I began to see that these fruitless discussions could go on indefinitely, and this prospect alarmed me; so I decided to change tactics: prepare a concrete suggestion, and have it endorsed by the others, or else modify it a little, if necessary. For that, I decided to come to an agreement first with the specialists Weinrowski and Isenbeck. When I approached Weinrowski, he quickly understood my intentions and promised me his support; as for Isenbeck, he would do whatever he was told to do. But we still lacked concrete data. Weinrowski believed the IKL had already carried out research on this subject; I sent Isenbeck to Oranienburg with a mission order; triumphant, he brought back a pile of files: at the end of the 1930s, the medical department of the IKL had in fact carried out a set of experiments, at the KL Buchenwald, on minimal feeding for inmates subjected to forced labor; with punishment or the threat of punishment as the sole incentive, they had tested a large number of formulas, frequently changing the rations and weighing the subjects regularly; a whole array of statistics had been generated from this. While Isenbeck analyzed these reports, I talked with Weinrowski about what we called the “secondary factors,” such as hygiene, cold, illness, beatings. I had a copy of my Stalingrad report sent to me by the SD, which dealt with precisely these subjects; skimming through it, Weinrowski exclaimed: “Oh, but you quote Hohenegg!” At these words, the memory of that man, buried inside me like a glass bubble, detached from the depths and rose up, gathering speed by the second, before bursting at the surface: how curious that is, I said to myself, I hadn’t thought of him in a long time. “Do you know him?” I asked Weinrowski, overcome with intense emotion.—“Of course! He’s one of my colleagues from the faculty of medicine in Vienna.”—“So he’s still alive?”—“Yes, of course, why not?”

I immediately set out looking for him: he was well and truly alive, and I had no difficulty finding him; he too was working in Berlin, at the medical department of the Bendlerstrasse. Happy, I called him on the telephone without giving my name; his throaty, musical voice sounded a little annoyed when he answered: “Yes?”—“Professor Hohenegg?”—“Speaking. What’s this about?”—“I’m calling from the SS. It’s about an old debt.” His voice became a shade more irritated. “What are you talking about? Who are you?”—“I’m talking about a bottle of Cognac you promised me nine months ago.” Hohenegg let out a long burst of laughter: “Alas, alas, I have to confess something to you: I thought you were dead, and I drank it to your health.”—“Man of little faith.”—“So you are alive.”—“And promoted: Sturmbannführer.”—“Bravo! Well, I’ll just have to unearth another bottle.”—“I give you twenty-four hours: we’ll drink it tomorrow night. In exchange, dinner will be on me. At Borchardt’s, eight o’clock, does that suit you?” Hohenegg gave a long whistle: “They must have given you a raise too. But allow me to point out that it’s not quite oyster season yet.”—“That’s all right; we’ll eat wild boar pâté. Till tomorrow.”

