“Say hello to Hercules from me, when you see him again,” he calls out. “It surely won’t be much longer now.”
*
A major situation briefing in the Wolf’s Lair. A discussion on the advance of the Red Army and to what extent blocking divisions should be used to seal off East Prussia. Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, the man responsible for these matters from the military staff, has flown in especially from Berlin to make a report.
It is hot in the briefing barracks, so Stauffenberg asks for permission to go and freshen up. The Führer wrinkles his brow. He doesn’t think it’s that hot, and the other officers in the room aren’t exactly fresh either. But Field Marshal Keitel nods.
Stauffenberg comes back. He puts his briefcase down under the conference table, right next to Sirius. Sirius is surprised by the fact that the man is wearing an eye-patch, and that he’s missing his right hand. Who does that remind him of? Oh yes, Barbarossa, the lion tamer. Maybe this man is a lion tamer, too? His thoughts are just wandering to Benares, the lion, when he hears a gentle ticking in the briefcase.
The presentation is taking its time coming. Stauffenberg excuses himself again, this time saying that he needs to pop out to make a phone call. The Führer and Keitel are already leaning over the world map. The dog sniffs at the briefcase, and a strong smell rises into his nose. He gives a loud yelp.
“What’s wrong, my doggy?” asks the Führer in concern. “Did I step on your paw?”
Alarich Heinzel, the Führer’s adjutant, puts the briefcase somewhere else so that the dog has more space.
Then, all of a sudden, a deafening explosion rips through the room. The bomb in the briefcase has been detonated, and the shockwave is so powerful that it hurls Alarich Heinzel across to the window.
Then the ceiling caves in. Lieutenant-General Rudolf Schmundt receives a blow to the head from a roof beam. The heavy map table splinters. Heinrich Berger, the stenographer, is killed on the spot, while the other men manage to crawl out into the open air, severely injured.
And the Führer?
With burst eardrums and tattered clothing, he staggers across the compound, clearly in shock. It is a miracle that he survived.
“It was destiny,” he wheezes, covered in blood. “The stars wanted it that way.”
Colonel General Jodl, also back on his feet, salutes: “Mein Führer! The miracle is called Hansi. If he hadn’t yelped, the bomb would have exploded right next to you, and you would be dead.”
“Hansi!” screams the Führer in desperation. “Where is my doggy?”
A search team clambers down into the ruins of the briefing barracks to find Hansi. The Gestapo, meanwhile, are hot on Stauffenberg’s heels.
The dog lies buried beneath the map of the world. His heart is beating, but only weakly. His eyes are closed, peacefully, and his tongue hangs sideways out of his mouth.
Two men lift him carefully onto a stretcher. They cover him with the flag that was just on the table, as a mark of respect, and march off in goose-step to his master.
Dr. Morell, the Führer’s personal doctor, has been summoned. He inspects the dog thoroughly, listening to his chest with the stethoscope, checking his organs, shining a light through his pupils, measuring the temperature on his tongue – and then an expression of concern settles on his face.
The Führer is holding Hansi’s paw. He is fighting back tears, and losing this battle too.
“Good doggy,” he sobs, “you warned me.”
Dr. Morell proceeds to the diagnosis: “A heart attack. The dog is critically ill.”
The Führer commands: “Order to the Air Force! Fly Hansi to the Charité at once! Sauberbruch is to give it his all, I repeat, his all!”
The propellers can already be heard setting into motion. The dog opens his eyes briefly, seemingly with the very last of his strength, then immediately falls unconscious again when he meets the Führer’s tear-soaked gaze.
The coup has failed. And it was all his fault.
*
Don’t they say that a person’s life flashes before their eyes in the very last seconds before they die? Well, exactly the same thing happens with dogs.
Sirius lies in the plane to Berlin, watching the palm trees on Sunset Boulevard rush past. He thinks of the visit to the dog cemetery that John Clark recommended. An honorary grave in Hollywood, side by side with Humphrey Bogart’s dog. How wonderful that would be. He sees before him the widow who lives twice. Her gratitude makes him feel good. He remembers the meadows of Lucerne, and once again smells the wonderful scent of fresh manure.
