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“She’s not a connoisseur?”
“Ha! Oh, Geli, you have no idea what a funny idea that is.” The photographer guffawed a further frantic set of has, and headed east on Prinzregentenstrasse.
“She’s superficial,” Geli said.
“Well, for example, I hinted at Hitler’s fondness for full-figured girls and found her stuffing handkerchiefs in her brassiere. I then told her I felt a sneeze coming on. Ha, ha!”
Geli hoped not to seem to be prying. “They’re seeing each other often?”
“Occasionally, not often. In the afternoons.” A yen of his own was in his face. Widower’s eyes, she thought. “Evenings,” Hoffmann said, “are for you.”
“Is he trying to keep it secret?”
“Well, how to say it? The leader puts his things in many different boxes. We’ll never see half of them.” Hoffmann turned to her. “Are you offended?”
Geli shrugged and gazed out the passenger window. “Why should I be?” They rode in silence for a while, and she added, “It’s not like he’s my husband.”
She stayed in the flat for no more than five minutes. She heard Maria Reichert vacuuming in the parlor and watched the canaries sidestep and spin on the perches, then she got up and took a trolley back to Schwabing.
She had no idea what she intended. She walked into the photography studio on Schellingstrasse and was surprised to find Eva Braun right in front of her, sorting packets of film negatives at a counter. She was a petite Nordic blond, five inches shorter than Geli. With a gymnast’s body. With a heart-shaped face and a candy mouth and the Delft-blue eyes of his mother. She seemed not to recognize who Geli was. And Geli realized she’d gotten what she wanted.
“Nazi headquarters?” Geli asked.
Eva stood on her tiptoes to point across the street. “There.”
She’d nightmared herself into wakefulness and was reading Der Steppenwolf in her yellow pajamas when she felt a mood in the room and was surprised to see her uncle just inside the door, his homburg in his hand, his gray wool suit coat still tightly buttoned.
“You’re home,” she said. “Where were you?”
“Talking,” he said. “Talking, talking.” He shied his stare from hers as he said, “It’s half three.”
“I’ll be quiet.”
His hand lifted his forelock and petted it flat. “It’s not that. I’ll have trouble sleeping. I finished a whole pot of green tea.”
She could tell he was trying to say something else, but she was mystified as to what it could be.
Then he asked, “Would you please go wake Frau Reichert for me?”
“At this hour?”
“She’ll know what to do.”
She got up from her bed and tied on her housecoat. “I’ll do it.”
“Are those new?” he asked.
“The pajamas? I got them today.”
“Thanks to me,” he needlessly s
aid. “They’re beautiful.”
“Thank you for everything.”
Hitler hesitated, introverted and ill at ease in the terra nova of his niece. And then, as sharp as the snap of a maître d’s fingers, he said, “Very good,” and withdrew to his bedroom, saying as an afterthought, “Take off the housecoat.”
She did that and followed him, self-consciously feeling the sway of her breasts under the yellow pajama top. She heard him say, “Stay out there for a minute,” and she stood in the hallway, her hands finding no place to settle, her feet getting cold on the herringboned oak. She stepped onto the carpet runner. She heard hangers ringing in his closet; she heard drawers slide and shut with a tock.
