The Austrian: Book Two Page 22

  “No, it’s not. You look… I don’t know. Peaceful. Finally at rest.” Melita, a paler and thinner version of her former self, affectionately rubbed my hand in hers as I was sitting on the side of her hospital bed.

  “I’m very far from being at rest.” I chuckled softly. “You should only see the snake pit in which I’m working.”

  “Well, then it means that you found yourself a girl.” Melita winked at me.

  “That I did,” I admitted, grinning back at her.

  “Did you finally ask your ballerina out?”

  “She’s not a ballerina anymore.”

  “Yes, yes, I remember, you were writing to me about her in every damn letter!” Melita rolled her eyes with theatrical disdain. “I’m glad that you didn’t forget all about me and came to hold my hand through it.”

  “I would never forget about you,” I promised seriously.

  We both looked at the little table next to her bed with a small opened bottle containing crystal clear liquid, and a glass syringe, filled with it. The bottle didn’t have any official medical inscriptions that were normally found on such containers, only a stamp of an eagle on a white sticker and a small T4, together with code numbers on a side. Melita was very particular in her telegram about which number I should bring to her from her former laboratory.

  “It won’t be painful for you, will it?” I asked her.

  “No, it won’t.” Melita gave my hand a reassuring squeeze. “I will fall asleep almost instantly, lose consciousness and then my body will quickly shut itself down. My breathing will slow down, my blood pressure and heart rate will drop, and then, finally, my brain will die of oxygen deficiency. All within just a couple of minutes, or maybe less if I’m lucky.”

  I shook my head, but she wouldn’t let me speak my mind.

  “Don’t. Don’t say anything, Ernst. You know that I’m dying, it’s just a matter of time when I will. I hate being helpless, and I hate wasting morphine on myself when the soldiers, who may actually survive, need it much more. The only reason why I haven’t sliced my wrists yet is that I wanted to see your handsome face once again.”

  I leaned into her and kissed her on the mouth, with all the tenderness that I could muster.

  “Thank you.” Melita stroked my cheek with her cool hand. “I missed that. Missed you.”

  “I missed you too.”

  “Tell me about your girl. I want to know if I’m leaving you in good hands.”

  I looked away, grinning embarrassingly. “I doubt you could call her hands ‘good.’”

  Melita lifted both eyebrows in surprise. “How come? I thought you said that she was almost the most perfect woman who ever walked the earth.”

  “I never said anything cheesy like that!” I couldn’t help but burst out laughing.

  “No, you used other words, but I draw conclusions.”

  “Well, if you consider the perfect woman to be Jewish, and that she works for the enemy, then yes, that would be her.”

  Melita slowly put her palm on top of her forehead.

  “What are you doing?” I was trying not to smile too obviously, watching her reaction.

  “Trying to figure out if my fever is rising again and I’m hallucinating, or if you really just said that.”

  “You don’t have a fever. I did say it.”

  Melita was eyeing me for quite a long time before finally saying, “I have a whole line of questions for you, my mad friend, but let’s start with the obvious one. How did you find out?”

  “She told me herself.”

  I looked at my boots, recollecting the day in my mind when one of the Gestapo agents found me in one of the hallways and with an overly sweet smile handed me a folder, saying that the information inside might be of utmost interest. When I went to the window and sat on the windowsill to look through it, it was all there, neatly packed together – every single theory and suspicion that I had prohibited myself to even consider. All because I was drunk on her soft lips and her whole body that she had finally offered me.

  I barely remembered how it happened for the first time, that’s how drunk I was. I only remembered waking up in the morning and stretching leisurely with a smile on my face despite the terrible hangover, with faint memories of the most pleasurable dream. I had had those dreams many times before, but this time for some reason it felt too real. Too real was the lean body under mine; too real was the taste of her mouth; too real was the smell of her hair when I buried my face in it… I could swear that I still smelled it, even now, lying on my own bed, still dressed in my uniform for some reason, in some God forsaken Polish city where I was supposed to be inspecting something… I pressed the heels of my palms to my eyes to rub them, and froze. There it was again, the smell of her perfume, barely noticeable, but I could still recognize it out of the million. My hands smelled of it.

