The Iron Bridge: Short Stories of 20th Century Dictators as Teenagers

by Anton Piatigorsky

  “Are they roasting tobacco today?” Klara asks. “Is that what’s in the air?”

  “I don’t know,” says Adi. “I thought it was father’s pipes.”

  He stares down at the food on his plate, the muscle striations of a pork chop, the pink juice that seeps. He cuts and forks a piece of meat, but as he chews the rich morsel, he has to resist the urge to gag and spit it back into his napkin. He pictures the corpse of a pig with its throat cut, its blood pouring, the purple, glossy viscera lying in a heap outside its carcass. He imagines its bones roasting on a fire and feels the meat inside his mouth, knocked around by his tongue and teeth, lubricated with his saliva. Yes, the flesh of a pig that once wallowed in its own shit. Adi distracts himself with a second helping of beans. After he wins the lottery, he will hire a cook to make only what he wants.

  When Klara finishes the dishes, she wrings out her cloth and wipes the counter. Adi watches her clean the handles of all the cupboards, even the ones that haven’t been touched. She opens a drawer beside the sink and removes a velvet rag that she will use to polish the eighteen pipes mounted against the back wall. Adi’s dead father’s pipes retain their scent of putrid tobacco even though they haven’t been used in well over two years. Klara removes a large one, polishes its meerschaum bowl and the lips of its mouthpiece, and replaces it on the rack. She makes sure it’s straight before moving on to another. Adi can’t understand why she takes such care of these pipes, even here, on Humboldtstrasse. Does she think her husband will come back from the dead to reign over this apartment? Does she expect him to demand clean meerschaum? Is she still that afraid?

  Adi stands and pushes his chair to the table, leaving his meal half finished. Klara asks if he’s got any plans for the day. It’s a timid question, but there’s a hint of accusation to it. Adi knows all about the heated conversations Klara has had with Angela, his older half-sister, and with Leo, Angela’s husband, in his mother’s bedroom. He eavesdropped on them from the hall. Angela and Leo demanded that Klara put more pressure on Adi to establish himself in a trade, the only proper thing for him to do now that he’s dropped out of school.

  “No plans until evening,” Adi tells his mother, glaring at her in defiance. “I’m busy with my work.”

  “Adi,” Klara whispers.

  He throws his head back and groans. “Mother,” he says with a sigh. He stiffens as he approaches her. “I have explained to you many times that the production of great art is a fickle, haphazard, and mysterious process. It cannot, in any way, be compared to other kinds of work.” Adi takes Klara’s trembling hands and holds them still. “It is a terrible mistake to judge an artist by the same standard as one would judge an artisan.”

  “But why can’t you find a trade,” Klara responds, her wide eyes moistening, “and still work at your painting, like Gustl with his music? Your father—hallowed be his memory—would not approve of this behaviour. He would not have liked it one bit.”

  Adi releases his mother’s hands and steps back to face her. “My dear mother,” he says, with firm but condescending sweetness, “Father so prized efficiency because his job required that particular skill of him. It’s the same for all those customs officials. Time itself is the gold standard whereby their every action is judged. If a case is processed quickly, it’s a success, pure and simple! Efficiency, for that whole lot of bureaucrats in the civil service—why, it’s the only means for them to determine success or failure.” He retakes his mother’s hands and kisses two of her fingernails. “Not so with art,” he says, his blue eyes bulging at her. “Not so with art!” Repeating the phrase with greater animation makes it sound all the more convincing.

  Instead of being soothed by her son’s explanation, Klara lowers her head and starts to tremble and cry. Her hands shake in his grip. Poor little Mother is so like a bird who’s struck the glass, or perhaps fallen out of her nest onto the busy street below, just a delicate featherlight bird, soon to be crushed under the boot of an oblivious passerby—unless, of course, Adi scoops her up and protects her, nurses her back to health. He squeezes his mother’s fingers and forces her to look up at him.

  “I will tell you a secret, Mother,” he says.

  Klara sniffles and swallows, but listens.

  “I will tell you a secret at the risk of tempting fate,” he repeats, his eyes growing wider. “I will tell you a magnificent secret.”

  Adi releases his mother’s hands and disappears into his room. Klara brushes away her tears with her knuckles and waits for Adi to return. When he does, he is holding his lottery ticket.

