[For Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, the model of all noble officers. ~ A.J.R.]
“Hurry up, Hildi,” my older sister Ingrid urged while adjusting her hat to the perfect angle in front of my bedroom mirror. “Won’t you ever care about anything?”
“Not about Nazi parades,” I retorted. “They’re silly.” I slowly drew a stocking up and over my left foot.
Ingrid revolved from the dresser. “But the Führer will be there!” she said in astonishment. “Don’t you want to see him?”
“Not especially.”
My sister was dumfounded.
“He doesn’t really seem to be that interesting,” I explained. “And you know what Papi says-”
“Don’t ever repeat what Papi says!” Ingrid halted me in a sharp and frightened voice. I scrutinised her quizzically.
“Heinz will be there,” she said, swiftly changing the subject.
“Heinz…” I dangled my left foot around, contemplating it. “You just saw him yesterday.”
“What do you have against Heinz?” Ingrid demanded.
“Mmm. He always looks at me in a strange way.”
My sister rolled her eyes. “You’ve been talking a lot recently about people looking at you in a strange way.”
“Well, it’s true. Not exactly down their noses, but still, you get that feeling. I’ve only mentioned it lately, but ever since I can remember, I’ve noticed it.”
“You imagine things,” Ingrid scolded. “Why would anyone look down his nose at you? Now finish up.”
I bent to pull on the other stocking, but then straightened again as I asked, “Why don’t you like Ferdinand?”
Ingrid was busily applying lipstick to her already very red mouth, and she didn’t answer right away.
“Ferdinand’s a kid,” she said finally, frowning at our brother Werner’s slamming of his door down the hall. He was a member of the Hitlerjugend, and so compelled to physically – and unwillingly – participate in the Führer’s procession.
“No, not in that way.” I was annoyed. “I meant you don’t seem to, well, approve of him. Like Heinz doesn’t approve of me.”
Ingrid had turned to get her handbag and pull on her gloves. “There’s something about him I don’t like,” she replied. “But I haven’t been able to figure out what it is, at least not yet.”
“Oh really?!?” I exclaimed in astonishment. “What’s there not to like about him? He’s noble, chivalrous, handsome, passionate, pious, ambidextrous-”
“As I said, I don’t know,” Ingrid interrupted my enumeration of Ferdinand’s virtues. “But we’re going to miss the parade if you keep asking questions. How many times do I have to tell you-?”
“Hildi! Ingrid! It’s time to go!”
Our mother’s voice wafted up the stairs, cutting my sister off, but adding weight to her statement. I finally hurried, only half-hearing Ingrid’s oft-voiced complaint of the past two days:
“That stupid cleaning service made such a mess of my room. I’m never going to get it right again.”
The streets of Hauptsruhe were arrayed with garlands and swastika flags as everyone assembled atop their front lawns, a look of expectation on all their faces, faces that had early on ceased the practise of expectancy in regards to any novelty invented by man.
“Too small for an aristocrat,” Count Hahnsberg had opined to Papi during his last sojourn in our affluent township. “Give me a castle with a forest full of roebucks, and I’m happy. None of these modern suburbs for me.”
“You already have two,” Papi had smiled. “And as head of Merveldt Motor Werk, it pays to be modern.”
“You should have raised your children the good old way. The way you and Satskia were raised.”
“Satskia had the upbringing of a film actor’s daughter,” Papi reminded him. “Which is about as much – culturally speaking – as nichts. And at least my children aren’t mad, idiot-crazy Nazis like your brilliant, Jesuit-raised nephews.”
But I too felt a strange sort of excitement as the sound of a band playing Der Horst Wessel Lied approached across the distant streets and behind houses. Ingrid emitted a noise that sounded very like a squeal, and Papi looked at her sternly. He was completely put-out about having to be present at this affair and had absolutely refused to allow my sister to fly a Nazi flag from our roof as she had begged to. Even her argument that Fr Schalling would be viewing the parade, and that this fact proved that the Nazis were good did nothing to sway him.
Mami patted Ingrid on the shoulder and smiled indulgently, while I looked down at my gold-and-white Shetland sheepdog Mädchen, sitting very alertly at my side. Papi had purchased her from Colonel Sabastian Richter for my sixteenth birthday, and she was one of comparatively few of the breed in Germany.
“Hallo, Hildi!” Ferdinand had bounded over the low wall that separated the yards of our two houses, his dark blonde hair slightly rumpled. “Good morning, Count Merveldt, Countess Merveldt, Ingrid.”
Mami and Papi greeted him warmly, but I caught a fleeting glimpse of disapprobation in my sister’s eyes.
Ferdinand didn’t seem to notice. He came over to stand beside me.
“You’re watching this thing, too?” he asked.
I nodded.
“They made me.” I knew he felt the same way about it as I did.
“Oh, well, at least we’ll see some nice horses,” he said, apparently devaluing a crush-infused equestrian classmate’s acclamation that “Ferdinand loves nothing next to horses, save his country and his God”.
The parade radiated closer, and Mädchen stood up, twitching her black nose. Around the curve of mansions and hedge-bordered lawns trooped the band, followed by Hauptsruhe’s Hitler Youth. Werner marched dutifully among them, and Ingrid shouted as he passed, while Mami beamed with pride. I felt like crawling away to some obscure locality and interring myself.
