Placing his cap on the table, Adolf sat down with his back to the fire and stretched his legs. He wasn’t made to wait long; a wide-hipped serving-girl threaded skilfully through the clamour carrying a stein and a jug of beer.
I couldn’t see what was said, but she laughed at some witticism he made. He took a sip of the cold beer and smacked his lips in appreciation.
My own mouth was a mass of painful sores. My feet were dead from the cold.
I entered the gasthaus and ordered myself a drink, although I knew I would be unable to taste it. I stood well back from the fire.
“Won’t you join us?” a man at an adjacent table asked Adolf.
Adolf gave the speaker a cursory glance, registering the man's round florid face and gleaming high forehead.
“We were just about to start another game.” The man shuffled a deck of cards with the jaunty air of a showman drumming up an audience.
“Room for another at the table,” said one of his two companions. “Especially for a comrade back from the war.”
Adolf declined and rooted the inside pocket of his greatcoat for a slim, finely etched cigarette case, opening it to reveal two dog-eared cigarettes. He selected the slightly longer one and lit it with a taper from the fire. I have never claimed to be a telepath, but I find I can often judge a man's thoughts by his facial expressions, eye movements, or by subtle changes in his posture. Adolf was thinking: To welcome one of our boys back from the war? Some welcome. We had returned from the Western Front to a Fatherland weighed down with disease, poverty and, worst of all, defeatism. Some welcome indeed. In that we were agreed. He settled back with his cigarette, the smoke purging the cold from his bones. He looked at ease. I would soon change that.
“It is very busy tonight,” I said. The chair scraped noisily over the stone floor as I sat down at his table. Adolf closed his eyes, blanking my intrusion.
“I remember you, don’t I?” I said.
He opened his eyes wearily to see me craning forward, scrutinising his face in the dim light. “You were a rider, taking messages to and from the Front. I am right, aren’t I? Tch, my manners.” I offered a grubby hand. “My name is Hubert.”
“Adolf. You are quite right, I sometimes performed despatch rider duties.” He shook my hand — I could see it made him uncomfortable — and moved his head slightly to allow some of the light from the fire to fall on my face. To his credit he suppressed a natural reaction to flinch. I admired him for it; many did not hide their disgust. My face was grim, I knew. Blood and discharge from my ruined lungs crusted in the creases of my lips. My eyes were yellow and crazed by small veins; the pupils looked like black flies trapped in amber.
“I was caught in a gas attack,” I said.
“Ah.” Adolf relaxed. “Me, too, and blinded. I have just come out of hospital. One eye is still worse than the other. A little fuzzy.” He waggled a hand. “But it is improving.”
“The Somme?”
He nodded, his expression bleak.
I raised my glass. “To fallen comrades.”
“To fallen comrades.”
I gasped as the spirits scorched a trail down my gullet. “So, you are a local man?”
“I come from Branau am Inn, Austria, but I was in Munich when the war broke out so I enlisted in the Bavarian infantry. The List Regiment,” he said with obvious pride. “I shall be reporting to the adjutant after this drink.”
A buxom fraulein placed a candle on a saucer in the centre of the table. I imagine I looked even more grotesque by its flickering light.
I said, “The army has dispensed with my services so I have no barracks to welcome me, but there is dry spot in some cellars not far from here. There are many of us ex-servicemen down there.”
I removed a bullet from my breast pocket and slowly turned it in my fingers. It was squashed and misshapen from an impact, but easily recognisable by someone with Adolf's experience as an eight-millimetre round.
“A wartime keepsake?” he asked.
“More than that,” I said, but before I could finish my sentence I was taken by a violent spasm. I coughed noisily and raised a rust-red handkerchief to my mouth. Mindless of my surroundings I had to retch and spit into the handkerchief to avoid choking on a blood clot. I folded away the piece of rag and gave myself a moment to recover. Spots floated before my eyes.
Adolf was looking with open distaste at my sleeve cuffs, which were slimed with the same discharge as my handkerchief.
