Look Who's Back (17 page)

“That would indeed be my choice,” I admitted. “Or something without meat.”

“I’m really sorry, we didn’t catch on early enough,” he said. “I should have thought. But if you wait a moment …”

He pulled out his mobile telephone and tapped at it with his fingers.

“Can your telephone cook, too?”

“No,” he said. “But ten minutes from here there’s a restaurant which is well known for its honest fare and stews. If you like I can order something from there.”

“Please refrain from going to any trouble. I quite fancy a bit of a stroll anyway,” I said. “I can have the stew there.”

“If you don’t mind, I’ll take you there myself,” Sawatzki said. “It’s not far.”

We absconded from the party and walked through the chilly Berlin night. This was far more agreeable than standing around in that canteen where an entire division of broadcasting types were incessantly lavishing praise on each other. Every so often our feet kicked up a few leaves.

“Can I ask you something?” Sawatzki said.

“Please do.”

“Is it a coincidence? I mean, that you’re a vegetarian too?”

“Absolutely not,” I said. “It’s common sense. I have been one for so long, it was only a matter of time before others shared my conviction. It’s just those buffet cooks who don’t seem to have heard of it.”

“No, what I meant was: have you always been one, or only since you became Hitler?”

“I have always been Hitler. Who do you imagine I was before that?”

“Well, maybe you tried a few others first. Churchill, or Honecker.”

“Himmler believed in all that esoteric humbug, reincarnation and mysticism. I can assure you I was never that Honecker fellow.”

Sawatzki looked at me. “And don’t you ever think you take your art too far?”

“One must undertake everything with utter, fanatical determination. Or one will get nowhere.”

“But – just to take an example – no-one would notice whether you were really a vegetarian or not.”

“First,” I said, “it is a question of well-being. And second, there can be no doubt that this is the way nature desires it.
Look, a lion can run two or three kilometres before it is completely exhausted. Twenty minutes, not even – a quarter of an hour. A camel, on the other hand, can keep going for a week. It’s the food which does that.”

“A nice example of sophistry.”

I stopped and glared at him. “What do you mean, ‘sophistry’? Right, let’s put it another way then. Where is Stalin?”

“Dead, I’d say.”

“I see. And Roosevelt?”

“Same.”

“Pétain? Eisenhower? Antonescu? Horthy?”

“The first two are dead, and I haven’t heard of the others.”

“Well, they’re dead too. And what about me?”

“You’re not dead.”

“Precisely,” I said with satisfaction, and set off again. “And I am convinced that this is because I’m a vegetarian.”

Sawatzki laughed. Then he caught me up. “That’s really good. Don’t you write that sort of stuff down?”

“Why bother? I know it.”

“I’m always worried that I’ll forget these things,” he said, pointing to the door of a restaurant. “Here we are.”

We entered the half-empty restaurant and placed our order with an elderly waitress. She gave me a hard stare and then screwed up her face in confusion. Sawatzki gave her a reassuring wave, and the lady went to fetch the drinks without further ado.

“It’s nice here,” I said. “It reminds me of the time of my struggle in Munich.”

“Do you come from Munich?”

“No, from Linz. Or actually …”

“… or actually from Braunau,” Sawatzki said. “I’ve been doing a bit of reading up.”

“Where do you come from?” I asked him in return. “And how old are you, by the way? You cannot be thirty yet!”

“Twenty-seven,” Sawatzki said. “I come from Bonn, and I studied in Cologne.”

“A Rhinelander,” I said with delight. “And an educated Rhinelander to boot!”

“German and History. In fact I wanted to be a journalist.”

“It’s a good thing you aren’t one,” I asserted. “Lying vermin, through and through.”

“The T.V. industry isn’t much better,” he said. “It’s unbelievable, the crap they churn out. And whenever we get hold of anything good, the stations would rather have another pile of crap. Or something cheaper. Or both.” Without pausing he added, “Apart from you, of course. What you do is completely different. For the first time I get the feeling that we’re not just flogging any old rubbish. I love your approach. The vegetarianism and everything – you’re not faking it; somehow, with you, it’s part of the whole concept.”

