by C.G. Banks
*
Thirteen kilometers away, the French chauffeur, Erich Kempka, turns off the Autobahn and makes his way toward Oranienburg, Germany. A long line of equally black sedans snake behind the Duesenburg as it glides smoothly along the snow-lined streets. Hitler sits in back, alone, the window slightly cracked to give him a touch of the biting cold outside, a nostalgic touch. His mouth is drawn into a thin line below the dab of moustache, the face a dry knob of hate as he considers the progress of his work. The schedule, though slow, is acceptable.
The Austrian has had many hours in which to reflect. Sometimes the memories drive him to the anxious years at home with his botched artistic endeavors, his entry into politics, the first tumultuous rising of the Beer Hall Putsch, or even the humiliating low of his prison solitude with that beast Hess. It all comes back easily enough, but no effort, it seems, had been expended fruitlessly. He looks down at the thin pristine hands and visibly shivers in delight.
As each day passes the memories call their siren song: those lost kaleidoscopic landscapes and toxic environs, the many soft-bodied intelligences left to burn on incinerated planets, deluges of heavy metals and cold washes of nitrogen, the rending of bodies and slashing destruction of personalities. Cold red skies, lakes of lava and pits of radioactive waste. Glacial, creeping techtonic plates set loose from their moorings, angry primordial seas coughing up the detritus of vanquished civilizations, vast conflagrations and rains of a thousand years. Storms of blistering cyanide. All these things in the past, in the ache of the poisoned nights.
It only remains to finish.
The gates creep into view in the milky twilight, the gray dawn slipping into every niche of the buildings alongside the roadway. On the other side of the hamlet the Duesenburg idles alongside a stretch of brick containment wall and concertina wire while the sentries confirm the identity of its occupant. Hitler sits quietly, savoring the luxury of dominance. Other times it has not come so openly; sometimes it had not come at all. But the result has rarely been any different than what he could see now. Not in the end.
The guard, satisfied, mashes his jack-booted heels together and salutes. “Heil Hitler!” he bellows, the words punching out in a frigid burst of air. The Fuhrer can already imagine this one’s skin aflame, peeling away from the bone in an orgy of chemical reaction. He enjoys the quick erection such images supply and lingers a moment on the face before ordering the giant, black auto down the icy drive.
The sleet has given way to snow by the time the Duesenburg pulls to a stop in the lot outside the Sachsenhausen entrance. Even in the thin light Hitler can easily read the motto scrawled across the camp’s irongate: “Arbeit macht frei.” Again, the humorless smile as he considers this exquisite irony. No one would be free when this was over. No one. But if the natives feel they should live and die by such edicts, well then, he will supply the architecture.
The French pawn kills the Duesenburg, thrusts open his door to the chill and turns to open the Fuhrer’s. Hitler steps out into the savage morning, careful to pull the lapel of his uniform trench close about his diminutive body even though he could have walked the lines for hours unfazed. But a show was a show and he’d perfected every nuance. He’d already instructed the rest of his party to stay put in the cars that even then stretched down the long drive to the check-point at the first gate. From where he stands he can see two guard towers, the occupants pacing about like impatient monkey’s aware of the keeper’s return.
He wills animation to his features and his face flushes red. Already one officer is stepping from the ranks, his right arm extended in the Nazi salute. “Heil Hitler!” the beast coughs. “Guten Morgen, Her Fuhrer!”
“Ja,” Hitler replies, half-heartedly returning the salute. He’d grown weary of these formalities but kept to the letter. For these meticulous Germans, it was the easiest way.
Krause descends on him then, the bitter smell of his perversity radiating off like a hot mug of coffee set on the hood of a running auto. Hitler acknowledges the pedophile with a curt nod, already halfway through his inventory of the other murderers standing before him. He scans the line, reading the faces and minds as the idiot blusters on. Young men, middle-aged, even a few older ones already going to seed, all stock still and attentive. As if a formidable but understanding teacher has just returned to the classroom, each pupil longing for his attention, his instruction.
The dictator’s effeminate hands squeeze into tiny fists. His eyes sparkle blackly, constantly in motion as the goon babbles on—there, the youngest one, his skin so thin it is almost transparent, sending his parents in Koln half his monthly pay, stocking their dinner table in the blood of the dead; this major, Schmit, long distanced in his uniform and shiny boots from the hovels of Munchen, already dreaming of alcohol; an Austrian mug itching for any kill, ready to sacrifice his mother or father if Hitler even so much as suggests it.
At once, a thing clicks and Hitler silences the inane soliloquy with a piercing glance. “Genug!” he hisses. Krause swallows hard, trying to maintain composure in front of the line. After all, the Fuhrer will be gone soon and he wants no derogatory comments bandied around behind his back. “Zeigen Sie mir die Gefangenen,” Hitler tells the pig, unmindful of his pathetic soap opera. He has other fires to stoke.
“Ja, ja!” Krause says excitedly, turning from the Fuhrer.
Ten minutes later they stand in the thick obliterating snow, the only emotion on Hitler’s face one of immense satisfaction as the soon-to-be-dead fight to bear up. If only they could all be done at once, he thinks. In his mind’s eye he sees great pyres smoking to the clouds above, all these bodies piled high atop the flames by his henchmen with their trucks and bulldozers, even crammed into the border reaches of the fires with the Duesenburg if that is what it takes. He reads defiance in some eyes, mere stupefaction and defeat in others. In the end it will not matter. He allows no heroes. Anywhere.