Hohenegg, as soon as he saw me, wanted at all cost to feel my scars; I graciously permitted him, under the surprised eye of the maître d’hôtel, who had come to proffer the wine list. “Good work,” Hohenegg said, “good work. If you had had that before Kislovodsk, I would have cited you in my seminar. All in all, I did well to insist.”—“What do you mean?”—“The surgeon in Gumrak didn’t want to operate on you, which is understandable. He had pulled a sheet over your face and had told the nurses to put you out in the snow, as they did then, to get it over with. I happened to be walking by, I noticed this sheet moving at mouth level, and of course I thought that was curious, a dead man breathing like an ox under his shroud. I turned down the sheet: imagine my surprise. So I told myself that ordering someone else to take care of you was the least I could do. The surgeon didn’t want to; we had a few words, but I was his hierarchical superior, and he had to give in. He kept complaining that it was a waste of time. I was in something of a hurry, I let him get on with it; I imagine he made do with a hemostasis. But I’m happy it was of some use.” I remained motionless, riveted to his words; at the same time I felt immensely remote from all that, as if it concerned another man, whom I scarcely knew. The maître d’hôtel brought the wine. Hohenegg interrupted him before he could pour: “Just a minute, please. Could you bring us two Cognac glasses?”—“Of course, Herr Oberst.” With a smile, Hohenegg took a bottle of Hennessy out of his briefcase and placed it on the table: “There. A promise is a promise.” The maître d’hôtel returned with the glasses, uncorked the bottle, and poured us each a measure. Hohenegg took his glass and got up; I did the same. Suddenly he looked serious and I noticed that he had aged perceptibly from what I remembered of him: his yellow, soft skin drooped under his eyes and on his round cheeks; his whole body, still fat, seemed to have shrunk somehow on his frame. “I suggest,” he said, “that we drink to all our comrades in misfortune who didn’t have as much luck as we did. And especially to those who are still alive, somewhere.” We toasted, and sat back down. Hohenegg remained silent for a little bit, playing with his knife, then resumed his cheerful air. I told him how I had gotten out, or at least what Thomas had told me, and asked him for his story. “With me it’s simpler. I had finished my work, turned in my report to General Renoldi, who was already packing his bags for Siberia and couldn’t have cared less about anything else, and I realized they had forgotten me. Fortunately, I knew an obliging young man at the AOK; thanks to him, I was able to send a signal to the OKHG with a copy for my faculty, stating simply that I was ready to submit my report. Then they remembered me and the next day I received orders to leave the Kessel. And it was when I was waiting for a plane in Gumrak that I came across you. I wanted to take you with me, but in that state, you were unfit for travel, and I couldn’t wait for your operation, since flights were becoming rare. I think I actually got one of the last flights leaving Gumrak. The plane just before mine crashed right in front of my eyes; I was still a bit dazed by the noise of the explosion when I got to Novorossisk. We took off straight through the smoke and the flames rising up from the wreck, it was very impressive. Afterward I got leave, and instead of reassigning me to the new Sixth Army, they gave me a job at the OKW. And you, what’s become of you?” While we ate I described my work group’s problems to him. “Indeed,” he commented, “it sounds tricky. I know Weinrowski well; he’s an honest man and a scholar of integrity, but he has no political sense and often makes blunders.” I remained pensive: “You couldn’t meet him with me? To help us get our bearings.”—“My dear Sturmbannführer, I would remind you that I am an officer of the Wehrmacht. I don’t think your superiors—or mine—would appreciate your mixing me up in this dark business.”—“Not officially, of course. A simple private discussion, with your old faculty friend?”—“I never said he was my friend.” Hohenegg ran his hand pensively over the dome of his bald skull; his wrinkled neck stuck out of his buttoned collar. “Of course, as a clinical pathologist, I am always delighted to be of help to the human species; after all, I never lack customers. If you like, the three of us can just finish off this bottle of Cognac together.”

Weinrowski invited us to his place. He lived with his wife in a three-room apartment in Kreuzberg. He showed us two photos on the piano of young men, one framed in black with a ribbon: his eldest son, Egon, killed in Demiansk; the younger one was serving in France and had been quiet till then, but his division had just been rushed to Italy to reinforce the new front. While Frau Weinrowski served us tea and cakes, we talked about the Italian situation: as pretty much everyone expected, Badoglio was just waiting for the occasion to switch sides, and as soon as the Anglo-Americans had set foot on Italian soil, he had seized it. “Fortunately, fortunately, the Führer was cleverer than he!” Weinrowski exclaimed.—“You say that,” Frau Weinrowski murmured sadly as she offered us sugar, “but it’s your Karl who is there, not the Führer.” She was a rather heavy woman, with puffy, tired features; but the outline of her mouth and especially the light in her eyes hinted at past beauty. “Oh, be quiet,” Weinrowski grumbled, “the Führer knows what he’s doing. Look at that Skorzeny! Tell me that wasn’t a master stroke.” The raid on the Gran Sasso, to liberate Mussolini, had made headlines for days in Goebbels’s press. Since then, our forces had occupied northern Italy, interned six hundred and fifty thousand Italian soldiers, and set up a Fascist republic in Salò; and all that was presented as a significant victory, a brilliant maneuver of the Führer’s. But the resumption of raids on Berlin was also a direct consequence; the new front was draining our divisions, and in August the Americans had managed to bomb Ploesti, our last source of oil. Germany was truly caught in the crossfire.