“I prefer the term ideology,” I said, but I was overjoyed by his youthful enthusiasm.

“You know, this has been something I’ve always wanted to do,” Sawatzki said. “Not just tout any old thing, but something of quality. At Flashlight we have to peddle so much garbage. Listen, when I was a boy I always wanted to work in an animal sanctuary. Help poor animals, that sort of thing. Or save animals. Do something positive.”

The waitress placed two bowls of stew before us. I was quite touched; the stew looked excellent. And it smelled as a stew ought to. We began to eat, and for a while neither of us said a word.

“Good?” Sawatzki asked.

“Very good,” I said, spooning it from the bowl. “As if it were straight from the field mess.”

“Yes,” he said. “There’s something about it. Simple, but good.”

“Are you married?”

He shook his head.

“Engaged?”

“No,” he said. “More like interested. There is someone.”

“But?”

“She doesn’t have a clue. And I don’t know if she’s interested in me, either.”

“You must be bold and go all out for total victory. You are not shy otherwise.”

“Sure, but she …”

“No wavering. Onward, quick march. Women’s hearts are like battles. They are not won through hesitation. One must concentrate all one’s forces and deploy them gallantly.”

“Is that how you got to know your wife?”

“Well, I could never complain about a lack of female interest. But my approach was generally the other way around.”

“The other way around?”

“In the later years especially I won more battles than women.”

He laughed. “If you’re not going to write it down, I will. If
you go on in this vein you really should think about writing a book. Hitler’s how-to book. How to have a happy relationship.”

“I am not sure that is my calling,” I said. “I mean, my marriage was rather short.”

“So I’ve heard. But that doesn’t matter. We’ll call it
Mein Kampf – With My Wife
. With a title like that it would sell like hot cakes.”

I had to laugh too. I looked pensively at Sawatzki, his short hair sticking up cheekily, his alert expression, his buoyant, but by no means foolish words. And in his voice I perceived that this man could have been one of those who accompanied me back then. To prison, to the Reich Chancellery, to the Führerbunker.

Ā
h, Herr Hitler, I’ve been expecting you!” the newspaper seller said in an enigmatically theatrical voice.

“Really?” I said, amused. “Why?”

“Well, I saw your performance,” he said, “and then I reckoned you’d want to read what’s been written about you. And that you might look for a place where the selection of papers and magazines is – how should I put it? – a little broader! Come in, come in! Take a seat. Would you like a coffee? What’s wrong? Don’t you feel well?”

I found it disconcerting that he had spotted this minor weakness in me, and it really was a minor weakness, a surge of joy, the like of which I had not experienced in a long time. I had woken as fresh as a daisy at around half past eleven, partaken of a small breakfast and then decided to read the newspapers, just as the vendor had guessed. Two days previously my suits had been delivered, allowing me something somewhat less official to slip into. The one I was now wearing was simple, dark and traditionally cut, and I had chosen to pair it with the dark hat. As I set off from the hotel I could see at once that I was attracting many fewer glances than usual. It was a crystal-clear, sunny day and wonderfully fresh, as one might expect for
the time of year. For now I felt free of all obligations and I marched forth with a sense of purpose. It was so peaceful, it almost felt normal, and because I took the green route along footpaths and through parks there was little to grab my attention, save for a madwoman who was bending down, obviously trying to pinpoint and then gather up her spaniel’s excrement in the long, unmown grass. It struck me briefly that this lunacy might be the result of an epidemic, but nobody appeared to be surprised by what she was doing. On the contrary, as I discovered soon afterwards, dispensing machines had been thoughtfully installed here and there, from which these madwomen were able to draw lots of small bags. The provisional conclusion I reached was that these must be women whose fervent wish to have a child had remained unfulfilled, giving rise to a form of hysteria which presented itself in this disproportionate care for all manner of dogs. And I had to concede that providing the poor creatures with bags was an astonishingly pragmatic solution. In the longer term, of course, these women ought to be steered back to their proper duties, but I expect that some party or other had opposed this. It’s all too familiar.

