He nodded, almost imperceptibly.
'I'm going to Peissenberg,' I told him, showing the rail ticket I had bought earlier. 'I wondered if you know anyone there I could stay with.'
He glanced at my ticket for only a moment, but his eyes did not miss the way the name 'Peissenberg' had been altered.
'I believe there's a very good hotel there,' he said. 'The Berggasthof Greitner. But it's probably closed right now. You're a little early for the ski season, Herr . . . ?'
'Gunther, Bernhard Gunther.'
'Of course there's a fine church there which, incidentally, affords a remarkably extensive and panoramic view of the Bavarian Alps. As it happens the priest there is a friend of mine. He might be able to help you. If you come by the Holy Ghost Church at about five o'clock this afternoon, I'll provide you with a letter of introduction. But I warn you, he's a keen musician. If you spend any time in Peissenberg he'll dragoon you into the church choir. Have you singing hymns for your supper, so to speak. Do you have a favorite hymn, Herr Gunther?'
'A favorite? Yes, probably 'How Great Thou Art.' I think it's the tune I like more than anything.'
He closed his eyes in a poor affectation of piety and added, 'Yes, that is a lovely hymn, isn't it?' He nodded. 'Until five o'clock, then.'
I left him and walked out of the building. I went south and west, across the city center, vaguely in the direction of the Holy Ghost Church but more precisely in the direction of the Hofbrauhaus, in the Platzl. I needed a beer.
With its red mansard roof, pink walls, arched windows, and heavy wooden doors, the Hofbrauhaus had a folkish, almost fairy-tale air, and whenever I passed it, I half expected to see the Hunch-back of Notre Dame swinging down from the roof to rescue some hapless Gypsy girl from the center of the cobbled square (assuming there were any Gypsies still left in Germany). But it could just as easily have been the Jew Suss swinging down into the medieval marketplace. Munich is that kind of a town. Small-minded. Even a bit rustic and primitive. It's no accident that Adolf Hitler got started here, in another beer hall, the Burgerbraukeller, just a few blocks away from the Hofbrauhaus on Kaufingerstrasse. But Hitler's echo was only part of the reason I seldom went to the Burgerbrau. The main reason was I didn't like Lowenbrau beer. I preferred the darker beer at the Hofbrauhaus. The food there was better, too. I ordered Bavarian potato soup, followed by pork knuckles with potato dumplings and homemade bacon-cabbage salad. I'd been saving my meat coupons.
Several beers and a sweet yeast pudding later, I went along to the Holy Ghost Church on Tal. Like everything else in Munich, it had taken a battering. The roof and vaulting had been completely destroyed and the interior decoration devastated. But the pillars in the nave had been re-erected, the church reroofed and repaired sufficiently for services to be resumed. There was one under way as I entered the half-empty church. A priest who wasn't Gotovina stood facing the still impressive high altar, his fluting voice echoing around the church's skeletal interior like Pinocchio's when he was trapped inside the whale. I felt my lip and nose curl with Protestant abhorrence. I disliked the idea of a God who could put up with being worshipped in this reedy, singsong, Roman way. Not that I ever called myself a Protestant. Not since I learned how to spell Friedrich Nietzsche.
I found Father Gotovina under what remained of the organ loft, next to the bronze tomb-slab of Duke Ferdinand of Bavaria. I followed him to a wooden confessional that looked more like an ornate photo booth. He swept aside a gray curtain and stepped inside. I did the same on the other side, sat down and knelt beside the screen, the way God liked it I presumed. There was just enough light in the confessional to see the top of the priest's billiard-ball head. Or at least a patch of it--a small, shiny square of skin that looked like the lid on a copper kettle. In the half darkness and close confines of the confessional his voice sounded particularly infernal. He probably laid it on a greased rack and left it to smoke over a hickory-wood fire when he went to bed at night.
'Tell me a little about you, Herr Gunther?' he said.
'Before the war I was a Kommissar in KRIPO,' I told him. 'Which is how I came to join the SS. I went to Minsk as a member of the special action group commanded by Arthur Nebe.' I left out my service with the War Crimes Bureau and my time as an intelligence officer with the Abwehr. The SS had never liked the Abwehr. 'I held the rank of SS Oberleutnant.'
'There was a lot of good work done in Minsk,' said Father Gotovina. 'How many did you liquidate?'
'I was part of a police battalion,' I said. 'Our responsibility was dealing with NKVD murder squads.'
Gotovina chuckled. 'There's no reason to be coy with me, Oberleutnant. I'm on your side. And it makes no difference to me whether you killed five or five thousand. Either way, you were about God's work. The Jew and the Bolshevik will always be synonymous. It's only the Americans who are too stupid to see that.'
Outside the booth, in the church, the choir started to sing. I'd judged them too harshly. They were much sweeter on the ear than Father Gotovina.
'I need your help, Father,' I said.
'Naturally. That's why you're here. But we have to walk before we can run. I have to be satisfied that you are what you say you are, Herr Gunther. A few simple questions should suffice. Just to put my mind at rest. For example, can you tell me your oath of loyalty, as an SS man?'
'I can tell you it,' I said. 'But I never had to take it. As a member of KRIPO my membership in the SS was more or less automatic.'
'Let me hear you say it, anyway.'
'All right.' The words almost stuck in my throat. 'I swear to you, Adolf Hitler, as Fuhrer and Reich Chancellor, loyalty and bravery. I vow to you, and to those you have named to command me, obedience unto death, so help me God.'
'You say it so nicely, Herr Gunther. Just like a catechism. And yet you never had to take the oath yourself?'
'Things were always rather different in Berlin from the rest of Germany,' I said. 'People were always a little more relaxed about such matters. But I can't imagine I'm the first SS man to tell you he never took the oath.'
'Perhaps I'm just testing you,' he said. 'To see how honest you're being. Honesty's best, don't you think? After all, we're in a church. It wouldn't do to lie in here. Think of your soul.'
'These days I prefer not to think about it at all,' I said. 'At least not without a drink in my hand.' That was being honest, too.
'
'Like something just got lifted off my shoulders,' I said. 'Dandruff, probably.'
'That's good,' he said. 'A sense of humor will be important to you in your new life.'
'I don't want a new life.'
'Not even through Christ?' He laughed again. Or perhaps he was just clearing his throat of some finer feelings. 'Tell me more about Minsk,' he said. His tone had changed. It was less playful. More businesslike. 'When did the city fall to German forces?'
'June 28, 1941.'
'What happened then?'
'Do you know, or do you want to know?'
'I want to know that
'Do you want to know details or broad brushstrokes?'
'Paint the house, why don't you?'
'All right. Within hours of the occupation of the city, forty thousand men and boys were assembled for registration. They were kept in a field, surrounded by machine guns and floodlights. They were all races. Jews, Russians, Gypsies, Ukrainians. After a few days, Jewish doctors, lawyers, and academics were asked to identify themselves. Intelligentsia, so-called. Two thousand did. And I believe the same two thousand were then marched into a nearby wood and shot.'
'And naturally you didn't play any part in that,' said Father Gotovina. He spoke as if he had been speaking to a crybaby.
'As a matter of fact I was still in the city. Investigating another atrocity. This one committed by the Ivans themselves.'
In the church service proceeding outside the confessional, the priest said 'Amen.' I muttered it myself. Somehow it seemed appropriate when I was talking about Minsk.
