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She patted his knee to praise him.
Emil inched closer on the sofa and asked, “May I kiss you?”
And Geli said, “Yes, please.”
At first they didn’t tell Hitler they were seeing each other, but for a selfish, cold, and insensitive man he was fairly intuitive, and within a few days he seemed to have noticed a new significance in their glances, the way she would stay in the car just a little longer than necessary, as if Emil were her air, how she seemed to find her harbor not far from him when they were in a room. And so he started talking about the Nazi hierarchy and all the bachelors in it. “We need wives,” he told Emil, “families.” And as Emil drove and Hitler wore his leather flying cap in the front seat, he’d embarrass his niece by mentioning unmarried women whom Emil ought to consider. Fräulein Christa Schröder? A beauty. Or who was that contralto at the Cuvilliés Theater? Fräulein Marika Kleist? And what about that girl at the Carlton Tea Room? Fräulein Meiser, wasn’t it? Leni Meissner? Which?
“Leni Meiser, I think,” Emil said.
“And?”
Emil found them all wanting.
Hitler sighed in frustration. He turned to his niece, in the backseat. “Any ideas, Geli?” he asked.
“Well, it’s hard with him so ugly.”
“We’ll just keep looking,” Hitler said. “Surely there’s somebody you’d like, Herr Maurice. Somebody to have little Aryans with? We’ll go to city hall for the wedding. We’ll get Franz Gürtner to officiate. And we’ll all get to be such good friends. We’ll have spaghetti together at your house every night.”
Emil smiled. “She can’t cook, my leader. Women I like can’t cook.”
“But my Angelika, for instance! She cooks, she cleans, she sews her own clothes! And beautiful, too! Why not find a wife just like her?”
Emil found Geli in the rearview mirror. Geli gazed out the window.
Hitler folded up his itinerary and held his hands in his lap as he said, “I myself have overcome any need for women. But I find nothing more sacred than the flame of life awakened by holy love. We must remember, though, that the flame only burns when lit by a man and a woman who have kept themselves pure in body and soul. And when their love is magnified by the presence of children, the sins of iniquity that have destroyed our nation fairly scream out in their doom.”
“And the sins of iniquity would be?” Geli asked.
“Oh, that you would never learn,” Hitler said.
With nothing being mentioned, Emil and Geli began holding hands around Hitler’s friends, and one night took the risk of h
ugging as they strolled to his Stammtisch in the Café Heck after the cinema. Rudolf and Ilse Hess were there with Putzi and Helene Hanfstaengl and Heinrich Hoffmann and a photographer’s model named Kristina. She was wearing a swastika pin. The gentlemen were all in white ties and tails, and the ladies in sheath dresses and opera tiaras. And the party turned and beamed at Emil and Geli as if they were children shocked awake by hearty toasts from the dining room.
Winter was finally there in earnest. Geli’s cheeks were as wind-chilled as if she’d been skiing, and she’d gone without gloves so she could feel Emil’s hands in hers. Hitler formally stood up, kissed her knuckles, and was startled. “But your fingers are cold as silverware, Geli!”
“I feel warm,” she said.
“I’ll bet you do,” said Ilse Hess, and she watched with fascination as Emil went to the Herrens.
“What film did you see, Fräulein Raubal?” Putzi Hanfstaengl asked.
“Metropolis.”
Rudolf Hess tilted toward the führer to inform him. “About the alliance between labor and capital,” he said.
“And what Jew directed that?” Hitler asked.
Heinrich Hoffmann said, “Not a Jew. Fritz Lang. A first-rate director.”
“You liked it?” Hitler asked his niece.
“Oh yes. It was stunning.”
“Whose metropolis was it?”
She shrugged. “It’s imaginary, I think.”
