A family Christmas
The sound of a motorcycle engine carries for miles amongst the high mountains of the Obersalzberg. Lottie Winter heard it first – her hearing was almost superhuman – and when she went to the window and moved aside the curtain, she saw the motorcyclist’s headlight miles down below them, on the Berchtesgaden road. Inge, Pauli and Peter watched her cupping her hands round her face to see into the darkness.
‘Are you expecting a visitor?’ Lottie asked without turning away from the window.
The question remained unanswered for a moment; then Inge replied. ‘It could be going to the pension, the Türken Hotel, or to one of the farms.’
‘It’s coming here,’ said Lottie. She shuddered. She had a premonition that it was a messenger bringing bad news.
‘I can’t think who it could be,’ said Inge. She, too, was now convinced that the motorcycle was coming to them. She switched out the light and pulled back the red silk curtain. Now through the windows they could see the mountain peaks, the snow lit by the waning moon. In the air there were snowflakes. For most of the year it was like this: the wind blew the snow off the mountains, so that the air was never completely free of whirling crystals.
It was Christmas 1930 when Pauli and Inge brought Lottie and Peter to the Obersalzberg, and this time their most famous neighbour was in residence nearby. Since 1923 Adolf Hitler had been a regular visitor to this small mountainside community in the shadow of the Hohe Göll near Berchtesgaden. He’d fled here after the putsch; upon his release from Landsberg Prison, he’d come here to finish writing Mein Kampf. Now he’d decided to have a residence permanently available here and had rented a modest chalet from his half-sister.
Suddenly Adolf Hitler had become an important political leader. At the elections in September, Hitler had won six and a half million votes. It increased the Nazi Party’s twelve seats in the Reichstag to a staggering 107 seats. After the Social Democrats, the Nazis were the most powerful political force in Germany. Since the election small groups of visitors – having made a special journey here – would sometimes linger at the curve in the road below the Hotel Türken, hoping to catch a glimpse of this fellow who called himself the Führer.
The world press took notice. In Britain, The Times, the Sunday Express, and the Daily Mail immediately published interviews with him. Hitler declared himself a bulwark against Bolshevism and warned the British that they would be militarily endangered by the Soviet Union if Germany fell to the communists.
Since his unsuccessful Munich putsch, Hitler always recognized how much he would need the support of the German army if he was ever to come to power. So, within a few days of the September election, Hitler promised that under a Nazi regime the army would become more powerful and more important and better equipped than ever before. As always, there was something in his promises for everyone except the Jews and the communists.
Pauli and Inge’s mountainside house was higher than the Führer’s Berghof and Inge usually saw him when he took his regular stroll in the deep, crunchy snow each afternoon before tea. Once, feeling rather foolish, she waved to him, but if he saw her he gave no sign of it.
It was Saturday. Peter and Lottie Winter had arrived the previous day. Knowing that Lottie followed the fashions so closely, Inge was wearing the new line: a bias-cut grey chiffon dress that fitted close at bust and hips. By now Inge’s terrible longing for Peter’s love had settled down and become no more than a dull ache. It was an ache she could live with, and she’d been determined to make Peter and Lottie feel at home. That night, after a big dinner of roast kid, potato dumplings, and apple pancakes, the cook and maid had departed, and the four of them were sitting drinking coffee and brandy round the log fire, listening to Peter’s stories about Bertolt Brecht, the playwright who’d become one of Berlin’s most colourful anarchistic characters. In October, Brecht had brought a legal action against the Nero film company, which was making a movie of his Threepenny Opera. The legal proceedings had soon become as entertaining, and far more star-studded, than anything Brecht had ever staged. Actors, actresses, writers, poets and more humdrum types of publicity-seekers made sure they were seen there, and the newspapers followed every move.
‘Brecht is a monster,’ said Peter, who’d directed Brecht through this courtroom drama. ‘An amusing, talented monster, but a monster just the same. When I told him that he couldn’t win and advised him to take the twenty-five thousand marks they offered as settlement, he called me a capitalist lackey, jumped to his feet, and went striding out of court.’
