Dilly looked pleased with himself. “Research,” he said, lifting a sheet of paper. It was Dilly at his best, the single-minded pursuit of a project until he got what he wanted. Endless trips to the civil service office, enlisting help, handing out coins and bills to bureaucrats, weaving his way through the paperwork of the empire. “Look.” He pointed with his patented gusto to the paper in his hand. “I’ve found an address.”
“And what were you planning to do?”
“I don’t know,” Dilly said. “It was such a big job and I had so little to go on. I didn’t really know much about him other than that he was born in a small town within the empire and that he would be around ten now. I knew his father’s name was Alois, that he was a petty civil employee, and that the name Schicklgruber was in there someplace. It’s funny though—” He pointed to all the papers scattered on the desk. “If you ask enough questions, you begin homing in. Now finally—” He looked down at the paper in his hand. “I think I have it. Alois Hitler in Lambach, retired civil servant, on a pension, near Linz, just a few hours. A train leaves soon. We could be back by tonight.”
Wheeler looked dumbfounded. “What about not interfering with history? ”
“We’re not going to do anything.” There was a fierce intensity in his eyes. “I just wanted to know if I could do it. And now I think I have it. We can be there in a few hours.”
“Hold it,” Wheeler said. It was all going too fast for him. He had experience—the prongball, Oppenheimer’s atomic bomb—that proved if you can do it you will do it, if you have it you will use it. “You think you have found Adolf Hitler. And you want to go right now to see him.”
Dilly was terribly serious, a great laboratory scientist on the brink of a cure. “I just need to confirm it. The pension lists don’t give the names of children. All I have is Alois Hitler in Lambach. I’ve done all the research, and now there is only one way to make sure.”
Wheeler looked at all the papers that amounted to an enormous number of hours. No wonder he had not seen Dilly more often at the Café Central. “I don’t get it,” he said, shaking his head. “You are the one who keeps telling me we have to be careful.”
Dilly’s face became softer. “I was driven by hate. I was going to garrote the little bastard. That’s what propelled me here, right out of my Gestapo cell. Well, now that it is real, and now that I have been here in this remarkable city with my son for a few weeks, my mission has become more gentle.” Then the hardness came back to his eyes and he seemed overtaken by an enormous shiver. “But we can’t forget all the terrible destruction and cruelty. We can’t—” He couldn’t find the words.
“But what would you actually do about it?”
Dilly scrunched up his face. “I don’t know, Stan. I actually do not know. Could I actually—when it got right down to it—harm the evil little bastard?”
“Well, let’s say you did decide to do something, and there was no Hitler. Then, for starters, there would have been no Lend-Lease, and no bombing of London, and you would never have met Mother or had a son.”
“I haven’t said I was going to do anything. I just want to go take a look. And it would mean an awful lot if you came with me.”
“I don’t like it. We haven’t gone to find the Haze, and we know he is right here in Vienna, easy to find. You don’t want to run into Frank Burden because you might breathe a germ on him—”
“I know, I know,” Dilly said. “And I’ve told you that we absolutely could not go anywhere near them, or Eleanor Putnam who is also right here.” Wheeler moved back a little in his seat. “I know all that. But that is small potatoes. That is just to make sure that the right people and circumstances come together in seventeen years, and after, so that you and I can be born.” He paused again and his face resumed its hardness. “But with Hitler.” He rolled his eyes, trying to estimate the effect of that one man’s presence. “We are talking about the ruin of democracy and the ruination of cultures and Coventry Cathedral, and millions of innocent lives.”
“And it’s worse than you know.”
The intensity was back in his eyes. “Let’s just go see.”
“A long train ride on a few scraps of possible evidence. It’s a crazy idea.”
On the train, Dilly was more excited than usual, an archaeologist on the brink of his great discovery. “I was getting nowhere, and then I happened to run into a retired provincial tax collector who was in Vienna for just one day. The guy was sort of feeble-minded and couldn’t stop talking, but he had a photographic memory. It was a lucky break.” He fell silent, watching the landscape pass. “What ever happened to all the Jews?” he said. “Did they get their property back?”
