Look Who’s Back

by Timur Vermes

  “I thought about taking you with me,” I replied. “My sister used to keep house for me, but she’s no longer alive I’m sorry to say. Were I able to pay your hotel salary I would very happily offer you a job.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “I like the variety here. Still, it’s a shame.”

  In the past someone else would have taken care of finding an apartment; now I had to take the matter in hand myself. In one respect this was interesting, because it brought me into contact with contemporary life. On the other hand it also brought me into contact with agency riff-raff.

  It soon became evident that without an estate agent one could not acquire a halfway decent apartment between 400 and 450 square metres. What became evident only later was that it was unlikely even with the assistance of these agent vermin. It was quite shocking how little these envoys of the rental inferno knew about their own properties. Even after sixty years’ absence from the market I was on every occasion able to locate the fuse box in less than half the time that it took the “expert” they sent. After the third firm I started insisting on more experienced colleagues, for otherwise I only got sixteen-year-olds in suits too large for them. These ignorant youths looked as if they had been dragged straight from their school desks into the front line of property broking.

  At the fourth attempt I was actually offered something suitable in the north of Schöneberg. A decent walk from there would take me to the government district, another factor in this property’s favour. After all, one never knew how soon my proximity to that area would become essential.

  “Do I know you?” the older agent asked as he showed me the servant’s quarters beside the kitchen.

  “Hitler, Adolf,” I said tersely, adeptly inspecting a few empty cupboards.

  “Of course,” he said. “That’s it! Without your uniform on – excuse me. And anyway, I thought you’d take the moustache off.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “Well, you know. When I get home the first thing I do is take off my shoes.”

  “And I take off my moustache?”

  “That’s what I thought …”

  “I see. Is there a room here for physical exercise?”

  “A fitness room? The last tenants didn’t have one, but before them there was someone from the jury of a talent show – he used the room over there.”

  “Is there anything I should know?”

  “Like what?”

  “Bolshevist neighbours?”

  “There may have been in the Thirties. But then … then you … how should I put it?”

  “I know what you’re trying to say,” I said. “Anything else?”

  “Well, let’s see …”

  I thought melancholically of Geli. “I don’t want another suicide apartment,” I said firmly.

  “Since we’ve been managing this property, no-one’s killed themselves. Not before that, either,” the agent said hastily. “At least I believe that’s the case.”

  “It’s a fine apartment,” I said drily. “The price is unacceptable, however. Lower it by 300 euros and we have a deal.” I turned to go. It was half past seven. After my successful première, Madame Bellini had surprised me with some opera tickets. “The Mastersingers of Nuremberg” was being performed and she had immediately thought of me. She had even said she would come with me – for my sake, she emphasised, as normally she didn’t care for Wagner.

  The agent promised to get back to me about the rent. “There’s not really any provision for discounts,” he said warily.

  “It is always possible to reverse such a policy if you can count Hitler amongst your customers,” I reassured him before leaving.

  *

  It was unusually mild for late November. The sky had long since darkened; the city hummed and rushed all about me. For a brief moment I was seized by the frenzy of old, the fear of the Asiatic hordes, the urgent desire to increase our level of armament. Then this turmoil gave way to the pleasant feeling that catastrophe had not engulfed us over the past sixty years, that Providence had certainly chosen the right moment to summon me to action, without leaving me too little time to enjoy a spot of Wagner now and again.

  I buttoned up my coat and wandered through the streets. Some shops were taking delivery of large quantities of fir and spruce branches. When I found the hustle and bustle a little too overwhelming I ducked into the smaller side streets. I pondered a few changes to certain details in my programme, and strolled past an illuminated sports centre. Large sections of the population were in tip-top physical condition – too often, however, these were women. A well-trained body may make childbirth easier; it improves the resilience and health of the mother. But ultimately the aim was not to breed hundreds of thousands of female partisans. The proportion of young men in these sports facilities had to be raised markedly. Such were my musings when two men blocked my path.

