The Company of Strangers by Robert Wilson Read Free Book Online Page B

something to keep him calm and Dr Schulz, he’s very good, he gave him some herbal teas, took his blood pressure, which was high but to be expected. Dr Schulz even asked him, “You’re not thinking of doing anything stupid, are you, General?” and your father replied “What? Me? No, no, why do you think I’m here?” and he left. He drove to the Havel, into Wannsee and out again, parked the car, walked along the waterfront and shot himself.’
    No tears this time. She just sat back and breathed evenly, looking at nothing beyond the short horizon of her own thoughts which were: he didn’t do it in his study, nor in the car, always a considerate man. He went out on the cold, hard ground and pointed the gun at the offending organ, his heart, not his head, and fired off two bullets into it. He froze out there. He was set solid by the time he was found, no walkers at this time of year, and short, bitterafternoons. She’d gone a little crazy that night he didn’t come home. She woke up in the morning to find all the gardening tools laid out in the kitchen. What had she been thinking? She came to, her son’s pulse thudding into her.
    ‘On his desk are the letters he wrote,’ she said. ‘There’s one there for you. Read it and we’ll talk again. And put some coal on the fire. I know it’s valuable but I’m just too cold today…you know how it gets into the marrow some days.’
    Karl threw some pieces on the fire, put his hands in there for a second until the heat nipped them. He went to his father’s study, his boots loud on the wooden floor of the corridor the way his father’s were, so that Julius and he could hear them from the top of the house. Louder as he got heavier with the years.
    He found the letter and sat in a leather armchair by the window, which still offered dim, late afternoon light.
Berlin-Schlachtensee
    14th January 1943
    Dear Karl,
    This action I have taken is as a result of my unique perception of a series of events in my life. It has nothing to do with you. I know you did everything possible to get Julius out and it was typical of him to make light of the seriousness of his physical condition so that none of us could have known how close to death he was. Your mother, too, is blameless in this. She has given of her strength constantly and in the last two years I have been an even more difficult man to live with than I was before.
    I have been overwhelmed by despair, not just because of the sudden termination of my career, butalso because of my helplessness in the face of what I fear will be the direst consequences for Germany as a result of our aggression and the extent of our aggression over the past three years.
    Don’t misunderstand me. I, as you know, approved of Hitler in those early years. He returned to the nation the belief in ourselves which we had lost in that first terrible war. I encouraged Julius into the Party as well as the army. I, like everybody else, was inspired. But the Commissar Order, which I vehemently opposed, was for a very important reason. Certain things have happened and will continue to happen in Germany and the rest of Europe while the National Socialists are in power. You have heard of these things. They are truly terrible. Too terrible, in so many ways, to believe. My stand against the Commissar Order was an attempt to prevent the army from acquiescing to these other, darker, politically motivated and utterly dishonourable actions. I failed and paid the penalty, a small one compared to the eternal damnation of the German Army for conspiring in these appalling deeds. If we lose this war, and it is possible, given the extent to which we have stretched ourselves over so many fronts, that the defeat of the Sixth Army at Stalingrad is the beginning, then our army officers will face the same retribution as the brutes and thugs in the SS. We have all been tarred by obeying the Commissar Order.
    This was the beginning of my despair and my removal from the battlefield