Dear Eva Braun, I took a book about your life out of the library so I could try to understand you. I had always held that you were misunderstood. I took on loan two other books that I'd already read because the young librarian seems to be interested in what I read, though more so because I often wonder if there is a flagging system in use - one that would mark me as potentially deranged, politically noxious, a dilettante, or Catholic etc. These additional books, which I immediately returned through the drop-box outside - to the confusion of those watching my account - were to guise my historical interest. Reading about American prohibition informs global teetotalers via flashing red lights on their desks, I know.
You were - I learned - a free woman, only trapped by your own doing, your own ends, your own humble ambitions, one of which was your own death, in fact1. There isn't a more humble, attainable ambition. But it couldn't come fast enough for you, not at times.
You were thirty-three when you killed yourself in his bunker. And, in those thirty-three years, that was not the first time that you wanted to end your life but the first you succeeded. I wonder what it was like to knowingly enter that bunker, aware of what was coming for you, what you, by association, justly deserved, and be happy about that, smiling your winning smile because you had, in the end, gotten exactly what you wanted and won. That is true despair, one that hides behind a content, photogenic grin.
I learned your parents had comedic name: Fritz and Franny2, like a stand-up duo, one tall and sickly thin while the other is short, fat, stupid and well-fed. It surprises me how much of your life can be considered comedy though it was often so tragic - but the truest form of comedy is often tragic, true, and absurd. I imagine the first meeting between you and him, the awkward silences that were never filled, the tea shared in an office of all places, and the strained distance of letters3 - especially in such a time when the world seemed so small, so insignificant that people could all be gathered, cornered, and taken. And then that stiff, cartoon-like walk, and you flowing beside it like a fun-house mirror to his gait.
I believe you when I imagine you sobbing it into your bedclothes and saying no one would understand you even if you had lived and tried to explain - for whatever that would be worth. You had taken a liking to death - in so many ways - even early in life, when you tried to shoot yourself in the neck4 and, later, when you had trouble sleeping5. Neither of those worked so you attached yourself to death in your own life in a way, attached yourself as inextricably as you could, killing yourself in that way too. You were so dedicated to death and dedicated to death himself that you followed him underground, burying yourself as it were, walking headlong into your own grave. And I imagine again that smile.
You, Eva, walking through the forest, walking a large dog that strains on the leash, a bit of makeup on your face - though he thought that wrong - and a lit cigarette wedged between the first and second of your fingers - though he disapproved of that too; you didn't care. And by the beach, you take off all your things and lay there, the sun beating down on you - this was the way you liked it. The dog breaking the slow, lapping waves of some hidden lake, yapping as they came to meet the shore. The sunlight attaching itself to you. And no one knew.
I know someone who is talented at solving the Rubik's Cube. In seconds, he can rearrange the cube so that similar colors are all sequestered to one side. But he approaches everything in life with the same concept he uses to solve the problem. He memorizes the possibilities, the combination, the equation to exactly undo what a mess the thing has become. Everything must fit into a place and be surrounded by like things, but I don't believe that's right. You must be surrounded by everything, like or not. You were just on the wrong side, surrounded. You were a laughing photographer, and they were not.
Take care of yourself,
1 Eva Braun attempted to kill herself on numerous occasions, both before and after she met him. Her final and most successful attempt was begun that very moment.
2 Freidrich "Fritz" Braun and Franziska "Franny" Kronberger.
3 Their relationship began innocently enough in her place of business: a photography shop. Together with the shop owner, Eva Braun would dine with him.
4 At the age of twenty, in 1932, Eva Braun attempted to kill herself in this manner.
5 Three years later, she tried again, this time with sleeping pills.
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