Manzini waves at him. The magician is still standing in the circus ring, pointing with a shrug at the time machine and smiling wistfully, as if wanting to ask for forgiveness, as though he is saying: even miracles can go wrong. Sirius understands completely. He too, has just caused a miracle which wasn’t how its creator intended it to be. He forgives the magician.
He has lived a wonderful, fulfilling life.
“Don’t give up!” says the tree.
“I fear my time has come,” breathes Sirius weakly.
“Oh nonsense,” replies the tree, “the next day is a new one.”
Sirius pauses. “What do you mean by that?”
“Gone with the Wind,” mumbles the tree, unsure now.
“Tomorrow is another day,” says Sirius. “That’s how it goes.”
“Really?” says the tree in surprise. “Well, trees can’t go to the cinema, remember.”
Sirius tries to imagine a tree sitting in the cinema. The poor viewer behind him, only seeing the film through the branches. Missing the most important scenes because the trunk is in the way. The man gets up, goes to the box office and asks for his money back. They don’t believe him, and accompany him back to the cinema, but by then the tree is already gone, because he didn’t like the film.
Sirius falls into a peaceful sleep.
*
Professor Sauerbruch and the lead doctors are already standing at the ready when the dog arrives. He is driven up in the state carriage. The Führer’s guard battalion, which just this once is now the Führer’s dog’s guard battalion, salutes.
“Patient Hansi!” announces the commander. “Emergency case!”
The Charité is on red alert, as though the Führer himself had been the victim of the explosion. Which, secretly, Professor Sauerbruch would have preferred. He was a close friend of Claus von Stauffenberg; he even made his hand prosthesis for him.
The dog is taken straight to the intensive care ward. He lies on the trestle, hooked up to all kinds of devices and tubes. An oxygen mask covers his snout. Thankfully, the monitor reveals that he still has a heartbeat.
“Tension pneumothorax,” diagnoses Sauerbruch. “Both lungs have collapsed. Coronary vessels already severely attacked. Critical condition. Don’t x-ray, just take him straight to the operating theatre.”
And yet Dr. Morell said it was a heart attack! He is nothing but a charlatan. Everyone knows it; only the Führer has remained loyal to him. He trusts the “miracle doctor” blindly, eager for his daily “wonder injection”. Exactly what drugs are in it, only the devil knows. Methamphetamine or cocaine, presumably. But that’s another matter.
No-one opens up a thorax better than Sauerbruch. It’s becoming his speciality. And it doesn’t throw him in the slightest that it’s a dog’s thorax, for he knows his stuff with rib cages of all varieties. A lung is a lung. His main concern now is the patient’s circulation – the dog’s heart is beating weakly. On two occasions it even stops, and on the monitor only a straight green line can be seen, without any movement, deathly still. But then the pulse begins to beat again. Sirius is fighting for his life.
The operation draws out over a number of hours, and even the professor himself is at the very end of his strength when he finally lays down the scalpel.
“The dog has made it,” he says. “He’s going to survive.”
At that very moment – and just a few streets away – Colonel-G
eneral Fromm is giving a special commando the order to fire. Claus von Stauffenberg is executed on the spot. He dies with a cry of “Long Live Germany!”
*
Conrad Nicholson Hilton has invited Carl and Rahel Crown to his summer party, as the future parents-in-law of his daughter Electra. They have no idea that it will be their last big party in Hollywood, otherwise they would try to enjoy the evening more.
They are a little stiff and shy. The other guests know them, if at all, as hotel staff, dressed up in Bordeaux-red uniforms. Hilton introduces the Crowns as “friends of the family”. When pressed for more information, he adds: “Mr Crown is a famous Plato researcher from Berlin”. Isn’t that right? That’s what his daughter told him, and she would know, because she’s studying philosophy. In her twelfth semester.
“A porter who’s a Plato scholar?” asks Rex Whittaker, the director of the New York Plaza Hotel, with a look of surprise. His wife looks piqued.
