was out of the room. “I want to follow Mama. She keeps calling
for me. But I cannot go. So long as Hermann is here, I cannot
go.”
Guilelessly Thomas told her of the telegram that had come
from Berlin on the fourth, and when Hermann came back in
she took the big man’s head close to her lips and whispered
faintly but urgently to him.
Her sister Fanny came in.
“Hermann has been called back to Berlin,” Carin said. “You
must help him to pack.”
Hitler and Göring were shown into President Hindenburg’s
presence on October , . The ex-corporal subjected the
great field marshal to a lecture on Germany. This failed to im-
press, and nothing came of the interview. Disappointed, the two
Nazi leaders threw themselves back into the general political
fray.
It was back to tactics and point-scoring again. Göring
forced a vote of no confidence in the government. Brüning
managed to survive it, on October , but only by twenty-five
votes.
Jubilant and confident of eventual victory, Göring tele-
phoned the clinic in Stockholm the next morning and spoke to
the nurse Märta. She broke it to him that Carin had died that
morning at : .. the clinic’s telegram had not yet reached
him. Consumed with remorse, he made the long journey back to
Stockholm, supported by Pili Körner and his older brother Karl,
to say adieu at last to his beloved wife. Thomas watched him
kneel weeping by the open coffin in the Edelweiss chapel where
their great love affair had begun, then stood at his stepfather’s
side as the white, rose-covered coffin was lowered into the
ground next to her mother’s freshly planted grave.