The Austrian: Book Two Page 14

  The day after, when I flew out to Berlin for a meeting with the Reichsführer, I called Melita and invited her to dinner to see how she was doing after our last, and not so pleasant, conversation about her new job. She told me not to worry about picking her up after work and to wait for her in our favorite restaurant instead. I had just ordered my first glass of wine when Melita appeared at the doors, escorted by the maître-d. She gave me a tight hug and a kiss before she sat in a chair that he was holding for her.

  “Good thing that you caught me in time, handsome,” Melita said with a glowing smile after ordering a bottle of champagne for the both of us. I gave her an inquiring look. “We’re going to celebrate my freedom. I’m going away in two days.”

  “Freedom?” I arched my eyebrow. “Are you moving to the United States?”

  “Ha, ha, very funny.” She chuckled with mock contempt. “I’m going to the front, silly.”

  I was at a loss for words for quite some time.

  “You’re serious, aren’t you?” I managed to ask at last.

  “Very much.”

  “But… why?” Her words still didn’t make any sense to me, though Melita seemed to be very happy with her destination point.

  “Do you remember what I was telling you about last time? About the projects that I had to participate in?” She asked quietly. I nodded. “Anything at this point will be better than that. I would have gone earlier if they only allowed women into the army, however, going as a field doctor was my only opportunity. They try not to take women there as well, but, as it turned out, not having a penis was compensated by my extensive medical experience. Even though it was mostly psychiatry, I also participated from time to time in sterilizations and other operations for… never mind for what, the point is that Wehrmacht is so short-handed with qualified medical staff that they agreed to take a doctor in a skirt.”

  The impeccably dressed waiter approached us with a bottle of Dom Perignon and, after demonstrating the label to us and getting our consent, he popped the bottle open and filled our flutes with golden champagne. Melita’s face lit up with enthusiasm as she raised her glass in a toast.

  “Here’s to me, finally going to do what I was supposed to be doing this whole time – actually saving people’s lives and alleviating their pain and sufferings instead of inflicting ones.”

  “Aren’t you afraid that you’ll get killed?” I asked carefully after tasting the bubbly wine.

  She shook her platinum head, positively beaming. “Look at me, Ernst. I’m happy. For the first time in so long, I am finally happy. Not even happy, I’m ecstatic! You don’t understand how delighted I was to receive that transfer order! I was… I was actually crying happy tears. I can’t wait to go to the front. I can’t wait to finally be free from all this… horror.”

  “And the front is not a horror to you?”

  “No, Ernst.” A sharp wrinkle creased her brow for a moment as she glanced at me very seriously. “After what I saw, the front is not a horror. Trust me, it’s not.”

  We made our order and I shook my head at her in mock reproach. “So you were just going to run away and not tell me anything?”

  “You would try to talk me out of it. I would have called you to let you know that I’m leaving, of course. But I’m so glad that I can see you before I go. I know I will miss that handsome face of yours when I am there.”

  “There will be plenty of handsome faces around, where you’re going,” I chuckled. “Maybe you’ll finally meet someone and get married.”

  “I’m thirty-nine, I’m too old for that!” Melita laughed. “Besides, all the Wehrmacht soldiers are young boys, so I’m afraid I will get arrested for molesting minors.”

  I burst out laughing. “You molested me when I had barely turned sixteen!”

  Melita covered her face with her hands, laughing as well. “Oh God, that’s right. I did.”

  “I should have pressed charges!”

  “I don’t remember you complaining!” She pointed a finger at me, playfully squinting her eyes.

  “I’ll miss you, Melita.”

  “I’ll miss you too, Erni.”

  She extended her hand to me over the table, and I took it in mine.

  “So, what’s new with you?” Melita interrupted the silence that was getting too sad, filled with emotions of our inevitable separation.

  “My son wants to become an SS officer.”

  “How old is he?”

  “He’s only five!”

  She waved my concerns off. “It’ll pass. Everyone wants to be in the army when they’re five.”

  “I’m turning into my own father, can you imagine?” I chuckled sadly. “I was just thinking about it on my way here. He hated me wearing this uniform. I didn’t understand him back then, but now it’s getting clearer to me, his resentment of the SS and the Party. He wanted to protect me, like I want to protect my son now. It’s too bad that he’s dead and I can’t tell him how right he was about everything.”

  “Our parents are always right. But we are too stubborn to listen.”

  I nodded several times. “Yes, we are. That’s how we got involved with all this. They were telling us, but we refused to listen. We thought we knew better. I thought that I knew better than anyone else. I thought that I had it all figured out.”

  “We still can fix everything.” Melita tried to give me a reassuring smile. “If not for everyone else, but for ourselves at least. See, I’m going to the front. You can come with me, if you want. It’ll be much better than whatever it is that you’re doing now with your Gestapo.”

  I thought about her proposal for a moment. “No… I can’t. I’ll be too far from… my family.”

  “Your family? You and your family live in two different cities!”

  “Well, yes, but… that’s different.”

  After watching me squirm in my seat, Melita leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest. “Oh my God, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, did you finally find yourself a girl?”