Quietly, I began to tell him my story. “We were sent over the top three times in quick succession, each assault doomed to failure. The enemy's heavy artillery was fierce and unrelenting.”
****
I was pinned down behind a dry-stone wall. It provided adequate cover, but the muzzle-flash of my Muskete at the interstices gave my position away. I was trapped like a rat cornered by terriers. Despite the numbing cold, I was sweating profusely.
I sniffed, then sniffed again. Tin. I could smell something like hot tin, a piercing tang over and above the cooling gun at my side. My eyes were starting to smart too. I blinked away a tear. Quelling the rising panic, I tugged the gas mask from its receptacle webbed to my chest and pulled the bulky hood over my head, taking care to replace my helmet afterwards. I made it just in time for a corrosive mist had billowed in on the breeze; a dirty, choking cloud of sour green.
I rolled onto my knees and made ready to run. I could see other figures beating hasty retreats, some with their protective masks on and some without, the latter flapping at themselves as though putting out flames. One soldier spun to let loose a grenade before continuing his sprint back to the relative safety of our trench.
Kicking hard, I left the cover of the wall and began to run. Bullets cracked the air like angry lead hornets, kicked up splinters of frosty mud. A grenade exploded behind me, giving me a moment’s respite from the withering Allied riposte. The mask made my breathing laboured, a harsh scraping sound in my ears. I struggled to pick out obstacles as the glass eyepieces steamed over. I was terrified that any second would see me pitch headlong into a crater or be cut down by enemy fire.
Ahead, I could discern the grey, blurred outline of a comrade running pell-mell, his legs rising and falling like pistons, his heavy boots thudding on the packed earth.
I hit the ground hard. I struggled to rise but my legs weren’t responding. There was a pain high in my belly. My eyes stung fiercely. I put a hand to the respirator box at my chest. There was a small neat hole in the casing, and my coat felt wet and sticky. My head snapped back as scalding gas flowed into my mouth and up my nose. My eyes burned as though they roved in orbits of hot ashes. Blisters erupted on the inside of my cheeks. Wave upon wave of hellfire flooded my body as delicate veins burst and membranes shrivelled. My nose trickled a warm coppery fluid into my mouth. I wept blood as the linings of my eyelids swelled and ruptured.
I retched, and bright red blood cannoned off the inside of the mask.
****
“I had been less than twenty metres from home.” I rapped the bullet on the table in a steady rhythm. “This slug hit me here, high in the belly. The surgeon said I was fortunate the respirator box had prevented it from penetrating deeper and causing any real harm.”
Adolf smiled his appreciation of the gallows humour. It was, he agreed, a game of chance. “A bullet passed clean through my sleeve during an attack on enemy lines, missing my arm entirely although I don’t know how. Your whole life hinges on moments such as those. Our fates were in the lap of the gods.”
“You said you were caught in a gas attack, too.”
He shrugged. “There is nothing to tell. My unit was resting alongside the artillery, just behind the frontline trenches. A mustard gas shell detonated nearby and we got out of there fast, but not fast enough. Many of us were blinded. We placed our hands on the shoulders of the man in front and were led to safety.” He shrugged again and took another sip of his beer. He turned at a tug on his sleeve.
“Look at them,” s
aid the first card-player. Adolf followed his gaze to where some newcomers were standing at the bar. Something indefinable — small nuances, their modes of dress — singled them out. An area had cleared around them.
“What of them?” asked Adolf in a reasonable tone.
“Jews. They only call themselves German when it suits them, when they want our money and our homes. But while we fought and died for the Fatherland they came hobbling home in their droves. Stones in their shoes, most likely. Pah!” The round faced man spat on the floor, the spit rolling in sawdust. “Jew boys, I hate them all, every last one of them. The knife takes more than their foreskin, it cuts off their balls too.”
Adolf Hitler's jaws clenched. He looked as though he was about to argue with the man but turned away instead. The card player mumbled something inaudible and then returned to his game.
