In Berlin, I again found myself overwhelmed by the Reichsführer’s requests. I had reported Speer’s visit to him, and he made only one comment: “Reichsminister Speer should know what he wants.” I saw him regularly now to discuss labor questions: he wanted at all costs to increase the quantity of workers available in the camps to supply the SS industries, private enterprises, and especially the new underground construction projects that Kammler wanted to develop. The Gestapo was making more and more arrests, but on the other hand, with the coming of fall and then winter, the mortality rate, which had dropped markedly during the summer, was increasing again, and the Reichsführer wasn’t pleased. Still, when I suggested a series of measures I thought were realistic, that I was planning with my team, he didn’t respond, and the actual measures implemented by Pohl and the IKL seemed random and unpredictable, not corresponding to any plan. Once I seized the occasion of a remark of the Reichsführer’s to criticize what I regarded as arbitrary, unconnected initiatives: “Pohl knows what he’s doing,” he retorted curtly. Soon after, Brandt summoned me and scolded me in a courteous but firm tone: “Listen, Obersturmbannführer, you’re doing very good work, but I’m going to tell you what I’ve already said a hundred times to Brigadeführer Ohlendorf: instead of annoying the Reichsführer with negative, pointless criticisms and complicated questions that he doesn’t even understand, you’d do better to cultivate your relationship with him. Bring him, I don’t know, a medieval treatise on medicinal plants, nicely bound, and talk with him a little about it. He’ll be delighted, and it will allow you to form a bond with him, to make yourself better understood. That will make things a lot easier for you. And also, I’m sorry, but when you present your reports, you’re so cold and haughty it only annoys him even more. That’s not how you’re going to settle things.” He went on a little more in the same vein; I didn’t say anything, I was thinking: he was probably right. “One more piece of advice: you’d do well to get married. Your attitude on the subject is deeply annoying to the Reichsführer.” I stiffened: “Standartenführer, I’ve already explained my reasons to the Reichsführer. If he doesn’t approve of them, he should tell me so himself.” An incongruous thought made me repress a smile. Brandt wasn’t smiling and was staring at me like an owl through his large round glasses. Their lenses reflected my own doubled image; the reflection prevented me from discerning his gaze. “You’re wrong, Obersturmbannführer, you’re wrong. But it’s your choice.”

I resented Brandt’s attitude, it was completely unjustified, in my opinion: he had no business getting involved in my private life that way. My private life, actually, was taking a pleasant turn; and it had been a long time since I had enjoyed myself so much. On Sundays I went to the pool with Helene, sometimes also with Thomas and one of his girlfriends; we’d go out for tea or hot chocolate, then I’d take Helene to the movies, if there was something worth seeing, or else to the concert to hear Karajan or Furtwängler; and we’d have dinner before I took her home. I also saw her from time to time during the week: a few days after my visit to Mittelbau, I had invited her to our fencing hall, at the Prinz-Albrecht-Palais, where she watched us fence and applauded the thrusts, then, in the company of Thomas, who flirted outrageously with her friend Liselotte, to an Italian restaurant. On December 19, we were together during the great English attack; in the public shelter where we had taken refuge, she sat next to me without saying anything, her shoulder against mine, flinching slightly at the closest explosions. After the raid, I took her to the Esplanade, the only restaurant I found open: sitting opposite me, her long white hands resting on the table, she stared at me silently with her beautiful, deep, dark eyes, a searching, curious, serene gaze. In such moments, I said to myself that if things had been different, I could have married this woman, I could have had children with her as I did much later with another woman who wasn’t her equal. It would certainly not have been done to please Brandt or the Reichsführer, to fulfill a duty or satisfy conventions: it would have been a part of everyday, ordinary life, simple and natural. But my life had taken another path, and it was too late. She too, when she looked at me, must have had similar thoughts, or rather women’s thoughts, different from men’s, in their tonality and color probably more than in their content, difficult to imagine for a man, even me. I pictured them this way: Is it possible I will enter this man’s bed someday, give myself to him? To give oneself, a strange phrase in our language; but the man who doesn’t grasp its full extent should try in turn to let himself be penetrated, it will open his eyes. These thoughts, in general, didn’t cause me any regrets, but rather a bitter feeling that was almost sweet. But sometimes, in the street, without thinking, with a natural gesture, she took my arm, and then, yes, I surprised myself by missing that other life that could have been, if something hadn’t been broken so early. It wasn’t just the question of my sister; it was vaster than that, it was the entire course of events, the wretchedness of the body and of desire, the decisions you make and on which you can’t go back, the very meaning you choose to give this thing that’s called, perhaps wrongly, your life.

