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.
"G.o.d, 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. .h.i.tler 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 d.a.m.ned thing himself! Speech over."
He sat down.
Both the producer and Der Fuhrer appeared to be in a state of shock.
"Order me another G.o.dd.a.m.n 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 b.i.t.c.h," 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 sc.u.m!"
"Boys, boys," said the producer.
"Boys, crud! You know what this swill-hole, this chamberpot n.a.z.i, 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 b.u.t.tons, the b.u.t.tons-"
"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. Bra.s.s bands. Torchlight. Bring back Leni Riefenstahl to show us how she shot the Rally in "34. Hitler"s lady-director friend. Fifty cameras she used, fifty she used, by G.o.d, 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 superf.a.gs of history asw.a.n.k in the stadium at dusk, make it all happen again, with this b.a.s.t.a.r.d 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 his 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.d, 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 G.o.d"s sake-"
"No, no, seriously, Archibald. This guy thinks because he puts on a ten-cent uniform and plays. .h.i.tler for four weeks at good pay that if we actually put together the Rally, why Christ, History would turn back, oh turn back, Time, Time in thy flight, make me a stupid Jew-baking n.a.z.i again for tonight. Can you see it, Arch, this lice walking up to the microphones and shouting, and the crowd shouting back, and him really 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, G.o.dd.a.m.n you! d.a.m.n and bake and burn 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 drive through streets. The blond girls. The lovely blond boys. The stadium. Leni Riefenstahl! And from all the trunks, in all the attics, a black plague of armbands winging on the dusk, flying to a.s.sault, 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 corner. "Remember the twenties, Arch, when Hitler got shot at in the street and not hit, or beaten in the streets, and n.o.body socked him away forever, or he left a beer hall ten minutes before a bomb went off, or was in that officers" hut in 1944 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-a.s.s 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 a.s.sistants 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 b.i.t.c.h."
They circled the empty hospital bed; they touched it.
A nurse stood in one corner wringing her hands. The production a.s.sistant babbled.
"Three men it was, three men, three men."
"Shut up." The director was s...o...b..ind 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 a.s.sistant with a steady gaze. "Three men, you say?"
"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, s...o...b.. fat?"
"How did you know?"
The producer blinked at both of them. "What goes on? What-"
"Stupid attracts stupid. Animal cunning calls to laughing jacka.s.s 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 b.i.t.c.h!"
"Louder and funnier, 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?"
"G.o.d, 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 dumba.s.s Adolf?"
"Crazy, awful, mad! It couldn"t happen!"
"n.o.body was ever going to clog the Suez Ca.n.a.l. n.o.body was ever going to land on the Moon. n.o.body."
"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 d.a.m.n 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 AT NUREMBERG. 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-"