The Little Book (44 page)

“Gassing, and worse. The number got up to ten million,” Wheeler said, and he told about Josef Mengele and his experiments and some of the other horrors. “When the Allied soldiers liberated the camps, they made townspeople walk past all the bodies, so no one could say it was just made up.”

Dilly was silent for a time, shaking his head in shock, and went back to looking out the window. “And you didn’t want to make this trip,” he said finally.

“You said there were other things you needed to tell me,” Wheeler said.

“About finding Hitler, that’s all.” Dilly was being evasive.

“You said something more.”

Dilly did not look at him. “It’s about Eleanor Putnam.” His head was turned away. “Actually, I knew she was in Vienna from the very first. And I—” Wheeler stared until he looked back at him. “I’ve sort of been—” He paused. “Well, sort of obsessed.”

“More than just watching her?”

“No, just watching.” He looked out the window again. “It’s just that—” He breathed a great sigh. “I didn’t expect her to be so—so beautiful.”

“What did you do?”

Dilly looked back apologetically, hesitant. “It’s not so much what I did, I guess. More like what I felt. I mean I never went up to her or anything. She never knew I was watching her.”

Wheeler did his best to hide his discomfort.

“I guess I sort of have a crush on her,” he said, putting his head in his hands.

“You have a crush on your own mother!”

Dilly looked around the train car, mortified. “She just looks so fresh and young. Her eyes are so blue, and her smile—she has an absolutely knockout smile. In fact, lately I really noticed a change.” He stopped to find the right words. “Lately, she has looked absolutely radiant. I figure she must be in love. You don’t often see a woman that full of life and passion. ”

“I wouldn’t know,” Wheeler said, wishing for the conversation to return to something safe, like Hitler.

“She looks like a beautiful flower opening up.”

“Music and Vienna,” Wheeler said quickly.

Suddenly Dilly turned to him seriously. “I know what is going on,” he blurted out decisively, a look of real seriousness in his eye, and a cold sweat came to Wheeler’s brow.

“You do?”

“There’s only one thing it can be.” Dilly’s eyes were filled with conviction. “It is love. It’s love for Frank Burden.”

The train stopped at Lambach shortly before one o’clock. Dilly pulled one of his scraps of paper from his pocket and asked the stationmaster for directions. They walked quickly through the narrow streets of the small town, past a number of important-looking buildings. Dilly stopped dead and pointed. “There it is,” he said, his heart beating so hard Wheeler could almost see it through his jacket. “Wait here.”

Wheeler watched as Dilly approached the door and knocked. A dark-haired woman in her forties stood in the doorway in her apron, drying her hands with a towel. She looked friendly enough, smiling and nodding, and at one time pointing down the street over Dilly’s shoulder. Dilly shook her hand and then turned as the woman closed the front door.

“I told her I was an American painter and was visiting from Munich. I said I heard she had an eight-year-old son, Adolf, with beautiful blue eyes and I wondered if I could perhaps have him pose for a chalk sketch. I said I would give the family a copy.”

Now Wheeler’s heart was beating fast. “Her name was Frau Hitler?”

“Of course.”

“And she has a son named Adolf?”

“He’s at school and will be home in an hour,” Dilly said nonchalantly. “He walks along that street.”

Wheeler shook his head. “Do you think it’s the one?”

“We have only to see,” Dilly said.

They killed time by walking the grounds of the eleventh-century Benedictine abbey, the only point of interest in the town. But neither could really concentrate. An hour and ten minutes later they were standing at the same spot near Mrs. Hitler’s front door when the young boy approached. Dilly walked forward, toward the young man. Wheeler had no choice but to follow. As they drew near the young boy, Dilly said, “Good afternoon, Meister Hitler.”

The boy looked perplexed for a moment, then smiled back. “Good afternoon,” he said with a smile as the two men passed. Dilly stopped and stood watching the child pass on toward his house. He took a step toward him, then hesitated, looking for an instant like a man on the brink of a monumental decision. “Meister Hitler,” he called to him, and the boy stopped and turned.

“I am an artist,” he said. “I would like to draw your portrait. I will return. ”

The boy looked at him quizzically, then nodded and turned and walked on toward his house.