It had begun to snow, a warm snow that didn’t stick. Then finally it lasted for a night or two, and gave a brief, strange beauty to the ruins of the city, before it melted and thickened the muck disfiguring the broken streets. With my tall riding boots, I walked through it without paying any attention—an orderly would clean them for me the next day—but Helene wore simple shoes, and when we reached a gray stretch thick with melted snow, I would look for a board I could throw over it, then hold her delicate hand so she could cross; and if even that was impossible, I carried her, light in my arms. On Christmas Eve, Thomas organized a small party in his new house in Dahlem, a luxurious little villa: as usual, he knew how to get by. Schellenberg was there with his wife, along with several other officers; I had invited Hohenegg, but hadn’t been able to locate Osnabrugge, who must have been in Poland still. Thomas seemed to have had his way with Liselotte, Helene’s friend: when she arrived, she kissed him passionately. Helene had put on a new dress, God knows where she had found the cloth, the restrictions were becoming more and more severe, she smiled charmingly and seemed happy. All the men, for once, were in civilian clothes. We had scarcely arrived when the sirens began wailing. Thomas reassured us by explaining that the planes coming from Italy almost never dropped their first bombs before Schöneberg and Tempelhof, and the ones from England passed north of Dahlem. Still, we dimmed the lights; thick black curtains masked the windows. The flak began to boom, Thomas put on a record, furious American jazz, and led Liselotte in a dance. Helene drank white wine and watched them dance; afterward, Thomas put on some slow music and she asked me to dance with her. Above we could hear the squadrons roaring; the flak barked without stopping, the windows trembled, we could scarcely hear the record; but Helene danced as if we were alone in a ballroom, leaning lightly on me, her hand firm in mine. Then she danced with Thomas while I exchanged a toast with Hohenegg. Thomas was right: to the north, we could sense more than hear an immense muffled vibration, but around us nothing fell. I looked at Schellenberg; he had gained weight, his successes didn’t encourage moderation. He was talking pleasantly with his specialists on our setbacks in Italy. Schellenberg, I had finally gathered from the few remarks Thomas sometimes let escape, thought he held the key to Germany’s future; he was convinced that if people listened to him, to him and his indisputable analyses, there would still be time to salvage something from the situation. The mere fact that he talked about salvaging something was enough to make my hackles rise: but apparently he had the Reichsführer’s ear, and I wondered where he might have gotten with his schemes. Once the alert was over, Thomas tried to call the RSHA, but the lines were cut off. “Those bastards did it on purpose to ruin our Christmas,” he said to me. “But we won’t let them.” I looked at Helene: she was sitting next to Liselotte and talking animatedly. “She’s very nice, that girl,” declared Thomas, who had followed my gaze. “Why don’t you marry her?” I smiled: “Thomas, mind your own business.” He shrugged: “At least spread the rumor that you’re engaged. That way Brandt will get off your back.” I had told him about Brandt’s comments. “And you?” I retorted. “You’re a year older than I am. Don’t they bother you?” He laughed: “Me? It’s not the same thing. First of all, my congenital inability to stay more than a month with the same girl is well known. But above all”—he lowered his voice—“keep it to yourself, but I’ve already sent two of them to the Lebensborn. I hear the Reichsführer was delighted.” He went to put another jazz record on; I figured he must help himself from the Gestapo’s stocks of confiscated records. I followed him and asked Helene to dance again. At midnight, Thomas put out all the lights. I heard a girl’s joyful shout, a muffled laugh. Helene was next to me: for a brief instant, I felt her sweet, warm breath on my face, and her lips grazed mine. My heart was pounding. When the light returned, she said to me in a composed, calm way: “I have to go home. I didn’t tell my parents, with the alert they must be worried.” I had taken Piontek’s car. We drove up toward the center of town by the Kurfürstendamm; on our right, fires lit by the bombing were roaring. It had started to snow. Some bombs had fallen on the Tiergarten and on Moabit, but the damage seemed minor compared to the big raids of the previous month. In front of her building, she took my hand and briefly kissed my cheek: “Merry Christmas! See you soon.” I went back to get drunk in Dahlem, and ended the night on the carpet, having ceded the sofa to a secretary upset at having been ousted from the host’s bedroom by Liselotte.