“Do not be troubled,” I said. “One becomes immune.”
His penetrating gaze roved over my face, trying to work out if I was a full-, half- or quarter-blood Jew.
“I spent much time among your people when I lived in Vienna as a student. I have served with them and, despite that oaf's assertion that they are all cowards, they were good men. In Vienna, before the War, things began to turn ugly and I fear now it will spread. The rampant anti-Semitism in that city always struck me as wrong. Righteous anger at politicians misdirected onto innocent people. I am a patriot. I wear my uniform with pride. I would lay down my life for my countryman, but nationalistic pride does not mean having to hate everyone else.”
I felt crusty blood cracking on my lips. “Your sentiments bring you much credit, but I fear that you are in a minority. And also I am thinking you didn’t tell me the full story, Herr Hitler.”
“What do you mean?”
“The gas attack.”
“The what?”
“The gas attack. You didn’t tell me everything.” I raised the squashed round and rotated it between finger and thumb. He understood. I saw it in his eyes.
He stood and grabbed his greatcoat, putting it on with jerky, uncoordinated movements. His knee bumped the table, causing beer to slop over the rim of the stein.
“Don’t forget this.” I passed him his cap.
Adolf snatched it up and hurried through the crowd of drinkers, heedless of the dirty looks as he barged them aside. He tugged the door open and staggered outside, gasping as the cold air hit him.
I wiped condensation from the window to watch him. Visibility was poor in the mist that had descended after the snow petered out, but I saw him run across the road. He surprised me by dashing in the opposite direction of the army barracks. His feet skated on the icy cobbles.
I picked his rucksack from under the table and went after him. I gambled on him cutting back to the army barracks once he had regained a cool head.
He had not lied to me about the gas attack on his unit, but he had omitted the truth. When Adolf was temporarily blinded, he had not acted calmly or with bravery. He had been commended for the coveted Iron Cross twice — he was no coward — but unable to see, his eyes and skin burning with the effects of mustard gas, he was temporarily unmanned. He unslung his Steyr-Mannlicher rifle and let loose with two shots before someone still in possession of their faculties disarmed and knocked him to the ground. Adolf endured the pressing weight of comrades as they piled on him, held his thrashing limbs until his fear spent itself. He was then dragged unceremoniously to his feet, had his hands placed on the shoulders of a fellow soldier equally blighted and ordered to keep his fool head down.
I had not picked his brain for this information. Have I not already explained I am not a telepath? But it had been surprisingly easy to discover who had opened fire after the order to cease firing during a retreat had been given.
Blind and in considerable pain, that march to safety would have been the longest night of his life. Over the ensuing nights, as he lay in a hospital bed, he would have wept with the fear of being permanently blind. Was the silence behind his bandaged eyes punctuated by those two reports from his rifle, his moment of cowardice? The first shot he had heard ricochet off stone, but the second...now he knew the second had winged away into the green mist to strike a fellow infantryman named Hubert.
I found Adolf staggering in an alleyway. The network of fizzing gas lamps did not extend far enough to dispel the swimming mist-wraiths around us. He pressed a hand to his side and leaned against a soot-stained wall, his ragged breath swirling in droplets of moisture. His sodden moustache hung limp.
He stiffened at the sound of my footsteps and peered myopically through the shifting grey curtain of fog. I imagine I looked quite daunting: a silhouetted figure in a long trench coat emerging from the mist. I carried his rucksack. It contained his Iron Cross and several paintings.
Adolf froze. I strode closer, ice-skinned puddles crunching under my heels until we were separated only by an arm’s length. My chest heaved. I could feel wet blood on my lips and chin. I wiped it off on my sleeve.
“You left without your rucksack. I thought you would want it.” My words sounded as though they had been dredged up from a deep well. I knew my time was near.
Adolf swallowed, his dry throat clicking. “Thank you.”
I watched impassively as Adolf put his arms through the straps of the rucksack and cinched them tight.
