Рэй Брэдбери: Darling Adolf

«Three, yes, three, three, three, oh, three men.»

A small forty-watt lightbulb flashed on in the director's head.

«Did, ah, did one man have a square face, a good jaw, bushy eyebrows?»

«Why… yes!»

«Was one man short and skinny like a chimpanzee?»

«Yes!»

«Was one man big, I mean, slobby fat?»

«How did you know?»

The producer blinked at both of them. «What goes on? What―»

«Stupid attracts stupid. Animal cunning calls to laughing jackass cunning. Come on. Arch!»

«Where?» The old man stared at the empty bed as if Adolf might materialize there any moment now.

«The back of my car, quick!»

From the back of the car, on the street, the director pulled a German cinema directory. He leafed through the character actors. «Here.»

The old man looked. A forty-watt bulb went on in his head.

The director riffled more pages. «And here. And, finally, here.»

They stood now in the cold wind outside the hospital and let the breeze turn the pages as they read the captions under the photographs.

«Goebbels,» whispered the old man.

«An actor named Rudy Steihl.»

«Goring.»

«A hambone named Grofe.»

«Hess.»

«Fritz Dingle.»

The old man shut the book and cried to the echoes.

«Son of a bitch!»

«Louder and runnier, Arch. Funnier and louder.»

«You mean right now out there somewhere in the city three dumbkopf out-of-work actors have Adolf in hiding, held maybe for ransom? And do we pay it?»

«Do we want to finish the film. Arch?»

«God, I don't know, so much money already, time, and ―» The old man shivered and rolled his eyes. «What if — I mean — what if they don't want ransom?»

The director nodded and grinned «You mean, what if this is the true start of the Fourth Reich?»

«All the peanut brittle in Germany might put itself in sacks and show up if they knew that ―»

«Steihl, Grofe, and Dingle, which is to say, Goebbels, Goring, and Hess, were back in the saddle with dumbass Adolf?»

«Crazy, awful, mad! It couldn't happen!»

«Nobody was ever going to clog the Suez Canal. Nobody was ever going to land on the Moon. Nobody.»

«What do we do? This waiting is horrible. Think of something. Marc, think, think!»

«I'm thinking.»

«And ―»

This time a hundred-watt bulb flashed on in the director's face. He sucked air and let out a great braying laugh.

«I'm going to help them organize and speak up. Arch! I'm a genius. Shake my hand!»

He seized the old man's hand and pumped it, crying with hilarity, tears running down his cheeks.

«You, Marc, on their side, helping form the Fourth Reich!?»

The old man backed away.

«Don't hit me, help me. Think, Arch, think. What was it Darling Adolf said at lunch, and damn the expense! What, what?»

The old man took a breath, held it, exploded it out, with a final light blazing in his face.

«Nuremberg?» he asked.

«Nuremberg! What month is this. Arch?»

«October!»

«October! October, forty years ago, October, the big, big Nuremberg Rally. And this coming Friday, Arch, an Anniversary Rally. We shove an ad in the international edition of Variety. RALLY ATNUREMBERG. TORCHES. BANDS. FLAGS. Christ, he won't be able to stay away. He'd shoot his kidnapers to be there and play the greatest role in his life!»

«Marc, we can't afford ―»

«Five hundred and forty-eight bucks? For the ad plus the torches plus a full military band on a phonograph record? Hell, Arch, hand me that phone.»

The old man pulled a telephone out of the front seat of his limousine.

«Son of a bitch,» he whispered.

«Yeah.» The director grinned, and ticked the phone. «Son of a bitch.»

The sun was going down beyond the rim of Nuremberg Stadium. The sky was bloodied all across the western horizon. In another half-hour it would be completely dark and you wouldn't be able-to see the small platform down in the center of the arena, or the few dark flags with the swastikas put up on temporary poles here or there making a path from one side of the stadium to the other. There was a sound of a crowd gathering, but the place was empty. There was a faint drum of band music but there was no band.

Sitting in the front row on the eastern side ofthestadium, the director waited, his hands on the controls of a sound unit. He had been waiting for two hours and was getting tired and feeling foolish. He could hear the old man saying:

«Let's go home. Idiotic. He won't come.»

And himself saying, «He will. He must,» but not believing it. He had the records waiting on his lap. Now and again he tested one, quietly, on the turntable, and then the crowd noises came from lilyhorns stuck up at both ends of the arena, murmuring, or the band played, not loudly, no, that would be later, but very softly. Then he waited again.

The sun sank lower. Blood ran crimson in the clouds. The director tried not to notice. He hated nature's blatant ironies.

The old man stirred feebly at last and looked around.

«So this was the place. It was really it, back in 1934.»

«This was it. Yeah.»

«I remember the films. Yes, yes. Hitler stood — what? Over there?»

«That was it.»

«And all the kids and men down there and the girls there, and fifty cameras.»

«Fifty, count 'em, fifty. Jesus, I would have liked to have been here with the torches and flags and people and cameras.»

«Marc, Marc, you don't mean it?»

«Yes, Arch, sure! So I could have run up to Darling Adolf and done what I did to that pig-swine half-ass actor. Hit him in the nose, then hit him in the teeth, then hit him in the blinis! You got it, Leni? Action! Swot! Camera! Bam! Here's one for Izzie. Here's one for Ike. Cameras running, Leni? Okay. Zot! Print!»

They stood looking down into the empty stadium where the wind prowled a few newspapers like ghosts on the vast concrete floor.

Then, suddenly, they gasped.

Far up at the very top of the stadium a small figure had appeared.

The director quickened, half rose, then forced himself to sit back down.

The small figure, against the last light of the day, seemed to be having difficulty walking. It leaned to one side, and held one arm up against its side, like a wounded bird.

The figure hesitated, waited.

«Come on,» whispered the director.

The figure turned and was about to flee.

«Adolf, no!» hissed the director.

Instinctively, he snapped one of his hands to the sound-effects tape deck, his other hand to the music.

The military band began to play softly.

The «crowd» began to murmur and stir.

Adolf, far above, froze.

The music played higher. The director touched a control knob. The crowd mumbled louder.

Adolf turned back to squint down into the half-seen stadium. Now he must be seeing the flags. And now the few torches. And now the waiting platform with the microphones, two dozen of them! one of them real.

The band came up in full brass.

Adolf took one step forward.

The crowd roared.

Christ, thought the director, looking at his hands, which were now suddenly hard fists and now again just fingers leaping on the controls, all to themselves. Christ, what do I do with him when I get him down here? What, what?

And then, just as insanely, the thought came. Crud. You're a director. And that's Aim. And this is Nuremberg.

So…?

Adolf took a second step down. Slowly his hand came up in a stiff salute.

The crowd went wild.

Adolf never stopped after that. He limped, he tried to march with pomp, but the fact was he limped down the hundreds of steps until he reached the floor of the stadium. There he straightened his cap, brushed his tunic, resaluted the roaring emptiness, and came gimping across two hundred yards of empty ground toward the waiting platform.