What Is All This?

by Stephen Dixon

  Two hours later the madam, Mrs. Dorfer, came into our room and said “Knock knock, darlings. Get your finest finery and most daring undies on, as we’re going to Hitler’s hotel.”

  We all get into a couple of officers’ cars Hitler sent over. Seven of us girls packed in to each one, which was almost the entire house. Lotte and Ilse were left behind. They were obviously too old—girls Mrs. Dorter saved for soldiers and townsmen who had drunk or gambled too much and were down to their last marks. During the ride I asked the girl next to me “Excited?”

  “For what? None of us has more than an eight percent chance of getting him. This was also supposed to be my day off, and besides that I’m coming down with the sniffles, so with my luck it’ll probably be me.”

  “But Hitler. Just that you might see him up close.”

  “Yes, Hitler. Maybe you’ve a point. Truth is, till now I didn’t even think there was a real Hitler. He’s so easy to impersonate and look like, and that voice—even my brother fooled me with it once on the phone. I thought there might be four to five men dressed like him making speeches and shaking their fists all over Europe—something thought up by some military and industrial geniuses to get our economy rolling again, and knowing the national mentality, what better way? But real or not, I was never one of his bigger fans. He comes in like hailstones and thunder, and thinks we’re going to take over the whole western world? You ever read world history? I did—before, when I was becoming a teacher, plus all the best literature there is. In the end, we got to lose. You can only stick it out so far and for so long before choppo, you get your head and hands cut off and, if you’re not looking, your behind too. So big deal, I quietly say in my own way—Hitler as a client. No, I thought it over. Years from now if I’m alive and I tell people that, they’ll say ‘That miscreant and baboon? He brought the great German nation to its lowest ebb yet. You had the devil himself in you.’ But believe me, if I wind up with Hitler I don’t move any more for him than I would for any other man, unless he puts a cocked gun to my head. And with his responsibilities and heavy worries and past decisions, you think he’s going to do any amazing tricks in bed? That’s for the newsreels. Like all deep thinkers I’ve had, it’ll take everything he has for him to get started and then stay with it, so I suppose I will have to move a little more for him than with others, just to get the job over with.”

  “Well, I’m excited at the prospect,” the girl on my other side said.

  “It’s like a fantasy come true. When I was a young girl—I am not old—I fell in love with him right after they jailed him for that putsch. His face—so sensitive and brooding, yet sweet. And his presence, defiance and physique. That was then. Maybe now his body’s a little changed. But I wrote him a letter, even. When he got out of prison he wrote me one back. He said ‘Your faith in my cause inspired me and inspires me still. We will win.’ That was very nice. I kept the letter, knowing it would be valuable one day, but my ancestral home was bombed early in the war and everything went up in it—I won’t even specify what people were inside. But from that prison sentence till now I have adored him. If I was chosen over all you girls it would be like for some other women making love with the world’s most famous movie star who they’ve been writing about in their diaries for years. And he’s still very handsome and gallant like one, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Very,” I said. “Do you know anything about what kind of girl he prefers? I heard he likes them extremely young.”

  “I don’t know, though I’m sorry to hear what you said. Perhaps if he’d succeeded with that putsch and we were in the same situation now, only ten years earlier, my chances would be better. But I wasn’t a prostitute then, so I guess I lose out no matter what.”

  “I’ve a good idea what he likes,” a girl on one of the jumpseats said.

  “Helga, the cleaning lady in our house, told me he only likes girls with big derrieres. She said years ago she was a girl in the most elegant house in Hamburg, and Hitler, who’d just become chancellor then, came in with Goebbels or Göring—though I know those two don’t look alike, I always get their names mixed up because of the G and O. They were some pair, she said, Hitler and the other one. Joking, playing the piano, throwing money in the air. You should speak to her. She has funny stories to tell about them just from their one trip. But Hitler took the girl with the biggest buttocks. She was also very young, chunky, and kind of happy-go-lucky, and had short black hair.”

