With certainty, Heinrich Hoffmann said, “It’s Philadelphia.”
White-jacketed waiters brought over two highly ornamented dining chairs, and Hitler ordered Emil’s to be situated near his own, and his niece’s inserted farther away, between Ilse Hess and Helene Hanfstaengl so “the women can talk about hairdressers and clothes and romantic novels.”
“Oh do sit,” Putzi’s American wife said as she held out the chair to Geli. And then she added in English, “And fill us in on your love life.”
Geli knew just enough English to shyly grin.
Hearing a foreign language, Hitler frowned, but then he turned in his chair to his private secretary and told Rudi what a marvel his niece was because she could follow the fiction serials in twelve magazines and newspapers simultaneously. “And she always knows how the stories fit together. She even notices when an installment is missing.”
Geli turned and found Ilse Hess interestedly staring. “What’s your sign?” Ilse asked.
“My sign?”
“Astrologically.”
“I’m Catholic. We don’t believe in astrology.”
Ilse smiled indulgently. “What’s your birthday?”
“June fourth.”
She sat back. “You’re a Gemini then. I’ll have to do your chart.”
Waiters put china and glassware in front of Geli and filled a flute with champagne. She heard Hitler holding forth to his followers about the joy of having such glamorous female company as he dined. “Women have always been such a comfort to me,” he said. “I have always found that feminine beauty lifts me from my doldrums and helps me put aside the cares that the world so often hands me. Whether she is intelligent or original is quite unnecessary. I have enough ideas for both of us.”
Helene Hanfstaengl sighed at his gracelessness, and softly asked Geli in German, “Are you in love?”
Geli thought for a few seconds, furiously nodded, and then she and the women laughed.
Kristina, the photographer’s model, asked, “Are you talking about the man you walked in with?”
“Hitler’s chauffeur,” Helene Hanfstaengl said.
Kristina fascinatedly looked over her shoulder as Emil walked from the Herrens to his chair near Hitler. “He’s very handsome. Is he French?”
“Corsican,” Geli said. She saw that Herr Hoffmann was now telling a joke, but Hitler was divided in his listening, flicking his worried attention between Emil and her, trying to be a jocular man among men yet wanting even more to hold his niece’s voice next to his ear, like a seashell with an ocean’s roar. She heard Helene ask in English, “Are you kissing yet?”
Geli answered in first-semester English, “Yes. But many time kissing not. Uncle watches.” She pinched her thumb and first finger a few millimeters apart. “Little only.”
Hearing them, Putzi Hanfstaengl widened his knees and hunched into their group, his white tie falling loose. In English he whispered, “Who’s kissing whom?”
“Emil and Geli.”
Clownishly dropping his jaw, Putzi tilted his ugly head to his wife. “And how will our smitten corporal take that?”
“Why should he care? Women don’t matter to him. He’s a neuter.”
Ilse asked Geli in German, “What are they saying?”
“I have no idea,” she said, but she did.
Waiters put down hot plates of food in front of Kristina and Ilse and Helene. Heinrich Hoffmann was full of satisfaction as he sat back to be served and continued his story, telling it now only to Emil Maurice and Rudolf Hess, whose hand failed to hide his buckteeth as he smiled. Geli’s uncle was glaring at her across the dinner table as if she’d betrayed him, his white face seeming about to fracture with hurt. Hoffmann finished his joke by shouting, “Hold the lion!” and the men howled with hilarity, and Hitler joined in, too, repeating Hoffmann’s final words and folding over with laughter, laughing so hard that he took out his handkerchief and wiped the wetness from his eyes.
She was scheduled to take the afternoon train to Berchtesgaden and share Christmas with Angela at Haus Wachenfeld, and so at noon on December 21st Hitler visited her white room at the Pension Klein, staying in his coffee-brown leather trench coat and slouch hat as he scanned her science textbooks and turned the handwheel on the Köhler sewing machine on her desk. A chart of the periodic table of the elements caught his attention, and he seemed at once to hate it. Swatting his right trousers leg with his dog whip, he asked, “Are you enjoying your studies, Geli?”
She said she was, but heard the heartlessness in it, as did he.
“We call it the Talmud high school,” he said, “there are so many Jews there.”