‘But why couldn’t he win?’ Pauli asked as one lawyer to another.
‘The film company brought witnesses to tell the court that Brecht had done almost no work on the film script, and Brecht provided me with nothing I could use to refute it.’
‘Bad luck,’ said Pauli. He knew the problem well: there had been some weeks when all the clients the Nazi Party provided for him were so guilty that nothing could save them. And some clients simply wouldn’t help themselves.
‘Oh, Brecht did all right,’ said Peter. ‘I persuaded the film company to give him sixteen thousand marks for agreeing not to go to the appeals court. I knew they wanted to get the matter conclusively settled quickly, so they could start filming.’
‘Isn’t he a clever man?’ said Lottie, who, sitting alongside her husband on the sofa, now hugged him. Inge smiled.
‘I’ve learned quite a lot about the world of films and theatre in the last few years,’ said Peter.
‘But not earned much money doing it,’ said Pauli.
‘Tell him he should charge them proper fees,’ Lottie told Pauli.
‘It’s more fun than the work I do for Papa,’ said Peter. ‘And when Mahagonny opened in Leipzig, they gave me the best seats in the house.’
‘I wish we hadn’t gone,’ said Lottie. ‘It was terrible. There were hundreds of storm troopers outside, waving protest banners and swastika flags. We pushed through them, but there were more demonstrations inside. There were fistfights in the auditorium, and some people were hurt. The police came: lots and lots of them. It was awful.’
‘You shouldn’t have gone,’ said Pauli. ‘Brecht is a communist. He wants that sort of trouble: it gets him the publicity he likes.’
‘He’s a genius,’ said Peter.
‘Maybe he is a genius,’ said Pauli. ‘But why doesn’t he use his genius to say something good about his own country? If Brecht had his way, he’d hand Germany over to his friends in Moscow.’
‘He’s trying to stir up our thoughts,’ said Peter. ‘He likes to be provocative.’
‘Let him go and be provocative in Russia and see what happens to him,’ said Pauli. ‘Stalin is murdering his opponents by the hundred thousands. Why doesn’t your friend Brecht write a play about that?’
‘Sometimes Brecht goes too far,’ agreed Lottie.
‘Perhaps he does,’ said Peter.
It was at this point that Lottie had heard the sound of the motorcycle and gone to the window. Their visitor was Fritz Esser, arriving unexpectedly, as he always did. Like many of the Nazi Party leaders, he’d leased a country house here in Bavaria, but in order to indulge his lifelong passion for sailing, he’d chosen the Ammersee, southwest of Munich. It took him over an hour on his BMW motorcycle to get to them. And, despite his ankle-length brown leather overcoat and fur-trimmed leather helmet, he would need some time by the fire and several drinks to thaw out properly.
Esser was a bearlike man: big, omnivorous, shaggy-coated and sharp-clawed. Also like a bear, he could be elegant, cuddly, fast-moving and vicious. He looked at them: the two brothers in dinner suits, and their wives in expensive new-fashion dresses. If Esser needed a reminder that his friends were from another world – a remote world with its own language, customs and costumes – this moment provided that reminder.
Pauli introduced Fritz Esser to his sister-in-law. They shook hands warily. ‘A member of the Reichstag,’ repeated Pauli. ‘It’s wonderful, Fritz.’ He poured coffee for Fritz and set the rum bottle out with the cream and sugar. Fritz preferred rum to brandy.
‘Not even the Führer thought it was possible,’ said Esser proudly. ‘I wish my father had lived to see it.’
‘He would have been proud of you,’ said Peter dutifully, but he couldn’t really imagine the ‘pig man’ – a lifelong socialist – being proud of his Nazi son, even if that son was now a member of the Reichstag.
