Men who always had bonbons for her in their pockets and who found her a delightful little darling and who interrupted important conversations just to admire a new book she’d bring them and deposited, quite unceremoniously, on their lap and demanded that they read for her.
Men who posed for her camera during her Margot von Steinhoff/Leni Riefenstahl phase and who signed those photos for her and her album.
Men, who spoke of their children and dogs and never about war or politics, never in front of her.
Outside, the whirl of snow hit her square in the face and Gerlinde gulped it, along with tears and the realization that her father would have been there along with Onkel Oswald had they both not been officially missing. The Amis said something about Oswald Pohl being tried in absentia, for crimes against humanity – the last thing she heard before she tore herself out of that theater. Gerlinde didn’t hear whether Otto Neumann’s name was listed right after, with the same charge against him.
Erich’s arms held her up when she was already sinking to the ground, drowning in the words of the prosecution and the scale of the crimes. Erich was saying something but she suddenly couldn’t make out his words. Through the darkness of the night, she was reaching for Tadek’s hand instead but he towered over her and regarded her the same way the prosecutor was regarding the defendants in that newsreel, with cold detachment and carefully veiled disgust.
“The newsreel should end soon,” he said, arms still crossed over his chest. It appeared, he suddenly didn’t wish to touch her or to have anything whatsoever in common with her, the arch-criminal’s daughter. “Then you can go in and watch the movie.”
Why such a change all of a sudden? Why such resentment? Why now? Because she couldn’t bring herself to face the truth? Gerlinde was searching his face, pleading him with her wet eyes but he looked at her fur collar, on the snow around instead – anywhere, but her face.
“Tadek, forgive me, please… I didn’t expect it, is all. I shall go in at once. I will watch it together with you—”
“What for? Why torture yourself?” His tone was thick with ice.
“I owe you at least this much—”
“You don’t owe me anything.”
The words stung. Gerlinde stumbled onto her feet and pushed Erich away when he tried saying something reasonable. Her eyes still full of mist, she picked her way back into the darkness, made herself walk all the way back to her seat through more shame and whispers. Behind her, Erich was once again apologizing to the same people and Gerlinde felt the urge to turn around and slap him and make him stop it with that pleading tone. She took her seat and bore her eyes into the screen, her face – an unyielding mask, as the war raged inside of her. With a chilling clarity, she realized that she no longer knew which side she ought to be on, the defense or the prosecution; whether the men, so familiar and terrifying, were the criminals or Vati’s good friends; whether she returned out of guilt or to prove that she had nothing to be guilty of.
Two hours passed. The lights went on. Lost in thought, Gerlinde sat, without budging, as people moved past them and brushed her knees with their coats.
“How did you like the movie?”
Erich had to repeat his question twice before she turned her head to him, as though emerging from a deep, troubled dream. She remembered the horses, the shootings, the swinging doors of the saloon but had not the faintest idea how it all ended.
“It was good.”
In the street, American GIs were smoking and laughing. Their dates were reapplying their lipstick. Someone was trying to arrange a car to take them all to the dance hall. Gerlinde listened and listened but no one mentioned the newsreel or the trials even once. She regarded them all with suspicion, as though it was all one big conspiracy against her.
Tadek moved to stand in front of her. Gerlinde waited for him to say something, something about the defendants or her father but he only asked if she was up to walking Erich back to his dormitory.
“Yes. Yes, of course,” she replied, disappointed and relieved at the same time.
She circled her arm through the crook of Erich’s but let the other one hang by her side. Some of the lampposts spilled the long-forgotten yellow light on top of their heads from their brand-new lamps. Yellow, the civilian light, not the chilling anti-aircraft blue – the official light of wartime. Among the few newly fixed lampposts, long black gaps stretched but even they crawled with life, invisible yet audible. The voices from the cellars, the clattering of the pots, the smell of cooking dinner, all hidden, secretive. Gerlinde thought about Nuremberg, the old one, where Vati took her for the rally, not the bombed-out one, with the court and the jail. Over her head, Erich and Tadek marveled at the Hollywood stuntmen’s skills.
“To leap from the horse straight onto the roof of the train car! I tell you, we had fellows in the equestrian regiment who could do handstands on their horses’ backs but nothing of this sort!”
“Not a moving horse?”
“No, not a moving one.”
Both laughed, without a care in the world.
“Their horses were trained not to get spooked when one shoots straight from their backs but I doubt any of our hot-heads would attempt what that fellow did, with the train!”
Gerlinde waited for Tadek to say something about the train or the soldiers – he told her about SS men traveling with them on top of the train cars and shooting anyone who would attempt to escape, from their vantage points – but Tadek only laughed carelessly again.
“Would you try to do something of that sort? If they offered to pay you?”
“Not a chance!” Erich was shaking his head. “Even if they
