I had no intention of letting her get on the bed and told her so.
“I’m not doing it stood up,” she said, tossing her hair, “I’ve got a bad back; it gives me backache if I do it standing up.”
“We’re not doing it.”
“You have to. Devil’s orders.”
“Bollocks to the Devil.”
I turned my back on her, pulled the blanket over my head and tried to get to sleep. I’d no idea what the Devil’s game was but I wasn’t about to play it. To have sex with this Rita woman might give me a little relief from my suffering but if things worked out par for the course she’d probably have VD or crabs or something equally nasty and I’d end up in an even more miserable state of being than I already was.
I heard her high heels on the stone flags click-clacking over to the bed and then she was lying down next to me under the blanket. “Hutch up a bit,” she said, “I can’t get in proper.”
I sighed, long-suffering. She was more persistent than the Reverend Ever. I gave her the Reverend Ever treatment. “Fuck off and leave me alone.”
Instead she put her arms around me and started to gently stroke my chest. I pushed her hand away roughly but she immediately put it back and continued stroking. I became aware of her thighs spooned into mine and the soft mounds of her breasts pressed hard against my back. I tried to shut it out of my mind but a moment later my whole body started to shake violently and then suddenly stiffened as what felt like a large red hot knife plunged into my body and pierced my heart. It was the Devil entering me, I know now. Seconds later my body relaxed, leaving only my penis stiff - satisfyingly stiff for a man with the Devil in him. Rita took hold of it, rubbed it a couple of times and said, “Ooh, who’s a big boy then?”
I turned to face her.
“How do you want me?” she said. “I prefer it from behind.”
I couldn’t have cared less as long as I got into her and quick. “Whatever.”
We climbed off the bed. She quickly took off her top and skirt - she wasn’t wearing knickers - got on her hands and knees on the edge of the bed, turned to face me and said, “Ready when you are, lover.”
I moved up to her, cupped her shoulders in my hands and pulled her back as I pushed forward and entered her. I closed my eyes, as I’m in the habit of doing when I have sex. I began to fuck her and she started moaning as though she was enjoying it, all part of the act I supposed. I couldn’t have cared less, I was enjoying it so nothing else mattered. In fact it was very nice, although not of course as nice as it was with Kristin. It wasn’t as nice as it was with Rita a moment later, when, on feeling a sudden change in the texture of her shoulders, from smooth to hairy, I opened my eyes to discover I was fucking a goat.
I have never moved so fast in my life. I reached the opposite wall in about two seconds flat. Unable to advance any further I turned to face the goat, my back pressed hard against the wall, my arms spread wide, hands pushing against the stonework in a futile effort to move myself even further away from it.
The goat, possibly wondering why its enjoyment had suddenly been curtailed, and certainly not getting any signals from me which might suggest to it that I’d be renewing our acquaintance in the immediate future, looked at me with a look of disappointment in its rectangular, dilated eyes, and bleated.
I pulled myself together and thought what to do. A moment later my mind was made up for me and I instantly became myself again when just as quickly as he had entered me the Devil left me. Unfortunately the goat didn’t. Accepting that our affair had come to an end it looked away from me and started eating the pillow. It made short work of it and was making inroads on the mattress when Ant and Dec returned, grinning from ear to ear.
“Sorry about that,” said Ant.
“Yes you look like you are,” I said.
“Well you have to laugh, haven’t you,” said Dec.
Ant shook his head and chuckled in admiration. “That Ow-ald Nick, eh? I do-an’t know how he thinks ‘em up.”
“But we’re glad he does,” said Dec. “Anyway, to business. We’ve to tell you that you can go back if you want.”
“Back? Back where?”
“Well earth of course.”
“Earth?”
“If you’re up for it, like.”
It took a moment to take this in. “You’re telling me I can return to Earth?”
Ant and Dec nodded.
“Reincarnation,” said Ant.
“You come back as a can of evaporated milk,” said Dec.
“Hey that’s a good one that, I like that,” said Ant.
“Got it off a Christmas cracker.”