  “Someone else thought he liked tall blondes with tiny waists,” I said.

  “I’d heard that too. So I asked Helga again, but she said Hitler definitely picked the stubby black-haired and Göring or Goebbels chose a tall blond. But you got a nice derriere—not fat, but just big and broad enough to qualify. Mine? Too small and firm, I think—coconuts, which lots of men prefer. If Helga’s right then I guess I should count myself out too. Though I’d love to be the one selected. Not just for the money involved but because it’ll be one hell of a story to tell for the rest of my life.”

  “Did Helga say what kind of man Hitler was like?”

  “Only the girl he was with saw him. But she did say something quite strange happened soon after Hitler left. The girl fainted dead away in the room she’d used. They thought she was overcome with being with the new dynamic chancellor, and maybe he also had something unique going in a physical and amorous way to have had such an effect on a young pro. They revived her with salts, but she said she couldn’t speak about what happened, nor could she work anymore that night. For two days after, all she could speak was gibberish—his stress, his anxieties, how it isn’t easy guiding an entire nation and maybe becoming the future number one leader of the world. They got her a doctor, but the third day after she saw Hitler and without allowing herself another man, she really cracked and had to be taken away.”

  “She must have been very immature,” I said. “I know I wouldn’t let myself go like that if he picked me tonight.”

  “You never know. Have you ever had a truly great man?”

  “You mean a powerful figure—world famous, like a great artist whose name everybody knows? Once; Johann the tightrope walker.”

  “You had him? Out of the air I’d think he’d be ungainly and tense.”

  “Sort of. But he’s called the best ropewalker in Germany and so maybe the rest of the world, we can say, can we not?”

  “We might.”

  “Even still, he fell. Two weeks ago—I read it in the paper. Broke both legs and his spine entertaining our troops. He was the most famous man I ever had, and just average in bed. Wanted things done, wouldn’t do much, peter out, come back, give him a few wiggles from below and you’re done with him. Nothing out of the ordinary. Normal.”

  “Maybe that was a bad day for him, or a very good one. Maybe all aerialists and the like only think they have to come to us, but don’t do well because they get most of their fulfillment on the ropes and bars. And like our leader, just think of all the tensions they come to you with. Everybody watching them, one false move and so forth, some people even hoping they’ll fall because that could be more exciting than just his high-wire walk. But Hitler’s problems are much different than any other man’s, so I don’t want to prejudge him too hard. Though I do think he’ll be an experience to make love with just because he is who he is and all those pressures he has to release.”

  The cars stopped. “Everyone into the hotel,” an officer said. “Leave your pocketbooks and accessories in the cars.” Soldiers all around—naturally, security was tight. So many flags above the entrance, and the lobby never seemed so clean and bright.

  We were led into the dining room. Only now, nobody was there except maybe fifty soldiers on guard. The middle of the room had been cleared except for fourteen chairs in a row for us girls. We were told to sit. A few minutes passed. Then the commanding officer said “Everyone rise.” The soldiers stood at attention, and all the girls rose. The door from the kitchen opened, and out first in front of a group of officers was Hit
ler, who walked quickly and was in full uniform and knotted tie and holstered pistol and with his hat and swagger stick under one arm, but instead of those riding boots I’d always seen him in photos and newsreels, he wore highly polished black shoes. He walked past us with the commanding officer, as if we were this officer’s troops he was inspecting. He was taller than I thought he’d be, and he didn’t look well: pale and fleshy in the face and with big bags under his eyes. His hair style and mustache were the same as always, and his paunch and the way his body drooped were no different than most men his age. He also looked a little annoyed, as if with just one glance he knew that none of us were what he’d had in mind and that he was wasting his time here. Then he smiled.

  That one,” he said, pointing the stick at Vera, the girl who’d been wanting him since the Putsch. “No good. Sorry, my dear,” he said, sort of bowing, and the officer snapped his fingers and a soldier escorted her out of the room. Vera, who threw her hands to her mouth and screamed in delight when she’d thought she’d been picked, left sobbing. Hitler walked past us all again and kept shaking his head.

