Рэй Брэдбери: Darling Adolf

«I will not sit here―» cried Hitler.

He started to get up but the producer was tugging his arm and the director had a knife at his heart: his forefinger, stabbing hard.

«Sit.»

The director's face hovered two inches from Hitler's nose. Hitler slowly sank back, his cheeks perspiring.

«God, you are a genius,» said the director. «Jesus, your people would show up. Not the young, no, but the old. All the Hitler youth, your age now, those senile bags of tripe yelling 'Sieg Heil,' saluting, lighting torches at sunset, marching around the stadium crying themselves blind.»

The director swerved to his producer.

«I tell you. Arch, this Hitler here has bilge for brains but this time he's on target! If we don't shove the Nuremberg Rally up this film, I quit. I mean it. I will simply walk out and let Adolf here take over and direct the damned thing himself! Speech over.» -

He sat down.

Both the producer and Der Fuhrer appeared to be in a state of shock.

«Order me another goddamn beer,» snapped the director.

Hitler gasped in a huge breath, tossed down his knife and fork, and shoved back his chair.

«I do not break bread with such as you!»

«Why, you bootlicking lapdog son of a bitch,» said the director. «I'll hold the mug and you'll do the licking. Here.» The director grabbed the beer and shoved it under Der Fuhrer's nose. The crowd, out beyond, gasped and almost surged. Hitler's eyes rolled, for the director had seized him by the front of his tunic and was yanking him forward.

«Lick! Drink the German filth! Drink, you scum!»

«Boys, boys,» said the producer.

«Boys, crud! You know what this swill-hole, this chamberpot Nazi, has been thinking, sitting here, Archibald, and drinking your beer? Today Europe, tomorrow the world!»

«No, no, Marc!»

«No, no,» said Hitler, staring down at the fist which clenched the material of his uniform. «The buttons, the buttons ―»

«Are loose on your tunic and inside your head, worm. Arch, look at him pour! Look at the grease roll off his forehead, look at his stinking armpits. He's a sea of sweat because I've read his mind! Tomorrow the world! Get this film set up, him cast in the lead. Bring him down out of the clouds, a month from now. Brass bands. Torchlight. Bring back Leni Reifenstahl to show us how she shot the Rally in '34. Hitler's lady-director friend. Fifty cameras she used, fifty she used, by God, to get all the German crumbs lined up and vomiting lies, and Hitler in his creaking leather and Goring awash in his blubber, and Goebbels doing his wounded-monkey walk, the three superfags of history aswank in the stadium at dusk, make it all happen again, with this bastard up front, and do you know what's going through his little graveyard mind behind his bloater eyes at this very moment?»

«Marc, Marc,» whispered the producer, eyes shut, grinding his teeth. «Sit down. Everyone sees.»

«Let them see! Wake up, you! Don't you shut your eyes on me, too! I've shut my eyes on you for days, filth. Now I want some attention. Here.»

He sloshed beer on Hitler's face, which caused his eyes to snap wide and his eyes to roll yet again, as apoplexy burned he cheeks.

The crowd, out beyond, hissed in their breath.

The director, hearing, leered at them.

«Boy, is this funny. They don't know whether to come in or not, don't know if you're real or not, and neither do I. Tomorrow, you bilgy bastard, you really dream of becoming Der Fuhrer.»

He bathed the man's face with more beer.

The producer had turned away in his chair now and was frantically dabbing at some imaginary breadcrumbs on his tie. «Marc, for God's sake ―»

«No, no, seriously, Archibald. This guy thinks because he puts on a ten-cent uniform and plays Hitler for four weeks at good pay that if we actually put together the Rally, why Christ, History would tam back, oh turn back, Time, Time in thy flight, make me a stupid Jew-baking Nazi again for tonight Can you see it. Arch, this lice walking up to the microphones and shouting, and the crowd shouting back, and him realty trying to take over, as if Roosevelt still lived and Churchill wasn't six feet deep, and it was all to be lost or won again, but mainly won, because this time they wouldn't stop at the Channel but just cross on over, give or take a million German boys dead, and stomp England and stomp America, isn't that what's going on inside your little Aryan skull, Adolf? Isn't it!»

Hitler gagged and hissed. His tongue stuck out. At last he jerked free and exploded:

«Yes! Yes, goddamn you! Damn and bake and bum you! You dare to lay hands on Der Fuhrer! The Rally! Yes! It must be in the film! We must make it again! The plane! The landing! The long (hive through streets. The blonde girls. The lovely blond boys. The stadium. Leni Reifenstahl! And from all me trunks, in all the attics, a black plague of armbands winging on the dusk, flying to assault, battering to take the victory. Yes, yes, I, Der Fuhrer, I will stand at that Rally and dictate terms! I―I―»

He was on his feet now.

The crowd, out beyond in the parking lot, shouted.

Hitler turned and gave them a salute.

The director took careful aim and shot a blow of his fist to the German's nose.

After that the crowd arrived, shrieking, yelling, pushing, shoving, falling.

They drove to the hospital at four the next afternoon.

Slumped, the old producer sighed, his hands over his eyes. «Why, why, why are we going to the hospital? To visit that — monster?»

The director nodded.

The old man groaned. «Crazy world. Mad people. I never saw such biting, kicking, biting. That mob almost killed you.»

The director licked his swollen lips and touched his half-shut left eye with a probing finger. «I'm okay. The important thing is I hit Adolf, oh, how I hit him. And now ―» He stared calmly ahead. «I think I am going to the hospital to finish the job.»

«Finish, finish?» The old man stared at him.

«Finish.» The director wheeled the car slowly around a comer.

«Remember the twenties. Arch, when Hitler got shot at in the street and not hit, or beaten in the streets, and nobody socked him away forever, or he left a beer hall ten minutes before a bomb went off, or was in that officers' hut in 1844 and the briefcase bomb exploded and that didn't get him. Always the charmed life. Always he got out from under the rock. Well, Archie, no more charms, no more escapes. I'm walking in that hospital to make sure that when that half-ass extra comes out and there's a mob of krauts to greet him, he's walking wounded, a permanent soprano. Don't try to stop me. Arch.»

«Who's stopping? Belt him one for me.»

They stopped in front of the hospital just in time to see one of the studio production assistants run down the steps, his hair wild, his eyes wilder, shouting.

«Christ,» said the director. «Bet you forty to one, our luck's run out again. Bet you that guy running toward us says ―»

«Kidnaped! Gone!» the man cried. «Adolf s been taken away!»

«Son of a bitch.»

They circled the empty hospital bed; they touched it.

A nurse stood in one comer wringing her hands. The production assistant babbled.

«Three men it was, three men, three men.»

«Shut up.» The director was snowblind from simply looking at the white sheets. «Did they force him or did he go along quietly?»

«I don't know, I can't say, yes, he was making speeches, making speeches as they took him out.»

«Making speeches?» cried the old producer, slapping his bald pate. «Christ, with the restaurant suing us for broken tables, and Hitler maybe suing us for ―»

«Hold on.» The director stepped over and fixed the production assistant with a steady gaze. «Three men, you say?»