  I immediately sat up in bed, trying to recollect the events of the previous night, an uneasy feeling taking over. I remembered having dinner with the host and his wife, with my adjutant and Oberführer Friedmann sitting on my left and Annalise on my right. I always did it on purpose, separated them, the husband and wife, just to taunt him. I didn’t actually have any hard feelings towards him, and we would probably even have become friends if it wasn’t for how I felt about his wife. He was quite a decent fellow for a Prussian, if only he wasn’t sleeping with my woman that is. I didn’t care that she wasn’t technically even my lover then, I still thought of her as mine, out of some childish obstinacy.

  I even remembered drinking with Friedmann, after Annalise had gone to sleep. My head started pounding again at the memory of all that brandy that we drank. Or was it cognac? I think we ran out of brandy at some point… And then… What the hell happened then? I fell asleep, I guess. In my own bed, judging by the fact that it was where I had woken up today. Maybe it was even Friedmann himself, who brought me here… Why do I smell of her perfume through and through then?

  I put my legs down on the floor – I didn’t even take my boots off before I fell asleep. Pieces of my dream started slowly coming back to me. In it, I was angry for some reason. I think I went to confront her about her possible connection with the enemy, but she was sleeping and I didn’t want to wake her up. I still somehow got into bed with her, only now I was her husband because she was calling me Heinrich… I clearly remembered the softness of her silk slip when I pulled it up to touch her… She liked it, she wanted me to make love to her, and I did. I closed my eyes. It all came back to me – my hands on her wrists, her hair in my face and her hectic breathing as I moved roughly and deeply inside of her.

  I smelled my hands again. It was coming back to me… I didn’t dream it all, I realized in terror. It all really happened.

  And then, more clearly this time, I remembered her angry eyes piercing me, her sharp nails when she tried to claw her way out of my steely grip, and how she called me a dirty pig and told me to get off her. I had only laughed, got dressed and went back to my room where I happily passed out on my bed. The bed that I was sitting on now.

  I hid my face in my hands, as a cold, sweaty wave washed over me. God, what have I done? Got into her bed while she was sleeping and… oh, God!

  Even that she forgave me, my Annalise. She slapped me across the face a couple of times – the first one for the deed, and the second one when I put a gun to my head and asked her if she wanted me to pull the trigger. I would have done it if she said yes, however she just hit me once more and screamed how dare I do something like that in front of her when her own brother, who she loved so… Annalise stopped herself on those very words for some reason, looked at me strangely, as if afraid of some thought of hers, yanked the gun out of my hand and almost ran out of the room.

  Only a little over a month later she came to me herself, and since the evening that we spent on the carpet in my office, I refused to let her go. Not that she was trying to leave, to be truthful.

  It all flashed in front of my eyes as I was flipping through the pages of the Ge
stapo report with her picture in it, as if there could be any confusion as to who the mysterious Annalise Friedmann, who was being accused of being in tight connection with enemy counterintelligence, could possibly be.

  I saw her running down the stairs right past by me, and went after her, this time ready to get all the answers out of her, even if I had to get them with force. I was certain that my hand wouldn’t falter to pull the trigger if I had to, and, yet, finally catching up with her at her house and holding her at gunpoint, all my resoluteness suddenly left me. Even the hand with the gun that I was pointing at her, yelling all my accusations while she was yelling hers back, became too heavy, and I lowered it, leaving my fate for her to decide.

  “All you Jews are the same,” I mumbled, offended to the deepest layers of my soul by her heartless lies, but too tired and weak to fight with her. “Traitors.”

  Annalise looked down, sighed and lowered her gun as well.