Wheeler sat astounded for a moment. “You don’t know about Buchenwald and Auschwitz?” he said.
“What are Buchenwald and Auschwitz?”
“The death camps?”
Dilly gave him a blank look. “There were rumors.”
“During the liberation, they turned into a lot more than rumors,” Wheeler said, incredulous. So Wheeler told Dilly the stories of the Allied soldiers coming to the concentration camps and what they found and what was revealed later from the Nazi documentation.
Dilly looked stunned. “I didn’t believe. No one could do that,” Dilly said, after he was finished with all the details. “I discounted what was being said. There are limits, after all, I kept telling people. Have faith, I kept saying. You know, when I was in France the time before that last one, I even got in an argument with a girl who worked for the Resistance. She told me the Nazis were gassing children, and I told her she was getting a little carried way.”
“Gassing, and worse. The number got up to ten million,” Wheeler said, and he told about Josef Mengele and his experiments and some of the other horrors. “When the Allied soldiers liberated the camps, they made townspeople walk past all the bodies, so no one could say it was just made up.”
Dilly was silent for a time, shaking his head in shock, and went back to looking out the window. “And you didn’t want to make this trip,” he said finally.
“You said there were other things you needed to tell me,” Wheeler said.
“About finding Hitler, that’s all.” Dilly was being evasive.
“You said something more.”
Dilly did not look at him. “It’s about Eleanor Putnam.” His head was turned away. “Actually, I knew she was in Vienna from the very first. And I—” Wheeler stared until he looked back at him. “I’ve sort of been—” He paused. “Well, sort of obsessed.”
“More than just watching her?”
“No, just watching.” He looked out the window again. “It’s just that—” He breathed a great sigh. “I didn’t expect her to be so—so beautiful.”
“What did you do?”
Dilly looked back apologetically, hesitant. “It’s not so much what I did, I guess. More like what I felt. I mean I never went up to her or anything. She never knew I was watching her.”
Wheeler did his best to hide his discomfort.
“I guess I sort of have a crush on her,” he said, putting his head in his hands.
“You have a crush on your own mother!”
Dilly looked around the train car, mortified. “She just looks so fresh and young. Her eyes are so blue, and her smile—she has an absolutely knockout smile. In fact, lately I really noticed a change.” He stopped to find the right words. “Lately, she has looked absolutely radiant. I figure she must be in love. You don’t often see a woman that full of life and passion. ”
“I wouldn’t know,” Wheeler said, wishing for the conversation to return to something safe, like Hitler.
“She looks like a beautiful flower opening up.”
“Music and Vienna,” Wheeler said quickly.
Suddenly Dilly turned to him seriously. “I know what is going on,” he blurted out decisively, a look of real seriousness in his eye, and a cold sweat came to Wheeler’s brow.
“You do?”
“The
re’s only one thing it can be.” Dilly’s eyes were filled with conviction. “It is love. It’s love for Frank Burden.”
The train stopped at Lambach shortly before one o’clock. Dilly pulled one of his scraps of paper from his pocket and asked the stationmaster for directions. They walked quickly through the narrow streets of the small town, past a number of important-looking buildings. Dilly stopped dead and pointed. “There it is,” he said, his heart beating so hard Wheeler could almost see it through his jacket. “Wait here.”
Wheeler watched as Dilly approached the door and knocked. A dark-haired woman in her forties stood in the doorway in her apron, drying her hands with a towel. She looked friendly enough, smiling and nodding, and at one time pointing down the street over Dilly’s shoulder. Dilly shook her hand and then turned as the woman closed the front door.
“I told her I was an American painter and was visiting from Munich. I said I heard she had an eight-year-old son, Adolf, with beautiful blue eyes and I wondered if I could perhaps have him pose for a chalk sketch. I said I would give the family a copy.”