Dilly watched him until he opened the front door and entered. When he turned back to Wheeler, his face was ashen and his hands were shaking.

On the train ride back to Vienna Dilly sat by the window and watched the Austrian countryside pass by. He seemed deep in thought, and Wheeler, doing some deep thinking himself, allowed the silence. The sighting of the child Hitler had had a profound impact on both of them, and now each just sat without speaking. Suddenly, Dilly turned from the window and looked at Wheeler with the old spark back in his eyes. “You know, I’ve been thinking,” he said. “How did you know I had been following my mother?”

46

Dancing over the Precipice

On their way back from the train station, Dilly suggested they drop in to the Café Central to see what was up with the
Jung Wien.
As they entered with a show of his old enthusiasm, Wheeler could see Dilly’s patented energy was not what it had been. The day in Lambach and the encounter with the child Hitler had taken a toll, but he was not about to let that stop him. “Let’s see what our
Jung Wien
friends are up to,” he said as they approached the table where a discussion was in full bloom.

“The Americans have arrived,” said Kleist with his old gusto. “We have not seen you for a while,” he said, giving Wheeler a wink. “Your energies have been with other projects, it seems.”

Claus rose and motioned to empty chairs. “By all means, join us. Schluessler here is telling us what is wrong with the empire.”

Schluessler, the scientist, paused in midsentence and acknowledged the newcomers with a forced smile. “This isn’t funny,” he said. “We are not headed in a healthy direction.”

“Oh, it is not as bad as it looks,” von Tscharner said, smiling.

But Schluessler was not diverted. “I think you all have your head in the sand. Karl Lueger has hit a nerve.”

“Handsome Karl is just rousing the rabble,” Kleist said. “His anti-Semitism is a political game, and he knows it.”

“It’s closer to the truth than any of you want to admit,” Schluessler said glumly. “The working people have been maligned and mistreated by all this splendor our fathers have created, the magnificent Ringstrasse, and have pulled together. They are angry and bitter.”

“And they are taking it out on us poor Jews.”

“Poor Jews?” von Tscharner quipped good-naturedly. “Name two.”

“The animosity is at a boiling point.”

“It’s only momentary,” Claus said. “It can’t last.”

Schluessler looked serious again, becoming annoyed that no one was matching his seriousness. “You Jews let it get out of hand, and now you will pay.” There was no good nature in his words anymore. “You control eighty percent of the banks. You run the businesses. You are good with money, and you are good with helping your own kind. You had an advantage and you exploited that advantage. And now you will pay.”

“Oh, come, come,” Claus added. “You are sounding much too serious for our intellectual circle.”

But Schluessler, dug in now, would not retreat. “I am serious. Jews are ruining our city, and the sooner we are rid of them the better.”

“A city without Jews. I can’t imagine it,” Kleist said, now trying to lighten the atmosphere.

“Well, I can,” said Schluessler. “And I must say, I look forward to the day.”

“You can’t be serious. Who would write the music?”

“And the plays?”

“Who would attend their performances?” A nervous laughter erupted from the group.

“I am serious. Deadly serious. Things have gone far enough, and now it is time for change.” He glowered at the silent faces around the table. “You mock me, but on this note I am right.” He rose suddenly from his seat. “And a lot of people agree with me.” Then he suddenly walked away, toward the door, leaving the rest of the table in uncomfortable silence.

“Well,” Dilly burst out, “that was a stimulating discussion,” but there was no life in his voice.

The two friends needed time to think and talk things out, so they had agreed to meet for lunch at one of the restaurants in the Prater, after which they were going to have “another session with that Frisbee thing,” Dilly said.

“That was a bad turn with the
Jung Wien,
” Dilly said, looking deeply concerned.

“They have no idea what is in store for them.”

“And I suppose we can’t warn them.”