  “Stand straight and tall, girls,” the officer said.

  “No, that’s all right,” Hitler said. They’re standing fine. That one,” and he pointed the stick at Gretchen, who had the biggest buttocks and maybe the best shape of any of us. “She’s quite charming looking, but her age is against her. Please,” he said to the officer. “To save them this embarrassment, you should have left behind the types I asked you to. Excuse me,” he said to Gretchen, and the officer snapped his fingers and she was escorted out.

  Of the twelve girls left, maybe only Reni had a behind that came close to being as big as mine but still compact, if that was what Hitler liked most in a woman. She also had a bigger bosom and tinier waist and was blond and almost as young as me, so I thought he’d pick her. Then, maybe Hetta next, who was the real beauty of the bunch though perhaps too tall and slim for him and like me a brunette, with maybe long-legged Frieda and me coming in third.

  “You,” he said, pointing to me. So I was out too. “I would like her. She has a bit more sparkle in the face than the others and a seemingly cheerier disposition, though you are all so nice for taking the time to come here today and Colonel Beineman will see that you are adequately recompensed. Thank you,” and he saluted us with the stick and left.

  The rest of the girls crowded around me. “Oh, Gerta, you are so lucky,” they said. “You clever girl. I bet you winked at him and showed him a peek of what you had, isn’t that so?”

  The winner and new champion, perhaps,” Clothilda said, raising my hand above my head. “You will be fantastic. He will adore you and be fantastic. Play your cards right, my darling, and you can take that other whore’s place and give orders in all his castles and feed his huge dogs.”

  “Just be careful and return to us safe and sound,” Mrs. Dorter said.

  The rest of you please return to the cars you arrived in,” the commanding officer said. “Mrs. Dorter, see Colonel Beineman, and you, please,” he said to me, “come with me?”

  I got into the hotel elevator with him and two guards. “You have nothing that can be construed as weapons,” he said. “Barrettes, nail-files, clippers—mind if I search?”

  “And if I did?”

  “I’d have the matron do it. I don’t take liberties with women, madame.”

  “Search me.”

  He searched me during the elevator ride. “You’re clean. Now be good to the leader, you hear? He doesn’t need to be counseled or consoled, just relaxed. Say only pleasant and reassuring things to him. Beautiful day today—words to that effect. He won’t find them rude or dumb and he will understand your unease. And don’t be aggressive or suggest anything unless he asks you to. He likes politeness and warmth. In other words, do what he says to do, and you will be amply rewarded, and if he comes this way again soon, you’ll be his choice for a second time.”

  “How long do you think it will be?”

  This is between you and him. And I forgot: be responsive too. Whatever he does, say you like.”

  Though I know he’s not like anybody else, I do that with all my clients unless they’re suffocating me with their weight or trying to murder me. Any other advice?”

  “None I can think of. After it’s over, he’ll tell you so by leaving through the door to the adjoining room, and probably without saying another word. Then you get washed and dressed and see me outside your door.”

  We walked down a hotel corridor where a lot of soldiers were. “Can I ask you one more thing? Why do you think he picked me?”

  “He already said. He liked you. Your disposition and sparkle and such.”

  “Some of the girls said they heard he only likes us young and with big buttocks and larger breasts than mine and maybe blond and a very narrow waist, which mine—though flat—is not. Any of that true?”

  “He likes all kinds. Young, maybe, but most men do. But you with your brown hair and others with red or black or even dyed to those. But no more of this. Here is his room. Just go inside and undress and get in bed under the top sheet. He’ll be in soon.”

