conversation. I showed her the picture I had purloined from the army archives.
“Yes, that’s him,” she said. “Of course he was much younger when this picture was taken.”
“Didn’t you know? This is at least a thousand years old. I know because that’s how long Hitler said the Third Reich would last.”
She smiled and, for a moment, it was hard to believe she had a brother who had lived and worked in the lowest pit in hell. Blond, of course. Like she’d stepped down from the Berchtesgaden. It was easy to see where Hitler had developed his taste for blondes if he’d ever met a blonde like Helene Elisabeth von Starnberg. Either way she was a creature from another world. I might have misjudged her, but my first thought about her, that she’d never been on a tram, was not one I was able to dislodge. I tried to picture it, but the image wouldn’t stick. It always came off looking like a tiara in a biscuit tin.
“Are you any relation to Ignaz Gunther?” she asked me.
“My great-great-grandfather,” I said. “But please don’t tell anyone.”
“I won’t,” she said. “He sculpted a lot of angels, you know. Some of them are rather fine. Who knows? Maybe you’ll turn out to be our angel, Herr Gunther.”
By which I assumed she meant the von Starnberg family’s angel. Maybe it was lucky it was a fine day and I was in a good mood, but I didn’t reply with a rude remark about how, if I was going to help her brother, I’d have to be a black angel, which, of course, was what people used to call the SS. Maybe. More likely I just let that one slide by me because she was what people used to call a peach, in the days before they’d forgotten what one looked and tasted like.
“There’s a fine group of guardian angels sculpted by Ignaz Gunther in the Burgersaal,” she said, pointing across Königsplatz. “Somehow they survived the bombing. You should take a look at them sometime.”
“I’ll do that,” I said, and stepped back as she opened the door of her Porsche and climbed inside. She waved a neatly gloved hand from behind the split windshield, fired up the flat-four engine, and then sped away.
I walked south across Karlsplatz and the “Stachus,” which was Munich’s main traffic center, named after an inn that had once stood there. I walked along Neuhauser Strasse to Marienplatz, both of them badly damaged during the war. Special passages had been constructed for pedestrians beneath the scaffolding, and the many gaps between bomb-damaged buildings were filled with one-storied temporary shops. Scaffolding made the Burgersaal as inconspicuous as an empty beer bottle. Like everywhere else in that part of Munich, the chapel was being restored. Every time I walked around the city I congratulated myself for being lucky enough to spend most of 1944 with General Ferdinand Schorner’s army in White Russia. Munich had been hit hard. April 25, 1944, had been one of the worst nights in the city’s history. Most of the chapel had been burned out. The high altar had perished, yet Gunther’s sculptures had survived. But with their pink cheeks and delicate hands these were hardly my idea of guardian angels. They looked like a couple of rent boys from a bathhouse in Bogenhausen. I didn’t think I was descended from Ignaz, but after two hundred years who can be sure of anything like that? My father had never been entirely certain who his mother was, let alone his own father. Either way, I’d have sculpted the group differently. My idea of a guardian angel involved being armed with something more lethal than a supercilious smile, an elegantly cocked little finger, and one eye on the Pearly Gates for backup. But that’s me. Even now, four years after the war ended, my first thought when I wake up is to wonder where I left my KAR 98.
I came out of the church and stepped straight onto a number six heading south down Karlsplatz. I like trams. You don’t have to worry about filling them up with gasoline, and
“Yes, that’s him,” she said. “Of course he was much younger when this picture was taken.”
“Didn’t you know? This is at least a thousand years old. I know because that’s how long Hitler said the Third Reich would last.”
She smiled and, for a moment, it was hard to believe she had a brother who had lived and worked in the lowest pit in hell. Blond, of course. Like she’d stepped down from the Berchtesgaden. It was easy to see where Hitler had developed his taste for blondes if he’d ever met a blonde like Helene Elisabeth von Starnberg. Either way she was a creature from another world. I might have misjudged her, but my first thought about her, that she’d never been on a tram, was not one I was able to dislodge. I tried to picture it, but the image wouldn’t stick. It always came off looking like a tiara in a biscuit tin.
“Are you any relation to Ignaz Gunther?” she asked me.
“My great-great-grandfather,” I said. “But please don’t tell anyone.”
“I won’t,” she said. “He sculpted a lot of angels, you know. Some of them are rather fine. Who knows? Maybe you’ll turn out to be our angel, Herr Gunther.”
By which I assumed she meant the von Starnberg family’s angel. Maybe it was lucky it was a fine day and I was in a good mood, but I didn’t reply with a rude remark about how, if I was going to help her brother, I’d have to be a black angel, which, of course, was what people used to call the SS. Maybe. More likely I just let that one slide by me because she was what people used to call a peach, in the days before they’d forgotten what one looked and tasted like.
“There’s a fine group of guardian angels sculpted by Ignaz Gunther in the Burgersaal,” she said, pointing across Königsplatz. “Somehow they survived the bombing. You should take a look at them sometime.”
“I’ll do that,” I said, and stepped back as she opened the door of her Porsche and climbed inside. She waved a neatly gloved hand from behind the split windshield, fired up the flat-four engine, and then sped away.
I walked south across Karlsplatz and the “Stachus,” which was Munich’s main traffic center, named after an inn that had once stood there. I walked along Neuhauser Strasse to Marienplatz, both of them badly damaged during the war. Special passages had been constructed for pedestrians beneath the scaffolding, and the many gaps between bomb-damaged buildings were filled with one-storied temporary shops. Scaffolding made the Burgersaal as inconspicuous as an empty beer bottle. Like everywhere else in that part of Munich, the chapel was being restored. Every time I walked around the city I congratulated myself for being lucky enough to spend most of 1944 with General Ferdinand Schorner’s army in White Russia. Munich had been hit hard. April 25, 1944, had been one of the worst nights in the city’s history. Most of the chapel had been burned out. The high altar had perished, yet Gunther’s sculptures had survived. But with their pink cheeks and delicate hands these were hardly my idea of guardian angels. They looked like a couple of rent boys from a bathhouse in Bogenhausen. I didn’t think I was descended from Ignaz, but after two hundred years who can be sure of anything like that? My father had never been entirely certain who his mother was, let alone his own father. Either way, I’d have sculpted the group differently. My idea of a guardian angel involved being armed with something more lethal than a supercilious smile, an elegantly cocked little finger, and one eye on the Pearly Gates for backup. But that’s me. Even now, four years after the war ended, my first thought when I wake up is to wonder where I left my KAR 98.
I came out of the church and stepped straight onto a number six heading south down Karlsplatz. I like trams. You don’t have to worry about filling them up with gasoline, and
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