I smelled a rat. Was this another way of inflicting more suffering on me? Probably. I said, “This is a trick isn’t it? To make me feel worse than I’m already feeling. You tell me I can return to earth and when I take you up on it you tell me you’re only joking.”
Ant looked shocked. “Would we do that?”
“Ant and Dec?” said Dec, equally affronted.
I decided to go along with it for the time being. What was there to lose? “What do I have to do?”
“Sell your sow-al to the Devil,” said Dec.
“Sell my soul to the Devil?”
Dec nodded. “Yes, you’re one of the lucky ones.”
“Or one of the unlucky ones,” said Ant.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Ow-ald Nick only lets the ones go back he thinks he can have a bit of fun with.”
I though it over for a minute. What did Ant mean, have a bit of fun with? The Devil seemed to get his kicks out of making your life a misery so presumably he thought that if he sent you back to Earth you’d be even more miserable. But how could that be? How could I be any more miserable than I already was? How could anything be worse than being forced to watch sixteen hours of crap television all day, when I wasn’t being forced to watch Manchester United lose against Liverpool - the score had been 77-0 yesterday - eating nothing but junk food, having my ears constantly assaulted by Whitney Houston and Tyler the Creator, Ant and Dec reading Harry Potter with Jeffrey Archer next up, two colostomy bags, and having sex with goats? It couldn’t. If the Devil was going to get into me again, and if he’d done it once he was certainly going to do it again whenever he had a mind to, far better he did it on Earth than in Hell.
“Tell him I’ll do it,” I said.
“He’ll know,” said Ant.
*
In the middle of the night I awoke but this time it wasn’t the sound of Whitney Houston or Tyler the Creator that roused me from my slumbers. My whole body was shaking violently again. I stiffened as I felt the red hot knife enter my body and pierce my heart again. I felt my hair actually stand on end. Sparks shot from my head and I could smell my hair burning. Then nothing.
****
PART FIVE
AUF DER ERDE
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
I awoke with a start. I was slumped in a chair, as though I’d fallen asleep there. I looked around. I was in a large, opulent office. It registered with me. I was back! I had sold my soul to the Devil and the Devil had kept his part of the bargain and delivered me to earth. But where on earth? Not back to where I’d previously lived, surely; they didn’t have offices of such magnificence in Harpurhey, certainly. Nor from where I’d left earth, New Mills, from what I’d seen of it.
My eyes took a quick inventory. I picked out a large green leather-topped desk, empty but for two telephones and a framed photograph. A large, high-backed chair behind the desk. A number of matching, smaller chairs against a wall. A highly-polished wooden floor dressed with expensive-looking rugs. A filing cabinet and a writing bureau against one of the wood-panelled walls. Two highly wrought multi-candled chandeliers suspended from the ornate corniced ceiling, their illumination not required at the moment as enough natural light was coming from the three large windows, each of them framed by elaborate brown velvet drapes. On the walls, one of which held a large floor-length g
ilt-framed mirror, were several paintings. One of them looked like a Monet. It was certainly a room I’d never been in before. Yet for some reason it seemed familiar.
I looked down at myself. I was wearing knee-high brown leather boots. Tucked into the tops were brown serge jodhpur-like trousers. Above them a military-style tunic, the same colour and material as the trousers, leather belt diagonally across it from shoulder to hip and round the waist. I put a hand to my cheek. It didn’t feel familiar; it was different to my cheek, the skin was a different texture, smoother; sallow? I explored further. My nose felt different too, sharper, slightly bigger, and beneath it a small moustache. And why did my hair, always brushed back, now have a right parting and hang down over my forehead on one side. Puzzled, I got to my feet, went to the mirror and looked into it. My eyes were immediately drawn to the swastika armband on my upper left arm. What was this? Then I looked at my face.
“Fuck me, I’m Hitler!” I said, or would have had I not been struck dumb.