“Why aren’t you in the Hitler Youth, Ferdinand?” Ingrid queried when the boys had advanced.
“You know why,” he answered in a quiet voice, he turned his head away from her, and I could see that he was angry.
“Yes, you know why,” I reprimanded my sister, and was about to say more.
But then came the cavalry officers, and Ferdinand and I were struck wordless for several minutes, admiring the beautiful Trakehner, Bavarian Warmblood, and Hanoverian stallions who whuffled, curveted, flashed frosty markings and shady haunches, and tossed their clinking bridles to the beat of the music.
“They aren’t any better than ours, though,” I maintained upon regaining my speech.
“I’m sure their masters would have the same opinion if they saw ours,” my friend said.
Heinz nodded by, and smiled at Ingrid, who blushed, and Ferdinand and I glanced at each other, grinning.
Next stomped the foot soldiers, and then:
“He’s coming!” my sister shouted in a most unladylike fashion.
A glistening black Mercedes droned within view, small Nazi flags fluttering from mounts on its sparkling hood. The mustachioed man in the brown corporal’s uniform seated between his two bodyguards smiled at my neighbours – transformed now into a hero-worshipping mob – and extended his right arm in the salute of his own making. Everyone shrieked frenziedly, and I wished I could cover my ears. Ferdinand gave me a sympathetic look.
Four officers rode, two to each side of the Mercedes. One horse reared suddenly and whinnied, but I was more interested in its rider. The dark, elegant young captain steadied his animal and precipitated it back on all four feet with one quick movement of his left hand. Then he looked towards our side of the street, and his dusky eyes met mine. And it was as if he had known me all of my life.
“I’ve seen that young man somewhere before,” Papi murmured, but I hadn’t time to ponder his words, for Adolf Hitler himself turned to me and smiled. Then he leant over to whisper something in his driver’s ear. The Mercedes ground to a halt, and an amazed silence descended on the throng as the Führer motioned to me to approach him.
I stared at my parents: Mami smiling in an astonished and proud way, Papi pursing his lips, and Ingrid scowling enviously. Then I looked at Ferdinand. He didn’t say anything, but I could understand the expression in his navy-blue eyes.
“Don’t go,” he was telling me.
But what else can I do? I thought.
I opened our front gate and walked towards the car, my neighbours’ ejaculations of jealousy, though whispered, reaching me nonetheless.
The elegant young officer on his bay stallion smiled encouragingly at me, assuming that my hesitation was due to shyness.
Adolf Hitler nodded as I stood in front of the Mercedes’s right anterior door, and took something out of the breast pocket of his uniform.
“What is your name?” he enquired, his voice a soft falsetto.
“Brünhilde von Merveldt,” I responded.
He didn’t seem to notice the abruptness of my answer. He smiled a toothy grin and held out the thing he had taken from his pocket.
It was a brooch, shaped like a raven with the head of a woman.
“You know about the Walküre?” It was more a pronouncement than a question.
I nodded my head.
“Of course, you do,” he remarked, as if to himself, also nodding. “You can’t have a name like that and not know about them.”
“A very beautiful woman gave this brooch to me,” he continued. “And it is my great pleasure to give it to another fair member of her sex, and a model Aryan girl.”
He pinned the brooch to the lapel of my blouse, and his attendants beamed at my confusion. I glanced up and again met the eyes of the young captain. He bowed to me with approval.
“Thank you,” I managed to articulate, addressing myself once more to Hitler. He grinned again, and made a sign to his driver. I stepped back as the Mercedes began to roll onward.
The cheers reverted as the Führer re-initiated his parade, and I returned to my family, slightly dazed, but not with pleasure.
“Oh, darling!” Mami gushed, embracing me.
“What did he say to you?” Ingrid demanded.
As I told them Hitler’s words, Papi looked stern.
“I’ll say one thing for him,” he commented once I had finished. “The man does know how to give compliments.”
I glanced up at him quickly, hoping that he wasn’t angry with me, and he smiled.
“Well, Hildi, every girl in Germany would envy you today,” he said. “Like Ingrid.”
He grinned at her.
“It’s so unfair,” my sister wailed. “I’m the one who’s crazy about him.”
Mädchen licked my hand as I noticed that Ferdinand hadn’t said anything. He appeared immersed in studying the gate’s grille.
The sounds of the parade receded into the distance, and the people who hadn’t followed it were returning indoors, a look of annoyance at having to go back to everyday life replacing the eager one of the morning.
My sister and parents followed their example, and I was left alone with Mädchen and my moody friend.
“Ferdinand?” I attempted.
He didn’t turn. His eyes were fixed on our mailbox.
“There wasn’t anything else I could do,” I told him desperately.
“I wouldn’t have done it,” he snapped back, and with that he left me, opening the front gate with his left hand and stalking down the path to his own house. There was no point in trying to talk to him further at that point, and I went back inside.
“I bet you’re going to treasure that brooch for the rest of your life,” Ingrid prophesied as I entered our sitting room.
“On the contrary, I am going to get rid of the thing,” I amended, and almost tore my blouse while unfastening the brooch. I then tossed it onto the sofa beside her fluted skirt.
“There,” I said. “You keep it.”
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