  “Oi, you. Jewish bastard,” one said.

  “Do you think we’re just going to sit back and watch you insult Germany?” the second said.

  Slowly, I removed my hat and showed my face in the light of a streetlamp.

  “Step back into the ranks, you vermin,” I said, unruffled. “Or you’ll end up like Röhm!”

  For a while neither of them said another word. Then the second man hissed, “What sort of a sick bastard are you? First you get that face operated on, then you use it to stab Germany in the back!”

  “A sick, vile bastard,” the first one said. Something glinted in his hand. With incredible speed his fist hurtled towards my face. Attempting to maintain my poise and my pride, I did not evade the blow.

  It was like being hit by a bullet. There was no pain, only speed, only a powerful impact. Then the wall of the building rushed silently towards me. I tried to keep my footing, but something hit the back of my head hard. The building shot past above me, my hand felt in my coat pocket, I grabbed the opera tickets and took them out, while the blows around me increased. The English must have new artillery, a murderous barrage, it became so dark, how could they aim with such accuracy, our graves, like the end of the world, I didn’t even know where my helmet was, or my faithful dog, my Foxl, my Foxl, my Foxl …

  xxxiv

  The first thing I saw was a glaring neon light. “I hope somebody’s been looking after Wenck’s army,” I thought. Then I looked around the room and when I caught sight of the apparatus it soon became clear that there was no pressing need for Wenck’s army just for now.

  Beside me was a type of coat stand, to which several plastic sacs had been attached. The contents of these dripped slowly into my right arm; the left was in a rigid plaster mould. This was not so simple to observe, for I was unable to open the eye on the non-plaster side. I was baffled: it all looked mightily painful, and yet I could feel no pain save for a permanent thudding in my head. I turned my head to afford a better reconnaissance of my situation, then raised it carefully, triggering a sudden and sharp pain in my chest.

  I could hear a door open on the other side of the room, but decided not to look over. The face of a nurse appeared cautiously above the bridge of my nose.

  “Are you awake?”

  “…” I said. This was intended to be a question about the date, but my mouth issued no more than a sound somewhere between a grunt and a rasp.

  “Good,” she said. “Now, don’t go back to sleep, will you? I’m going to fetch the doctor.”

  “…” I wheezed in reply. I could already tell that in all likelihood I had suffered no permanent damage, just a slight rusting of the vocal chords as a result of their not having been used for some time. I rotated my functioning eye. In my field of vision was a small table on which sat a telephone and a bouquet of flowers. I saw a device which must be monitoring my pulse. I tried to move my legs, but soon abandoned the attempt as it was probable that this would incur further pain. Instead I essayed some short speaking exercises; I presumed, after all, that I would have a question or two to put to the doctor.

  In fact nothing happened for a co
nsiderable length of time. I had forgotten how things tended to be in hospital if one is not Führer and Reich Chancellor. The patient is supposed to recover, but in fact all he does is wait. He waits for nurses, treatment, doctors – ostensibly everything is going to happen “soon” or “straight away”, whereas “straight away” means “in half an hour to forty-five minutes” and “soon” means “in an hour or more”.

  I was overcome by an acute urge, and I sensed at once that a certain provision had been made for this too. I would have liked to have taken a look at the television for a while, only the operating of this machine was as perplexing to me as it was physically impossible. So I stared motionlessly at the wall opposite and tried to reconstruct recent events. I recalled a moment in a patient transport vehicle and Fräulein Krömeier’s screams. Confusingly, my mind played that short sequence over and again in which I greeted France’s surrender with a spontaneous leap or dance for joy. And yet I wasn’t wearing a uniform but a turquoise tutu. Then Göring came up to me, leading two saddled reindeer, and said, “Mein Führer, when you’re in Poland please get me some curd cheese. I’ll cook us something fabulous this evening!” I looked at him incredulously and said, “Göring, you fool! Can’t you see I don’t have any pockets?” At this Göring burst into tears and someone was shaking my shoulder.