  “Here,” he says, handing it to her. “You see?”

  Klara stares at the card with its embossed digits and the Hapsburg icon, unsure of what exactly she’s supposed to see.

  “I have won,” says Adi, tapping the paper. “The lottery.”

  Klara’s childlike face opens in astonishment. “You have?” she asks, her voice rising to a cry.

  “I have won the lottery,” he repeats, now pressing his lips together and letting his eyes widen.

  “You’ve really won the lottery?” Their faces are moving closer and closer together with each iteration of that magnetic statement. “Are you certain?”

  “I’ve won!” he says again. “I was in bed this morning with that ticket on my chest and felt the spirit of victory inside it. I felt its weight. I felt it on me. I have won the lottery,” says Adi. “I assure you. I guarantee it.”

  “Oh, Adi,” Klara says, bursting into tears again. “Oh, Adi.”

  Adi wraps his arms around his shaking mother and holds her close to his chest. Tears have begun to stream down his cheeks as well. “It’s happening, Mother,” Adi cries. “It’s happening, right now. I’ve won!”

  “Oh, my Adi,” Klara whispers through sobs. She clings desperately to her son, pressing her small body against his, as if she’s terrified of what will happen to him when she lets go.

  A few minutes later, after his mother has gone, the frantic teenager, assured of his own victory and heroism, sits alone at the little desk in his bedroom and extracts sketch paper. Where will he begin? He closes his eyes and focuses his concentration. When he opens them again, he begins to draw the bridge he’s designed to span the Danube, wide as Vienna’s Ringstrasse and lined with mythological statues. It will connect the Hauptplatz to the green hills of Urfahr, replacing the present iron monstrosity, which is completely impractical for modern Linz, as it is not much wider than a single horse-drawn cart. Today’s version of the bridge adds nothing to his basic design, conceived months earlier.

  He soon tires of architecture and decides to execute a few pastoral paintings. He’s not very interested in these, but he’ll need them for his entrance portfolio for the Viennese Academy of Fine Arts. Using watercolour and a postcard as a guide, he paints the hills around Linz, a field by Pöstlingberg in late afternoon, the shadows long in the yellowing sky, and a couple of peasants tending sheep. He’s humming Elsa’s motif from Lohengrin while he works. He finishes the first painting, makes a second, and a third. His strokes are short and serious, although he’s not really focusing on his craft. He’s imagining the astonished faces of the Viennese academy’s instructors, how they’ll shake their heads and raise their brows and whisper excitedly to each other: Look at Hitler’s pastorals! He can whip them off, just like that, one after the other, without stopping! And when those flabbergasted teachers think they’ve seen it all, the full range of his talents, he’ll knock them out with his plans for the new Linz opera theatre.

  “Victory is a spirit,” he’ll tell his instructors. “When it’s inside you, you cannot be defeated.”

  Hours pass and the light softens. It is nearly four-fifteen. Adi goes into the bathroom, shuts the door, and runs the water until it’s hot. He studies his reflection in the mirror, his long face and bulging eyes, his gaunt and sallow cheeks. A mop of black hair falls over his pasty forehead. His brow is as bulky as an ape’s, and it recedes ridiculously. His nostrils are so cavernous
that two snakes could slither inside and make themselves at home. Who knows how much dripping snot is stashed up there? His nose is horrible, prominent and protruding. He twitches the fuzz above his lip, wishing it were thicker. He wets his washcloth and scours his face, careful to remove every flake of dry skin.

  Now Adi must address the problem of his teeth, which are yellow and rotting, especially the bottom ones. A few are turning black. What a pity. He needs to practise smiles that will keep them well hidden. He tries several options, but there’s really no hope. It’s the same conclusion every day: he must raise his chin slightly, smiling only with his eyes. Stefanie does not need to see his teeth.

  His mother has laid his shirt on his bed, as requested, pressed and clean, crisp and white. He puts it on and fumbles with his silver cufflinks, ties a red and gold cravat, and then dons his best suit, which shows signs of wear at the elbows. He tucks the notebook and lottery ticket into his pocket, along with a recent drawing he’s made of his future apartment’s interior, folded into a square. When he emerges, his mother is waiting for him in the living room, standing beside his little sister, Paula. It’s nearly five o’clock.

