Look Who's Back (21 page)

“Hitler!” I said in a commendably discreet voice.

“Have you read the paper yet?” the voice of Madame Bellini asked straight away.

“No,” I said. “Why?”

“Then take a look. I’ll call you back in ten!” “Wait!” I said.

“What do you mean? What newspaper are we talking about here?”

“The one with your picture on the cover,” Madame Bellini said.

I stood up and went over to the pile of newspapers, where there were a few copies of that
Bild
. On the cover was a photograph of me together with the headline: “Loony YouTube Hitler: Fans go wild for his tirades!

I took the paper back to my table and sat down. Then I started to read.

I have to admit that I was astounded. Not by the paper’s outlandish take on reality, something I have encountered only too often in the past – it is well known that the biggest fools are generally to be found on the editorial boards of the national press. But because I sensed this
Bild
newspaper was an institution which might turn out to be a secret ally. A little uptight, maybe, with a typical petit-bourgeois subservience which recoiled from speaking its mind. But on many issues the position it took was not dissimilar to my own. When I heard the daughters of Wotan soar across the skies once more, I reached for the telephone.

“Hitler.”

“I’m disgusted,” Madame Bellini said. “They didn’t give us any warning!”

“What do you expect from a newspaper?”

“I’m not talking about
Bild
, I’m talking about MyTV,” she said in a state of high excitement. “They interviewed Fahrendonk. At the very least I thought we might have been told in advance.”

“What difference would that have made?”

“None,” she sighed. “You’re probably right.”

“In the end it is only a newspaper,” I said. “It is of no interest to me.”

“Maybe not to you,” Madame Bellini said. “But it is to us. They want to bring you down. And we’ve invested rather a lot in you.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” I asked curtly.

“It means,” Madame Bellini said in a cooler tone, “that we have arranged an interview with
Bild
. And that we need to talk.”

“Why do we need to talk?”

“Because once they’ve got it in for you they’ll leave no stone unturned. I’d like you to tell me if there’s anything they might dig up.”

It is always exhilarating to watch our business leaders take fright. When the deal appears sufficiently tantalising, they hurry over with beaming smiles, scarcely able to throw enough money at you. When everything goes well, they are at the front of the queue to increase their share, suggesting that they would have borne the whole risk. But the moment something looks perilous, they are the first to foist this lucrative risk onto others.

“If that is your concern,” I mocked her, “then it has come too late. Do you not think you ought to have asked these questions earlier?”

Madame Bellini cleared her throat. “I’m afraid I have something to confess.”

“Which is?”

“We ran a check on you. Listen, don’t get me wrong, we didn’t have you tailed or anything like that. But we did hire a specialist agency. I mean, one needs to find out whether one is actually employing a devoted Nazi.”

“Well,” I said peevishly, “I imagine the results will have reassured you.”

“On the one hand, yes,” Madame Bellini said. “We didn’t find anything bad.”

“And on the other?”

“On the other hand, we didn’t find anything at all. It’s as if you didn’t exist.”

“I see. So now you would like me to tell you whether I existed before?”

Madame Bellini paused a moment.

“Please don’t get the wrong end of the stick. We’re all in the same boat here; all we want to do is avoid the sort of situation where …” Here she let out a rather forced laugh. “… we end up – without knowing it, of course – having someone like the real Hitler on our books.” She paused again before adding, “I can hardly believe what I’m saying here.”

“Me neither,” I said. “It’s high treason!”

“Can’t you be serious for a minute?” she asked. “I want you to answer just one question for me – hand on heart, are you sure that the hacks at
Bild
won’t unearth anything they could use against you?”

“Frau Bellini,” I said, “I have done nothing in my life of which I am ashamed. I have neither sought any unwarranted financial gain, nor have I ever acted purely in my own interest. This will be of little use in our dealings with the press, however. In this instance we must assume that
Bild
will concoct a whole heap of ugly lies. I expect they will falsely attribute an array of illegitimate children to me once again – we know this is the worst thing the scurrilous petit-bourgeois press can think of. But I can live with such accusations.”

“Illegitimate children? Nothing else?”

“What else do you imagine there might be?”

“What about your political background, Nazi affiliation and that sort of thing?”

“My political background is above reproach.”

“So you were never a member of a right-wing party?” she probed.

“What are you talking about?” I laughed at her clumsy
trick question. “I was practically one of the party’s founders. Member number 555!”

“I’m sorry?”

“I don’t want you to go around thinking I was just some hanger-on.”

“Was that a youthful indiscretion, perhaps?” Once again Madame Bellini made an awkward attempt to undermine my unimpeachable convictions.

“What are you saying? Think about it. In 1919 I was thirty. I even helped come up with the ruse. We invented the first 500 to make the numbers look better! It is a stunt I’m awfully proud of. Let me reassure you, the worst that this newspaper will be able to print about me is that Hitler falsified his membership number. I think I can live with that.”

There was another pause on the other end of the line. Then Madame Bellini said, “1919?”

“Of course. When else do you think? You can only join a party once, unless you leave it. And I certainly never left mine!”