  “Herr Hitler? Herr Hitler?”

  I woke with a start, jerking up as far as my body would allow.

  “The ward doctor’s here.”

  A young man in a white coat offered me his hand, which I was barely able to shake.

  “Here we are,” he said. “I’m Doctor Radulescu.”

  “Considering your name, you speak remarkably fluent German,” I croaked. “No trace of an accent.”

  “Considering the state you’re in, you’re remarkably talkative,” the imported doctor said. “Do you know how I perfected my German accent?”

  I shook my head wearily.

  “Thirteen years of school, nine semesters studying medicine, two years working abroad, then I married my wife and took her name.”

  I nodded and coughed; assaulted by pain, I tried to avoid coughing again, at the same time attempting to exude an element of strength and Führer-like leadership qualities. The outcome of not coughing, however, was that a number of small and unlovely bits and pieces shot out of my nose. All in all I felt miserable.

  “Let’s get one thing out of the way first. You’re in better physical shape than you look. There’s nothing that won’t heal or get working again properly in time …”

  “My vo–ice?” I moaned. “… I’m an or–ator.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with your voice, it’s just out of practice, hence the dry throat. What you must do is keep drinking. All the time. If I’m not mistaken,” he said, glancing down beside my bed, “you don’t even have to worry about waste disposal for the time being. Let’s see, what else have we got? A nasty fracture of the cheekbone, severe concussion, several ugly bruises on the jaw, but the most puzzling thing is that it’s not broken. The guys in casualty immediately put money on a knuckleduster. If they’re right you can thank your lucky stars ten times over. Your swollen eye might not be pretty, but it’ll work again. And then we’ve got a broken collarbone, broken arm – a clean break, which is perfect – five broken ribs, and we had to open you up to put that rupture of your liver right again. While we’re on the subject, might I say that you’ve got one of the finest livers we’ve ever seen? Am I right in thinking you don’t drink?”

  I nodded weakly. “Vegetarian, too.”

  “Your results really are excellent. You might make it to one hundred and twenty.”

  “Won’t be enough,” I said dreamily.

  “Now, now,” he laughed. “You’ve got plenty of time ahead of you. I can’t see any problems; you’re just going to have to be patient.”

  “You really ought to report this to the police,” the nurse said.

  “That would suit those villains down to the ground! What would Röhm have given to have been reported to the police?”

  “I’m not your lawyer,” said the doctor with the Roumanian name. “But with injuries like this …”

  “I shall strike back in my own way,” I coughed, and it occurred to me that rarely in my life had I uttered such an empty threat. “I’d rather you tell me how much longer you intend to keep me here.”

  “A week or two, if there are no complications, maybe a little longer. Then you can recuperate properly at home and let everything fuse together again. Right now you should get some more sleep. And do think about telling the police, the nurse is absolutely right. I know you should turn the other cheek, but that doesn’t give people the right to administer beatings like that.”

  “And have a think about your menu.” This was the nurse, showing me a list of meals. “We need to know what you’d like to eat during your stay with us.” I pushed the list away. “No special treatment. Simple soldier’s rations. Vegetarian. Like the Ancient Greeks.”

  She looked at me, sighed, ticked a dozen or so boxes and gave me back the list. “You have to sign it.”

  Feebly, I signed with the hand I could move. Then I passed out again.

  I was standing at a bus stop in the Ukraine, holding a huge bowl of curd cheese.