  “What? No!” I answered far too fast. “I mean, I have many girls. Which one are you talking about?”

  “Don’t try to throw me off track with your jokes.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Are you blushing? Oh my God, you’re blushing!”

  “I am so not.”

  “You so are!” Melita kept teasing me even more after I tried to deny everything. “I can’t believe it. My boy is in love.”

  “I’m not in love with anybody,” I grumbled, looking away.

  “What’s her name?”

  “I won’t tell you.”

  “You won’t tell me? That’s the first time you won’t tell me about your girl. Now I am definitely convinced that you have feelings for her.”

  “No, it’s really nothing. She’s just… very pretty, that’s all.”

  “I’m sure she is, all your girls are very pretty. What makes her so special though?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered honestly, giving her a guilty smile for some reason.

  “Is she Viennese?”

  “No, she lives here, in Berlin.”

  “What are you doing here then? Shouldn’t you be standing at her door with a nice bouquet instead of wasting your time with me?” Melita seemed to have adopted the role of a matchmaker faster than I could have expected.

  “I highly doubt that her husband would appreciate it if I showed up at her door with flowers,” I sneered involuntarily, imagining the scene in my mind.

  “Oh, she’s married?”

  “Yes. Unfortunately.”

  “Why unfortunately? When did that ever stop you?”

  “You sound just like Otto.”

  “Maybe it’s because we both know you so well.”

  Melita dug into her ragout as soon as the waiter placed the dish in front of her, and then winked at me. “Well, I suppose since I’m leaving to the front, this evening belongs to me. Promise me, though, that tomorrow you will go and meet with your girl.”

  �
��All right, I promise.” I tried to hide a silly smile, and couldn’t.

  I kept my promise, and the next day went by the theatre where she danced. I didn’t buy any flowers, though, thinking that it would be too much; and besides, I didn’t even know how I was going to explain why I had suddenly appeared at her work to ask her out to dinner. Stepping through the massive doors of the ballet theatre, I was trying to guess her reaction when she saw me. I was hoping that she would be happy to see me.

  It was still too early for an evening performance, and the hallways were deserted except for an old janitor, polishing the floors. He greeted me and pointed me to the rehearsal hall, where the company was supposed to be warming up, or whatever it is they did during the day. On my way I saw multiple posters decorating the walls, and quite a few of them were Annalise’s, each one with her wearing a different costume. I stopped for a moment, admiring her graceful beauty and wondering how she could possibly smile so effortlessly while standing on tiptoe with her other leg almost parallel to the floor. Another poster showed her face only, while she was looking at something in the distance thoughtfully, stage make-up making her seem wonderfully different from what she was in real life. However, I immediately caught myself thinking, even in real life every time I saw her she was different. My mysterious Frau Friedmann with a hundred of different masks.

  “Admiring my prima ballerina, mein Herr?”

  I turned to the voice behind my back and saw a woman in her late fifties-early sixties, with the undoubtable poise of a former dancer.

  “Yes, I am,” I admitted with a smile. “She is very beautiful.”

  “And very talented, too. Too bad. Such a loss for the company.” She shook her head in disappointment.

  I frowned in confusion. “Pardon me? Why a loss?”

  “She left us last week for good for her new work. These posters are all that’s left of her.”

  “What new work?”

  “She has enlisted in the women’s SS she told me. I’m sorry, I’m still so upset that I’m completely forgetting my manners.” She held her hand out to me. “My name is Martha, Martha Meyer, but everyone calls me Frau Martha. I’m her former choreographer.”

  I shook her thin hand, which had a surprisingly strong grip, and introduced myself as well.

  “Dr. Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Gruppenführer SS, at your service, Frau Martha. The SS, you said?”

  “Yes, the SS. She started working with her husband in the RSHA last week. I think it was his idea, even though she never admitted it. Maybe he wanted to keep her close, who knows. With so many admirers following her everywhere,” she concluded, winking at me with a coy smile.

  “You think? I know them both, and he never seemed to be a jealous type of husband to me.”

  Annalise’s former choreographer shrugged.

  “She blamed it on his boss, Gruppenführer Heydrich. He supposedly offered her a position in the RSHA, said that they needed radio operators or stenographers, I don’t remember what the story was. But she told me that it was his idea that she quit ballet to work for him.” Frau Martha glanced at Annalise’s poster again and added suddenly, “Maybe he has an eye for her too, who knows. You know how those high ranking big shots are: they always get what they want. No offense. I’m just still upset over the loss of my most talented dancer. Such a waste, dressing her up in a uniform and having her locked up in a stuffy room to work with a radio all day. It really is a shame.”

  “Yes, it is. I’m sorry.”

  “Ach, what are you going to do? I guess Herr Heydrich needs her services more than I do.” Frowning with contempt, she shook her head.

  Forty minutes later I stormed into Heydrich’s office, almost physically pushing his unsuspecting adjutant out of my way.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?!” I confronted him at his desk with my fists on my hips and fury emanating from every pore of my body.

  “Working on the reports I just received,” Heydrich replied nonchalantly, nodding at the stack of papers in front of him, and then raising his eyes at me with a scheming gleam in them. “Why?”

