Aftershock & Others: 19 Oddities Page 11

  And then he began to speak, his surprisingly rich baritone rising and falling like a Wagnerian opus, hurling sudden gutturals through the air for emphasis like fist-sized cobblestones.

  For the first ten minutes he spoke evenly and stood stiffly with his hands trapped in his jacket pockets. But as his voice rose and his passion grew, his hands broke free, fine, graceful, long-fingered hands that fluttered like pigeons and swooped like hawks, then knotted into fists to pound the top of the rostrum with sledgehammer blows.

  The minutes flew, gathering into one hour, then two. At first Karl had managed to remain aloof, picking apart Hitler’s words, separating the carefully selected truths from the half truths and the outright fictions. Then, in spite of himself, he began to fall under the man’s spell. This Adolf Hitler was such a passionate speaker, so caught up in his own words that one had to go along with him; whatever the untruths and specious logic in his oratory, no one could doubt that this man believed unequivocally every word that he spoke, and somehow transferred that fervent conviction to his audience so that they too became unalterably convinced of the truth of what he was saying.

  He was never more powerful than when he called on all loyal Germans to come to the aid of a sick and failing Germany, one not merely financially and economically ill, but a Germany on its intellectual and moral deathbed. No question that Germany was sick, struck down by a disease that poultices and salves and cathartics could not cure. Germany needed radical surgery: The sick and gangrenous parts that were poisoning the rest of the system had to be cut away and burned before the healing could begin. Karl listened and became entranced, transfixed, unmindful of the time, a prisoner of that voice, those eyes.

  And then this man, this Adolf Hitler, was standing in front of the rostrum, bathed in sweat, his hair hanging over his forehead, waving his arms, calling for all loyal Germans who truly cared for their Fatherland to rally around the Nazi Party and call for a march on Berlin where they would extract a promise from the feeble Weimar republicans to banish the Jews and the communists from all positions of power and drive the French and Belgian troops from the Ruhr Valley and once again make the Fatherland’s borders inviolate, or by God, there would be a new government in power in Berlin, one that would bring Germany to the greatness that was her destiny. German misery must be broken by German iron. Our day is here! Our time is now!

  The main hall went mad as Hitler stepped back and let the frenzied cheering of more than three thousand voices rattle the walls and rafters around him. Even Karl was on his feet, ready to shake his fist in the air and shout at the top of his lungs. Suddenly he caught himself.

  What am I doing?

  “Well, what did you think of the Gefreiter?” Ernst said. “Our strutting lance corporal?”

  They were out on Rosenheimerstrasse, making their way back to the hotel, and Karl’s ears had finally stopped ringing. Ahead of them in the darkness, mist rising from the Isar River sparkled in the glow of the lights lining the Ludwig Bridge.

  “I think he’s the most magnetic, powerful, mesmerizing speaker I’ve ever heard. Frighteningly so.”

  “Well, he’s obviously mad—a complete loon. A master of hyperbolic sophistry, but hardly frightening.”

  “He’s so…so…so anti-Semitic.”

  Ernst shrugged. “They all are. It’s just rhetoric. Doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  Ernst stopped and stood staring at Karl. “Wait. You don’t mean to tell me you’re…?”

  Karl turned and nodded silently in the darkness.

  “But Colonel Stehr wasn’t—”

  “His wife was.”

  “Good heavens, man! I had no idea!”

  “Well, what’s so unusual? What’s wrong with a German officer marrying a woman who happens to be Jewish?”

  “Nothing, of course. It’s just that one becomes so used to these military types and their—”

  “Do you know that General von Seeckt, commander of the entire German army, has a Jewish wife? So does Chancellor Stresemann.”

  “Of course. The Nazis point that out at every opportunity.”

  “Right! We’re everywhere!” Karl calmed himself with an effort. “Sorry, Ernst. I don’t know why I got so excited. I don’t even consider myself a Jew. I’m a human being. Period.”

  “Perhaps, but by Jewish law, if the mother is Jewish, then so are the children.”

  Karl stared at him. “How do you know that?”

