The Iron Bridge: Short Stories of 20th Century Dictators as Teenagers (23 page)

The skinny sixteen-year-old
in a long nightshirt climbs out of bed. He plucks the ten-Kronen lottery ticket from the notebook on his dresser. His pale blue eyes stare at the card no bigger than his palm, rereading its eight-digit number and studying the bold icon of the twin-headed eagle of the Hapsburg state. Adi’s future depends on this little piece of paper.

He climbs back into bed and sprawls on the quilted bedspread. Paper is a fragile medium for such a historic transmission. He could easily rip his ticket to pieces. He wonders where it would go, the victorious spirit inside it, the awesome power to transform a life. Would it disappear altogether and cease to exist, or would that disembodied spirit float into the air of his closet-sized bedroom, drift out of his window, above the courtyard filled with early summer flowers, and, catching a current, would it surge high in the air, swirling and turning flips, before gently floating down again, only a block or two away—
perhaps no further than Mozartstrasse, there’s the fickleness of fate
—into the recently purchased card of some unworthy farmer? Yes, that’s exactly what the spirit would do, fall into the crumpled ticket at the bottom of a filthy rucksack, belonging to a muddy farmer
who’s come into town for the day to sell turnips. Or even, God forbid, into the ticket of a Czech weaver. The spirit of victory is a capricious vagabond, easily driven from its proper home by human free will. This is something Adi knows for certain. To avoid altering history, he must protect the piece of paper in his hand.

He lays the ticket on his bony chest and tries to feel its weight through his cotton nightshirt. He’s certain he can feel something. It must be the spirit. Yes, when he wins the lottery, that spirit will leave the ticket, enter him, and be his forever—a victory designated for Adi alone.

There’s a timid knock on his closed bedroom door. Adi rises and opens it without saying a word. He stares down into his mother’s blue eyes, as wide and round and icy as his own. Klara, who is almost a foot shorter than her son, stands on the threshold, her cheeks and lips twitching, her hands squeezing together. She says she’s very sorry to disturb him and that she doesn’t mean to bother him, but it’s already two in the afternoon and he’s been in bed all day and she thought he might be hungry. “It’s important for a growing young man to eat,” she says, staring nervously at her son. “Always you have to eat in order to stave off further illness,” she adds, crossing herself inadvertently, “and to keep your strength.”

Adi mumbles his consent. His mother is intertwining and releasing her fingers in front of her smock. “There’s roast pork and potatoes and green beans on the table,” Klara says. “And how’s your breathing today? Any return of dangerous symptoms?”

It’s a question she asks every day. In response, Adi manufactures a few abrupt coughs and tries to imagine the burning in his lungs, the pain he never really felt, not even when he dropped out of Realschule on its account. He tells his mother he’s quite well, thank you. “Just the usual tickle,” he says, the result of scarring acquired during his lung infection.

“Are you sure?” Klara asks. “Nothing more than a tickle?”

“Nothing else, I assure you.”

“All right,” says Klara. “That’s good. I’m sorry to have disturbed you.” She scurries away towards the kitchen.

Adi decides to eat before starting his work. He returns the ticket to his dresser and ventures into the kitchen, his long nightshirt almost touching the floor. He sits at the little green table and looks out of the window into the meticulously tidy courtyard, all flowers in pots and well-swept cobblestones. The air is thick with pollen, hints of manure and tobacco. A pungent tinge of fermenting hops emanates from the breweries. His mother is standing by the sink, washing dishes that are already clean, peering over her shoulder at her son.

“Are they roasting tobacco today?” Klara asks. “Is that what’s in the air?”

“I don’t know,” says Adi. “I thought it was father’s pipes.”

He stares down at the food on his plate, the muscle striations of a pork chop, the pink juice that seeps. He cuts and forks a piece of meat, but as he chews the rich morsel, he has to resist the urge to gag and spit it back into his napkin. He pictures the corpse of a pig with its throat cut, its blood pouring, the purple, glossy viscera lying in a heap outside its carcass. He imagines its bones roasting on a fire and feels
the meat inside his mouth, knocked around by his tongue and teeth, lubricated with his saliva. Yes, the flesh of a pig that once wallowed in its own shit. Adi distracts himself with a second helping of beans. After he wins the lottery, he will hire a cook to make only what he wants.

