(This is a short extract from chapter 6 of my novel “Geli Hitler,” available here)
Waiglein had never been out of Germany in his life, and only rarely out of Bavaria. To him, Austria, no matter how close on a map, was as foreign as the other side of the Moon. He had certainly known many natives from the strange place who had wandered into Munich, speaking their unusual Southern accent; but they surely hadn’t enlightened him on the issue of what to expect from the actual sight of their mountainous, mysterious land.
As he eyed Waiglein, who sat in ill-fitting civilian clothes in the bench in front of him, striving to read a German newspaper as the train rolled into Vienna, eyes shaded under the brim of his lumpy civilian hat, Maier thought of detective stories; and, more specifically, of the fact that policemen in civilian garb were always conspicuous in such stories, always easily identifiable by the good or the bad guys. He had never thought of himself as one such impossible-to-disguise policeman; but, if such a breed existed, he realized, Waiglein was a sterling example.
Walking down the corridors of the huge central station of the formerly imperial capital, amid the din of nations flowing past them, Waiglein whispered a question:
“Did you bring your weapon?”
Maier turned to him, and made a face of displeasure.
“Of course. Did you?”
“Diehl said I shouldn’t. But I still–”
“Alright then.”
They dropped their luggage in a cheap pension not far from the Imperial Palace, ruled by a stiff, bald man with a dark mustache and goatee who seemed suspicious of the two German travelers.
“It’s a pity my land has been reduced to this rump around Vienna you just went through,” he intoned. “It used to be the largest country in Europe; I always thought it was misguided of the emperor to join Germany in its stupid war against France and England.”
“I always thought it was Germany who joined Austria in its stupid war against Russia,” Maier said.
“I always thought Russia was the largest country in Europe,” Waiglein said.
The bald man lifted his chin theatrically, not deigning to respond to either, and closed the door behind him, leaving them in their sparse, but clean, room. Their budget was somewhat limited, Diehl had explained, and yet the biggest concern was publicity. It was of paramount political importance that the Austrian authorities, always extremely wary of having the Germans involve themselves in their business, wouldn’t suspect that two German policemen were conducting an unauthorized investigation in their fiefdom. A cheap lodge satisfied both concerns—the offending policemen were less likely to be found in a non-conspicuous location.
Speed was, of course, the other main consideration. That was the main argument that Maier used to explain his plan to Waiglein, and convince him to do as he told: that is, to stay all afternoon in their pension, as he set out to find a way to locate Markus Leutert; which was what Waiglein did very reluctantly.
Maier went into a nice-looking, biggish Austrian police station in the downtown, looking upset and haughty as a good German would be, if forced to deal with the notoriously incompetent Austrian police force. He was made to wait for close to an hour, but in the end he was given a chair to sit down in front of the desk of a detective that was obviously not happy for having to deal with him. Having already made the needed impression with the detective’s underlings, one that had them reassured that he was nothing more than another visiting German with a problem who acted like a pain in the ass, Maier held his hat in his hands in a most humble manner, and avoided the man’s gaze as he spoke in a slow tone, wholly respectful of Austria’s legal authority. For this second stage of his act, Maier needed to make a whole different impression altogether.
“My problem is simple, sir,” he said. “I’m here to beg your help, to find the man who left my sixteen-year old daughter pregnant.”
The Austrian detective, a man of Maier’s age with dark, large eyebrows and a meritorious paunch, relaxed visibly. He had been told to be prepared to deal with an idiot from the other side of the border, not with a polite, distressed father who begged for things.
“I’m not sure we can help you with that, Mr. Maier,” he said in his softest voice, his timid denial swamped by goodwill and a desire to accommodate the wronged foreign visitor.
“Please, let me explain myself. My darling Lotte is my only daughter. I knew she was seeing this young man, and I approved of the relationship because I like him. I actually treated like my own son, and he always had the doors to my house opened. I’m just amazed that this happened–”
Maier fell silent, as if deep in his remorse; he knew that trailing off, not giving up all the main points in his message at once, was a key to that particular performance. The detective nodded thoughtfully.
“Well, Mr. Maier, this is not the kind of–”
“Please, listen to me, Detective. I don’t hate this young man, even though I should, because he did this to my daughter without my knowing or my approving. I know he’s a fine person, who did something wrong. I’m not looking for him to punish him. I just want him to do the right thing.”