  “Everybody knows that. But that doesn’t matter. The locals we’ve met know you as Colonel Stehr’s son. That’s what will count here in the next week or so.”

  “Next week or so? Aren’t we returning to Berlin?”

  Ernst gripped his arm. “No, Karl. We’re staying. Things are coming to a head. The next few days promise to be most entertaining.”

  “I shouldn’t—”

  “Come back to the hotel. I’ll fix you an absinthe. You look like you could use one.”

  Karl remembered the bitter taste, then realized he could probably do with a bit of oblivion tonight.

  “All right. But just one.”

  “Excellent! Absinthe tonight, and we’ll plan our next steps in the morning.”

  Today it takes 4 trillion marks to buy a single US dollar.

  —Volkischer Beobachter, November 8, 1923

  “Herr Hitler’s speaking in Freising tonight,” Ernst said.

  They strolled through the bright, crisp morning air, past onion-cupolaed churches and pastel house fronts that would have looked more at home along the Tiber than the Isar.

  “How far is that?”

  “About twenty miles north. But I have a better idea. Gustav von Kahr, Bavaria’s honorable dictator, is speaking at the Burgerbraukeller tonight.”

  “I’d rather hear Hitler.”

  It was already more than a week into November and Karl was still in Munich. He’d expected to be home long ago but he’d found himself too captivated by Adolf Hitler to leave. It was a strange attraction, equal parts fascination and revulsion. Here was a man who might pull together Germany’s warring factions and make them one, yet then might wreak havoc upon the freedoms of the Weimar Constitution. But where would the Constitution be by year’s end with old mark notes now being over-printed with EINE BILLION?

  Karl felt like a starving sparrow contemplating a viper’s offer to guard her nest while she hunts for food. Surely her nest would be well protected from other birds in her absence, but could she count on finding any eggs left when she returned?

  He’d spoken to a number of Jews in Munich, shopkeepers mostly, engaging them in casual conversation about the Kampfbund groups, and Herr Hitler in particular. The seismic upheavals in the economy had left them frazzled and desperate, certain that their country would be in ruins by the end of the year unless somebody did something. Most said they’d support anyone who could bring the economic chaos and runaway inflation under control. Hitler and his Nazis promised definitive solutions. So what if the country had to live under a dictatorship for a while? Nothing—nothing—could be worse than this. After all, hadn’t the Kaiser been a dictator? And they’d certainly done better under him than with this Weimar Republic with its Constitution that guaranteed so many freedoms. What good were freedom of the press and speech and assembly if you were starving? As for the anti-Semitism, most of the Munich Jews echoed Ernst’s dismissal: mere rhetoric. Nothing more than tough talk to excite the beer drinkers.

  Still uneasy, Karl found himself drawn back again and again to hear Hitler speak—in the Zirkus Krone, and in the Burgerbraukeller and other beer halls around the city—hoping each time the man would say something to allay his fears and allow him to embrace the hope the Nazis offered.

  Absinthe only added to the compulsion. Karl had taken to drinking a glass with Ernst before attending each new Hitler speech, and as a result he had acquired a taste for the bitter stuff.

  Because Herr Hitler seemed to be speaking all the time.

&
nbsp; Especially since the failed communist putsch in Hamburg. It failed because the German workers refused to rally to the red flag and Reichswehr troops easily put down the revolution in its second day. There would be no German October. But the attempt had incited the Kampfbund groups to near hysteria. Karl saw more uniforms in Munich’s streets than he’d seen in Berlin during the war. And Herr Hitler was there in the thick of it, fanning the sparks of patriotic fervor into a bonfire wherever he found an audience.

  Karl attended his second Hitler speech while under the influence of absinthe, and there he experienced his first hallucination. It happened while Hitler was reaching his final crescendo: The hall wavered before Karl, the light dimmed, all the color drained from his sight, leaving only black and white and shades of gray; he had the impression of being in a crowded room, just like the beer hall, and then it passed. It hadn’t lasted long enough for Karl to capture any details, but it had left him shivering and afraid.

