Hitler frowned at Ingrid behind her, then focused his irritation on his niece. “And so, is this Fräulein Raubal at my door?” he asked. “What a surprise, your appearing here completely unannounced.”
She heard the formality in his tone and answered, “I do beg your indulgence, Herr Hitler. My friend Fräulein von Launitz and I are here with a singing group from Wien. We thought you’d be offended if we did not at least say hello.”
“Of course,” Hitler said, then looked back at the interior of his flat, found it satisfactory, and invited them in.
The flat was just one long room; his own watercolor sketches of architecture were tacked to the green walls, flaking pages of paint were falling away from the ceiling, and the floor was a worn green linoleum hidden here and there with ugly other-color throw rugs. His headboard obstructed half the window at the far end, and hanging above it was a photograph of his dead mother, Klara, when she’d been just a little older than Geli. The only other furniture was a plain chair and folding table and a tilting bookcase constructed with bricks and unplaned planks with rusty nails still in them. Was he truly as poor as this? Geli took it all in, and told her uncle, “This place was never new.”
Hitler was about to object, but then realized she was kidding. She saw he did not take kindly to it. Seeming to see his room for the first time, as she did, he said, “I’m hardly ever here, Fräulein Raubal. And it can be beneficial for a workers’ party to have a leader who seems a little down-at-the-heels.” He held out a box of English toffee to her, but she shook her head. “I have no kitchen. Otherwise I’d heat some tea.”
Hitler shyly offered Ingrid the box of toffee and, far later than other men Geli had seen, finally noticed that the girl was gorgeous. And then he fastened his stunning silver-blue eyes on Ingrid’s, holding her in an unrelenting gaze in which she could do or say nothing. She seemed amazed and bewildered. She flushed and her lips faintly parted, as if she were awaiting a kiss, and only when she fluttered her eyelids with weakness and looked to the floor was she able to catch her breath. Ingrid later told Geli that she was embarrassed to have been so spellbound by him, but she’d never felt such intensity in a stare. Even days later when they were in the railway car heading back to Wien, Ingrid confessed with utter seriousness, “Looking into those eyes of his may have been the greatest moment of my life!”
But Hitler seemed to grow bored with his hold on the girl, and shifted around to his niece. “You said you’re singing here?”
“With our high school group.”
“And what’s its name?”
“Seraphim.”
Her uncle smirked. “My Angelika, with the angels! You’re a soprano?”
“Yes.”
“Where are you singing?”
Ingrid too urgently said, “At Wilhelmsgymnasium, Herr Hitler. With the boys there. Eight o’clock. Won’t you come?”
“But I am so terribly busy tonight,” Hitler whined. “Will you both be singing again?”
Geli told him they would be, at three tomorrow, at the Theatine Church.
“Well, I can’t be seen in a church,” he said. And then his face was nettled with insight. “Oh no, you’re not singing The Messiah?”
“Yes.”
“Handel! That Englishman!”
She reminded her uncle that George Frideric Handel had been born in Germany.
“And he was a failure here, wasn’t he? While finding success in Dublin and London. Oh, they know their own.” Hitler shot his sleeve to look at his wristwatch. “I shall not pretend I’m sorry to miss The Messiah tonight, but would it be possible to have a little more time with you this afternoon?”
“Certainly,” Geli said.
“Walk with me to my office, will you?”
While he got out of his carpet slippers and put on a hard white collar, Ingrid sidled up to her friend and whispered, “Don’t you think he’s handsome?”
She shrugged, then signified his foolish little mustache by holding a finger beneath her nose. Ingrid giggled and agreed. Geli tilted her head to the left to read the titles in his bookcase: both volumes of My War Memoirs by General Erich Ludendorff; My Life by the composer Richard Wagner; On War by General Carl von Clausewitz; Houston Stewart Chamberlain’s two-volume Foundations of the Nineteenth Century; Franz Kugler’s biography of Frederick the Great; a collection of heroic myths by someone named Schwab; four volumes of Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West—sober books that her uncle could claim he was reading, if asked. But on the first shelf were books that felt more authentically his: thrillers such as The Crimson Circle and Sanders of the River by an American named Edgar Wallace; twenty Wild West juveniles by the wildly popular Karl May; erotic picture collections that an Eduard Fuchs had titled The Illustrated History of Morals and The History of Erotic Art; and a flimsy, worn pamphlet called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. She heard her uncle ask, “Did your father purchase his title, Fräulein von Launitz?”
She told him, “We inherited it.”
Geli surreptitiously opened The History of Erotic Art as her uncle said, “Old wealth, then! Would you like to join the party?” She heard Ingrid giggle.
A bookmark was just above a frightening painting by Franz von Stuck of a beautiful and frankly staring dark-haired female with skin as white as pastry and a face that Geli would have guessed was Jewish. Her hands seemed to be tied behind her back. Easing up between her lewdly opened thighs and undulating around her naked torso was a gigantic sleek black python whose fierce head hung over her shoulder to nestle just above her round left breast. She seemed to be taking dull pleasure in its weight. The title was Sensuality. Geli was mystified. Why was this erotic? What did her uncle see that she didn’t? She heard Hitler telling Ingrid about the hikes and picnics the National Socialist German Workers Party organized for the young, for whom life, he knew, was now so boring, but Geli could not shift her gaze from the vexing picture, though it was making her feel a little ill. And then Hitler called, “Er, Fräulein Raubal? Will you tie my tie?”
She closed the book. “You can’t?”
“I have trouble with it.”