Sirius (22 page)

“
Oh là là
,” flirts Mae West. “Is that a violin in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me?”

The band plays
As Time Goes By
. People dance.

Then a man appears on the dance floor. He, too, just feels. He flings his arms upwards, spins like a humming top, whirls like a dervish, and all to the sounds of a melancholy ballad. Oh yes, it’s the funny Austrian with the cocked hat, Billy Wilder. He is hopping around in circles with Mrs Whittaker.

“Hey, Crown,” he calls, “long time no see. How are you?”

“He’s a Plato scholar,” Mrs Whittaker whispers to the Austrian.

“Plankton,” corrects Crown politely.

“Nobody’s perfect,” giggles the Austrian.

Electra is proudly wearing the war bride badge on her dress.

“Your husband is in the war?” asks John Wayne.

“My fiancé,” responds Electra.

“Normandy?” asks Wayne.

“How should
I
know?” says Electra defiantly. “I’m not one of those women who constantly spy on their man. I don’t have to know where he is and what he’s doing all the time. I trust him.”

“Of course,” bows Wayne, retreating with a shake of his head.

Later, he sees Electra dancing with the young actor Freddie Winston, more closely than is appropriate for a woman whose fiancé is currently fighting in Normandy. Or wherever he is.

*

Sirius spends the entire summer in the Charité. And he enjoys it to the fullest. Professor Sauerbruch’s private ward is luxurious in many ways; food from the Adlon Hotel, pretty nurses who could easily make a career in the movies, and much more. But the most important thing is this: here, one is in the care of the most famous medical practitioner in the world. Should – and the emphasis here is on should – something happen to someone here, then it wouldn’t be down to human error, but fate. It is absolutely wonderful. All doubts are lifted, all fears, all ruminations, all dark thoughts. The heart is free. The mind is light. Life, otherwise such a trying affair, is carefree all of a sudden. As long as it lies in Sauerbruch’s hands. Such a shame that one only gets to enjoy this when sick.

The artist Jobst Korthe, another of the professor’s patients, put this into words very beautifully. He often engages the dog in the neighbouring room in conversation.

“Look,” he says, “this is my tube of black paint. I haven’t used it one single time since I’ve been here. Before I used to get through twenty tubes a week.”

Sirius likes the paintings. Expressionism, presumably. Korthe sits at the easel and paints what he sees when he looks out of the window. And it’s true; even the bridge over the Spree, which really is black, looks green on the picture.

“I would love to paint your portrait one day, Master Hansi,” says Korthe. He addresses the dog formally. Only Sauerbruch calls everyone by their first names.

And so Sirius sits for the painter.
Dog before Berlin
, the picture is to be titled. The dog takes up his position on the windowsill.

What does it remind him of? He has to think for a long while. Then the glass house comes into his mind. Villa Hercules. “When Hercules sits by the window, his silhouette will become one with the backdrop of the city,” Miss Green had rejoiced. Was that her name, Miss Green?

Strange that his silhouette always ends up becoming one with the backdrop of the city, regardless of where he is.

Lost in thought, he stares out of the window. How desolate Berlin looks. Entire areas of the city lie in ruins. The charred Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church towers up from the grey sea of houses like a hollow tooth. With this view, one needs to be an Expressionist to get away with leaving the black paint untouched.

There is a knock at the door, and Professor Sauerbruch steps in.

“Korthe!” he exclaims, “you’re supposed to be in bed, not painting!”

He surveys the artwork on the easel. He even pulls his glasses out of his breast pocket. “Have you no eyes in your head? Where on earth is this building in Berlin, this yellow tower here?”

“It’s not in Berlin, Herr Professor, it’s in my imagination,” beams Korthe.

“Ah-ah,” says Sauerbruch. “And the red glove? Or what is that?”

“The dog,” responds Korthe, offended.

“The dog,” murmurs Sauerbruch with a shake of his head. “Well, just don’t show that picture to Hitler, or you’re a dead man.”

“No, no,” stammers Korthe, “I’m in so-called ‘inner emigration’.”