  The following night it happened again—the same flash of black and white, the same aftershock of dread.

  It was the absinthe, he was sure. He’d heard that it caused delirium and hallucinations and even madness in those who overused it. But Karl did not feel he was going mad. No, this was something else. Not madness, but a different level of perception. He had a sense of a hidden truth, just beyond the grasp of his senses, beckoning to him, reaching for him. He felt he’d merely grazed the surface of that awful truth, and that if he kept reaching he’d soon seize it.

  And he knew how to extend his reach: more absinthe.

  Ernst was only too glad to have another enthusiast for his favorite libation.

  “Forget Herr Hitler tonight,” Ernst said. “This will be better. Bavaria’s triumvirate will be there in person—Kahr, General Lossow, and Colonel von Seisser. Rumor has it that Kahr is going to make a dramatic announcement. Some say he’s going to declare Bavaria’s independence. Others say he’s going to return Crown Prince Rupprecht to the throne and restore the Bavarian monarchy. You don’t want to miss this, Karl.”

  “What about Hitler and the rest of the Kampfbund?”

  “They’re frothing at the mouth. They’ve been invited to attend but not to participate. It’s clear, I think, that Kahr is making a move to upstage the Kampfbund and solidify his leadership position. By tomorrow morning, Hitler and his cronies may find themselves awash in a hysterical torrent of Bavarian nationalism. This will be worse than any political defeat—they’ll be…irrelevant. Think of their outrage, think of their frustration.” Ernst rubbed his palms with glee. “Oh, this will be most entertaining!”

  Reluctantly, Karl agreed. He felt he was getting closer and closer to that elusive vision, but even if Generalstaatskommissar Kahr tried to pull the rug out from under the Kampfbund, Karl was sure he would have plenty of future opportunities to listen to Herr Hitler.

  Karl and Ernst arrived early at the Burgerbraukeller, and a good thing too. The city’s Blue Police had to close the doors at seven fifteen when the hall filled to overflowing. This was a much higher class audience than Hitler attracted. Well-dressed businessmen in tall hats and women in long dresses mingled with military officers and members of the Bavarian provincial cabinet; the local newspapers were represented by their editors rather than mere reporters. Everyone in Munich wanted to hear what Generalstaatskommissar Kahr had to say, and those left in the cold drizzle outside protested angrily.

  They were the lucky ones, Karl decided soon after Gustav von Kahr began to speak. The squat, balding royalist had no earthshaking announcement to make. Instead, he stood hunched over the rostrum, with Lossow and Seisser, the other two thirds of the ruling triumvirate, seated on the bandstand behind him, and read a dull, endless anti-Marxist treatise in a listless monotone.

  “Let’s leave,” Karl said after fifteen minutes of droning.

  Ernst shook his head and glanced to their right. “Look who just arrived.”

  Karl turned and recognized the figure in the light tan trench coat standing behind a pillar near the rear of the hall, chewing on a fingernail.

  “Hitler! I thought he was supposed to be speaking in Freising.”

  “That’s what the flyers said. Apparently he changed his mind. Or perhaps he simply wanted everyone to think he’d be in Freising.” Ernst’s voice faded as he turned in his seat and scanned the audience. “I wonder…”

  “Wonder what?”

  He leaned close and whispered in Karl’s ear. “I wonder if Herr Hitler might not be planning something here tonight.”

  Karl’s intestines constricted into a knot. “A putsch?”

  “Keep your voice down. Yes. Why not? Bavaria’s ruling triumvirate and most of its cabinet are here. If I were planning a takeover, this would be the time and place.”

  “But all those police outside.”

  Ernst shrugged. “Perhaps he’ll just take over the stage and launch into one of his speeches. Either way, history could be made here tonight.”

  Karl glanced back at Hitler and wondered if this was what the nearly grasped vision was about. He nudged Ernst.

  “Did you bring the absinthe?”

  “Of course. But we won’t be able to fix it properly here.” He paused. “I have an idea, though.”