My mind full of these less than demanding deliberations, I walked uninterrupted to the kiosk; indeed I was scarcely recognised at all. The situation felt curiously familiar, but it was not until I heard the words of the newspaper seller that I understood why. It was that magical atmosphere I had frequently experienced in those early days in Munich, after my release from prison. I was fairly well known in the city, but at the time I was still a minor party chairman, a speaker who could see into
people’s hearts. And it was the little people, the littlest people, who, touchingly, lent me their support. I would cross the Viktualienmarkt, where the poorest of the market women would smile and beckon me over, offering me a couple of eggs or a pound of apples. I went home like a veritable forager, to be greeted by a beaming landlady. Their faces used to radiate the same pure joy that I recognised now in the newspaper vendor. This impression of the past washed over me so quickly, before I could even grasp what it was; it was so overwhelming that I had to look away hurriedly. But on account of his long professional experience, the newspaper seller had acquired an impressive understanding of his fellow man such as one might otherwise only find in motor-cab drivers.

I let out an embarrassed cough and said, “No coffee for me, thank you. But I’d love a cup of tea. Or a glass of water.”

“Your wish is my command,” he said, filling a kettle like the one in my hotel room. “I’ve put the papers by your chair. There aren’t many of them; I think the Internet’s the best place to look.”

“Yes, this Internetwork,” I said in agreement. “A splendid facility. And nor do I believe that my success will be dependent on the goodwill of the newspapers.”

“I don’t want to spoil your enjoyment,” the newspaper seller said, fetching a tea bag from a shelf. “But there’s no need to worry … Those who saw it seemed to like you.”

“I have no worries,” I said confidently. “What is the opinion of a critic worth?”

“Well …”

“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing at all! It counted for nothing in
the Thirties and it counts for nothing now. All they ever do is tell people what to think. The wholesome sensibility of the Volk is in no way inferior. Indeed, the Volk instinctively knows what to think, even without our noble critics. A wholesome Volk has a perfectly clear sense of what is good and what is not. Does the farmer need a critic to tell him how good the soil is in which he cultivates his wheat? No! The farmer himself knows better.”

“Because he sees his fields every day,” the newspaper seller chirped in. “But he doesn’t see you every day.”

“But he does see his television set every day, so he can make his own judgements. No, the German needs no-one to draft opinions for him. He forms his own opinion.”

“Well, you should know,” he said with a grin, offering me the sugar. “I mean, you’re the expert on forming one’s own opinions.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“I really have to watch out with you,” the newspaper seller said, shaking his head. “I can’t help talking to you as if you really
were
him.” A hand rapped on the sales counter behind him. “I’ve got customers. Have a read of what the papers say. There’s not that much.”

I looked at the small pile by the chair. I did not feature on their front pages, but I couldn’t have supposed that would be the case. Nor had any of the major newspapers addressed the topic. For example, that formidable
Bild
was not amongst the pile. Seeing as Gagmez’s programme had been running for a while now, the press were probably no longer all that interested. In the end it was only covered by the smaller regional
papers, which commissioned writers to watch the television set every day in order to compile a short column. Three of these writers had switched on to the programme hoping to be entertained, and all were of the opinion that my speech had been the most noteworthy feature. One found it astonishing that of all people it was a Hitler figure who had identified exactly what Gagmez was serving up every week: a mass of clichés about foreigners. The other two said that, thanks to my “splendidly wicked performance”, Gagmez had finally rediscovered his edge, which had been missing for far too long.

“So?” the newspaper seller said. “Happy?”

“I started from the very bottom once before,” I said, sipping my tea. “Back then I spoke to an audience of twenty. I suspect a third of them had come by accident. No, I cannot complain. I must look to the future. How did you find it?”

“Good,” he said. “Hard core, but good. Gagmez didn’t look too thrilled, though.”

“Indeed,” I said. “It’s something I have come across before. Those drunk on success always cry foul whenever a fresh idea makes its mark. At once they start fretting about their livelihood.”

“Is he going to let you back on his programme?”

“He will do whatever the production company tells him. He lives off the system; he must follow its rules.”