Then Sauerbruch turns to Sirius. “Speaking of Hitler, the Führer called me. He wants to know if you are better at last, and I answered truthfully. You will be discharged tomorrow morning.”

Sirius whimpers in shock.

“I’m sorry,” says Sauerbruch. “You were our ray of sunshine here. We’ll miss you on the ward.”

He looks into the dog’s sad eyes. “Goodbye, little red glove. Look after yourself.”

*

The Red Army has already advanced into East Prussia, a hefty blow. The Wolf’s Lair had to be evacuated, and the headquarters are now in the Berlin Chancellery once more.

Sirius is horrified when he sees the Führer again. The man is a shadow of his former self. He walks hunched over and has become old. His left arm and left leg shake. His face, too, is contorted with pain from the relentless colic. He is almost blind in his right eye.

It’s unfathomable, thinks the dog, that hosts of armies from all over the world are needed to free the world from this geriatric.

The Führer doesn’t even have the energy to bend over to his doggy and greet him.

“There you are,” he mumbles, “welcome back.”

Dr. Morell is now constantly by his side. The effect of the last “wonder injection” barely has time to fade before he administers the next. Then the dark mood lifts momentarily, and for a brief moment the Führer regards his final victory to be possible again.

“Only his iron will is keeping him on his feet now,” whispers Goebbels, full of amazement.

Field Marshal Model and Colonel-General Jodl arrive for a situation report. They bring depressing news.

“I’ve had enough of the never-ending defensive!” rants the Führer.

He means the Western Front, which is surrendering more ground with every passing day. The Allies have already reached the Rhine. The Rhine! Another few kilometres, thinks Hitler, and the Lorelei will be in their hands.

The Führer commands the offensive and christens it
Operation Watch on the Rhine
. It must be a battle which brandishes an iron fist to the enemy.

All of the Wehrmacht’s reserves are to be mobilized. It is all or nothing now. The annihilation of the Allies, or the end.

The attack begins on the 16th of December, on the stroke of 5:30
AM
. The Führer himself trudges to the Adlerhorst command post on the Front, in order to give the annihilating blow the highest authority.

But after just a week, the attack collapses. The army from the West is too powerful and the attackers hopelessly inferior, the majority of them children in uniform or doddery old men with helmets.

In the middle of the Ardennes, a brave farmer’s wife is the harbinger of approaching peace. On Christmas Eve, she positions herself between the troops and coaxes both sides to lay down their arms and forget the war for a few hours. Singing German and English Christmas songs, the soldiers celebrate together late into the night.

*

The Führer returns to Berlin. He is bitterly disappointed by the German men on the Front. They were too weak. Lacking in iron will. Towards the end of his days, it dawns on the Führer that the fault lies with the German people; they didn’t prove themselves to be worthy.

He moves one last time, now into the bunkered Führer apartment in the cellar of the Reich Chancellery. He suspects that this will be his final destination.

The apartment is small, and not just by the standards of the greatest Führer of all time; even an allotment gardener would feel cramped in here. The room for the situation briefings – which admittedly an allotment gardener wouldn’t need – measures exactly twelve square metres. The walls are damp because the bunker lies beneath ground-water level. A mass of pumps siphon off the rivulets. Glaring bulbs provide the only light. Thick iron doors seal the air. It is stuffy, and it stinks.

There sits the commander, not knowing where to direct his rage. Constanze Manziarly, the dietary chef, serves him his beloved muesli.

“What is this?” he barks at her. “I can’t stand to see this gruel anymore!”

“But think about your gut,” pleads the cook, bursting into tears.

And so what? Warsaw is gone. Aachen too. Auschwitz has been liberated. Vienna is teetering on the brink. What does flatulence matter now?

Albert Speer, the Minister of Armaments, comes to visit and finds a broken man before him.

“If we lose the war,” says the Führer, “then the people will be lost too. The German people have proved to be the weaker.”

“Now come on, don’t give up on our noble soil just yet,” advises Speer.

“The soil?” rages the Führer. “Oh no. There won’t be any soil left either.”

“Why not?” asks Speer.

