Hitler's Niece

“I shall, I think. Thank you.” Calm and unembarrassed; as if she’d handed him a pill.

She was digging a soft-boiled egg from its shell with a teaspoon the next morning when he strolled into the breakfast room at eleven, fully rested and buoyant. Maria Reichert shuffled in with a tray of hot cocoa, hard rolls, and sticks of chocolate on a plate, and they talked like old friends about the cold weather, higher grocery prices, the difficulties a cousin of hers was having at his factory job.

“Well, we all have to pay our keep, don’t we,” he said.

“We do,” Frau Reichert said. “If it’s free it’s not worth having.” And she left.

“Was that meant for me?” Geli asked.

Hitler seemed honestly startled. “We were just making conversation.”

She felt guilty. She could not face him. She held her coffee cup with both hands. “Will you have me do that again?”

She ought to have known he’d be ready, and would trivialize it. “Our little game?” he asked. “Our child’s play?”

“That.”

Hitler softly stroked her hair and said, “We shall do only what gives you pleasure, Princess.”

“Others have done it?”

“Yes.” He got a hard roll from a straw basket and sawed it without anger with his knife. “Don’t feel in any way compelled—”

“I just wanted to know,” Geli said.

What Makes Him Unhappy:

Emil, lately. My talking on the telephone. Warm rooms. Radiator heat. Empty apartment. Questions. Contradictions. Any foreign language. Horseback riding. Office work. Modern art and music. Yawns. Other men and me. Any touching. Any mention of cancer. Wetness on floor or sink. “Spicy” foods.

What Makes Him Happy:

My asking permission. Any dessert. Me here when he comes home or calls. “I find you very handsome.” Head and neck massages (Wagner playing). With him at meals, even if I don’t eat. Watching me shave my legs. Unending compliments. Orange marmalade on zwieback. “Noticeable” females, far younger or far older. These poses: “Bathing,” “The Nap,” “Venus Awakening.” My hair longer than it is now. My smile.

In December she read a news article about the novelist Thomas Mann, who lived along the Isar just a short stroll from them. The Swedish Academy had awarded him the Nobel Prize for literature and afterward he’d been honored as München’s favorite son with a banquet at city hall. She mentioned it to her uncle at breakfast, and without hesitation Hitler told her, “My Struggle is now outselling both Buddenbrooks and The Magic Mountain.”

“Still, he’s a great writer.”

Suddenly reddening, and seeming to dare her to try another word, he said, “And he’s an enemy of the party!”

She was quiet.

Just before Christmas Geli’s gramophone was loudly playing Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte and she was singing along with the aria “Der Hölle Rachen” as she watched snow strike her windows. And then she heard Christof Fritsch shout her name from the foyer. She turned off the gramophone and tilted out into the hallway. She couldn’t see him, so he must have been in a parlor. She called out, “Who let you in?”

“I found the door open. Are the servants gone?”

She calculated: The Winters were off for the day, Maria was at the Viktualien Markt, and old Dachs was deaf. “Wait!” she said, and went into her room for a sweater as she called out, “I am forbidden male visitors here; I told you.” Then she heard the jingle of his galoshes on the floor. She hurriedly fussed in her room, hiding under-things, and then he was large in the doorway, his beret in his hand, his blond hair in havoc, his black mackintosh flaked with snow.

“I have written you three letters and torn them all up,” he said. “I need to say it face-to-face.”

“Say what?”

Worn out, Christof slid down the wall and sat heavily in a university way, his ankle-high gutta-percha galoshes angled far out and bleeding water onto the fine woolen rug. When he unfastened his mackintosh she smelled India rubber, tobacco smoke, and the fading fragrance of the outdoors. She settled onto the sofa and hunched forward, her forearms crossed on her knees. Waiting.

&nbs

p; “I haven’t seen you much,” he said.

“We haven’t been in the same places.”