Five Past Midnight - James Thayer [49]
At the bottom of the stairs was a foyer, lit so brightly by overhead bulbs that Kahr had to squint up into the faces of the two SS guards posted there. Schutzstaffel guards were all tall. One examined his pass, then checked the duty roster on his clipboard, marking off Kahr's name. The other guard searched Kahr, running his hands up the sergeant's uniform to his armpits, then along his lower back, then down and up his trousers, rudely probing his crotch. This guard carried a Schmeisser submachine gun across his stomach on a sling.
The guard captain worked at a small desk to one side of the door. He glanced up at Kahr, but quickly returned to his rosters and bulletins. Four telephones and several loose-leaf binders covered his desk. The guard captain wore a livid purple burn scar on his right cheek and right side of his neck.
"All right, Sergeant," the guard with the clipboard said. "You can go in."
"Bleib übrig," Kahr said pointedly. Survive. Lately, Berliners had been using the phrase instead of "good-bye." Kahr knew it irritated the SS guards, who viewed the new saying as defeatist. So he said it again.
"Bleib übrig."
"I'll survive, old man." The clipboard guard laughed meanly. "From the looks of you, you may not."
Kahr could only nod agreement. The war had beaten up Ulrich Kahr, had ravaged his face and his body, and he knew it. Perhaps he shouldn't feel sorry for himself. He hadn't seen frontline duty, after all, not in this war, anyway because he was fifty-five years old, born the same year as the Führer. But the war had etched deep lines into Kahr's face, running from his nose to the corners of his mouth, fanning out from his eyes in expanding webs. The skin below his eyes was a ghastly mottled green, looking as if it had been bruised. He walked now in a stoop like an old man. And he was hesitant, the boldness gone from him. Everything, from climbing a flight of stairs to rising from a chair to spreading ersatz butter on black bread, seemed an insurmountable physical challenge. Last week the Führer's physician, Dr. Morrel, a kindly man, had offered to examine Kahr. The sergeant had politely said no. Kahr's decline was not due to a physical ailment but to news from the fronts, and in the last half year he had taken Germany's sufferings upon his shoulders.
Kahr had been a widower for fifteen years, and had raised his sons on his own. Last summer his oldest boy, Eswald, a Wehrmacht infantryman, had been killed by the American naval bombardment on the Normandy coast. Then just this past Christmas, Kahr had learned his second son, Theodor, an armored scout-car driver, had been killed during the Ardennes campaign when his vehicle rolled over a mine.
Now all that was left of Ulrich Kahr's family was his youngest son, Max, who was on the eastern front. Every time Kahr saw the regimental chaplain, Kahr held his breath, hoping the chaplain wasn't bringing bad news, as he had already done twice. Kahr took little solace in knowing he was not alone in having lost two sons. German families had been gutted by this war, their boys torn from them. A pall of grief lay over the land.
And there was no one to turn to. Every man in his regiment had lost someone. To talk of one's own loss was to rekindle someone else's heartache. So he suffered alone and in silence. Ulrich Kahr knew he could never again be whole, but he had one tender hope. The chance he might see his son Max again, home and alive, was a fragile prospect, too perilous to nudge by dwelling on it, but it was all that was left for Kahr.
He stepped into a long central corridor used as a lounge. A Persian carpet brought from the Chancellery covered some of the floor, its edges folded under to fit the space. The furniture was an odd mix: a utilitarian bench resembling a pew, three ribbonback Louis Quinze chairs, several camp stools, and a long oak table against a wall under two enormous Schinkel landscapes. Dome lights cast the concrete walls in pale yellow.
Ventilation grates were along the walls near