  “I will arrest you right now, if you don’t shoot me,” I warned her in a stern voice, still looking at her limp hand with the gun in it. She shrugged indifferently, and put it on a nightstand next to her.

  I shook my head at the memory after I finished telling the story to Melita.

  “She was in love with you, wasn’t she? Couldn’t shoot you, could she?” Melita was beaming with a most impish smile.

  “Yes, she was. And no, she couldn’t. Neither could I do anything to her. I shot the Gestapo agent instead, the one who made the report, and made Himmler believe that it was all a planned set-up.”

  Melita laughed openly this time. “So you have an enemy counterintelligence agent actually working in your office right now?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “And you probably didn’t stop hiding any information from her.”

  “I started showing her every single damn thing.” I laughed together with her.

  “Good for you. All this,” Melita said, making a gesture around herself referring to the war, “needs to stop, and the sooner the better. I’ve seen so much death in my life, Ernst, I feel like the Grim Reaper’s right hand. Help your girl, give her whatever she needs. Sell them all to the Allies. They cheated us out of our own lives, Ernst, and millions of other people. Sell theirs to their enemies now. I’ll die happy, knowing that the good will win. Only don’t lose your own life, will you? You just started living, at last… Too bad I never met her… But you tell her to take good care of you when I’m gone. You’re not good on your own.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Lay down next to me, and give me the syringe.”

  I did as she told me and wrapped my arms around her tightly.

  “Will you kiss me again? For the last time?” Melita asked, looking me in the eye. Her voice was so calm and her smile so serene that it was almost impossible to believe that she was holding a lethal injection in her hand. That’s the way she was, Melita, always despising not only physical weakness, but death itself. She wasn’t afraid of it then, nor now. I planted a gentle kiss on her lips.

  “I’ve always loved you, Melita.”

  “I know you have. I’ve always loved you too. Squeeze my forearm right above my elbow, will you?”

  As my fingers encircled her thin limb, Melita brushed my cheek once more, turned the needle resolutely in her fingers and without hesitation pricked her vein with it.

  “Be careful not to touch the needle when you put it back on the table,” she said, placing the empty syringe on her lap. “Goodnight, Ernst.”

  “Sweet dreams, Melita,” I whispered to her mouth before kissing her once again, on her eyes that she had already closed, on her cheeks and forehead, on her whole face, until I couldn’t feel her breath on my skin anymore.

  _______________

  Nuremberg, September 30, 1946

  I couldn’t feel my own breathing anymore, as if with every word, every new accusatory gaze, my body was refusing to take another breath, so as not to prolong its misery. Today they brought us back to the court, to read out the final judgements on our account, one by one. Mine was probably one of the worst, next to the former Reichsmarschall Göring.

  “Kaltenbrunner is indicted under Counts One, Three, and Four. He joined the Austrian Nazi Party and the SS in 1932. In 1935 he became a leader of the SS in Austria. After the Anschluss he was appointed Austrian State Secretary for Security and, when this position was abolished in 1941, he was made Higher SS and Police Leader. On 30 January 1943, he was appointed Chief of the Security Police and SD and head of the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA), a position which had been held by Heydrich until his assassination in June 1942. He held the rank of Obergruppenführer in the SS.

  “Crimes against peace: As leader of the SS in Austria, Kaltenbrunner was active in the Nazi intrigue against the Schuschnigg Government. On the night of the 11th of March, 1938, after Göring ordered Austrian National Socialists to seize control of the Austrian Government, 500 Austrian SS men under Kaltenbrunner’s command surrounded the Federal Chancellery and a special detachment under the command of his adjutant entered the Federal Chancellery while Seyss-Inquart was negotiating with President Miklas. But there is no evidence connecting Kaltenbrunner with plans to wage aggressive war on any other front. The Anschluss, although it was an aggressive act, is not charged as an aggressive war, and the evidence against Kaltenbrunner under Count One does not, in the opinion of the Tribunal, show his direct participation in any plan to wage such a war.”