  He signaled the waitress and ordered two snifters of cognac. She looked at him strangely, but returned in a few minutes and placed the glasses on the table next to their beer steins. Ernst pulled his silver flask from his pocket and poured a more than generous amount of absinthe into the cognac.

  “It’s not turning yellow,” Karl said.

  “It only does that in water.” Ernst lifted his snifter and swirled the greenish contents. “This was Toulouse-Lautrec’s favorite way of diluting his absinthe. He called it his ‘earthquake.’” Ernst smiled as he clinked his glass against Karl’s. “To earthshaking events.”

  Karl took a sip and coughed. The bitterness of the wormwood was enhanced rather than cut by the burn of the cognac. He washed it down with a gulp of ale. He would have poured the rest of his “earthquake” into Ernst’s glass if he hadn’t felt he needed every drop of the absinthe to reach the elusive vision. So he finished the entire snifter, chasing each sip with more ale. He wondered if he’d be able to walk out of here unassisted at the night’s end.

  He was just setting down the empty glass when he heard shouting outside. The doors at the rear of the hall burst open with a shattering bang as helmeted figures charged in brandishing sabers, pistols, and rifles with fixed bayonets. From their brown shirts and the swastikas on their red armbands Karl knew they weren’t the police.

  “Nazi storm troopers!” Ernst said.

  Pandemonium erupted. Some men cried out in shock and outrage while others shouted “Heil!” Some were crawling under the tables while others were climbing atop them for a better view. Women screamed and fainted at the sight of a machine gun being set up at the door. Karl looked around for Hitler and found him charging down the center aisle holding a pistol aloft. As he reached the bandstand he fired a shot into the ceiling.

  Sudden silence.

  Hitler climbed up next to General Commissioner von Kahr and turned toward the crowd. Karl blinked at the sight of him. He had shed the trench coat and was wearing a poorly cut morning coat with an Iron Cross pinned over the left breast. He looked…ridiculous, more like the maître d’ in a seedy restaurant than the savior of Germany.

  But then the pale blue eyes cast their spell and the familiar baritone rang through the hall announcing that a national revolution had broken out in Germany. The Bavarian cities of Augsburg, Nuremberg, Regensburg, and Wurzburg were now in his control; the Reichswehr and State Police were marching from their barracks under Nazi flags; the Weimar government was no more. A new national German Reich was being formed. Hitler was in charge.

  Ernst snickered. “The Gefreiter looks like a waiter who’s led a putsch against the restaurant staff.”

  Karl barely heard him. The vision…it was coming…close now…the absinthe
, fueled by the cognac and ale, was drawing it nearer than ever before…the room was flickering about him, the colors draining away…

  And then the Burgerbraukeller was gone and he was in blackness…silent, formless blackness…but not alone. He detected movement around him in the palpable darkness…

  And then he saw them.

  Human forms, thin, pale, bedraggled, sunken-cheeked and hollow-eyed, dressed in rags or dressed not at all, and thin, so painfully thin, like parchment-covered skeletons through which each rib and each bump and nodule on the pelvis and hips could be touched and numbered, all stumbling, sliding, staggering, shambling, groping toward him out of the dark. At first he thought it a dream, a nightmare reprise of the march of the starving disabled veterans he’d witnessed in Berlin, but these…people…were different. No tattered uniforms here. The ones who had clothing were dressed in striped prison pajamas, and there were so many of them. With their ranks spanning to the right and left as far as Karl could see, and stretching and fading off into the distance to where the horizon might have been, their number was beyond counting…thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions…

  And all coming his way.

  They began to pick up speed as they neared, breaking into a staggering run like a herd of frightened cattle. Closer, now…their gaunt faces became masks of fear, pale lips drawn back over toothless mouths, giving no sign that they saw him…he could see no glint of light in the dark hollows of their eye sockets…but he gasped as other details became visible.

  They had been mutilated—branded, actually. A six-pointed star had been carved into the flesh of each. On the forehead, between the breasts, on the belly—a bleeding Star of David. The only color not black, white, or gray was the red of the blood that oozed from each of those six-pointed brands.