Hitler's Niece

For a fleeting, agonizing moment Hess was like a dog besieged with thought. Then he said, “Oh. I see. You’re joking.”

Cell 7’s door was unlocked again, and the guard allowed in a prisoner carrying a high-backed chair that might have been a throne. His red-flannel shirtsleeves were rolled up and his biceps bulged like coconuts. His face turned toward Geli as he hauled his heavy load and she saw that he was a black-haired, handsome man in his late twenties, with a boxer’s tightly muscled build, features that seemed Corsican or Greek, and skin that even in jail was ginger brown. She’d never seen such huge, gorgeous chocolate eyes in a full-grown man. Like a fawn’s. “Where does he want it?” he asked.

Hess pointed to the crown of laurel leaves. “Under there.” And then he said, “Emil Maurice. His chauffeur. And this is Fräulein Raubal.”

She held out her hand but stayed seated, afraid that if she stood she’d be taller than he was. Emil Maurice grinned with fractured and jagged teeth and said, “Je m’appelle Emil. Enchanté.”

“Et moi,” she replied. “Je m’appelle Geli.”

“She speaks French!” Emil cried.

“She’ll grow out of it,” Hess said. “She’s young.”

They all heard Hitler shouting. They couldn’t hear the words.

“Won’t he ever cease?” Emil asked.

Geli laughed, but Hess was horrified.

In a fair imitation of Hitler’s gestures and voice, Emil held Hess’s face in his hands and said, “Oh, my Rudi! My little Hesserl! Did I offend you?”

Hess flung away his hands, saying, “Quit it!”

Emil smiled at Geli. “We’re tired of each other already, and we have years to go.” Emil flopped into a chair, his knees spread wide, his hands holding the rattan seat in front of his crotch as he stared frankly at the only girl in the fortress.

She was intrigued by him, but embarrassed. She looked at the floor. She heard a squawk from the planking as Emil yanked a free chair next to his own and quietly asked, “Won’t you sit next to me, Geli? We’ll talk.”

“Don’t!” Hess shouted. Whether to Emil or to her she wasn’t sure.

Her face felt hot enough to char paper. She felt afloat on a raft of pleasant wooziness. And then the office door opened and Angela walked out.

“We have to go, Geli,” Angela said.

She got up. Emil winked. “Shall I say good-bye to Uncle Adolf?” she asked.

“We have to go,” Angela said.

Walking outside the fortress, they saw the headlights of the waiting taxi flash on and off. They got in. And when they were on the highway to München and there was only a high horizon of black forest behind them, her mother put a hand on the upholstery beside her, like a purse she could have if she wanted it. Geli tried to find her face, but she was a block of night in nighttime. “We’ll have money for furniture and new clothes,” Angela said. “Others will handle our rent. Paula’s last name shall be Wolf from now on. She’ll have a flat of her own.”

“Why?”

Angela thought for a while, then said, “It is necessary.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

MÜNCHEN, 1925

She visited München for the first time without Angela in April 1925, going t

here on a high school outing with a girl’s choir called “Seraphim.” She knew that her uncle had been paroled in December, so as soon as she and a friend, Ingrid von Launitz, got settled into their room at the first-class Königshof Hotel, Geli tried to telephone him at his Thierschstrasse flat, but she found that his number was unlisted. She then boldly decided that she and Ingrid would walk to the flat, thinking that if she failed to find Hitler there she could at least leave a note.

“And if we do find him?” Ingrid asked.

“Well, he’ll have to be friendly to us,” Geli said. “He’s a politician.”

They found a druggist’s shop at Thierschstrasse 41, but just above it was a three-story town home where they were greeted by Frau Maria Reichert, a friendly widow whose house it was. She was a hale and heavy woman in her late thirties, and the foyer with its white upright Bechstein piano gave evidence that she had formerly been well off. But she confessed to the girls that she was now a Mädchen für alles, a charwoman, and was renting out rooms for an income in these hard times. She told them as she walked to his flat just off the hall that her favorite renter was Geli’s uncle, whom she called “that funny bohemian.” She knocked twice and sweetly called, “Herr Hitler!” then withdrew.

And then there he was. Although it was four in the afternoon, he seemed to have just gotten dressed and shaved, for his starched, collarless white shirt looked like it was just out of its box, he was in purple carpet slippers and freshly pressed blue serge suit pants with leather suspenders, and Geli could smell Chlorodont toothpaste. Ingrid blushed to see the much-talked-about man; Geli stiffly held out her hand and offered him the old Bavarian greeting, Grüss Gott, “You greet God.”