Long After Midnight (33 page)

 
          
He
sat down.

 
          
Both
the producer and
Der
Fuhrer appeared to be in a state
of shock.

 
          
"Order
me another goddamn beer," snapped the director.

 
          
Hitler
gasped in a huge breath, tossed down his knife and fork, and shoved back his
chair.

 
          
"I
do not break bread with such as you!"

 
          
"Why,
you bootlicking lapdog son of a bitch," said the director. "I'll hold
the mug and you'll do the licking. Here." The director grabbed the beer
and shoved it under
Der
Fuhrer's nose. The crowd, out
beyond, gasped and almost surged. Hitler's eyes rolled, for the director had
seized him by the front of his tunic and was yanking him forward.

 
          
"Lick!
Drink the
Qerman
filth! Drink, you scum!"

 
          
"Boys,
boys," said the producer.

 
          
"Boys,
crud! You know what this swill-hole, this
chamberpot
Nazi, has been thinking, sitting here, Archibald, and drinking your beer? Today
Europe
, tomorrow the world!"

 
          
"No,
no, Marc!"

 
          
"No,
no," said Hitler, staring down at the fist which clenched the material of
his uniform. "The buttons, the buttons—"

 
          
"Are
loose on your tunic and inside your head, worm. Arch, look at him pour! Look at
the grease roll off his forehead, look at his stinking armpits. He's a sea of
sweat because I've read his mind! Tomorrow the world! Get this film set up, him
cast in the lead. Bring him down out of the clouds, a month from now. Brass
bands. Torchlight. Bring back
Leni
Reifenstahl
to show us how she shot the Rally in '34.
Hitler's lady-director friend. Fifty cameras she used, fifty she used, by God,
to get all the German crumbs lined up and vomiting lies, and Hitler in his
creaking leather and Goring awash in his blubber, and
Goebbels
doing his wounded-monkey walk, the three
superfags
of
history
aswank
in the stadium at dusk, make it all
happen again, with this bastard up front, and do you know what's going through
his little graveyard mind behind his bloater eyes at this very moment?"

 
          
"Marc,
Marc," whispered the producer, eyes shut, grinding his teeth. "Sit
down. Everyone sees."

 
          
"Let
them see! Wake up, you! Don't you shut your eyes on me, too! I've shut my eyes
on you for days, filth. Now I want some attention. Here."

 
          
He
sloshed beer on Hitler's face, which caused his eyes to snap wide and his eyes
to roll yet again, as apoplexy burned his cheeks.

 
          
The
crowd, out beyond, hissed in their breath.

 
          
The
director, hearing, leered at them.

 
          
"Boy,
is this funny. They don't know whether to come in or not, don't know if you're
real or not, and neither do I. Tomorrow, you bilgy bastard, you really dream of
becoming
Der
Fuhrer."

 
          
He
bathed the man's face with more beer.

 
          
The
producer had turned away in his chair now and was frantically dabbing at some
imaginary breadcrumbs on his tie. "Marc, for God's sake—"

 
          
"No,
no, seriously, Archibald. This guy thinks because he puts on a ten-cent uniform
and plays Hitler for four weeks at good pay that if we actually put together
the Rally, why Christ, History would turn back, oh turn back, Time, Time in thy
flight, make me a stupid Jew-baking Nazi again for tonight. Can you see it,
Arch, this lice walking up to the microphones and shouting and the crowd shouting
back, and him
really
trying to take
over, as if Roosevelt still lived and Churchill wasn't six feet deep, and it
was all to be lost or won again, but mainly won, because
this
time they wouldn't stop at the Channel but just cross on over,
give or take a million German boys dead, and stomp England and stomp America,
isn't
that
what's going on inside
your little Aryan skull,
Adolf
?
Isn't
it!"

 
          
Hitler
gagged and hissed. His tongue stuck out. At last he jerked free and exploded:

 
          
"Yes!
Yes, goddamn you! Damn and bake and burn you! You dare to lay hands on
Der
Fuhrerl
The Rally! Yes! It
must be in the film! We must make it again! The plane! The landing! The long
drive through streets. The blonde girls. The lovely blond boys. The stadium.
Leni
Reifenstahl
! And from all
the trunks, in all the attics, a black plague of armbands winging on the dusk,
flying to assault, battering to take the victory. Yes, yes, I,
Der
Fuhrer, I will stand at that Rally and dictate terms! I—I—"

 
          
He
was on his feet now.

 
          
The
crowd, out beyond in the parking lot, shouted.

 
          
Hitler
turned and gave them a salute.

 
          
The
director took careful aim and shot a blow of his fist to the German's nose.