She laughed and sounded relieved. “I can live with that, too. ‘YouTube Hitler fudged party entry in 1919!’ I’d almost pay to see a headline like that.”

“Return to your post, then, and hold your position. We will not surrender a metre!”

“Jawohl, mein Führer,” I heard Madame Bellini laugh before hanging up. Dropping the newspaper onto the table I suddenly found myself staring into gleaming blue eyes set beneath a mop of blonde hair. A boy, with his hands clasped timidly behind his back.

“Well, well,” I said. “Who do we have here? What is your name?”

“My name is Reinhard,” the whippersnapper said. Really a delightful little chap.

“How old are you?” I asked. Tentatively, he brought forth a hand and put up three fingers before eventually adding a fourth. Adorable.

“I knew a Reinhard once,” I said, gently stroking his hair. “He lived in Prague. Such a beautiful city.”

“Did you like him?” the lad asked.

“I liked him very much indeed,” I said. “He was a very good man! He made sure that lots of wicked people can’t harm people like you and me anymore.”

“How many?” the boy asked. I could see he was becoming more trustful.

“A huge number! Thousands! A very good, brave man!” “Did he put them in prison?” “Yes,” I nodded. “That, too.”

“I bet they got their bottoms smacked,” this enchanting scallywag chortled, taking his other hand out from behind his back. He held out a copy of
Bild
.

“Did you bring this for me?” I asked.

He nodded. “From Mummy! She’s sitting over there,” he said, pointing to a table in the distance. Then he pulled a felt-tipped pen from his trouser pocket. “Mummy said I have to ask you if you’ll draw a auto on it.”

“A auto,” I laughed. “Are you sure? Or did Mummy say an autograph?”

The boy pulled the sweetest frown imaginable and thought
hard. Then he cast me a look of consternation: “I don’t know anymore. Will you draw me a auto?”

“Why don’t we ask Mummy?” I stood up, took the little fellow by the hand and brought him back to his mother. I signed the newspaper for her and also drew on a piece of paper a picture of a beautiful automobile – a magnificent twelve-cylinder Maybach. As I returned to my seat the telephone rang. It was Madame Bellini.

“You do that very well,” she said.

“I like children,” I said. “I was unable to start my own family. But please stop watching everything I do!”

“What do you mean, ‘children’?” she asked, sounding quite astonished. “No, I mean you argue well, you’re quick-witted. You’re so good that Herr Sensenbrink and I thought we could offer them an interview right away. The
Bild
people!”

I pondered this for a few seconds, then said, “No, we’re not going to do that. And by not doing it we’ll feature more frequently on their front page. We will grant them their interview when it suits
us
. And on our terms.”

I
am not often mistaken. On the contrary, I am very seldom mistaken. This is one of the advantages of not entering the political fray until one has had some proper experience of life – and let me emphasise here the word “proper”. These days there seems to be no end of self-styled politicians who, having stood behind a shop counter for a whole quarter of an hour, or once peered through an open door into a factory hall, now think they know what real life looks like. To take an example I just have to think of that liberal Asiatic minister, who abandoned his medical studies to concentrate on his career as a political nonentity. This begs the question: Why? If, instead, he had said he was concentrating on completing his medical studies, then aiming to work as a doctor for ten or twenty years, fifty to sixty hours per week, so that afterwards, schooled by harsh reality, he could gradually form his own opinions and develop these into a view of the world, allowing him to embark on meaningful political work with a good conscience, he might have been somebody, given favourable enough circumstances. But no: this fellow is one of those ghastly modern types who think they should enter politics first and the ideas will somehow piece themselves together along the way. And indeed,
this is precisely what it looks like. Today they state the case for Jewish finance; tomorrow they’re chasing after Jewish Bolshevism. This stripling is no different; he is like the class dunce, forever running after the bus. All I can say is: ugh! Had he waited until his first experience on the front line, unemployment, the men’s hostel in Vienna, rejection by those professorial oafs of the academy, then he would know what he was talking about today. Errors would be committed only in exceptional circumstances. As with this
Bild
affair, in which I confess I had misread the situation.

I had assumed that the press vermin would be all over me, my policies, my speeches. In fact they sent a horde of photographers. Two days later a large picture appeared of me drinking tea from a paper cup at the newspaper kiosk. The vendor stood beside me holding a bottle of lemonade, which might have resembled a beer bottle. Above the photograph in large type was written:

True, the newspaper vendor had not been having his best day sartorially. This was due to the fact that he had decided to undertake some renovations to his sales window, for which he had been wearing some decommissioned fatigues under a smock that he removed in his cigarette breaks. He had looked no shabbier than one would expect from someone in the middle of a painting job – nobody can judge this better than I. But the vendor was no “drinking buddy” of mine, not by a long shot; I had never sought the company of drinkers. I found the whole business most unpleasant; I mean, the newspaper seller really did not deserve to be treated like that. Fortunately he seemed to know how to deal with it. I had set off late morning to offer my apologies for the distress caused by the article. But he could barely spare me the time of day.