McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales - Michael Chabon [152]
“Suicide! Absolutely, my dear Sir Seaton! Suicide! Certainly! And I’m the bloody Virgin of Lourdes.” Still chuckling, the Brown-shirt leader, considered by many to be the most powerful man in Germany, turned to throw his cigar butt into the flames.
“Perhaps if we had a word with Herr Hitler himself?”
Again the Herculean snort. “Good luck, my friend. He’s a wreck. Maybe you can get more sense out of him than we can. He’s a classic Austrian. All talk and trousers and useless in a crisis. Feckless as they come. Yet he’s my leader, and I live with it. I am an infantile man, at heart, and a wicked one. I offer my loyalty to whichever leader best serves my interest. I have too many weaknesses to be more than an ordinary soldier taking orders.”
“You’ve known him a long time?” Begg asked quietly.
“I threw in with Alf, as we knew him in the trenches, soon after the Stab in the Back of the Armistice. Just as we were on the verge of winning, victory was stolen from us by Jews and Socialists at home. I didn’t need to explain anything to Alf. We had a lot in common. He was a great infiltrator. Used to get in with the Commies, find out what they were up to, then report back to me. They say he won the Iron Cross for bravery, as a runner in the trenches, but that’s not his talent. My guess is that he was terrified the whole time. No choice. Run the lines or be shot as a coward. He’s always managed to slip away from the violence. Bad precedent, of course, in a soldier. Learns the wrong lessons.” Röhm shrugged. “I doubt if he ever had to shoot anyone personally in his life. Good luck to you, my dear sir.”
Strasser was sober and collected. He put down his glass halffinished. “Let me see if the Führer is ready.”
As he walked up the staircase, Sinclair murmured to Begg, “Classic case of manic depression, eh?”
From the landing above, Rudolph Hess peered down. “I have very good hearing, Mr. Sinclair. We reject the debased jargon of the Jew Freud. We have perfectly good German words and good German precedents to describe our leader’s state of spirit. Goethe, himself, I believe coined several . . .”
“Our Anglo-Saxon phrase would be ‘barkingbarmy,’ Herr Hess.” Sinclair craned to look at their customer. “Would that be better?”
Hess adopted a haughty manner. “Perhaps,” he said. “Herr Strasser. Would you like to bring them now?”
With a somewhat theatrical movement of his hand, Gregor Strasser motioned for the two Englishmen to follow him up the stairs.
Hitler’s room was at the far end of the landing. There was only faint flickering candlelight issuing from it. When, at Hess’s knock, they entered, they found a dark, ill-smelling room in which guttered a few church candles of yellow wax, placed here and there on dressing table and nightstands. The Englishmen were immediately reminded of Father Stempfle’s den. The mirror of the dressing table reflected a man’s naked legs, scrawny feet. The knees were bare. The man had hastily pulled on a raincoat in lieu of a dressing gown.
Adolf Hitler sat at the end of his bed. Clearly he had just allowed himself to be coaxed out of bed. He sat hunched with his hands folded in front of him and did not look up as Begg and Sinclair were introduced. Then a thin whine, like a distant turbine, started in the man’s throat. “No, no, no. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.”
Strasser stepped forward. “Just a few minutes, Alf. They want to find out who killed Geli. This means you’ll be able to punish the culprit and put an end to suspicion within the party. It will save your career.”
“What do I care for my career now that my angel is dead?” The soft, Austrian accent was unexpected.
When the man looked up, a ghastly intelligence in his sleepless eyes, even Begg was shocked. Hitler had the familiar red blotches on his cheekbones, the drawn lines of anxiety, a face so mad and yet so utterly without redeeming character that one might have been looking at a damned soul in Limbo. It was all the two men could do not to turn away in disgust.
Now Hitler began to mumble in a monotone. “She loved life. She loved her Uncle Alf. We