  Adi nods coldly at Paula. She nods in return, a half-step hidden behind her mother. A pretty girl of nine with the Hitler family’s big blue eyes, timid by nature, and dour, Paula wears the dress uniform of her elementary school, from which she has recently returned. Klara is gently and absently stroking the girl’s straight hair.

  “The opera?” his mother asks.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Go get your brother’s money from the can,” Klara tells Paula.

  The girl scurries into the kitchen and searches under the sink for the tin stuffed with Kronen. As she does, Adi and Klara wait beside each other, fidgeting on their feet, glancing alternately at the carpet and the wall.

  “Oh, Adolf,” Klara whispers, her voice almost breaking.

  “Mother, please. I’m an artist, you understand. That’s all there is to it.”

  He glances at the large portrait of his father on the side wall. Alois Hitler, in his official, double-buttoned customs jacket, has a low and bulging brow, a bulldog face, and a wild moustache with side whiskers like the emperor’s. The portrait has been recently dusted, no doubt that very morning, since Klara cleans house daily, without exception. In the image of the dead customs official Adi sees disdain for artistic greatness, for the fancy suits of those without station, for the dandies’ leisurely nights at the opera house. Adi makes a point of keeping his expression still while staring into his father’s eyes.

  Paula returns with three Kronen, two for his ticket, one for his evening snack. His daily allowance. She hands the money to her mother, who in turn hands it over to her son. Adi nods and slips the bills into his pocket. Paula runs to the coat stand by the door and removes his summer overcoat, his ebony walking stick, and his silk top hat.

  He takes the coat and slips it over his shoulders like a cape. “Thank you, Fräulein,” he says to his little sister, nodding formally. Paula beams. He removes black kid gloves from the pockets and makes a ceremony out of pulling them on. He lays the top hat on his head and gives it a little tap. Then, at last, he takes his ivory-handled walking stick from his sister. Resting his weight upon it, he steps one foot forward and raises his chin, striking a dramatic pose. “Well?”

  Klara presses her hands together, her face opening into a wide grin. Paula giggles beside him. Adi doesn’t hide his bad teeth.

  “What’s tonight?” Klara asks.

  “Lohengrin.”

  “Again?”

  “Again.”

  He touches the rim of his top hat in parting, as befits a dashing bohemian. His mother closes the door behind him. He swings his walking stick in circles and descends three flights, down to Humboldtstrasse, clicking his heels on each step and humming Siegfried’s horn theme from Götterdämmerung.

  Linz is warm and full of colours on this cloudless evening in early June. The street is crowded with horses, carts, and pedestrians. Civic workers plant flowers for the city’s annual summer festival. Children in knickers play with a ball. A drunk staggers and sings a garbled Hungarian song. Adi walks over to the Hauptplatz, where gentlemen sip drinks at cafés and eat early dinners of bratwurst and beer. Crowded streetcars rumble in their tracks. When two young lieutenants pass Adi at a leisurely pace, their sabres trailing like tails, he glares at the lazy Austrian oafs who don’t have anything better to do than loiter in the Hauptplatz. He leans against the fence at the large Trinity Column in the northern end of the square and checks his pocket watch. Just after five. Right on time. He withdraws his small notebook from the inner pocket of his suit and opens it to his poem “Hymn to the Beloved.” With a pen, he marks little ticks beside a few words, as if he were still composing it, imagining the sight of his own forehead wrinkled in concentration. He’s a rakish figure, is he not, standing beneath the gigantic column with its cherubs and clouds and radiant sun, with his overcoat on his shoulders, his top hat and walking stick? He whistles as he waits.

  The winning number will be in tomorrow’s newspaper, and then his photograph, an image of the victor, will appear the day after that. When the reporters come to him with their petty questions about money, he will unveil his great plans for the new bridge to Urfahr, for the lengthening of the marble frieze on the Landesmuseum, and for the cog railway climbing the Lichtenberg to a new hotel of Italian Renaissance style.

  The square is alive with activity—policemen patrolling; civil servants returning from work in groups, laughing and packing their pipes; farmers loading their remaining flowers, vegetables, and leather goods into carts—but Adi doesn’t see Stefanie or her mother. They should have appeared by now. Realizing that he might have better luck if he wanders on the street, Adi leaves the towering column and approaches the old cathedral, scanning faces along the way.