When Klara finishes the dishes, she wrings out her cloth and wipes the counter. Adi watches her clean the handles of all the cupboards, even the ones that haven’t been touched. She opens a drawer beside the sink and removes a velvet rag that she will use to polish the eighteen pipes mounted against the back wall. Adi’s dead father’s pipes retain their scent of putrid tobacco even though they haven’t been used in well over two years. Klara removes a large one, polishes its meerschaum bowl and the lips of its mouthpiece, and replaces it on the rack. She makes sure it’s straight before moving on to another. Adi can’t understand why she takes such care of these pipes, even here, on Humboldtstrasse. Does she think her husband will come back from the dead to reign over this apartment? Does she expect him to demand clean meerschaum? Is she still that afraid?

Adi stands and pushes his chair to the table, leaving his meal half finished. Klara asks if he’s got any plans for the day. It’s a timid question, but there’s a hint of accusation to it. Adi knows all about the heated conversations Klara has had with Angela, his older half-sister, and with Leo, Angela’s husband, in his mother’s bedroom. He eavesdropped on them from the hall. Angela and Leo demanded that Klara put more pressure on Adi to establish himself in a trade,
the only proper thing for him to do now that he’s dropped out of school.

“No plans until evening,” Adi tells his mother, glaring at her in defiance. “I’m busy with my work.”

“Adi,” Klara whispers.

He throws his head back and groans. “Mother,” he says with a sigh. He stiffens as he approaches her. “I have explained to you many times that the production of great art is a fickle, haphazard, and mysterious process. It cannot, in any way, be compared to other kinds of work.” Adi takes Klara’s trembling hands and holds them still. “It is a terrible mistake to judge an artist by the same standard as one would judge an artisan.”

“But why can’t you find a trade,” Klara responds, her wide eyes moistening, “and still work at your painting, like Gustl with his music? Your father—hallowed be his memory—would not approve of this behaviour. He would not have liked it one bit.”

Adi releases his mother’s hands and steps back to face her. “My dear mother,” he says, with firm but condescending sweetness, “Father so prized efficiency because his job required that particular skill of him. It’s the same for all those customs officials. Time itself is the gold standard whereby their every action is judged. If a case is processed quickly, it’s a success, pure and simple! Efficiency, for that whole lot of bureaucrats in the civil service—why, it’s the only means for them to determine success or failure.” He retakes his mother’s hands and kisses two of her fingernails. “Not so
with art,” he says, his blue eyes bulging at her. “Not so with art!” Repeating the phrase with greater animation makes it sound all the more convincing.

Instead of being soothed by her son’s explanation, Klara lowers her head and starts to tremble and cry. Her hands shake in his grip. Poor little Mother is so like a bird who’s struck the glass, or perhaps fallen out of her nest onto the busy street below, just a delicate featherlight bird, soon to be crushed under the boot of an oblivious passerby—unless, of course, Adi scoops her up and protects her, nurses her back to health. He squeezes his mother’s fingers and forces her to look up at him.

“I will tell you a secret, Mother,” he says.

Klara sniffles and swallows, but listens.

“I will tell you a secret at the risk of tempting fate,” he repeats, his eyes growing wider. “I will tell you a magnificent secret.”

Adi releases his mother’s hands and disappears into his room. Klara brushes away her tears with her knuckles and waits for Adi to return. When he does, he is holding his lottery ticket.

“Here,” he says, handing it to her. “You see?”

Klara stares at the card with its embossed digits and the Hapsburg icon, unsure of what exactly she’s supposed to see.

“I have won,” says Adi, tapping the paper. “The lottery.”

Klara’s childlike face opens in astonishment. “You have?” she asks, her voice rising to a cry.

“I have won the lottery,” he repeats, now pressing his lips together and letting his eyes widen.

“You’ve really won the lottery?” Their faces are moving closer and closer together with each iteration of that magnetic statement. “Are you certain?”

“I’ve won!” he says again. “I was in bed this morning with that ticket on my chest and felt the spirit of victory inside it. I felt its weight. I felt it on me. I have won the lottery,” says Adi. “I assure you. I guarantee it.”

“Oh, Adi,” Klara says, bursting into tears again. “Oh, Adi.”

Adi wraps his arms around his shaking mother and holds her close to his chest. Tears have begun to stream down his cheeks as well. “It’s happening, Mother,” Adi cries. “It’s happening, right now. I’ve won!”

