A narrative account of one occasion on which Joseph Goebbels and Albert Speer shared a car on a cold day.

It’s a bitter morning speeding down the road to Vinnitsa. Speer can see the ghost of Goebbels’ breath, hanging in the air after he exhales, mingling with his own. The little doctor’s hands, pink and raw, are curtailed from their usual wild flights, wrestling with each other in his lap in an attempt to wring away the cold. It makes his own bones shake in sympathy though he was sensible enough to wrap up for the Ukraine weather in a voluminous fur coat, only a few stitches removed from the shaggy un-tailored pelt of some gargantuan bear.

Outside the world is dead with a weight of snow and ice. The way Goebbels had come hurrying out of the building to meet the motorcar and down the fat, frost-crusted slabs of the steps (a design badly out of proportion, Speer noted, and emphasised that much more by the tiny figure that descended them) with his unsteady gait and smart soled shoes, it seemed a miracle he hadn’t tripped over himself.

It’s not very much like Goebbels to be late to one of these meetings with the Führer but perhaps the work is getting to him just like everyone else. His eyes look a little further sunken in above his cheekbones than usual and glassy from the bright cold; the colour leached from his face even amidst all this ivory, apart from about his eyelids which are almost as pink and sore looking as his hands with the want of sleep.  

“I was in Kiev the other day,” Speer says. “Such a waste, the Soviets have blown that beautiful church to nothing but a pile of stones.”

Goebbels laughs shortly. Another burst of vapour. Speer notices there are still snowflakes caught, unmelting, in his dark hair. He has a strange compulsion to brush them away.

“Not the Soviets,” Goebbels says. “Koch, or some bright spark in that lousy department, thought it was a fine idea to tear the place down. Tear down their pride! Another clever solution to a non-existent problem.”

Goebbels thin lips almost disappear with displeasure as he glowers at the thought of the aforementioned Reich Commissioner. One hand escapes his lap to mime a tornado, a cascading spiral, down through the air and his shirtsleeve pulls back to reveal a wrist so strikingly slender that Speer can’t help but touch it in fascination.

“You’re freezing,” he says.

Goebbels shakes his head, though he doesn’t pull his wrist from Speer’s grip. He laughs, not a bitter bark like before but something almost hesitant, self-conscious. Later, Speer will find it difficult to say if it was that laugh and the uncertain, awkward smile left in its wake, or the silent, sprawling void of the passing landscape that lent the little cabin of their motorcar an air of suspension from place and time and sense that makes him do it; but he opens up his coat, takes one arm out and gently tugs Goebbels toward him.

“Ridiculous,” Goebbels huffs, quietly.

But then, after a moment long enough for Speer to  start to  wake to the sheer foolishness of the idea and begin to refasten his coat, Goebbels quickly scoots inside, his sharp little hips pressing close to his own. His head is facing resolutely forward as Speer pulls the edge of the coat around him, bundling them both back up close together in the fur.  

It takes a few miles for the tension to eke its way out of the little doctor. It takes a few miles after that for Speer to realize that Goebbels has actually fallen asleep on him, his head lolling gently, a warm weight against his chest and his breath sighing slow and steady. Speer resettles his arm around him, to hold him tighter, steadier, and protect him from the tug of gravity as the car rounds one bend after another. The snowflakes have all but vanished from his hair now, like little stars winking out before dawn.