“Because,” bellows the Führer with the last of his strength, for he has asthma now too, “because I am giving the order: Burn the land! Destroy everything! The enemy will end up wondering what kind of land they have conquered. A barren, worthless land.”

“And the German people?” stammers Speer.

“—should be given no more consideration!” orders the Führer. “They will survive in the most primitive of ways. That is their fate.”

Speer leaves the cellar, shaking his head.

He is not the only stalwart to turn his back on the Führer at this time. Heinrich Himmler has, on his own initiative, made contact with Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Forces in Europe. He offers unconditional surrender, just like that, as though Adolf Hitler doesn’t even have a say in it anymore. Eisenhower, a man of shrewd mind, passes on the message to the press, and the Führer finds out about it. Outraged, he immediately expels Himmler from all his posts.

Hermann Göring has retreated to the mountainside retreat of Obersalzberg. In the shadow of the Berghof, he composes a telegram to the Führer in which he boldly proclaims himself as successor, with all powers, unless the message arrives by 10 PM that the Führer is prepared to leave Berlin. The message doesn’t arrive, but at around the hour in question, Göring is arrested.

Only Goebbels and Bormann stay loyal to the Führer. They are now living alongside him in the cramped bunker apartment. Goebbels has brought his family along as reinforcements: his wife Magda and their six children.

The children are supposed to cheer up “Uncle Adolf”. An absurd plan, particularly when it leads to them filling his bathtub up with water and crashing around in it noisily. In all likelihood, this probably contributed to his suicidal thoughts.

Since the end of March, Eva Braun has been living in the subterranean community too. She has always dreamt of being the official wife of the Führer, but unfortunately he has always been married to Germany.

And right in the thick of all this is the dog.

“Hansi,” calls the Führer, when he sits there in the armchair at night, alone, brooding to himself. Who else is willing to lend him their ear so patiently? In the glow of the light bulb, the Field Commander reminisces on his greatest triumphs, describing the front lines of years gone by, wallowing in the memories. Sometimes he cries uncontrollably.

The doggy has sympathy for the sick, old man whose world is falling apart. Sirius hates Hansi for this, and Hercules in turn would love to pounce up at the old man’s throat and get revenge for Levi. Are they not all one and the same dog? The dog will have to be careful, otherwise he might lose his mind.

And he’s not the only one.

But that’s how it is right now, in this bunker. It’s hard to tell who will lose their mind first, or even whether the person in question was ever in their right mind in the first place.

Like Dr. Goebbels, for example. When the bombs hail down on the ground, which in the bunker is essentially the ceiling, he calls his wife and children to him, and then they sing in unison at the top of their voices:

“The blue dragoons, with beating drums,

through the gates they come.

The fanfare is their guide,

As high up the hillside they ride.”

In reality, though, it’s not quite like that. Two million Red Army soldiers are before the gates of Berlin, the army of tanks already rolling in. The sky is black with fighter planes, and their bombs are transforming the city into a field of rubble. Berlin is sinking into ruins and ashes.

*

One evening in April, master and dog are sat faithfully together when the Führer says solemnly:

“Hansi, the time has come. We are to marry.”

The dog gives a start. What? Now the Führer wants to marry him too? Just what he needs!

“Be my best man,” asks the Führer, his voice trembling with emotion.

Hansi nods, relieved.

Shortly after midnight, municipal officer Walter Wagner appears, the registrar. Eva Braun is wearing a pretty dark blue dress with a white ruched collar. The Führer appears in a grey suit. Together with the two witnesses, Goebbels and Hansi, the couple stride towards their marriage ceremony.

The groom is a widower. His first wife was called Germany. Now he is daring to venture into married life once more.

So now there is also a widower who lives twice. Should Sirius give a warning growl? He restrains himself from doing so.

The ceremony is short and succinct. Tyrone Chester, the King of Heartstring Pulling, would have made more of it, no question.

The following day, the newlywed Hitlers host a lunch, for which the dietary chef and both secretaries are warmly invited to join them at the table. They have leek soup.

The conversation is drowned out again and again by artillery fire, which they can hear through the air shafts. The Russians are already hoisting the Soviet flag on the Reichstag, and they could storm the bunker any minute now.