«Of course! The Army, the Hitler Youth.»
«Yes, yes,» said Hitler. «But think of the publicity, all over the world? Let us go to Nuremberg, eh, and film my plane, eh, and me coming down out of the clouds? I heard those people out there, just now: Nuremberg and plane and torches. They remember. I remember. I held a torch in that stadium. My God, it was beautiful. And now, now I am exactly the age Hitler was when he was at his prime.»
«He was never at his prime,» said the director. «Unless you mean bung-meat.»
Hitler put down his glass. His cheeks grew very red. Then he forced a smile to widen his lips and change the colour of his face.
«That is a joke, of course.»
«A joke,» said the producer, playing ventriloquist to his friend.
«I was thinking,» Hitler went on, his eyes on the clouds again, seeing it all, back in another year. «If we shot it next month, with the. weather good. Think of all the tourists who Would come to watch the filming!»
«Yeah. Bormann might even come back from Argentina.»
The producer shot his director another glare.
Hitler cleared his throat and forced the words out: «As for expense, if you took one small ad, one mind you! in the Nuremberg papers one week before, why, you would have an army of people there as extras at fifty cents a day, no, a quarter, no, free!»
Der Fuhrer emptier his stein, ordered another. The waitress dashed off to refill. Hitler studied his two friends.
«You know,» said the director, sitting up, his own eyes taking a kind of vicious fire, his teeth showing as he leaned forward, «there is a kind of idiot grace to you, a kind of murderous wit, a sort of half-ass style. Every once in a while you come dripping up with some sensational slime that gleams and stinks in the sun, buster. Archie, listen to him. Der Fuhrer just had a great bowel movement. Drag in the astrologers' Slit the pigeons and filch their guts. Read me the casting sheets.»
The director leaped to his feet and began to pace.
«That one ad in the paper, and all the trunks in Nuremberg get flung wide! Old uniforms come out to cover fat bellies! Old armbands come out to fit flabby arms! Old military caps with skull-eagles on them fly out to fit on fatheads!»
«I will not sit here―» cried Hitler.
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.
«God, 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 Hitler 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 damned thing himself! Speech over.» -
He sat down.
Both the producer and Der Fuhrer appeared to be in a state of shock.
«Order me another goddamn 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 bitch,» 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 scum!»
«Boys, boys,» said the producer.
«Boys, crud! You know what this swill-hole, this chamberpot Nazi, 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 buttons, the buttons ―»
«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. Brass bands. Torchlight. Bring back Leni Reifenstahl to show us how she shot the Rally in '34. Hitler's lady-director friend. Fifty cameras she used, fifty she used, by God, 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 superfags of history aswank in the stadium at dusk, make it all happen again, with this bastard 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 he 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 bastard, 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 God's sake ―»
«No, no, seriously, Archibald. This guy thinks because he puts on a ten-cent uniform and plays Hitler for four weeks at good pay that if we actually put together the Rally, why Christ, History would tam back, oh turn back, Time, Time in thy flight, make me a stupid Jew-baking Nazi again for tonight Can you see it. Arch, this lice walking up to the microphones and shouting, and the crowd shouting back, and him realty 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, goddamn you! Damn and bake and bum 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 (hive through streets. The blonde girls. The lovely blond boys. The stadium. Leni Reifenstahl! And from all me trunks, in all the attics, a black plague of armbands winging on the dusk, flying to assault, 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.