‘Everyone was surprised.’ He looked up from his drink and met Pauli’s eyes. They both knew that Pauli had suggested that Fritz stand for election, and Pauli had done endless behind-the-scenes work to persuade the Nazis to back him. ‘No matter what they said afterwards, everyone was bowled over. Before the election they were hoping for thirty seats . . . fifty at the very most.’
‘And that’s all you would have got under the American or British system of first-past-the-post,’ said Lottie. ‘It was proportional representation that inflated your gains.’
‘We’re not in America,’ said Pauli sharply, as if to guard Fritz against his sister-in-law’s tongue.
But Deputy Fritz Esser was far too happy to take offence at such remarks. ‘They never thought I’d do it,’ he said. ‘They say Göring helped the Chief assign the seats. They gave me my seat in Schleswig-Holstein, not because I’m from that part of the world, but because they hadn’t the faintest hope that anyone could win it for us. Schleswig-Holstein! Good God, what could have been more hopeless for the party than that? They’ve voted liberal ever since anyone can remember up there. Everyone was astonished when the results came in.’
He looked round at the others and smiled. Despite his old clothes, and his heavy body and darkly menacing eyes, Fritz had an energy and a will power that made him attractive to men and to women. Anyone who’d heard his speeches glimpsed the captivating quality that was apparent to his friends. And yet Fritz never had any lasting relationships with women, as far as could be seen. Often he arrived with some glamorous young girl on his arm, but none lasted. Sometimes Pauli wondered if there was something wrong with Fritz, some flaw in his personality that Fritz could not come to terms with.
‘Why did it happen?’ asked Peter.
‘No one knows: all the centre parties suffered. Votes went to the communists and to us. The unemployed must have been a prime cause, but the Chief says that most of the first-time voters preferred us, and there were a lot of first-time voters in this election.’
‘Will Hitler work within the parliamentary system?’ asked Lottie.
‘Maybe,’ said Esser. He poured a generous amount of rum into his coffee and added sugar and cream, too.
‘The system you’ve vowed to destroy,’ persisted Lottie.
‘We’ll make Germany great again,’ said Esser. He didn’t want to get into an argument with this Jewish American intellectual: she was everything he despised. He was only being polite to her because Pauli was his closest friend, adviser and confidant.
‘Then why those disgraceful demonstrations in the Reichstag?’ said Lottie.
‘Now, that was Pauli’s idea,’ said Esser. He looked at Pauli and grinned.
Pauli flushed. ‘It wasn’t my idea, Fritz,’ he said awkwardly.
‘You’re too modest,’ said Esser. He enjoyed teasing Pauli. ‘On the night the election results came over the radio, I said to Pauli how angry the Führer was that Prussia had banned the wearing of our uniforms. He would have liked to see our deputies taking their seats in proper uniform. The Führer had said as much to me. He thought it was impossible to get round it, but young Pauli here found a way. He always finds a way. Pauli is the smartest fellow we have in the party.’
‘What was Pauli’s idea?’ said Peter.
‘Taking our uniforms in with us and changing in the washrooms.’ ‘Would someone explain it to me?’ asked Lottie.
Quietly Peter said, ‘Once inside the building, the delegates enjoy parliamentary immunity. No one could stop them from wearing their Nazi uniforms, whatever the law says about it.’
‘It was a real pantomime,’ said Esser proudly. ‘We shouted and sang the old songs and told them what we thought of them. They tried to get the proceedings going, but there were too many of us, and the sight of our brown shirts drove them to a frenzy.’ He laughed.
‘It sounds stupid,’ said Lottie angrily.
Esser laughed again at her anger, and Pauli laughed too. They were like naughty schoolboys. She found it impossible to argue with them. ‘It’s not funny,’ she said, but the more angry she became the more they laughed.
When they were quiet again and Pauli had replenished everyone’s drinks, Pauli said, ‘Have you come to see the Führer, Fritz?’
