering the streets of Vienna, beaten, numb with cold, starving to death! Long live Hitler!’
She listened to me, her eyes wide. Soon I would tell her more brutal truths. I would reveal my identity. I would choose the perfect moment and whisper into her ear the confession the nameless knight made to the Inquisitor’s daughter:
Ich, Señora, eur Geliebter,
Bin der Sohn des vielbelobten,
Großen, schriftgelehrten Rabbi
Israel von Saragossa.
Hilda had obviously never read Heine’s poem.
In the evenings, we would often go to the Prater. I love funfairs.
‘The thing is, Hilda,’ I explained, ‘funfairs are terribly sad. The “enchanted river”, for example, you get into a boat with your friends, you are carried along by the current and when you come to the end you get a bullet in the back of the head. Then there’s the House of Mirrors, the rollercoaster, the merry-go-rounds, the shooting galleries. You stand in front of the distorting mirrors and your emaciated face, your skeletal chest terrify you. The cars on the rollercoaster systematically derail and you break your back. The merry-go-rounds are surrounded by archers who shoot little poisoned darts into your spine. The merry-go-round never stops, victims fall from the wooden horses. From time to time, the machinery seizes up, clogged with piles of corpses and the archers clear the area for the newcomers. Passers-by are encouraged to stand in little groups inside the shooting galleries. The archers are told to aim between the eyes, but sometimes an arrow goes wide and hits an ear, an eye, a gaping mouth. When they hit their mark, the archers are awarded five points. When the arrow goes astray, five points are deducted. The archer with the highest score wins a young blonde Pomeranian girl, an ornament made of silver paper and a chocolate skull. I forgot to mention the lucky bags at the sweet stalls: every bag sold contains a few amethyst blue crystals of cyanide, with instructions for use: “Na, friss schon!”4 Bags of cyanide for everyone. Six million of them! We’re happy here in Theresienstadt. .’
Next to the Prater is a large park where lovers stroll; in the gathering dark I led Hilda under the leafy boughs, next to the banks of flowers, the blue-tinged lawns. I slapped her three times. It gave me pleasure to watch blood trickle from the corners of her mouth. Great pleasure. A German girl. Who once had loved an SS Totenkopf. I know how to bear an old grudge.