  Göring wasn’t there, and I remember just how much that irritated me.

  xxxv

  I did, in fact, briefly consider reporting the matter to the police, but then dismissed the idea. It contradicted all my principles. The Führer cannot assume the role of victim; it is not right. He is not dependent on the intercession or assistance of such wretched characters as state prosecutors or police officials; he does not hide behind them, he grabs the law with his own fist. Or, rather, he offers it to the burning hands of the S.S. and then they grab it with their many fists. If I’d had an S.S. at my disposal this obscure “party headquarters” would have gone up in flames the very next evening and, within a week, each one of its cowardly members would have had the opportunity to ponder the true principles of the racial idea while bathed in a pool of their own blood. But from whom could I demand such brutality in these peaceable times, in which people had been weaned off violence? Sawatzki was a man for deft punchlines rather than punches; he worked with his brain, not his brawn. All I could do at this juncture was to defer the matter to an unspecified time in the future and take great care that no press photographer would have the opportunity to take some unfavourable pictures of me when I availed myself of the sanitary facilities at the hospital. The incident itself could not be kept secret, however, and only a few days later it was reported in the newspaper that I had been the victim of “far-right violence”. It was, of course, the usual journalistic incompetence to exalt these feeble-minded stooges as “far-right”, a label they did not merit. But every cloud has its silver lining, and within a few days, even hours, I had quite a number of extraordinary telephone exchanges with people to whom Fräulein Krömeier – at the suggestion of Herr Sawatzki and with his blessing – had given the number of my mobile telephone.

  The first conversation, other than those with Flashlight colleagues wishing me a speedy recovery, was conducted with Frau Künast, who enquired about my well-being and wanted to know if I did actually belong to any party.

  “Of course,” I said. “My own.”

  Künast laughed and said that the N.S.D.A.P. was, for the time being at least, dozing or in hibernation. Until it awoke, she continued, I ought to consider whether the Green Party couldn’t offer a home to me, the man who had risked life and limb in opposition to right-wing violence. “At least for a while,” she said, repeating her invitation with a laugh.

  I digested the telephone call with a shake of my head, and would most likely have dismissed it as another curious figment of the democratic–parliamentary imagination, had not another call come the following day along surprisingly similar lines. I had a gentleman on the telephone who, as I dimly recollect, was either just completing an apprenticeship as minist
er of health, or had already done so. Even after much thought I no longer recall his name; in any case I gave up trying to keep a track of this party long ago. After all, rumours are frequently aired on the relevant broadcasting slots that the only remaining elderly gentleman of the alliance is an out-and-out dipsomaniac. In my opinion this is unfair on the man; I rather take the view that it must be utterly impossible to last for even an hour in this bizarre game of political ring-a-ring o’roses without appearing inebriated.

  The apprentice health minister told me how sorry he was about the assault. Especially on someone like myself who, as he put it, was a standard bearer for the broadest freedoms of opinion and speech, and needed all the support he could get at this difficult time. I scarcely had the opportunity to emphasise that the strong man is mightiest alone, for the apprentice was already insisting that he would do his utmost to ensure I was back on the television screen as soon as possible. For a moment I was terrified that he would take my treatment in his own notoriously soft-fingered and incompetent hands. Instead he asked me with feigned casualness about my party affiliation and I answered him truthfully.

  The apprentice roared with boyish laughter. Then he said I was hilarious and suggested that as the N.S.D.A.P. was currently at rest in the graveyard of history, maybe the F.D.P. could become my new political home. I told him that he and his colleagues should finally stop insulting my party and that I had no interest of any sort in his crowd of liberal maggots. The apprentice laughed once more and said he loved it when I was like this; he could tell I would soon be my old self again. Before he hung up he promised to have an application for membership sent to me. Unsolicited. The telephone, it struck me at that moment, is the wrong means of communication for people without ears. And barely had I put the darned thing down than it rang again.

  It turned out that the apprentice health minister and Künast the Green were by no means the only ones who had decided to put their own individual interpretations on my unflinching blood sacrifice. A number of callers from different parties congratulated me on my unequivocal championing of non-violence, which in their view was manifested by my demonstrative refusal to resort to self-defence. These callers included a man from the only grouping whose name aroused any sympathy in me: the Animal Protection Party. I had a very pleasant conversation with this fellow, during the course of which he generously brought my attention to some atrocities perpetrated against Roumanian street dogs, which were beyond belief. I resolved in the near future to devote particular attention to the outrageous goings-on in that country.