  Out of the square, on the Landstrasse, shoppers, diners, and amblers present themselves in their finery for their late afternoon strolls. Adi’s ebony walking stick clicks on the cobblestones. A horse and cart clomp by. He nods to the driver. Still no sign of her. When he reaches the end of the commercial district, he crosses the street and marches back on the other side, his overcoat swishing behind him as if he were a count.

  At last, as Adi nears Schmiedtoreck, he sees Stefanie approaching on his side of the street, walking arm in arm with her mother, as usual. No doubt the sight of young Adi in her peripheral vision has set her heart racing. Her seeming lack of interest is just an act of saving face. Adi stiffens his posture and tries to appear bored by the activity, as if he were, in principal, above the trendy fashion parade on the Landstrasse but had deigned just this once to enjoy its simple pleasures.

  Stefanie is tall and slender, with dark brown hair pulled into a bun, chubby cheeks, pouty lips, and light blue eyes speckled with flashes of aquamarine, like opals. An ethereal motif could accompany this walk of hers down the Landstrasse. He can almost hear her pure and radiant voice singing of loneliness and salvation—Einsam in trüben tagen hab ich ze Gott gefleht—a prayer that leads to his arrival, just like the hero and heroine in Lohengrin. As she moves closer to him now, only a step or two away, Adi raises his chin and closes his mouth, smiling with his eyes. But now a horse neighs in the street and offers a half-hearted kick back to the loaded cart it’s hauling, and the stout driver clicks at the nag and mutters bland obscenities. Stefanie and her mother, both expressionless, with nothing more than the mild curiosity of any common pedestrian, turn to regard this amusing exchange between a beast of burden and its master. Adi and the girl pass each other on the sidewalk without making eye contact, and now she’s behind him, moving away, and his stick is continuing to click on the stones as the distance between them grows.

  Adi blinks rapidly. He’s marching past suited gentlemen and ladies in their finery, but the faceless figures all blur together in a stream of copious fabric. Adi stares up into the darkening sky, his cheeks stinging. It’s only on
e evening, of course, and it doesn’t matter. Their love can’t be obliterated by a single missed connection. The proof of their bond is in the way their glances have locked, here, on the Landstrasse. Not tonight, of course, but other nights, many nights, dozens of times, always in passing, sometimes with a short nod, sometimes a semi-smile. Although they’ve never spoken to each other, not even a simple hello, Adi’s body has quivered with the vibration of their kindred spirits united. The crests and valleys of Stefanie’s feelings are synchronized with his own musical emotions, albeit played in different octaves. He has heard the Wagner in her head, harmonizing with the Wagner in his own.

  Adi’s glassy eyes stare at nothing, oblivious to his surroundings. If Stefanie does not hear their music tonight, that can only be because her mind has been poisoned, must have been poisoned, by the cacophonous Magyar influences in their cursed empire. All that Hungarian smugness. The spirits of the perfumed and arrogant lieutenants passing Stefanie in the street emit an awful white noise, a screech that accompanies their oppressive floral scents. How can a true Wagnerian soul be anything other than an undertone in all that Magyar-Czech garbage? Stefanie’s spirit plays an optimistic and ethereal note, quiet and easily missed, but drawn long as it rises into a swell. Her tone is so pure it can fight through noise. And tomorrow, when Adi wins the lottery, when the spirit of victory merges with his own, he will be able to play his musical motif so loudly and clearly that it will obliterate the lesser tones played by inferior souls throughout the city of Linz. He will approach Stefanie’s mother and declare his love—and how can she not hear him then? The harmony played by the two Wagnerian lovers will ring out to the world.

  He continues north on the Landstrasse then veers west onto the wide Promenade. The road narrows and transforms into the gloomy Klammstrasse, where the plaster facades are chipped and stained by ash and smoke, the street caked with dried dung. Adi pauses before his friend’s small and dilapidated Baernreiterhaus, the dangling sign above its storefront reading Kubizek Upholstery. He removes his kid gloves and sticks fingers into his mouth, emitting a high and short whistle Gustl will surely recognize. He pulls his gloves back on, wiggling his fingers for effect, and waits with his hands pulled behind his back. Only fifteen seconds later, he’s grumbling and kicking the cobblestones. At thirty seconds, Adi is pacing back and forth on the street in fury, prepared to kill his only friend for not responding. “Damn lazy Gustl,” he tells the spring air.