‘Tomorrow you will be introduced to him,’ Fritz Esser announced proudly. There was no need to say whom he was talking about: when Fritz spoke of his ‘Chief’ – the Führer – there was a special note of respect in his voice. ‘Pauli and Inge, too. He has asked me to arrange it. He wants to meet all his neighbours, and of course he knows about Pauli’s work in the Berlin Gauleiter’s office.’ He finished his second coffee with rum; this time it was almost entirely rum.
‘Does he?’ said Inge. She had never had any interest in politics, but now that she was married to Pauli she supported the Nazis, for whom he worked. And, like any loyal and devoted wife, she wanted her husband’s virtues to be properly rewarded.
‘We all know what a damned difficult year it’s been,’ said Fritz, rubbing his hands together before warming them again at the fire.
Inge didn’t know. Pauli seldom discussed his work with her. Every night he came home looking as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
‘First, just after your wedding, when the Führer had his big row with Strasser. We were worried, I can tell you!’
‘What was that about?’ asked Inge. She looked at Fritz with great interest. Inge was a wonderful hostess: she drew people out.
Fritz knew she was pumping him, but he didn’t mind: Inge was pretty and the wife of one of his best friends. And the rum was taking effect. ‘I was there, in the Hotel Sanssouci, when it happened. They nearly came to blows. Strasser wants a programme of nationalization of industry and a whole lot of things that the communists want. The Chief called Strasser a commie and said he wouldn’t nationalize Krupps, because government clerks would bring it to bankruptcy within a few weeks. It was quite a shouting match. Then a couple of days later the Berlin SA went on strike for more wages. . . .’ He shrugged.
‘What will happen about the SA? I’m so glad Pauli didn’t wear brownshirt uniform when we got married. There is always so much trouble with them.’ She looked at Pauli, who smiled but didn’t comment.
‘The trouble’s not over yet. The Führer has asked Ernst Röhm to take command of the SA again.’
‘I thought he went to South America.’
‘Yes, we all thought we’d got rid of the fat swine, but now he’s coming back.’
‘Pauli hates him.’
‘We all hate him; he’s a cunning, deceitful pansy. And now he’ll make sure all his homosexual friends are promoted back into the SA top ranks. He’ll make life difficult for his enemies, and I’m one of his enemies.’
‘Why does the Führer want to use a man like that?’
‘Since the election, people are joining the party and the brown-shirts in such numbers that we can hardly cope. With the party that’s no real problem: we write their names and addresses in a book and they start paying us their contributions. But the SA has to be uniformed, trained and organized. Röhm knows all about that, so Röhm is the quickest solution to an urgent problem.’
‘Is Röhm coming here?’
‘I hope to God he’s not. I’ve got to have a few minutes with the Führer tomorrow. I was wondering . . .’
‘A bed for the night? Of course, Fritz. I’ll have your bags sent up to the corner room, the room with the balcony; you like that one, I know.’
‘Thanks, Inge. Not much baggage on a motorcycle: just the shoulder bag I left in the hall.’ He finished his third cup of coffee and rum and searched the pockets of his battered tartan, zip-fronted jacket to get cigarettes and matches. Pauli – always a good host – offered cigars from an inlaid humidor, but Fritz preferred the cheap, evil-smelling cigarettes he always smoked.
‘When will we meet him?’ Inge asked.
‘Tomorrow, for tea. He’s installed his half-sister over there as his housekeeper. She used to work as a pastry cook, and she makes the finest cream cakes I’ve ever seen; the Chief is very fond of cream cakes.’
‘Yes, we heard his widowed sister was living there. Angela, is it? Isn’t there a brother, too?’
Fritz got up from the fender seat, where he’d been warming himself, and gave a little laugh – a snigger almost. ‘The Führer’s half-brother, Alois, is rather a touchy subject, Inge. He’s been in and out of prison a number of times – some petty theft and then bigamy – and the last we heard of him, he’s run off to live in England.’
‘The Führer’s brother lives in England! That’s extraordinary.’
Fritz looked Inge straight in the eyes. ‘Yes, well, it’s not something that has been given wide publicity, and I’d be obliged if you’d keep it to yourself.’