“Plato,” she giggles tipsily, “isn’t that the word doctors use for…?” She points self-consciously at her husband’s trouser fly.
“No darling,” replies Mr Whittaker, adding in a whisper, “that’s “penis.”’
“Oh,” she replies, rolling her eyes.
“Plato,” Conrad Nicholson Hilton corrects, “was a philosopher in the Middle Ages.”
The band plays Bésame Mucho. People dance.
“Didn’t you used to have a famous dog?” asks Rita Hayworth, who is now married to Orson Welles. “Goliath, or something like that?”
“Hercules,” replies Crown.
Sad, but true. Hercules has slowly faded into obscurity into Hollywood. And the incompetent doppelgänger played a part in that. Jack Warner put the legend on ice.
“He’s in Berlin,” Rahel chips in. “On tour.”
Rita Hayworth smiles sympathetically. “On tour? That’s just another way of saying Auf Wiedersehen. Isn’t it?”
“We hope so,” says Crown, not catching her drift.
The Crowns don’t mean to give themselves airs, but they now have a famous son-in-law. Andreas Cohn. He recently made his debut as a soloist, accompanied by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 3.
The New York Times enthused:
“We have listened to Menuhin. We have listened to Heifetz. We have listened to Oistrakh. Always with our ears. And now we have listened to Andreas Cohn. With our hearts.”
The Diablo, they call him. Because his virtuosity has almost demonic traits, but also because of his hellishly romantic looks. Women are throwing themselves at his feet.
“Didn’t you bring the Diablo with you?” asks Lana Turner. “I’d love to hear how his violin sounds at close proximity. Very close proximity, if you know what I mean.”
“Is it true that he thinks about Hitler while he’s playing?” Ava Gardner wants to know. “I mean, during the angry parts.”
“He doesn’t think, he just feels,” comments Crown knowingly.
“Oh là là,” flirts Mae West. “Is that a violin in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me?”
The band plays As Time Goes By. People dance.
Then a man appears on the dance floor. He, too, just feels. He flings his arms upwards, spins like a humming top, whirls like a dervish, and all to the sounds of a melancholy ballad. Oh yes, it’s the funny Austrian with the cocked hat, Billy Wilder. He is hopping around in circles with Mrs Whittaker.
“Hey, Crown,” he calls, “long time no see. How are you?”
“He’s a Plato scholar,” Mrs Whittaker whispers to the Austrian.
“Plankton,” corrects Crown politely.
“Nobody’s perfect,” giggles the Austrian.
Electra is proudly wearing the war bride badge on her dress.
“Your husband is in the war?” asks John Wayne.
“My fiancé,” responds Electra.
“Normandy?” asks Wayne.
“How should I know?” says Electra defiantly. “I’m not one of those women who constantly spy on their man. I don’t have to know where he is and what he’s doing all the time. I trust him.”
“Of course,” bows Wayne, retreating with a shake of his head.
Later, he sees Electra dancing with the young actor Freddie Winston, more closely than is appropriate for a woman whose fiancé is currently fighting in Normandy. Or wherever he is.
*
Sirius spends the entire summer in the Charité. And he enjoys it to the fullest. Professor Sauerbruch’s private ward is luxurious in many ways; food from the Adlon Hotel, pretty nurses who could easily make a career in the movies, and much more. But the most important thing is this: here, one is in the care of the most famous medical practitioner in the world. Should – and the emphasis here is on should – something happen to someone here, then it wouldn’t be down to human error, but fate. It is absolutely wonderful. All doubts are lifted, all fears, all ruminations, all dark thoughts. The heart is free. The mind is light. Life, otherwise such a trying affair, is carefree all of a sudden. As long as it lies in Sauerbruch’s hands. Such a shame that one only gets to enjoy this when sick.
The artist Jobst Korthe, another of the professor’s patients, put this into words very beautifully. He often engages the dog in the neighbouring room in conversation.
“Look,” he says, “this is my tube of black paint. I haven’t used it one single time since I’ve been here. Before I used to get through twenty tubes a week.”