I reeled. Literally. Adolf Hitler. So this was the Devil’s price for my soul! To be returned to earth, not as Norman Smith but as Hitler, the man whom I had detested from the moment I’d become aware of him, the only human being I had ever truly hated. Transfixed by the frightful sight in the mirror I asked myself how the Devil could have known this? But then why wouldn’t he? He’d known about my dislike for Bruce Forsyth and Carry On films and rap music and all the other things he’d continually plagued me with all the time I’d been in hell, so why not Hitler?
I closed my eyes, opened them and looked again. Hitler was still there, scowling at me; not an optical illusion, as I’d hoped, not a figment of my imagination but flesh and bone, my flesh and bone. Yet....I didn’t feel like Hitler. Or at least what I imagined Hitler must feel like, a man constantly at boiling point, ready to erupt anytime, forever teetering on the edge of insanity; I felt like me, Norman Smith, Mr Ordinary Joe. What was the Devil’s game?
It now came to me where the room was. What it was. Adolf Hitler’s study in his country retreat in the Obersalzberg of the Bavarian Alps near Berchtesgaden. Not far from Germany’s border with Austria, the country of his birth. I’d seen it in photographs of the Wachenfeld/Berghof, the name by which the house was known.
I went to one of the windows and looked out. It was a bright summer’s day. Undulating green countryside stretched into the distance as far as the eye could see; there was a pine forest and the Bavarian mountains beyond. How could such evil have emanated from such a beautiful spot?
I wondered at the date. I noticed a newspaper on one of the chairs and checked the top of the page. June 29, 1936. Three years and three months before the outbreak of the Second World War. I searched my memory. In March of that year Hitler had defied the Versailles and Locarno treaties by remilitarizing the Rhineland. I sat down and reflected on my position. Why was I here? In particular why was I here now? Was it the Devil’s plan that I should preside over the war? Was it his idea of the ‘bit of fun’ that Ant and Dec said he liked to have with people who sold him their soul? I shuddered; if that was the case not only would I be overseeing the war and the wholesale carnage it brought with it, I would be the man ultimately responsible for the concentration camps and the systematic murder of millions of Jews, gipsies, political opponents, communists, cripples, homosexuals and anyone else who didn’t fit the Aryan template or simply got in my way. It would be the nightmare to end all nightmares. But....that couldn’t happen now, surely? I wouldn’t do that. Norman Smith wouldn’t be responsible for murdering millions of innocent people, men, women, children, and I was Norman Smith. I might not look like Norman Smith, I might look like Hitler, but I was most definitely Norman Smith inside. Otherwise why would I be thinking like Norman Smith? Had the Devil perhaps messed up, botched my return to earth in some way? Had he sent me back as Hitler on the outside but somehow mistakenly left me as Norman Smith on the inside? It was beginning to look like that. And if that was the case....well, hard cheese Devil, there wouldn’t be a Second World War if I was in charge of things. There would never be an invasion of Poland by Germany, the last straw that triggered off the hostilities; Germany wouldn’t be invading Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland - the Fatherland could forget about that too. I smiled at the prospect. I was going to enjoy myself as Hitler. Before I could think of further horrific events in history that wouldn’t be happening now that Norman Smith was in charge of things there was a discreet tap on the door.
“Come in.” I gave a start. I’d said the words ‘Come in’ in English but they’d come out in German, “Kommen Sie herein.” What was all that about? I don’t speak German, only the odd bit I’d picked up from my war books and from Herman the German back at Manchester Central Library; ‘Kommen Sie herein’ was one of the bits I’d learned so maybe, aware that I looked like Hitler, I’d said it subconsciously. The door eased open. A man, shoulders stooped in deference, stepped cautiously in, as though half-expecting to be castigated for setting foot in Hitler’s office even though he’d been invited to. He said, almost whispered, “Herr Goebbels and Reichsfuhrer Himmler have arrived, mein Fuehrer.” Except that he didn’t say that. He said, “Herr Goebbels und Reichsfuhrer Himmler sind angekommen, mein Fuhrer.” But I heard it in English. What was going on?