She touched his arm in a gesture of reassurance. ‘Of course, Fritz.’
‘I’ve become very close to the Chief over the last few years, Inge. I’ve been loyal to him, and he’s a man who respects loyalty. The Chief has a lot of good people round him: now more of them than ever, of course. But when the Führer has a problem, I’m proud to say he often turns to Fritz Esser. And Fritz never lets him down.’
‘And what does Fritz Esser do?’ said Inge. ‘He goes to Pauli Winter.’
‘Exactly,’ said Esser.
Pauli smiled contentedly. Although he knew it to be a childish thought, he allowed himself to contemplate how perfect it would be if they all shared a house like this: together always. To be with Inge and Fritz and Peter and Lottie all the time was Pauli’s idea of heaven.
Later that night, the two women were tidying the room. They had no living-in staff, and the two young village women who cooked and cleaned for them would not arrive until seven-thirty next morning. It being Sunday, they would come after Mass.
‘You’re not really going, are you, Inge?’
Inge was plumping up the cushions. She stopped and said, ‘To see the Führer?’
‘The man is a monster.’
‘So is Brecht. Even Peter said so.’
‘That’s different. Brecht doesn’t rail against the Jews and threaten his opponents.’
‘But he does, Lottie. Brecht passionately hates everything that I love. He despises the soldiers who fought in the war for us. He says horrible things about officers, and Pauli and Peter were both officers. He hates the Homeland. He hates the church. He hates us!’
‘I shouldn’t have come,’ said Lottie. It was no good. Inge was one of the most intelligent German women she’d ever met, but . . .
‘Don’t be silly, Lottie darling.’
‘I’m not being silly!’ said Lottie, a new, quiet anger in her voice.
Inge looked at her, not knowing how to deal with her. She’d never seen her sister-in-law on the verge of tears before. She’d never guessed that there were such strong emotions within her.
‘Did you read the speeches Hitler just made at Offenburg and at the University of Erlangen?’ Lottie asked her. ‘Everyone strives for expansion, he told them, and every people strives for world domination. World domination! He’s a madman, I tell you.’
‘You mustn’t take it all so seriously, Lottie,’ said Inge, much relieved to find that it was nothing more serious than Hitler’s rhetoric that had upset her. ‘It’s the sort of thing Germans want to hear. I am a German, and I understand these things. Please don’t worry yourself.’
‘Perhaps we should go back to Berlin.’
‘Please don’t go,’ said Inge. ‘It’s so nice to see Peter and Pauli together. And it’s Christmas.’
‘What is Christmas to me?’ said Lottie. ‘I’m a Jew. Or have you forgotten that?’
‘This obsessional hatred for the Führer’
Inge’s mother-in-law, Veronica Winter, had met Adolf Hitler almost two years before. It was also at his house here on the Obersalzberg, and under similar circumstances. Veronica thought him a horrible man. He fawned and smiled and behaved like the men she’d met at the salons in Vienna, hand-kissing men who hung around on the fringes of the art world being nice to rich old ladies.
But Inge and Pauli met a far more confident Hitler. Although the election success had not brought power, it had brought him the promise of power. There was not much hand-kissing now. They met a middle-aged man with unmistakable energy and determination. Not in any way like a peasant, he was obviously urban and quick-witted and might have been mistaken for a semiskilled foreman in one of Harald Winter’s heavy-engineering factories. His carefully parted hair was almost unnaturally black, and his eyes were alert, but the colour of his skin was grey and unhealthy. He wore a dark double-breasted suit with a Nazi Party badge in the wide lapel, and he made anxious little movements all the time: hand upon hip, then in pocket, raised fist, pointing finger, and hands clasped together.
Despite the violent and flamboyant speeches he’d made in the period leading up to the election, and his more recent ones at Offenburg and Erlangen, Hitler was today displaying the face of the respectable statesman.
