John Wray - The Right Hand of Sleep

— Something’s going to happen, said Voxlauer, stepping into the kitchen.

Else looked up from the table. — Has Kurt been up to see you?

— Just now. Was he here, too?

She nodded. Her eyes were small and red. — I’m frightened now, Oskar. I can’t not notice any longer.

— Something’s happened to Pauli. Or is about to.

— Who’s Pauli? said Resi, coming up from the bedroom.

— No one, mouse. Go to sleep.

— He is someone, said Voxlauer sharply.

— Hello, Oskar, said Resi, letting out a yawn. She stood between them sleepily, leaning against the counter. — Can I sit?

— I know he’s somebody, Oskar. Christ in heaven, remember who you’re talking to. Go on back to bed, Resi, Else said, half turning toward the counter. — Go on. She turned back to Voxlauer, taking his hand and squeezing it. — I want to leave. I want to leave tomorrow.

— A few more days, Else. A little while longer. Let me find out about Pauli.

— Who’s Pauli? said Resi again, looking back at them hopefully from the top of the stairs.

Else spun angrily in her chair. — You go to sleep this instant! This instant, Fräulein! Go!

Resi went. They sat silently at the table. Resi was humming to herself as she dressed for bed and the sound of her humming carried faintly up to them. — I had a terrrible talk with Kurti today, Else said.

— He brought Resi?

She nodded. — He talked about you as though you were dead, she said, running her hands along the edge of the table.

Voxlauer was quiet for a time. — Where would we go?

— I don’t know. She smiled weakly. — Tyrol?

— Tyrol would be all right. Except for the Tyroleans.

— Where, then?

Voxlauer shrugged. — Not Italy. Not east, either, if we can help it.

— It doesn’t matter, really, does it? said Else.

— No. I suppose it doesn’t.

One half hour later they went down the steps and crossed on tiptoe to the bed. Resi was curled on the parlor couch, whistling tunelessly. Voxlauer leaned over tiredly and unlaced his boots. Else ran her fingertips along his scalp, over his forehead and his eyes. — Thank you, he said in a whisper.

Else gave him a light kiss on the neck. He drew in a long and grateful breath. Opening his eyes he saw Resi watching from the couch.

— Aren’t you a peach? he said, smiling at her crookedly.

— Leave us alone for a little while, mouse.

— What for? said Resi, giggling.

— Evil spoilt child, said Voxlauer.

— Suffer the little children, Oskar, said Else. — Suffer them. The Good Book tells us to.

— Damn the Good Book, said Voxlauer, falling back onto the bed.

Resi’s eyes widened. — Mama!

— Shh, mouse, said Else. — Don’t bother us just now. The springs chirped sweetly as she lay down next to him. He felt the shifting of the mattress as she turned onto her side and the unbelievable fineness of her hair against his face and neck. — Good night, Voxlauer, she breathed into his ear.

In Berlin I found myself quite the celebrity for a time. Mittling had friends very high up in the brass and they took to me at once. I was put on display that very week at all the most exclusive cocktail parties.

“The Bolshevists have their pet subversive movements, of course, in every nest,” one bird-faced general with hair the color of dirty wool said to me, waving his sherry glass in my face like a baton. “Spain, Italy, the Argentine. Now, by God, we have ours!” He held on to my arm tightly, teetering a little.

“I’m sure you’re right, General.”

“That Dollfuss affair was regrettable. But you’ll have your time yet, son. Your golden moment. What do you say?”

“I hope to, General. Watch yourself.”

“Thank you, my boy. Very kind. Blood of Christ! If we had fifty more like you. .”

It was the same everywhere I went, particularly with the drunks. Himmler never came to these parties but I received a brief note from him through Schellenberg, the Brigadenführer for foreign intelligence, instructing me to work closely with both of them in preparation for “the intersection of public policy with what is dearest on the international front to all our hearts.” The only work I seemed to be doing, however, was to go to six or seven endlessly dull cocktail parties every evening.

The purported need for secrecy in smuggling me from one salon to the next worked on everyone like an aphrodisiac. I was moved about the city like a theater prop those first few weeks, gawking at everything from the wings. Here at last was a great city, a German city, fully ecstatic over the Cause. People addressed me by my full title of Obersturmführer, Austria SS, although it was now of course meaningless, and flattered me in a thousand other ways. There was some talk from Schellenberg and certain others of actually forming an Austrian Legion, unifying the various bands of illegals that had fled across the border in the weeks following the putsch, but I quickly realized that greener fields lay elsewhere. Already it was too crowded in the middle brass, too many ambitious young officers and not enough room for them in the Reich bureaucracy. Expansion was inevitable. When the annexation happened it was clear enough it would be Reichs-Germans, not Austrians, filling the posts. Positions would be open to Reichs-Germans and to Reichs-Germans only. So, with help, I became one.

An old Junker heiress took me into her house in the first glow of my celebrity and outfitted me in the clothes of her late husband, whom she fancied me to resemble. Maria von Lohn was a well-preserved sixty-five; I slept with her only once, after which she sent me away in a fit of melodrama and self-reproach. I took up with her daughter-in-law, Lotte, and occasionally with Liesl the chambermaid, who came from the Rhineland and was obliging and very generously put together. I stayed in the von Lohn house three years. The arrangement had something of the bedroom farce about it that kept me, by and large, in very high spirits. I’m not sure where else I could have gone after the novelty of my story faded, and it faded quickly enough.

Lotte, the daughter-in-law, was married to Gustav, a high-ranking general in the Waffen-SS who was often away from Berlin. It was through him, or through her, to be more accurate, that I became a citizen of the Reich. Through the indulgence of certain fortunately placed friends of the family, a plea for asylum was made on my behalf. My dearest hope, it was explained, was to become a German. This, of course, was absolutely true.

“Like our Führer,” Lotte would say, wrinkling her nose at me. “A fugitive from your Austrianhood!” Lotte was not a great patriot. “I’m sure he had a woman behind him, too, the sly bastard.”

“He only has his secretary, darling. Fräulein Braun.”

“Pah, Kurtchen! Secretary. Pah!” She made an obscene gesture with her hand and let out a giggle.

“Please, Lotte.”

Lotte sat up at once, frowning. She’d been lolling at the edge of the bed, watching me dress in front of her heavy pier glass. “Look at yourself, Herr Bauer! Another tight-lipped citizen of the Reich. I liked you better when you were from the territories.” She laughed to herself in that high, sparrow-like way she had. I can still hear it, dry and chittering and unhappy, girlish and middle-aged at once. A drinker’s laugh. When I try to remember her face now it escapes me, fittingly enough. But that laugh I remember very well.

“I have a meeting with the Reichsführer-SS today, not that you’d care,” I said, straightening my tie.

“Little Heinrich Himmler, of the pince-nez?”