  Just from that look of his I knew that he had planned it all a long time ago, after our last meeting in Paris.

  “You know perfectly well what I’m talking about. What kind of a sick game are you playing with her?”

  Heydrich barely suppressed a wicked chuckle and addressed his adjutant, still standing behind my back. “Albert, what date is it today?”

  “October 6, Herr Gruppenführer.”

  The Chief of the RSHA checked something in his schedule. “Would you look at that, I lost myself a bet. I wasn’t expecting you earlier than next week, Kaltenbrunner. You found your little missing ballerina far faster than I thought you would. Bravo.”

  I decided to take at least part of my anger out on Heydrich’s adjutant, who was still standing behind my back.

  “Get out of here while I’m talking to your boss.” The poor young man was clearly petrified of the both of us, and he shifted from one foot to another, trying to guess who he should be more petrified of: his psychotic boss or the infuriated visitor.

  “Are you still here?! Don’t look at him, look at me, because I’m standing closer, so it will be me who will break your nose if you don’t move this fucking instant!!!” I hollered at the almost shivering adjutant, and made a step towards him. His survival instinct kicked in, and he quickly turned around and disappeared behind the doors.

  “You Austrians are indeed devoid of any sense of tact whatsoever,” Heydrich noted without being affected in the slightest by my shouting and quite violent state. “Bursting into my office without any announcement, making a scene, harassing my adjutant… It’s not polite, Kaltenbrunner.”

  “You know what’s not polite?! Harassing my woman!” The words jumped out of my mouth before I could even think of what I was saying.

  Heydrich broke into a wide grin, obviously satisfied with himself. After so many years he had finally found something that was giving him an advantage over me.

  “She’s not your woman.”

  “Making her work for you doesn’t make her yours either.”

  “I didn’t say that working for me was all that she’s doing.” Heydrich gave me another sly grin.

  “I know that you’re lying,” I said as calmly as possible, even though everything was boiling inside.

  “Keep telling yourself that.”

  For a second I thought of getting my gun out and shooting him right in his long sarcastic face. I eyed him a little longer, his winning smirk and squinted eyes, and realized that through my impulsiveness I had made a huge mistake in showing him my biggest weakness. No, that wasn’t going to happen, I thought, slowly taking my heavy breathing under control and relaxing my facial muscles which must have painted a vicious scowl on my face.

  “You know what, Reinhard?” The calmness in my voice astonished even me. “Even if you’re not lying, I don’t care. She’s not so special. You can have her all to yourself.”

  Heydrich even leaned forward, searching my face, clearly unnerved with losing his grip over me. I smiled.

  “I thought that she was special.”

  “No, not at all.” I smirked. “If she’s with you now, if she allowed you to even touch her with one finger, I have no interest in her anymore. She doesn’t mean a thing to me.”

  _______________

  Nuremberg, July 1946

  It didn’t mean a thing, the fact that Otto went through all the pains of getting caught and incarcerated here just to throw this clueless pen to me. He did leave a note inside, but it wasn’t technically even a note, just a tiny piece of paper with coordinates written on it, or at least numbers that looked like coordinates.

  And what the hell am I supposed to do with these coordinates? I was musing disappointedly, while getting dressed for yet another day in court. The representatives of each allied country were supposed to read out their final statements on our account today, and I couldn’t even explain how much
I detested going to the courtroom to listen to more dirt being poured all over us, when it was all perfectly clear a long time ago: only very few of us would make it out of here alive, and I certainly wasn’t going to be amongst those lucky ones. I had known it before, and Justice Jackson’s words only confirmed my fate.

  “Kaltenbrunner, the grand inquisitor, took up the bloody mantle of Heydrich to stifle opposition and terrorize compliance, and buttressed the power of National Socialism on a foundation of guiltless corpses…”

  Heydrich… What did they know about Heydrich? And calling me his successor, when I hated the man with every fiber of my soul. I closed my eyes and wished to be as far away as I could, or dead even, just to make them stop talking. Corpses, victims, hangings, shootings, gas chambers – all those gut-wrenching actions seemed to have become permanent attributes to my name. And was I guilty of all of it? One hundred percent.

  “Do you think they will hang us right away or wait for a while?” I asked Rosenberg, who had the misfortune to sit next to me that day.

  The former minister looked at me as if I had gone mad. I shrugged slightly. “Just want it all to be over with.”

  Rosenberg swallowed hard and moved away from me, closer to Seyss-Inquart. Such typical human nature, shying away from anything that emanates death; and God knowns, I was a dead man, as dead as it gets.

  As soon as they took me back to my cell, I took out Otto’s note with the mysterious numbers on it. I studied it for so long that I memorized them for the rest of my very short life, tore it in tiny pieces and flushed it down the toilet. I didn’t need any reminders of the impossible salvation that he was trying to give to me, just to prolong this agony. I didn’t want any hope, and I didn’t want to deceive myself anymore. There was no way out. I was going to die very soon, and it was time that I stopped grabbing a metaphorical straw and let just myself drown already. I’d been on this Earth far too long by any measure, far longer than I deserved.