For working-class audiences and students, Hitler concentrated on what they wanted to hear. He promised that everyone must be compelled to work, and that all income from investment would be abolished. Workers would nevermore be subjected to the ‘slavery’ of interest repayments. All corporations would be nationalized, and department stores would be turned over to individual traders. Land would be redistributed to the peasants.
But today, for his prosperous neighbours, he talked of the injustice of the Versailles Treaty, the cooperation between workers and management that would bring a more prosperous Germany. He talked of his love for the mountains, his impoverished youth and his ambition to see Germany and Austria united.
Hearing that Pauli Winter had been born in Vienna started the Nazi leader on a long, rambling account of his difficult days there. Only one light illuminated the darkness: the inspiring career of Karl Lueger, a man Adolf Hitler greatly admired. Once he had completed his short eulogy, uniformed aides made a passage for him, and the Führer moved away without waiting for any reaction.
Inge was thrilled. Years fell away, till her face shone with the excitement of a young girl. Nervously she ran her hand up the side of her face and back through her short-trimmed hair, holding her hand to her head as if trying to awaken herself from a dream.
There were many people in the chintzy little house with its fretwood and dried flowers and gingham. Too many for the cramped rooms, even when chairs and tables had been moved to make more space. In the corner was a piano – a present from his neighbours the Bechstein family – and Hitler sometimes played it. Besides aides, cronies, secretaries, bodyguards and hangers-on, there was a crush of invited guests. Six of them were newly elected deputies, and Fritz Esser was amongst these. Inge was interested to catch a glimpse of Hitler’s half-sister, Frau Angela Raubal. She was a cheerful, matronly woman who, Inge guessed from her appearance, had not given up hope of remarriage. Her daughter Geli was there, too, and had Inge been even better at guessing, she would have looked more closely at this plump twenty-two-year-old blonde who passed round the cream cakes. Before another year had passed, Geli Raubal would be found shot dead in Hitler’s Munich apartment, with Hitler’s personal 6.35mm Walther pistol at her side, and be the centre of speculation about ‘Uncle Alf’s’ love affairs.
But, for Pauli, Hitler’s half-sister and niece, and all the other local residents and high-ranking Nazis, were of only passing interest compared with the presence amongst the Führer’s guests of Heinrich Brand. Pauli was horrified. He’d heard Esser’s stories and other reports in the party papers of Brand’s distinguished career as a brownshirt officer. And Alex Horner had told him of his encounter during the military exercises. But to see Brand face to face again was another matter.
An SA Obersturmbannführer now – a lieutenant colonel – and smartly turned out in beautifully cut riding breeches, and a well-fitting brown shirt on the pocket of which was an Iron Cross first class, exactly like the one the Führer wore. Had Pauli been prepared for this confrontation, it might have been endurable, but the sudden sight of his old tormentor made his stomach turn.
Pauli and Brand shook hands. Only a flicker of a smile from Brand revealed the hatred that he wanted made obvious to the younger man. Obersturmbannführer Brand, explained Fritz Esser, was setting up the headquarters for the return of the newly appointed brownshirt leader Ernst Röhm.
‘Crazy Heini’ was forty-five years old and, like his Führer, had grown less and less crazy with every step up the ladder of fortune. Brand had aged in the way that most people aged. His hair was grey and so was his moustache, but his eyes were the same as they always had been in so many of Pauli’s worst nightmares. It wasn’t just that they were set rather close to his thin, bony nose; the eyes were hard and glasslike, almost alive but not quite, moving always, and blinking like the eyes of a very expensive doll.
Pauli made polite comments about the important new post and how much he looked forward to meeting him again in Berlin. Brand touched his moustache and stared at Pauli, responding to his politeness with no more than a grunt. Pauli became nervous; he desperately wanted a cigarette, but they’d all been warned that the Führer didn’t permit smoking.