The man waited patiently while I considered the implications of his announcement. Josef Goebbels and Heinrich Himmler. The Reich Minister of Propaganda and the Head of the Waffen SS. What did they want with me? Some business or other, obviously, terrible business if I knew them, they certainly hadn’t come to wish me happy birthday. After a few moments the man wrung his hands apologetically and said, quietly coaxing, “Herr Goebbels and Reichsfuhrer Himmler, Herr Hitler?”
I took a deep breath. There was nothing for it but to admit them. “Tell them I will see them now.” But the words came out in German again, “Sagen Sie Ihnen, ich werde sie jetzt empfangen.”And I certainly didn’t know the German for “Tell them I will see them now”. Somehow my brain was translating my spoken English words into German and making me hear German in English.
Moments later the manservant returned with Goebbels and Himmler. Goebbels was dressed in civilian clothes and carried a trilby hat in his hands; Himmler wore the dreaded black uniform of the SS. Both of them halted immediately on entering the room, clicked their heels together smartly and raised outstretched right arms in the German salute. “Heil Hitler.”
After only the briefest pause I returned the salute in the time-honoured manner and with all the passion I could muster. For just a second I’d thought not to return their stupid salute, but thought better of it; it might give them reason to suspect things weren’t all they should be. “Heil Hitler,” I barked, with an impressively loud click of the heels of my boots.
We stood looking at each other, my visitors obviously waiting for me to take the lead. I stirred myself into motion, made for the desk and indicated the chairs by the wall. “Please, gentlemen, be seated.” It came out in German again, as I now half-expected it would. I moved behind the large desk - sitting down I saw that the framed photograph I’d noticed earlier was of Eva Braun - and Goebbels and Himmler drew up chairs. Again they waited for me to speak first. Goebbels coughed, as if to prompt me.
“Remind me why you are here, gentlemen,” I said. Artfulness was never my strongest point but the words seemed to come to me easily. Maybe the Devil had left a bit of Hitler in me, along with the Norman Smith?
“The concentration camp position, mein Fuehrer,” said Himmler.
Concentration camp position? What did he mean? What was the concentration camp position? I searched my memory. Germany had been building concentration camps since March 1933, Dachau. But this was 1936. Whatever it was Goebbels saved me from further conjecture.
“And our need to step up the building programme of these very necessary facilities.”
I eyed them coolly and replied immediately and firmly. “We will not be building any more concentration camps. On the contrary we will be t
earing down all the concentration camps and setting free all the people who have wrongfully been incarcerated in them. And we will be doing it immediately. Immediately! Is that clearly understood?” At least that’s what I meant to say. The words that came out of my mouth were “Oh you’ve no need to bother me with such trivialities, build as many as you wish, the more the merrier.”
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
Nuremberg, September 14, 1936.
“Russia planned a world revolution and German workmen would be used as cannon-fodder for bolshevist imperialism. But we Nationalist Socialists do not wish that our military resources should be employed to impose by force on other peoples what those peoples themselves do not want. Our army does not swear an oath that it will with bloodshed extend the National Socialist idea over other peoples, but that it will with its own blood defend the Nationalist Socialist idea and thereby the German Reich, it’s security and freedom, from the aggression of other peoples....”
I raised my voice with each of the final words of this sentence so by the time I got to ‘other peoples’ it was little more than a scream. I could feel my eyes bulging as I repeated the final two words and brought the heel of my hand down hard on the rostrum to further emphasise the point. Each and every one of the crowd of well over a hundred thousand gathered that day in the Nazi Party rally grounds at Luitpoldhain roared their approval. Cries of “Heil Hitler, Heil Hitler!” rang out and echoed off the surrounding buildings. As I mopped my brow with the back of my hand before I continued I could feel the veins standing out on my temples. The crowd was getting a real show from me today.
“The German people as soldiers is one of the best peoples in the world: it would have become a veritable ‘Fight to the Death Brigade’ for the bloody purpose of these international disseminators of strife. We have removed this danger, through the National Socialist Revolution, from our own people and from other peoples....”
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