“Oh, my Adi,” Klara whispers through sobs. She clings desperately to her son, pressing her small body against his, as if she’s terrified of what will happen to him when she lets go.

A few minutes later, after his mother has gone, the frantic teenager, assured of his own victory and heroism, sits alone at the little desk in his bedroom and extracts sketch paper. Where will he begin? He closes his eyes and focuses his concentration. When he opens them again, he begins to draw the bridge he’s designed to span the Danube, wide as Vienna’s Ringstrasse and lined with mythological statues. It will connect the Hauptplatz to the green hills of Urfahr, replacing the present iron monstrosity, which is completely impractical for modern Linz, as it is not much wider than a single horse-drawn cart. Today’s version of the bridge adds nothing to his basic design, conceived months earlier.

He soon tires of architecture and decides to execute a few pastoral paintings. He’s not very interested in these, but
he’ll need them for his entrance portfolio for the Viennese Academy of Fine Arts. Using watercolour and a postcard as a guide, he paints the hills around Linz, a field by Pöstlingberg in late afternoon, the shadows long in the yellowing sky, and a couple of peasants tending sheep. He’s humming Elsa’s motif from
Lohengrin
while he works. He finishes the first painting, makes a second, and a third. His strokes are short and serious, although he’s not really focusing on his craft. He’s imagining the astonished faces of the Viennese academy’s instructors, how they’ll shake their heads and raise their brows and whisper excitedly to each other:
Look at Hitler’s pastorals! He can whip them off, just like that, one after the other, without stopping!
And when those flabbergasted teachers think they’ve seen it all, the full range of his talents, he’ll knock them out with his plans for the new Linz opera theatre.

“Victory is a spirit,” he’ll tell his instructors. “When it’s inside you, you cannot be defeated.”

Hours pass and the light softens. It is nearly four-fifteen. Adi goes into the bathroom, shuts the door, and runs the water until it’s hot. He studies his reflection in the mirror, his long face and bulging eyes, his gaunt and sallow cheeks. A mop of black hair falls over his pasty forehead. His brow is as bulky as an ape’s, and it recedes ridiculously. His nostrils are so cavernous that two snakes could slither inside and make themselves at home. Who knows how much dripping snot is stashed up there? His nose is horrible, prominent and protruding. He twitches the fuzz above his lip, wishing
it were thicker. He wets his washcloth and scours his face, careful to remove every flake of dry skin.

Now Adi must address the problem of his teeth, which are yellow and rotting, especially the bottom ones. A few are turning black. What a pity. He needs to practise smiles that will keep them well hidden. He tries several options, but there’s really no hope. It’s the same conclusion every day: he must raise his chin slightly, smiling only with his eyes. Stefanie does not need to see his teeth.

His mother has laid his shirt on his bed, as requested, pressed and clean, crisp and white. He puts it on and fumbles with his silver cufflinks, ties a red and gold cravat, and then dons his best suit, which shows signs of wear at the elbows. He tucks the notebook and lottery ticket into his pocket, along with a recent drawing he’s made of his future apartment’s interior, folded into a square. When he emerges, his mother is waiting for him in the living room, standing beside his little sister, Paula. It’s nearly five o’clock.

Adi nods coldly at Paula. She nods in return, a half-step hidden behind her mother. A pretty girl of nine with the Hitler family’s big blue eyes, timid by nature, and dour, Paula wears the dress uniform of her elementary school, from which she has recently returned. Klara is gently and absently stroking the girl’s straight hair.

“The opera?” his mother asks.

“Yes, of course.”

“Go get your brother’s money from the can,” Klara tells Paula.

The girl scurries into the kitchen and searches under the sink for the tin stuffed with Kronen. As she does, Adi and Klara wait beside each other, fidgeting on their feet, glancing alternately at the carpet and the wall.

“Oh, Adolf,” Klara whispers, her voice almost breaking.

“Mother, please. I’m an artist, you understand. That’s all there is to it.”

He glances at the large portrait of his father on the side wall. Alois Hitler, in his official, double-buttoned customs jacket, has a low and bulging brow, a bulldog face, and a wild moustache with side whiskers like the emperor’s. The portrait has been recently dusted, no doubt that very morning, since Klara cleans house daily, without exception. In the image of the dead customs official Adi sees disdain for artistic greatness, for the fancy suits of those without station, for the dandies’ leisurely nights at the opera house. Adi makes a point of keeping his expression still while staring into his father’s eyes.