The Kindly Ones

But I didn’t want to get better right away, I was happy to vegetate a little. I began listening to music again. Slowly, I regained my strength, relearned gestures. The SS doctor had granted me a month’s leave for my convalescence, and I intended to take full advantage of it, whatever happened. In the beginning of August, Helene came back to see me. I was still weak but I could walk; I received her in pajamas and a bathrobe and made her some tea. It was extraordinarily hot out, not a breath of air circulated through the open windows. Helene was very pale and had a lost look I had never seen on her before. She asked about my health; I saw then that she was crying: “It’s horrible,” she said, “horrible.” I was embarrassed, I didn’t know what to say. Many of her colleagues had been arrested, people with whom she had been working for years. “It’s not possible, they must have made a mistake…I heard that your friend Thomas was in charge of the investigations, couldn’t you talk to him?”—“That wouldn’t do any good,” I said gently. “Thomas is doing his duty. But don’t worry too much about your friends. They might just want to ask them some questions. If they’re innocent, they’ll let them go.” She had stopped crying and was wiping her eyes, but her face was still tense. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But still,” she went on, “we should try to help them, don’t you think?” Despite my fatigue, I remained patient: “Helene, you have to understand what is going on right now. The Führer was nearly assassinated, those men wanted to betray Germany. If you try to intervene, you’ll just attract suspicion. There’s nothing you can do. It’s in the hands of God.”—“Of the Gestapo, you mean,” she replied with an angry movement. She got hold of herself: “I’m sorry, I’m…I’m…” I touched her hand: “It will be all right.” She drank some tea as I contemplated her. “And you?” she asked. “Are you going to go back to your…work?” I looked out the window, the silent ruins, the pale blue sky clouded by the omnipresent smoke. “Not right away. I have to get my strength back.” She held her cup up, with both hands. “What’s going to happen?” I shrugged: “In general? We’ll keep on fighting, people will keep on dying, and then someday it will end, and the ones who are still alive will try to forget all this.” She lowered her head: “I miss the days we went swimming at the pool,” she murmured.—“If you like,” I offered, “when I’m better, we can go back.” She looked out the window in turn: “There aren’t any more pools in Berlin,” she said quietly.

Leaving, she had paused on the threshold and looked at me again. I was going to speak, but she put a finger on my lips: “Don’t say anything.” She left that finger on an instant too long. Then she turned heel and quickly went downstairs. I didn’t understand what she wanted, she seemed to be revolving around something without daring either to approach it or leave it. This ambiguity troubled me, I would have liked her to declare herself openly; then I could have chosen, said yes or no, and it would have been settled. But she herself must not have known what it was. And what I had told her during my fit must not have made things any easier; no bath, no swimming pool would be enough to wash away such words.