Now Wheeler’s heart was beating fast. “Her name was Frau Hitler?”
“Of course.”
“And she has a son named Adolf?”
“He’s at school and will be home in an hour,” Dilly said nonchalantly. “He walks along that street.”
Wheeler shook his head. “Do you think it’s the one?”
“We have only to see,” Dilly said.
They killed time by walking the grounds of the eleventh-century Benedictine abbey, the only point of interest in the town. But neither could really concentrate. An hour and ten minutes later they were standing at the same spot near Mrs. Hitler’s front door when the young boy approached. Dilly walked forward, toward the young man. Wheeler had no choice but to follow. As they drew near the young boy, Dilly said, “Good afternoon, Meister Hitler.”
The boy looked perplexed for a moment, then smiled back. “Good afternoon,” he said with a smile as the two men passed. Dilly stopped and stood watching the child pass on toward his house. He took a step toward him, then hesitated, looking for an instant like a man on the brink of a monumental decision. “Meister Hitler,” he called to him, and the boy stopped and turned.
“I am an artist,” he said. “I would like to draw your portrait. I will return. ”
The boy looked at him quizzically, then nodded and turned and walked on toward his house.
Dilly watched him until he opened the front door and entered. When he turned back to Wheeler, his face was ashen and his hands were shaking.
On the train ride back to Vienna Dilly sat by the window and watched the Austrian countryside pass by. He seemed deep in thought, and Wheeler, doing some deep thinking himself, allowed the silence. The sighting of the child Hitler had had a profound impact on both of them, and now each just sat without speaking. Suddenly, Dilly turned from the window and looked at Wheeler with the old spark back in his eyes. “You know, I’ve been thinking,” he said. “How did you know I had been following my mother?”
46
Dancing over the Precipice
On their way back from the train station, Dilly suggested they drop in to the Café Central to see what was up with the Jung Wien. As they entered with a show of his old enthusiasm, Wheeler could see Dilly’s patented energy was not what it had been. The day in Lambach and the encounter with the child Hitler had taken a toll, but he was not about to let that stop him. “Let’s see what our Jung Wien friends are up to,” he said as they approached the table where a discussion was in full bloom.
“The Americans have arrived,” said Kleist with his old gusto. “We have not seen you for a while,” he said, giving Wheeler a wink. “Your energies have been with other projects, it seems.”
Claus rose and motioned to empty chairs. “By all means, join us. Schluessler here is telling us what is wrong with the empire.”
Schluessler, the scientist, paused in midsentence and acknowledged the newcomers with a forced smile. “This isn’t funny,” he said. “We are not headed in a healthy direction.”
“Oh, it is not as bad as it looks,” von Tscharner said, smiling.
But Schluessler was not diverted. “I think you all have your head in the sand. Karl Lueger has hit a nerve.”
“Handsome Karl is just rousing the rabble,” Kleist said. “His anti-Semitism is a political game, and he knows it.”
“It’s closer to the truth than any of you want to admit,” Schluessler said glumly. “The working people have been maligned and mistreated by all this splendor our fathers have created, the magnificent Ringstrasse, and have pulled together. They are angry and bitter.”
“And they are taking it out on us poor Jews.”
“Poor Jews?” von Tscharner quipped good-naturedly. “Name two.”
“The animosity is at a boiling point.”
“It’s only momentary,” Claus said. “It can’t last.”
Schluessler looked serious again, becoming annoyed that no one was matching his seriousness. “You Jews let it get out of hand, and now you will pay.” There was no good nature in his words anymore. “You control eighty percent of the banks. You run the businesses. You are good with money, and you are good with helping your own kind. You had an advantage and you exploited that advantage. And now you will pay.”
“Oh, come, come,” Claus added. “You are sounding much too serious for our intellectual circle.”