“I’m not sure that I follow.”
“I just want to find him, to let him know that Lotte is pregnant, and let him have a chance at doing the gentlemanly thing.”
“He doesn’t know she’s pregnant,” the detective said, a bit puzzled.
“Of course he doesn’t. I wouldn’t have come all the way here from Munich, if he knew.”
The detective nodded again. Pieces were falling into place, within his particular mental construction.
“So, you want us to find this young man for you?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t dare to ask for such a thing. I know you must be very busy chasing criminals and the like. No, I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing that at all.”
“So–”
“No, I just want you to give me a little hand. I came to you, to the police, because I don’t know anyone in this city, and I trust police more than anyone else in the world.”
“Well, of course we’d like to–”
“The name of this boy is Leutert, Markus Leutert. As I said, he’s a good boy, so I would be absolutely astonished if you had his name on any sort of police record–”
“I can make sure we check that for you, though. It would be no hassle at all.”
“I’d really appreciate that, Detective.”
“Consider it done. I’ll let you know if–”
“There’s one other thing, detective. I don’t have a lot of time, or money to spend here, so I’d like to keep looking for Markus in the meantime. There is a—how do you call it? A clue? —a clue I’d like to follow. A friend of Markus told me he’s enrolled in an artistic school, you see: Markus is a painter. Or so he hopes.”
Maier smiled, cue for the detective to do just the same. The detective responded:
“What I can tell you is that there are two big schools here. The old imperial school, and a new contemporary arts school. It really depends on what sort of temperament this fellow Markus has. Young boys tend to prefer the contemporary thing. More modern, you understand, but not really to my taste.”
Maier came out of the police station with addresses for both schools. He was fairly certain of what sort of painter Markus thought he was, but a cold, foggy night has fallen, so he went straight to the pension and told Waiglein the plan for the next morning: Maier would hit the contemporary arts school, while Waiglein, also acting like the concerned father of the poor, trusting girl, would take care of the classic arts school.
Waiglein had no objection to that plan, or to Maier’s idea that they might as well spend part of the budget in some moderately-prized eatery, for dinner. He sat his bulk behind a greasy table as a sullen waiter gave them a short choice of courses in what sounded like a non-native German accent, possibly Slavic. The walls of the eatery had some cinema posters in Hungarian, and a small coat of arms with chess-like red and white squares, plus a string of bizarre-looking words including one that Maier understood: Hrvatska, or Croatia, one of the southern Slavic lands, formerly Austrian territories, that the Serbians had taken over after the Great War to make them part of their brand new Yugoslavian state, now thrice the size of the sorry Austrian rump of a state. Vienna was like that sometimes, exposed as driftwood from what had once been an empire that perhaps should have never been.
Maier watched Waiglein in silence as his subordinate methodically dispatched a goulash and a cabbage dish with his eyes firmly on the prize, surprised to glimpse the small, round-faced boy that Waiglein had once been: a boy who had been big and gentle, possibly not quite a giant but still perceived as one; a well-mannered boy who did as he was told, not the brightest light in the street but a reliable pupil on which moderate hopes had once been placed. Would he become a welder? A tramway driver? An assistant carpenter in a Polish circus? A policeman, perhaps?
“What do you think of Diehl?” Maier asked, when he noticed that Waiglein’s mouth was empty enough to respond.
Waiglein hadn’t expected such a question. He shrugged, looking like a suspicious farmer in the process.
“He’s all right,” he said.
“Do you like him?”
“I like all my bosses, Detective.”
Maier lit a cigarette.
“Not everyone in our line of work likes Diehl, you know,” Maier went on. “He has opinions.”
“Everyone has opinions.”
“He believes in them, more than most.”
“I’m not so sure about that.”
“He doesn’t like the Nazis.”
“Not everyone likes the Nazis. Not even in Munich.”
Maier nodded, conceding the point.
“Do you?” he asked.
“I only do as I’m told. I don’t worry about politics.”
“Is that why Diehl picked you for this case?”
“Possibly.”
Waiglein seemed to be strangely at ease, deflecting Maier’s questions. Looking at him, Maier reflected that overweight men have a way to appear nonchalant. Emil Berger, the stocky chauffeur, shared the same trait.
“You know, Waiglein, lots of guys in our outfit like the Nazis. Diehl is handling a tricky case here. We will need pretty convincing evidence to talk any judge into going ahead with a murder trial against one of the most prominent politicians in Germany.”