“I owe you an apology,” he said. “I don’t know what came over me. Perhaps I could have a word with someone about a room for you, or...I don’t know. If I had anything to give you, I would. But I don’t.”
I nearly smiled. “Oh, I wouldn’t say that.” I took Adolf's unresisting hand and pulled him closer. “You have your body.”
Adolf recoiled, his head smacking into the wall in his haste to get away. My head darted forward like a striking cobra. I had done this before. Many times. I pushed my sticky tongue between his lips. It skated over gritted teeth. I kneed him hard in the testicles so that his mouth sagged and let me in.
I made the exchange.
He tried hard to lever me off, but he would be feeling weak now. He would feel his strength dissipate as though every particle of his body was rushing away at impossible speed. I was experiencing the same thing myself. It is like being flipped inside out, as if your insides are being drawn through your navel, your brain tearing from its anchors, the inner ears and optic nerves detaching. The sensation is horrifying, especially the first time, but it is, paradoxically, without pain. I released him, his wheezing breath echoing in my ears.
Adolf stumbled, bereft of sensation; deaf and blind. His knees crumpled, his world spun and the flagstones struck him a vicious blow to the left temple.
While he slept, I absorbed his memories. Sifted, correlated and assimilated them.
He would dream. They always do.
****
The sunlight is blinding, the sky a burning copper bowl over a scorched earth. The heat buckles the ground beneath the watcher’s feet. It scorches his nostrils and threatens to hammer him to his knees.
A crowd jostles and shoves at his back. He snarls and shoves back with his elbows, determined to keep his place at the roadside. Shielding his eyes, he squints into the dazzle and watches the ragged procession snaking its way up the rough track. It shimmers in the heat haze. Centurions — tall and lean in their horsehair-plumed helmets, their polished breastplates dulled by dust — jeer and goad their charge as he struggles under the weight of the coarse, unplaned timber.
The watcher sees the bent figure draw closer, close enough for the streaks of dried blood on the victim’s face to become apparent, the cruel imitation of a crown on his head and the gouges on his shoulders and legs made by the whip. He is smaller than the watcher expected, this self-proclaimed Son of God, and darker; his skin burned nut-brown by the sun.
The watcher wants to whimper, but instead hostile foreign sounds spill from his throat, the sarcasm unmistakable. He extends a finger and jabs the air. The bent man pauses under his burden and establishes eye contact. And though he spea
ks quietly, and from a distance, every strange-sounding syllable rings like a bell.
The watcher falls to his knees as if physically struck, the superheated air drawing the moisture out of his lungs
****
Poor Adolf. I could see his chest burned with every breath as though he drew in flames, a fire not even the freezing fog could quell.
“Open your eyes, Herr Hitler. Come on.”
He tried to move, but it took so much effort...it was easier to just let oneself liquefy and bleed into the cracks between the flagstones.
“Don’t sham me, I know you are awake.”
He gingerly opened one eye and gazed unfocused at my feet.
“That’s better.” My voice would be tauntingly familiar . I strode away, keeping my back to him. I wore his greatcoat and rucksack.
“Thieving bastard!” he whispered, and spat a string of pink and black mucus that roped his chin to the floor.
I executed a smart about-turn. The tip of the cigarette I smoked glowed in the darkness, illuminating my bushy moustache.
Adolf screwed shut his eyes, but not before I saw the panic in them.
“What did you see in the dream?” I asked. “Tell me.”
Adolf's eyes swivelled to face me and looked with horror into his own face, for I wore more than just his clothes.
“Ach. You know who I am? What I am?”
Adolf was silent. His mother would have told him the legend of the Wandering Jew.
I squatted to look my victim squarely in the eye. “The Roman soldiers took Christ, they stripped and whipped him, humiliated him, were about to crucify him...Back then, I was simply Ahasue’rus the cobbler. I got caught up in the heat of the moment and I shouted, ‘Faster, Jesus, faster!’ I still don’t understand why I did that; it was so out of character for me. The Son of God said he forgave me, but told me I would roam the earth until he comes among us again.
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