But Schluessler, dug in now, would not retreat. “I am serious. Jews are ruining our city, and the sooner we are rid of them the better.”
“A city without Jews. I can’t imagine it,” Kleist said, now trying to lighten the atmosphere.
“Well, I can,” said Schluessler. “And I must say, I look forward to the day.”
“You can’t be serious. Who would write the music?”
“And the plays?”
“Who would attend their performances?” A nervous laughter erupted from the group.
“I am serious. Deadly serious. Things have gone far enough, and now it is time for change.” He glowered at the silent faces around the table. “You mock me, but on this note I am right.” He rose suddenly from his seat. “And a lot of people agree with me.” Then he suddenly walked away, toward the door, leaving the rest of the table in uncomfortable silence.
“Well,” Dilly burst out, “that was a stimulating discussion,” but there was no life in his voice.
The two friends needed time to think and talk things out, so they had agreed to meet for lunch at one of the restaurants in the Prater, after which they were going to have “another session with that Frisbee thing,” Dilly said.
“That was a bad turn with the Jung Wien,” Dilly said, looking deeply concerned.
“They have no idea what is in store for them.”
“And I suppose we can’t warn them.”
“No impact,” Wheeler said glumly, and at that moment he wondered if Dilly was going to bring up Weezie Putnam again and speculated on how lucky it was that Dilly had not seen them together and how quickly he had accepted Wheeler’s “I guessed” when asked how he had known about Dilly’s watch on her. Maybe he had seen them and was being discreet, which Wheeler doubted, since that option required an indirection of which the younger man simply didn’t seem capable. When Dilly Burden had something on his mind he put it square out there on the table. “There was nothing even remotely resembling subterfuge in his style,” Wheeler’s mother said of her husband. “He was totally incapable of dissembling, which made him a great spy.”
“You may have noticed that my health is not tip-top,” he said to Wheeler as they sat down. “Energy’s not what it used to be. Those dreadful Germans ground me down.” As far as Wheeler could tell, his father was indefatigable, but now it was difficult not to notice the shadows deepening under his eyes and some uncharacteristic moments of breathlessness. But this morning he seemed excited and filled with energy for the outing. He held in his hand a copy of the Neue F
reie Presse. “Look at this,” he said excitedly, slapping the front of the paper with the back of his hand as Wheeler pulled up his chair. “Egon Wickstein’s first publication. I remember reading this in 1934 and giving it to my friend Brod Walker. It was the summer after our junior year. We were on a grand tour of Europe.”
Wheeler looked down at the morning copy of Vienna’s great daily newspaper. On the lower front page, in the usual feuilleton spot was Wickstein’s essay. “ ‘The Preconditions of Cultural Apex,’ ” Dilly read. “A little stuffy. But you have to remember he is only eighteen. I think that is swell. We are sitting here with a piece of history in front of us, and we are the only ones who know it.” Then Dilly began reading it, a little slowly, translating as he went. “It is a lively piece of writing. You can see that the boy has talent. I remember when I first read it to my pal Walker. I think it was that morning that he decided to make Wickstein his life’s work.” Dilly looked askance at Wheeler. “He wasn’t much of a scholar in those days, you know. More interested in the young ladies and Cambridge alehouses. But that summer discovering Wickstein sort of lit a fire under him.” Dilly looked off into the distance, smiling. “And now you say he went on to become one of the ranking Harvard scholars.” He gave a satisfied smile. “Brod deserved that. He was an exceptionally good man.”
Wheeler looked down at the copy of the Neue Freie Presse. “This is my essay,” he said, his voice full of ironic amusement, which Dilly at first took as humor. “I’m serious,” Wheeler said. “This is my essay.”
“You’re joking.”
“I’m not. I’m dead serious. I pretty much dictated it to Egon the other day in the Café Central.”
“That’s impossible.” Now Dilly looked confused. “This is pure Egon, any graduate student could tell you that. It will be known as his first published work.”
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