  I went inside and undressed and got in bed. There was an uncorked bottle of Moselle in an ice bucket by the bed. I’d like a drink but didn’t know if I should take one. I’d wait. There was fruit too. And tiny cheese and wurst sandwiches on a silver tray. Truth was, I was getting nervous and would like something to eat and drink to calm my nerves. For what would I say to him? How was I to act? He’d see through any pose I put on. La guerre goes well, mon general, n’est pas? No, that wouldn’t do. Whatever I’d say: no jokes. And suppose he didn’t like me nude? My simple little appendectomy scar might put him off. Then he’d say so and I’d leave if he wanted me to, easy as that. I don’t think he’d get angry. And he had so much power. That was what frightened me. I must be on my guard what I do and say. People who it seemed hadn’t done or said anything had disappeared. Not anyone I knew, but friends of friends. All for a good cause, I’m sure, but some say no. But who was to say what was the good cause? A man with so much power could establish his own good cause. That was true. Just keep the words functional and complimentary and wait for the signals from him, that was the best way.

  The door to the next room opened and he came out. He didn’t say anything, just looked at the ceiling, blinking his eyes as if the light there was too bright for him, then looked at me. He was in slippers and a bathrobe. Very nice one too. Velvet. Red, with black piping and a thick braided rope. Stern, though, and it didn’t seem a smile would ever come.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “Hello. You’re a very attractive young lady—you know that, don’t you?”

  “I’ve been told.”

  “Hasn’t gone to your head yet, has it?”

  The Moselle?”

  The Moselle? Oh, the Moselle. No, not that. You want some? Maybe you’ve had some.”

  “I haven’t. I thought I’d wait.”

  “You should have felt free and helped yourself. I wouldn’t have minded.” He was still standing by the door he’d come through, bathrobe still tied. “Did you think I would have got upset if you’d taken a glassful?”

  “I thought it would be politer and more respectful of me to wait till you got here. It’s your wine. I’m your guest and these are your rooms. I would wait till you offered it, that’s what I felt.”

  “It’s the hotel’s wine. They gave it to me. The best Moselle, they said. Let me see.” He came over and read the bottle’s label. “Good, but not the best. So now it’s our Moselle and I will only drink a glass if you’ll have one too. No, that’s not so. But drink a glass or two. Don’t wait for me.”

  “Do you want some? I’ll pour it for you.”

  “Yes, pour it. Why not? And I’ll offer you sandwiches. That way, we can be polite to each other and give each other different things.”

  Thank you.” I poured the wine into two glasses, held his glass out for him. We clicked glasses. He fi
rst, then I clicked his. I drank all my wine. He only sipped from his.

  “You drank so fast,” he said.

  “Because I’m a little nervous. Uh-oh, maybe I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “Nervous of me? Don’t be. And say anything. I am in here like all other men. And you are young. And have nice breasts. I like them.”

  Thank you.”

  “I won’t tell you why. That might embarrass you. You’ll have to guess. All women’s breasts are nice, but yours especially so. But I still won’t say why.”

  “I’ll think about why you think they’re nice later on.”

  “Do. It’s good to have something to think about later on.”

  “You mean after you leave?”

  “No, always. Always to have something to think about but not always to think about it. Activity. Physical and of the mind. Both you can’t do very well together at the same time, now can you?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Don’t say so or agree with me unless you believe it.”

  “I won’t.”

  Then what do you really think about it?”

  “About what?”

  That physical and mental activity can’t go hand in hand together very well. And then, not too much of only one without the other coming soon after it, and on and on and on and interchanging themselves like that till you sleep. Thrust yourself into experience and then reflect on the meaning of it. But all reflection and no experience makes us mad. The opposite, and we are nothing but brutes. Now who previously said that?”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  “Guess.”

  “Goethe?”

  “Very good. You’re educated. Or look straight at me and tell me you didn’t read my mind.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Something happened. Or perhaps it is that you’re just plain smart.”

  “I went through your schools. And almost became a nurse.”

  “You should have. And I’m excited by you, you know? Educated, or a mind reader. Both would do.” He sat on the bed. “Oh, I completely forgot.” He offered me the plate of sandwiches. “Eat, go on. You’re young, maybe still growing. And you’ll grow bigger, stronger, and wiser and maybe even telepathic if you take the headcheese.”