  So they admitted that I was innocent of at least one of the counts against me. I smiled sadly, studying my nails, suddenly remembering one of my university professors. He would do the same thing, when he was going to fail a student but always did it with tastefulness: he would tell the young man what he liked about his work first, and only then, piece by piece, paragraph after paragraph, would he destroy the whole thesis, spreading his arms out in a helpless gesture as he informed the student that he had failed the exam. I was waiting for them to continue so they could explain to me and to the whole world, which was listening now, how I had failed my life, together with millions of others.

  “War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity.” The President cleared his throat and continued, “When he became Chief of the Security Police and SD and head of the RSHA on 30 January 1943, Kaltenbrunner took charge of an organization, which included the main offices of the Gestapo, the SD, and the Criminal Police. As Chief of the RSHA, Kaltenbrunner had authority to order protective custody to, and release from, concentration camps. Orders to this effect were normally sent over for his signature. Kaltenbrunner was aware of the conditions in the concentration camps. He had undoubtedly visited Mauthausen, and witnesses testified that he had seen prisoners killed by various methods of execution – hanging, shooting in the back of the neck, and gassing – as part of a demonstration. Kaltenbrunner himself ordered the execution of prisoners in those camps and his office was used to transmit to the camps execution orders which originated in Himmler’s office.

  “At the end of the war, Kaltenbrunner participated in arrangements for the evacuation of inmates of concentration camps, and the liquidation of many of them, to prevent them from being liberated by the Allied armies. During the period in which Kaltenbrunner was head of the RSHA, the RSHA was engaged in a widespread program of War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity. These crimes included the mistreatment and murder of prisoners of war. Einsatzkommandos operating under the control of the Gestapo were engaged in the screening of Soviet prisoners of war. Jews, commissars, and others, who were thought to be ideologically hostile to the Nazi system were reported to the RSHA, which had them transferred to a concentration camp and murdered. An RSHA order issued during Kaltenbrunner’s regime established the “Bullet Decree,” under which certain escaped prisoners of war, who were recaptured, were taken to Mauthausen and shot. The order for the execution of Commando troops was extended by the Gestapo to include parachutists while Kaltenbrunner was Chief of the RSHA. An order signed by Kaltenbrunner instructed the Police not to interfer
e with the hostile actions of the population.

  The murder of approximately four million Jews in concentration camps has heretofore been described. This part of the program was also under the supervision of the RSHA when Kaltenbrunner was head of that organization, and special missions of the RSHA scoured the occupied territories and the various Axis satellites arranging for the deportation of Jews to these extermination institutions. Kaltenbrunner was informed of these activities. A letter, which he wrote on 30 June 1944 described a shipment to Vienna of twelve thousand Jews for that purpose and directed that all who could not work would have to be kept in readiness for ‘special action,’ which meant murder. Kaltenbrunner denied his signature to this letter, as he did on a very large number of orders on which his name was stamped or typed, and in a few instances, written. It is inconceivable that in matters of such importance his signature could have appeared so many times without his authority.

  “Kaltenbrunner has claimed that when he took office as Chief of the Security Police and SD and as head of the RSHA he did so pursuant to an understanding with Himmler under which he was to confine his activities to matters involving foreign intelligence only and not to assume overall control over the activities of the RSHA. He claims that the criminal program started before his commencement of office, that he seldom knew what was going on, and that when he was informed he did what he could to stop them. It is true that he showed a special interest in matters involving foreign intelligence. But he exercised control over the activities of the RSHA, was aware of the crimes it was committing, and was an active participant in many of them.

  “Conclusion: The Tribunal finds that Kaltenbrunner is not guilty on Count One. He is guilty under Counts Three and Four.”

  I was expecting the President to finish his speech by ‘and is sentenced to death by hanging,’ but it seemed that they had decided to have mercy on us and give us our sentences the next day, without witnesses and press. I was grateful at least for that.