| Private journal entry 2 |
[11 Jan 2008|04:13pm] |
I should just get over this. If I do not go, if I just avoid even going anywhere near...
Maybe my life would return to normal. Or at least, what has passed for normal which is not very normal at all. For that matter, it has been almost entirely unlike living. I could slip back into the routine of my days, existing in this glass cage where I am transparent and yet reveal nothing of myself to anyone.
Or I could go to mein kleiner Käse, and let what come may. Unwise though it may be, I am unwilling to just let this go. I fear death - but was I not already dead, having allowed life and the desire to live slip from my hands?
I will take off this uniform, and dress in my civilian clothes, and I will go to him. As his friend, his Choucroute. We will talk about this, our private loyalty.
God help us both, there is no turning away.
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| For M-P: A note, and a cheese... |
[10 Jan 2008|05:23pm] |
Before work, Hans took some time to locate the laiterie that Marie-Pierre had told him of on their tour. A bit of bribery later, and he had learned the identity of M-P's favorite cheese and arranged to have a generous portion delivered to him along with a personal note.
The note had been sealed in wax, with Hans' signet ring - not his SS ring, the one with his family crest that he no longer wore. It was written in a mixture of German and French, and read, in Hans's elegant script:
Mein kleiner Käse,
May we someday dance again.
--Choucroute
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| In a very carefully hidden private journal... |
[10 Jan 2008|03:09am] |
A scribbled journal entry, written stream of consciousness
Today on a tour with Marie-Pierre, and perhaps it is this that makes me pick up where I had long left off my journal.
No thoughts, no matter how private, are safe these days I fear. Haven't I learned that lesson yet? Yet here I am, writing of unsafe things. Of unsafe emotions.
There is no place for desires, for feelings in this world. Father tried hard enough to beat it into me when I returned from Berlin - I could not walk for weeks, but did it make me any stronger? Fatherland, over all - but, tonight I was not a Nazi. I was Hans. I was a man. Tonight I felt weak in the presence of a Frenchman who - I barely know.
( rambling on... )
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| A letter home... |
[28 Dec 2007|02:22am] |
Lieber Vati, Liebe Mutti , Meine liebste Gretchen,
Vielen Dank für deinen Brief.
It was good to hear from you all. I am pleased to report that I am well-settled in my apartment now, and that there is a little cafe where I frequently take my meals in the evenings after work is through. The city of Paris is as splendid as you have read of in all stories. Gretchen, when you are older and the war is over - I will bring you here as I have promised. Dein Bruter does not lie.
I miss you all very much, and trust that you will think kindly of me this Christmas. I am sending twenty Reichsmarks home so that you may purchase some nice presents for yourselves on my behalf. Please forgive my absence as I was unable to obtain holiday leave.
The new year is almost upon us - and I pray that it will bring good things for our family, and for das Vaterland.
Schreib mal wieder!
Liebe,
Hansel
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