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Young Hitler
Category:
Literary Fiction
refer to below
I co-authored this historical fiction with Claus Hant. The tome focuses on Adolf Hitler's Viennese years as an aspiring artist, snob and outcast. Then he was obsessed with opera particularly Wagner. During World War One, he found his niche in the army as a "runner." When the uncertain peace followed, the radicalized Hitler became a speaker for one of the Thule groups, there he was able to live his dream and deliver a rousing aria of hate.
Excerpt
Monocled men and women wrapped in muslin sat in velvet chairs around marble-topped tables as they met for a late Sunday afternoon rendezvous. They sipped their coffee, chattering bon mots in each other’s ears. Laughter circulated softly in the smoke-hazed room. This is how Vienna must feel, I thought; the place I longed to be.
I could have ordered the house specialty, the Linzer Torte, but no, I had chosen the Viennese Sacher Torte instead, as today was my birthday. My sixteenth birthday. When the stars had aligned sixteen years ago, I wondered, had they predestined my life? My life, and my fate? Had the stars created the ‘me’ within me? Had the heavens decided I would be a musician? I didn’t know. But what I did know was that music came effortlessly to me; any time I heard a melody, I could sit down at a piano and pick out the tune much as some people could naturally sing and stay in key. I yearned to be a trained, working musician. If only . . . if only I could attend the music conservatory in Vienna! I sipped my demitasse contemplatively and gazed out of the arched windows that framed the promenade leading to the Landhaus. As I did, a farmer and his wife lumbered down the street like a pair of packhorses hauling a cart. My Viennese fantasy shrivelled instantly, and I was reminded of where I was: Linz. Everything outside this café was just so unspeakably unsophisticated. I glanced around the room, and at that moment, I made a vow to myself: I swore to be as urbane as this café’s clientele. After all, I was a sixteen-year-old gentleman now. I was old enough to have my own Viennese style. From now on I would remain impervious to the barrage of insults my brutish, unenlightened father launched at me. As I thought about it now, it almost seemed a compliment when he sneered and called me a pompous fool.
A young man entered the room. He was no older than I but was dressed as though twice my age. He wore an expensive charcoal business suit and a blue and black striped tie framed by a high starched collar. A slate-grey derby perched deliberately askew shaded his features. For a moment he was faceless, a shadow of the life I longed to lead. His wiry build was strangely familiar. A curious aura surrounded him, making my heart quicken. But no one else in the café paid him any notice. No heads turned, no eyes followed. To them, he was one of their own. Laughter flitted across both rooms of the café. A woman concealed by her fan was hitting a high C; even the chess players looked up. She must have been privy to something deliciously depraved. For a moment, she had been transported from the backwaters of Linz. For a moment, she too had been in Vienna. The stranger moved among the tables and waiters with the graceful elegance of a matador. His brown hair was perfectly trimmed and slicked back. I was irresistibly drawn to him, yet intimidated by him.
Who was he?
He ambled towards the periodicals, hanging like slack sails from their wooden holders. Each reader who picked them up and read them sailed away to exotic shores, where outrageous ideas thrived and taboos were broken. Every radical thought from evolution to feminism to anticlericalism was displayed here like available but forbidden fruit. The afternoon light silhouetted the young man’s profile as he plucked a paper from the rack with an air of arrogance, and I glimpsed the masthead of Der Hammer. He leaned over to see what else was there for the taking, and then grabbed a Neues Wiener Tagblatt and Unverfälschte Deutsche Worte. A Communist, a German Nationalist and a Liberal Jewish paper. A truly eclectic choice, He came to sit at a window-side table no more than twenty feet from me, and began to read. The waiter’s back was towards me as he approached the young gentleman, who had just lowered his paper. His eyes squinted as the waiter recited the array of pastries and cakes on offer. His eyebrows rose and he ordered with measured nonchalance. The waiter seemed to recognise him. Probably the young gentleman spent his days here, not slaving away at a job he loathed as I did. I wondered who he might be: the son of a wildly successful industrialist? The cousin of a prince? I imagined him living in a luxurious mansion with spacious hallways full of exquisite portraits.
The young man raised his newspaper again. He flicked it open and folded the pages over with his manicured fingers. They were long and white. They could easily span a full octave on a piano. He had the immaculately groomed hands I coveted. I looked down at my grubby labourer’s hands. How could they ever do justice to Chopin? It was a concern for which my father had no sympathy whatsoever. He was adamantly opposed to me studying music in Vienna. I examined my hands: they were stained from horse-hoof glue, and my fingernails were discoloured from emptying and re-stuffing sagging mattresses. My father constantly harangued me with his plans for me to take over his upholstery business so he could retire. I looked across at the stranger behind the newspaper. He was perfect; I was not. Maybe he was a musician. A professional. An artiste. But if so, what was he doing here in Linz, in this pitiful backwater? I tried to make out his face but it was concealed, nose-deep in one of the papers. Did I know him from somewhere? He was a stranger, yet familiar. His fingers gripped the edges of the newspaper with what seemed to me a menacing force. There was something about those hands; I could easily envision them strangling someone. This is absurd, I thought: the caffeine has gone to my head.
As I sat there, sneaking furtive glances at him, he read all three papers. He ate his pastry, drank his Kleiner Brauner and stood up, carefully positioning his hat on his head, and then cutting a path between the tables. At the entrance, he caught the front doors as they swung open out on to the street and was gone. My chest heaved with relief: just watching him read the papers had exhausted me. Through the window, I saw him stop amid the pedestrian traffic and turn west down the Promenade. His walking stick pushed him along the pavement and he disappeared into the grey shadows of late afternoon. I felt compelled to record the whole disconcerting incident, of which I had evidently been the sole observer, so I took out my leather-bound diary and began to write.
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