Fritz Esser was suddenly at his elbow, persuading Pauli to repeat a joke that ended in a long speech in Austrian dialect, which Pauli could imitate so perfectly. He was halfway through before he remembered Hitler’s strongly accented speech. He looked across the uncomfortably crowded room. It was damned hot in here, what with the woodstove and all these people. Hitler was at the window, surrounded by nodding, smiling sycophants. He was out of earshot, but Pauli had the feeling that this unfortunate joke would be repeated to the Führer. And Hitler’s contempt for lawyers was well known.
When they got back home, it was dark. It got dark early in the mountains; that was the worst part of being there in the winter. Inge went upstairs to change into a dinner dress. Pauli poured himself a big glass of cognac and drank it too quickly. The shock of seeing Brand again had upset him. He decided that he wanted to talk about it to someone, and the depth of his fear was not something he wanted to reveal to Fritz Esser. Esser respected Pauli, and Pauli was determined to keep it that way. Pauli looked down at his hands. They were shaking so much that he’d already spilled some of his drink in pouring it out. Perhaps he should go and see one of these damned psychologists that were so fashionable nowadays.
But first he would speak about it with his brother. Peter understood him better than anyone. Peter wouldn’t laugh at his fears. Peter would reassure him and give him advice, sensible advice, not the sanctimonious sermon that Papa delivered whether asked or not. It must have been fate that brought Peter here at this time of need. He went up to the big guest bedroom, the one with the balcony that provided a view of the legendary Untersberg. When there was no response to his knock, he tried the door. It opened, but Peter wasn’t in, and neither was Lottie. And there was no sign of any of their clothes or personal possessions. On the dressing table was an envelope. He opened it.
It was a polite note, thanking Pauli and Inge for their hospitality and the extra work the visit had made for them. There was an appropriate gratuity for the servants. But they’d had to return to Berlin suddenly. Peter was sure that Pauli would understand.
Pauli read the note again, and then a third time. He could hear Inge’s bathwater running: it was no use going to her. He loved her dearly, but Inge wouldn’t understand: he needed Peter. Pauli wanted to shout aloud, or at least to sob. But Pauli’s days of crying had ended back when he used to cry himself to sleep in the cadet-school barracks at Lichterfelde.
He went downstairs and had another drink. It always took Inge a long time to bath, change and rearrange her hair. She liked to have some time to herself. When she came downstairs again, the fire was almost dead and Pauli was asleep on the sofa. She shook him, but the cognac decanter was empty and he was very drunk.
‘Are you hungry, Pauli? There is ham and chicken.’ She touched his arm to wake him. ‘You haven’t changed. . . . Pauli!’ She switched the table lamp on. ‘Pauli!’
‘Peter’s gone home,’ he mumbled.
‘Yes, I know.’
‘I love Peter,’ said Pauli drunkenly.
‘Yes, you love your father and you love Peter. But can’t you see that that’s just your way of saying how much you depend on them?’
‘I do depend on them.’
‘Then stop it! Pull yourself together, Pauli. Be a man. Start living your own life and making up your own mind about everything. I hate to see you abasing yourself to Peter. You’re as good as he; better, in fact.’
‘Why did he go?’ asked Pauli.
‘They were angry about our visit to the Führer,’ said Inge. ‘I heard him on the phone ordering a car. It was Lottie, of course. She has this obsessional hatred for the Führer.’
‘You should have told me,’ said Pauli. ‘I wouldn’t have gone if I’d known it would make that much difference.’
‘Yes, yes, yes,’ said Inge. ‘You would have refused to go, and what would have happened to us then?’ She knelt on the carpet beside him and, holding him very tight, she kissed him. She loved this clumsy, silly Pauli, who never sent her flowers, never remembered her birthday, took her love for granted, as he expected her to do with his love. She loved him so much because he needed her to care for him. Germany had millions of unemployed, and many of them were lawyers. She wished Pauli would realize how lucky he was to have his fat salary and good job with the Nazis. It was all right for Lottie to air her opinions about what should be done, but her husband, Peter, had the security of the Winters’ family business. Sometimes Inge resented the way that Pauli had been treated by his family. ‘Pauli, darling. I love you, I love you.’