“No impact,” Wheeler said glumly, and at that moment he wondered if Dilly was going to bring up Weezie Putnam again and speculated on how lucky it was that Dilly had not seen them together and how quickly he had accepted Wheeler’s “I guessed” when asked how he had known about Dilly’s watch on her. Maybe he had seen them and was being discreet, which Wheeler doubted, since that option required an indirection of which the younger man simply didn’t seem capable. When Dilly Burden had something on his mind he put it square out there on the table. “There was nothing even remotely resembling subterfuge in his style,” Wheeler’s mother said of her husband. “He was totally incapable of dissembling, which made him a great spy.”

“You may have noticed that my health is not tip-top,” he said to Wheeler as they sat down. “Energy’s not what it used to be. Those dreadful Germans ground me down.” As far as Wheeler could tell, his father was indefatigable, but now it was difficult not to notice the shadows deepening under his eyes and some uncharacteristic moments of breathlessness. But this morning he seemed excited and filled with energy for the outing. He held in his hand a copy of the
Neue Freie Presse.
“Look at this,” he said excitedly, slapping the front of the paper with the back of his hand as Wheeler pulled up his chair. “Egon Wickstein’s first publication. I remember reading this in 1934 and giving it to my friend Brod Walker. It was the summer after our junior year. We were on a grand tour of Europe.”

Wheeler looked down at the morning copy of Vienna’s great daily newspaper. On the lower front page, in the usual
feuilleton
spot was Wickstein’s essay. “ ‘The Preconditions of Cultural Apex,’ ” Dilly read. “A little stuffy. But you have to remember he is only eighteen. I think that is swell. We are sitting here with a piece of history in front of us, and we are the only ones who know it.” Then Dilly began reading it, a little slowly, translating as he went. “It is a lively piece of writing. You can see that the boy has talent. I remember when I first read it to my pal Walker. I think it was that morning that he decided to make Wickstein his life’s work.” Dilly looked askance at Wheeler. “He wasn’t much of a scholar in those days, you know. More interested in the young ladies and Cambridge alehouses. But that summer discovering Wickstein sort of lit a fire under him.” Dilly looked off into the distance, smiling. “And now you say he went on to become one of the ranking Harvard scholars.” He gave a satisfied smile. “Brod deserved that. He was an exceptionally good man.”

Wheeler looked down at the copy of the
Neue Freie Presse
. “This is my essay,” he said, his voice full of ironic amusement, which Dilly at first took as humor. “I’m serious,” Wheeler said. “This is my essay.”

“You’re joking.”

“I’m not. I’m dead serious. I pretty much dictated it to Egon the other day in the Café Central.”

“That’s impossible.” Now Dilly looked confused. “This is pure Egon, any graduate student could tell you that. It will be known as his first published work.”

“That may well be, but it is pretty much verbatim an essay I wrote at Harvard in 1960, in a philosophy course.”

“How did it end up in the
Neue Freie Presse?
By osmosis?”

“No, I told you. I gave it to him. He had that deadline and needed something, so I told him my idea, and he wrote it down.”

Dilly stared at his son. “This essay appears as the first selection of the book Brod edited on Wickstein’s early works. He gave me a copy when we all came home for Christmas in 1943. And you are telling me
you
wrote it.”

“I know it is in Dr. Walker’s book. I know it is considered pure Egon Wickstein. That became very clear to me when I nearly got bounced from Harvard for plagiarism for my own essay. I’m just telling you that I gave him the ideas.”

“You mean you gave him the subject matter.”

“And most of the wording. He was desperate and not being very discerning. The deadline was quick upon him.”

Dilly shook his head. “You are saying that if it had not been for you Egon Wickstein might have written his first essay on the tulips at Belvedere? ”

“Exactly.”

Now Dilly was looking serious, trying to get his arms around something big. “You gave Egon Wickstein the idea for his first published essay. I read the essay to Brod Walker in 1935. Brod Walker used it to found his fascination with Wickstein and became the American scholar who popularized Wickstein in English—” He stopped and his mind tried to sort out the enormity of it all.

“And there is more. When I originally wrote the essay in freshman year it was for Philosophy one-oh-one, and it was titled ‘The Great Catch.’ The stuffy title came later. I was trying to figure out on paper why people made such a big deal out of small dramatic events in art and politics and—” He paused to see that Dilly was following.

“And sports.”