The Lady from Zagreb

Forty-six

When I got to the cottage near Pfaueninsel, I telephoned Goebbels and told him that everything was fine. He sounded relieved. Then I found a bottle of Korn in a cabinet and a box of cigarettes, made some coffee, and waited. Thirteen hours later the telephone rang twice. I wanted to answer it, of course, but didn’t. I knew that would only make things harder for the both of us. Then I called Goebbels again. I hadn’t heard him shout like that since his total war speech at the Sportpalast, in February. I think if I’d been with him he’d have ordered someone to shoot me.

They arrested me, of course, and took me to the police station in Babelsberg, just outside Potsdam, but I didn’t care because I knew that Dalia was safe in Switzerland. For two days they held me in a cell before they took me to the Linden Hotel. It wasn’t really a hotel. That’s just what the people of Potsdam called the place because it was on Lindenstrasse. In reality this large creamy white building with redbrick windows was a Gestapo prison. There they locked me in a cell with more locks on the door than a bank vault and left me alone, but with meals and cigarettes. I had lots to read. The walls of my cell were covered with graffiti. One stayed with me for a very long time afterward: it read “Long Live our Sacred Germany.” Now, that was something noble, to give a man hope, as opposed to the dirty little secularist tyranny that Hitler had imposed on my beautiful country.

Five days after Dalia left Germany for good I received a visitor. A little to my surprise it was State Secretary Gutterer, from the Ministry of Truth. He’d put on a little more weight since the last time I’d seen him but he was just as supercilious as ever; all the same I was pleased to see him. I’d have been pleased to see anyone after spending almost a week by myself. Even a man wearing a black top hat.

“You’re very fortunate you’re not going to stay in here for a lot longer,” he said. “It’s lucky for you you’ve got some friends with influence.”

I nodded. “That sounds promising.”

“As soon as it can be arranged, you’re leaving Berlin,” he said. “You can spend a couple of weeks on Rügen Island with your wife and then you’re to join army intelligence on the Panther-Wotan line. It’s an insignificant section of the defensive line that runs between Lake Peipus and the Baltic Sea on our Eastern Front. You’ll be a lieutenant in the 132nd Infantry Division, part of Army Group North, where a man of your negligible talents can be properly appreciated. Right now, I believe it’s uncomfortably hot there. Lots of mosquitoes. But you won’t be surprised to learn that it gets very cold in winter. Which is only a couple of months away. And of course let’s not forget the Russians are coming. They should keep you occupied for as long as you manage to stay alive.”

I nodded. “Fresh air, sounds good,” I said. “And Rügen Island with my wife. That will be nice. Thank you. She’ll like that.”

Gutterer paused. “What? No jokes, Lieutenant Gunther?”

“No, not this time.”

“I’m disappointed in you. No, really.”

“Lately — I’m not quite sure why — I’ve lost my sense of humor, Herr State Secretary. I suppose it weighs a bit heavily on me, being in the Linden Hotel, of course. This isn’t a place for mirth. That and the fact that I’ve just come down to earth with a loud bump and realized that I am no longer a god. The fact is, I’ve suddenly stopped feeling as if I were painted with gold and lived on Mount Olympus.”

“I could have told you that, Gunther.”

“For a short while she made me feel that way. I walked as tall as the tallest man, breathed the purest air, and took an absurd delight in myself. I even managed to face myself in the shaving mirror. I thought, if she can look at me with pleasure, then perhaps I can, too. But now I shall have to get used to being ordinary again. I am, in short, exactly like you, Gutterer: ignoble, inhuman, small-minded, sterile, ugly, with a mind like a paper knife.”

“You’re making no sense at all, you know that, don’t you?”

“I daresay that a man with your great wordsmith’s skills could have written that speech better for me, Herr State Secretary. But you’ll forgive me if I say you couldn’t ever have felt any of those things. Not in a thousand years. You were never a Teutonic knight of the Holy Roman Empire. You’ve never fought and defeated a troll or a dragon. You’ve never sacrificed yourself for a noble cause. You’ve never pledged a woman loyalty on your sword. Which is really what’s important in life.”

Gutterer sneered.

“Let me tell you something,” he said. “And you can take this from the Ministry of Truth. She’s going to forget all about you, Gunther. Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but as time goes by, I can absolutely guarantee it. You’ll certainly never hear from her again. My ministry is going to make absolutely sure of that. Any letters sent to or received from her house in Switzerland won’t ever arrive. Telegrams will be ignored. Nothing. You mark my words, by the time Christmas comes she won’t even remember your name. You’ll just be a sentimental little adventure she had one summer when she played Lili Marlene to your soon-to-be-dead soldier. A footnote in the life of a minor film actress of insignificant talent. Think about that when you’re sitting in a cold foxhole on the Dnieper River and waiting for an ignominious death. Think about her, wrapped in a fox fur, and in some other man’s arms, her husband, perhaps, or some other fool like you who thinks he’s more than just her favorite toy.”

Gutterer got up to leave.

“Oh, I nearly forgot something important.” He tossed an official-looking envelope onto the table in front of us and smiled unpleasantly. “Those are two tickets to the cinema for you. A last gift from Dr. Goebbels. The Saint That Never Was starring Dalia Dresner is playing at the Kammerlichtspiele in the Café Vaterland. The minister thought that you might like them so you can see her and know that you’re never going to see her again.”

“Kind of him. But that makes two of us, doesn’t it?”

As Gutterer walked out of my cell, I remembered the graffiti on my cell and for no reason I can think of, I said it out loud.

“Long live our sacred Germany.”

I don’t expect he understood what it meant. In fact, I’m fairly certain of it.