Timur Vermes: Look Who's Back

“What then?”

“It stinks, too! I don’t know what it’s made out of — was it one of those boiler suits they wear at petrol stations?”

“In the theatre of war the infantryman cannot change his coat, and I myself refuse to indulge in the decadence of those who live in comfort behind the front.”

“Whatever… but just think about your programme!”

“How do you mean?”

“Listen, you want to your programme to do well, don’t you?”

“Yes, and?”

“Just think about it: someone comes by wanting to meet you, and there you are, reeking so strongly of petrol that they don’t even dare light up within ten metres!”

“ You did,” I replied. But my words lacked their customary edge; reluctantly I had to concur with his arguments.

“I’m brave, you see,” he laughed. “Come on, why don’t you pop home and fetch some more clothes.”

The tiresome accommodation problem.

“I told you, it’s difficult at the moment.”

“Sure, but your ex must be at work now. Or out shopping. Why are you being so cagey?”

“You see,” I said hesitantly, “it’s all very difficult. My home…” My logic was now in a bit of a tangle. But it was a humiliating situation, too.

“Don’t you have a key, or what’s the problem?”

This time I couldn’t help laughing at such naivety. I had no idea whether or not there was a key to the Führerbunker.

“No, er, how should I put it? Somehow contact was… er… cut off.”

“Are you under a restraining order?”

“I can’t even explain it to myself,” I said. “But it’s something like that.”

“Heavens above, you don’t give that sort of impression,” he said. “What on earth did you do?”

“I don’t know,” I said, truthfully. “I’ve lost all memory of the intervening period.”

“You don’t seem like the violent type to me at any rate,” he said thoughtfully.

“Well,” I said, running my fingers over my parting, “I am a soldier, of course…”

“O.K., soldier,” the newspaper vendor said. “Let me make another suggestion. Because you’re ace and because I’ve got faith in obsessive types like you.”

“Of course you have,” I said. “Like any sensible person. We must spare no effort, indeed we must be obsessive in the pursuit of our goals. Lily-livered, two-faced compromise is the root of all evil and—”

“Yes, O.K.,” he interrupted me. “Now look. Tomorrow I’ll bring you some of my old things. No need to thank me, I’ve put on a bit of weight recently and can’t do up the buttons anymore. But they might fit you,” he said, looking rather unhappily at his stomach. “I mean, you’re not working as Göring, are you?”

“Why would I do that?” I asked, confused.

“And I’ll take your uniform straight to the dry cleaner’s…”

“I will not part with my uniform!” I said adamantly.

“As you like,” he said, suddenly looking weary. “You can take your uniform to the dry cleaner’s yourself. But you do understand, don’t you? That it has to be cleaned?”

It was an outrage — I was being treated like a child. But I realised that nothing would change as long as I went around looking as grubby as a child. So I nodded.

“The shoes might be a problem, though,” he said. “What size are you?”

“43.”

“Mine will be too small, then,” he said. “But I’ll come up with something.”

The reader must be shown some sympathy if, at this or any other point, he is flabbergasted by the speed with which I adapted to my new circumstances. How can the poor reader, who during the years, nay decades, of my absence has been drowning in the Marxist broth of history from the soup kettle of democracy, be capable of peering over the edge of his own bowl? I have no intention of casting any reproach upon the honest labourer or farmer. How should the simple man protest when so-called professionals and academic nonentities have, for six decades, been proclaiming from the lecterns in their “temples of knowledge” that the Führer is dead? Who would hold it against the man who, amidst his daily struggle for survival, cannot find the strength to say, “Where is he then, the dead Führer? Show him to me!”

Or the woman, for that matter.

But when the Führer suddenly reappears in the place where he always was, in the capital of the Reich, the confusion and disorientation which strikes the Volk is as paralysing as the astonishment. And it would have been perfectly understandable had I, too, spent days, weeks even, in utter bewilderment, crippled by the incomprehensible. But Fate decreed that it should be different with me. That as a result of a vast amount of effort and enormous deprivation over harsh yet instructive years, I should be able early in life to form a reasoned outlook, forged in theory, but hardened into a finished weapon on the battlefield of practice, an unwavering viewpoint which had consistently governed my life and work ever since. Even now, there was no need for newfangled or casual tinkering; on the contrary, my grounded perspective helped me achieve an understanding of both the old and the new. And so it was the Führer principle which ultimately liberated me from my fruitless hunt for explanations.

Having spent one of the first nights tossing and turning in my armchair, unable to sleep after those strenuous hours of reading, and ruminating on my plight, all of a sudden I was struck by a flash of understanding. I sat up bolt upright, my eyes wide with enlightenment as they surveyed the large jars of colourful confectionery and everything else inside the kiosk. It was crystal clear: in her own inscrutable way, Fate herself had intervened in the course of events. I slapped my forehead; it was so obvious that I reproached myself for not having realised it earlier. Particularly as this was not the first time that Destiny had taken hold of the rudder. Had it not been exactly the same in 1919, at the nadir of German misery and hardship? Did not an unknown corporal rise from the trenches in that portentous year? Despite being afflicted by poverty, abject poverty, did not a brilliant orator emerge from the desperate multitudes, from where one might have least expected? Did not this orator also reveal a rich hoard of knowledge and experience, amassed during those darkest of days in Vienna and born of an insatiable curiosity which, from early childhood, spurred this young man, keen of mind, to devour everything relating to history and politics? The most valuable information, stored seemingly at random, but in fact carefully accumulated morsel by morsel within one man? And did not this man, this inconspicuous corporal, upon whose lonely shoulders millions placed their hopes, did he not smash the shackles of Versailles and the League of Nations, withstand with God-given ease the conflicts forced on him with Europe’s armies, against France, against England, against Russia? Did not this man, who was said to possess no more than a mediocre mind, lead the Fatherland to the highest peaks of glory in the face of unanimous judgement by self-professed experts?

This man, of course, was none other than myself.

My ears were pounding. Each single event, each single occurrence from back then was by itself more improbable than everything which had befallen me over these past two or three days. Now my razor-sharp gaze pierced the darkness between a jar of bulls-eyes and one of sugar drops, where the bright light of the moon soberly illuminated my brainwave like an icy torch. Of course, for a lonely warrior to lead an entire people out of a slough of errors is a wondrous talent, which could appear only every one hundred or two hundred years. But what was Fate to do if she had already played this priceless trump card? If, amongst the human material available, there was not a single soul with sufficient presence of mind?