Sirius likes the paintings. Expressionism, presumably. Korthe sits at the easel and paints what he sees when he looks out of the window. And it’s true; even the bridge over the Spree, which really is black, looks green on the picture.
“I would love to paint your portrait one day, Master Hansi,” says Korthe. He addresses the dog formally. Only Sauerbruch calls everyone by their first names.
And so Sirius sits for the painter. Dog before Berlin, the picture is to be titled. The dog takes up his position on the windowsill.
What does it remind him of? He has to think for a long while. Then the glass house comes into his mind. Villa Hercules. “When Hercules sits by the window, his silhouette will become one with the backdrop of the city,” Miss Green had rejoiced. Was that her name, Miss Green?
Strange that his silhouette always ends up becoming one with the backdrop of the city, regardless of where he is.
Lost in thought, he stares out of the window. How desolate Berlin looks. Entire areas of the city lie in ruins. The charred Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church towers up from the grey sea of houses like a hollow tooth. With this view, one needs to be an Expressionist to get away with leaving the black paint untouched.
There is a knock at the door, and Professor Sauerbruch steps in.
“Korthe!” he exclaims, “you’re supposed to be in bed, not painting!”
He surveys the artwork on the easel. He even pulls his glasses out of his breast pocket. “Have you no eyes in your head? Where on earth is this building in Berlin, this yellow tower here?”
“It’s not in Berlin, Herr Professor, it’s in my imagination,” beams Korthe.
“Ah-ah,” says Sauerbruch. “And the red glove? Or what is that?”
“The dog,” responds Korthe, offended.
“The dog,” murmurs Sauerbruch with a shake of his head. “Well, just don’t show that picture to Hitler, or you’re a dead man.”
“No, no,” stammers Korthe, “I’m in so-called ‘inner emigration’.”
Then Sauerbruch turns to Sirius. “Speaking of Hitler, the Führer called me. He wants to know if you are better at last, and I answered truthfully. You will be discharged tomorrow morning.”
Sirius whimpers in shock.
“I’m sorry,” says Sauerbruch. “You were our ray of sunshine here. We’ll miss you on the ward.”
He looks into the dog’s sad eyes. “Goodbye, little red glove. Look after yourself.”
*
The Red Army has already advanced into East Prussia, a
hefty blow. The Wolf’s Lair had to be evacuated, and the headquarters are now in the Berlin Chancellery once more.
Sirius is horrified when he sees the Führer again. The man is a shadow of his former self. He walks hunched over and has become old. His left arm and left leg shake. His face, too, is contorted with pain from the relentless colic. He is almost blind in his right eye.
It’s unfathomable, thinks the dog, that hosts of armies from all over the world are needed to free the world from this geriatric.
The Führer doesn’t even have the energy to bend over to his doggy and greet him.
“There you are,” he mumbles, “welcome back.”
Dr. Morell is now constantly by his side. The effect of the last “wonder injection” barely has time to fade before he administers the next. Then the dark mood lifts momentarily, and for a brief moment the Führer regards his final victory to be possible again.
“Only his iron will is keeping him on his feet now,” whispers Goebbels, full of amazement.
Field Marshal Model and Colonel-General Jodl arrive for a situation report. They bring depressing news.
“I’ve had enough of the never-ending defensive!” rants the Führer.
He means the Western Front, which is surrendering more ground with every passing day. The Allies have already reached the Rhine. The Rhine! Another few kilometres, thinks Hitler, and the Lorelei will be in their hands.
The Führer commands the offensive and christens it Operation Watch on the Rhine. It must be a battle which brandishes an iron fist to the enemy.
All of the Wehrmacht’s reserves are to be mobilized. It is all or nothing now. The annihilation of the Allies, or the end.
The attack begins on the 16th of December, on the stroke of 5:30 AM. The Führer himself trudges to the Adlerhorst command post on the Front, in order to give the annihilating blow the highest authority.
But after just a week, the attack collapses. The army from the West is too powerful and the attackers hopelessly inferior, the majority of them children in uniform or doddery old men with helmets.
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