“That’s your job, Detective.”
“Yes, and I wonder why.”
Now it was Waiglein’s turn to lit his own cigarette, and look a tad more thoughtful.
“Everyone knows your wife is Jewish. Diehl knows too.”
“Do you think that’s the reason why?”
“I don’t know, and it’s none of my concern. I’m just saying that most people would think you’re probably not too sympathetic to the Nazis.”
“Yes, I believe that’s a fair assessment.”
Maier looked away; behind them, there was a conversation in a Slavic language, involving the waiter.
“Listen, Detective, we only have to do our job here. Put the evidence together, get some witness who can be called to make a statement. Let Diehl worry about making a case for the judge. That’s what they pay him for.”
“Is it true that Diehl has powerful friends in the ministry?”
Waiglein shrugged again, turning his eyes back to the table.
“How should I know?”
“That’s what people say, right?”
“You don’t get to become a chief without friends in the ministry,” Waiglein said. “That’s what people know. There are other chiefs, apart from Diehl, and they have friends too.”
“It’s a big, friendly world.”
“You know, I once met Hitler personally.”
Maier swallowed slowly.
“That’s interesting,” he said.
“One of my brothers-in-law – I have six sisters, honest to God, all older than me – one of my brothers-in-law was an early member in the Nazi party. He joined before Hitler came around.”
“That’s – something – “
“Hitler’s party card was number eleven or something, my brother-in-law eight or seven I think. He says that, when Hitler joined, he was just just a quiet guy with this intense – intense way of looking at people. You know, those eyes. My brother-in-law had been an aircraft mechanic during the war, he worked with Zeppelins. Anyway, they all later knew that Hitler had actually joined as a police informer.”
“That’s not in his police file.”
“Yeah, well, what do you want me to say – You never think your own shit stinks as bad as other people’s.”
“And your brother-in-law was fine with that?”
“By the time he knew, he was on his way out. Anyway, all of those nationalists groups after the war were full of informers. Unemployed soldiers and informers, that was pretty much it, if you ask me. But apparently Hitler told his main guys, came clean at some point: he said, look, I came here as an informer, I was told to keep an eye on you people, and I have come to like and respect you people, so I’m staying as your leader. And whoever doesn’t like it, there’s the door. Or words to that effect.”
“And your brother-in-law left?”
“Many people left. People were leaving before the Beer-Hall putsch. That’s probably why Hitler acted so rashly then. He and the communists. They saw things were improving, people would find jobs, so they had to strike and use their manpower before they went away. I’m not judging here, just stating the obvious.”
“They became pretty irrelevant for a while. Nobody paid them any attention for what, five years or so.”
“Exactly. With a full belly and a safe job, everyone is a moderate who can ponder all points of view. It was only when people started to lose their jobs again, that they had a second look at good old Adolf.”
“Your brother-in-law too?”
“He was a solid supporter of the Center Party all these years. He’s not going back to the Nazi meetings. He’s not about to go out looking for Reds to beat up. But he will vote for Hitler next time around, yes.”
“Did he lose his job?”
“No, but he knows people who did. He always tells me that Hitler has this ability to put everyone on their feet. He makes sense of things. His speeches have few of those parts, you know, when politicians just fill up the time until the next big proclamation. Hitler lives in a permanent state of excitement, that’s how he speaks and that’s how he acts. My brother-in-law thinks it’s because of those years he spent as an artist bum in Vienna. Hitler probably believes he wasted his time, and is always in a hurry now.”
“That doesn’t mean he will fix anything.”
“Well, lots of guys will be happy if he just abides by his promise to take revenge on their enemies for them. They know they can trust him to destroy stuff. Building stuff, we will see about that.”
Waiglein was slurring some of his words. Maier wasn’t drunk but he wished he was, so he snapped his fingers and failed to get the waiter’s attention; he then called aloud for the waiter and asked for two more beers before Waiglein had the time to object.
“I’m not drinking any more, Detective,” Waiglein said.
“You won’t let me drink both, will you?”
“That’s up to you. You will pick up the tab, I trust. I should only remind you that we have an early start tomorrow. I need the sleep, myself.”
As he finished the sentence, Waiglein was already up. Before Maier could think of anything reasonable to respond, he was walking out of the eatery.
Neotenianos 