 
          
After
that the crowd arrived, shrieking, yelling, pushing, shoving, falling.

 
          
They
drove to the hospital at four the next afternoon.

 
          
Slumped,
the old producer sighed, his hands over his eyes. "Why, why, why are we
going to the hospital? To visit that—monster?"

 
          
The
director nodded.

 
          
The
old man groaned. "Crazy world. Mad people. I never saw such biting,
kicking, biting. That mob almost killed you."

 
          
The
director licked his swollen lips and touched his half-shut left eye with a
probing finger. "I'm okay. The important thing is I hit
Adolf
, oh, how I hit him. And now—" He stared calmly
ahead. "I think I am going to the hospital to finish the job."

 
          
"Finish,
finish?"
The old man stared at
him.

 
          
"Finish."
The director wheeled the car slowly around a comer. "Remember the
twenties, Arch, when Hitler got shot at in the street and not hit, or beaten in
the streets, and nobody socked him away forever, or he left a beer hall ten
minutes before a bomb went off, or was in that officers' hut in 1944 and the
briefcase bomb exploded and
that
didn't
get him. Always the charmed life. Always he got out from under the rock. Well,
Archie, no more charms, no more escapes. I'm walking in that hospital to make
sure that when that half-ass extra comes out and there's a mob of krauts to
greet him, he's walking wounded, a permanent soprano. Don't try to stop me,
Arch."

 
          
"Who's
stopping? Belt him one for me."

 
          
They
stopped in front of the hospital just in time to see one of the studio
production assistants run down the steps, his hair wild, his eyes wilder,
shouting.

 
          
"Christ,"
said the director. "Bet you forty to one, our luck's run out again. Bet
you that guy running toward us says—"

 
          
"
Kidnaped
! Gone!" the man cried. "
Adolf's
been taken away!"

 
          
"Son
of a bitch."

 
          
They
circled the empty hospital bed; they
touched
it.

 
          
A
nurse stood in one comer wringing her hands. The production assistant babbled.

 
          
"Three
men it was, three men, three men."

 
          
"Shut
up." The director was
snowblind
from simply
looking at the white sheets. "Did they force him or did he go along
quietly?"

 
          
"I
don't know, I can't say, yes, he was making speeches, making speeches as they
took him out."

 
          
"Making
speeches?" cried the old producer, slapping his bald pate. "Christ,
with the restaurant suing us for broken tables, and Hitler maybe suing us for—"

 
          
"Hold
on." The director stepped over and fixed the production assistant with a
steady gaze.
"Three
men, you
say?"

 
          
"Three,
yes, three, three, three, oh, three men."

 
          
A
small forty-watt
lightbulb
flashed on in the
director's head.

 
          
"Did,
ah, did one man have a square face, a good jaw, bushy eyebrows?"

 
          
"Why
. . . yes!"

 
          
"Was
one man short and skinny like a chimpanzee?"

 
          
"Yes!"

 
          
"Was
one man big, I mean,
slobby
fat?"

 
          
"How
did you
know?"

 
          
The
producer blinked at both of them. "What goes on? What—"

 
          
"Stupid
attracts stupid. Animal cunning calls to laughing jackass cunning. Come on,
Arch!"

 
          
"Where?"
The old man stared at the empty bed as if
Adolf
might
materialize there any moment now.

 
          
"The
back of my car, quick!"

 
          
From
the back of the car, on the street, the director pulled a German cinema
directory. He leafed through the character actors. "Here."

 
          
The
old man looked. A forty-watt bulb went on in his head.

 
          
The
director riffled more pages. "And here. And, finally, here."

 
          
They
stood now in the cold wind outside the hospital and let the breeze turn the
pages as they read the captions under the photographs.

 
          
"
Goebbels
," whispered the old man.

 
          
"An
actor named Rudy
Steihl
."

 
          
"Goring."

 
          
"A
hambone named
Grof
e."

 
          
"Hess."

 
          
"Fritz
Dingle."

 
          
The
old man shut the book and cried to the echoes.

 
          
"Son
of a bitch!"

 
          
"Louder
and funnier, Arch. Funnier and louder."

 
          
"You
mean right now out there somewhere in the city three
dumbkopf
out-of-work actors have
Adolf
in hiding, held maybe
for ransom? And do we
pay
it?"

 
          
"Do
we want to finish the film, Arch?"

 
          
"God,
I don't know, so much money already, time, and—" The old man shivered and
rolled his eyes. "What if—I mean—what if they don't
want
ransom?"

 
          
The
director nodded and grinned. "You mean, what if this is the true start of
the Fourth Reich?"