by Rex Baron
She was secretly thrilled that Claxton had taken her suggestion to employ him as his driver. But when she actually thought of it, the suggestion had originally been made by Carl-Heinz, himself, the morning he had made love to her while her employers were out. He had said that it might be advantageous to be in the employ of people who had money to spare, and that although he found it decadent in the extreme, it might be useful and provide some financing for the great cause.
Claxton’s face brightened as the young driver entered the drawing room and clicked his heels, taking the wooden posture of one in service.
“Well, well, and an Aryan beauty on top of everything else,” Claxton said, as he clapped his hands together in delight. “He’s even wearing the full drag as well. I haven’t seen such a gorgeous chauffeur since that little queen Ramon Novarro dressed up a prizefighter and hired him to drive him… if you get my meaning.”
His lurid comment went totally unnoticed, as Helen took charge of organizing their departure and hurried Claxton onto his feet, badgering him as he made last minute changes to his outfit, a different cravat and a pair of light leather gloves to replace the felt.
When they stepped outside, a gleaming maroon-colored Packard touring car, with a tan canvas top and a white-wall tire mounted on the side running board, stood waiting for them. Claxon let out a low whistle.
“Jesus, mother and Joseph. Wherever did you get this? It looks like an ocean liner.”
“I sometimes drive for a businessman who allows me the use of the car to make extra money when he is out of the country,” Carl-Heinz explained. “I believe he is in New York at present and will not return for several weeks. So, the car is at my… your… disposal for at least that amount of time.”
The truth was that no such businessman existed. The car belonged to Carl-Heinz’s father, the Bergermeister, and he had bribed the real chauffer with half of the twenty dollars that Ilse had stolen for him and a promise that if he lent him the car, whenever he wanted, he would not tell his father that he had caught the chauffeur having sex in the back seat with a boy he had picked up at a youth hostel and given a lift to. The middle-aged man was so frightened of losing a well-paying job in such hard times that he threw in the use of his uniform as well to ensure the Youth Leader’s silence.
“You see, my dear, everything is falling into place, just as it should,” Claxton said reassuringly, as he helped Helen step up onto the running board and into the luxurious automobile. “The Prince will think we’re a couple of swells when he sees this beauty pull up. And the minute he sees you, I’m sure his heart will veritably melt.”
Carl-Heinz took his place behind the wheel of the luxurious motorcar and within a quarter hour they had arrived in the drive of the Chateau Saint Claire, an elegant building built in a former century in the style of the French Baroque.
Helen had remained silent the entire time. She sat listening to Claxton prattle on, attempting to be reassuring one moment, then, more true to his nature, critical and caustic the next. She had only heard a fraction of what he was saying, as she rehearsed in her head what she would say to the Prince when they met. At marked intervals, she was aware of the icy Nordic gaze of the driver, Carl-Heinz, watching her in the rear view mirror, and she could not help but wonder what such an attractive young specimen of Aryan manhood could possibly see in the dowdy little servant girl, Ilse.
Once again, he held her in his gaze, as he opened the door and took her hand to help her out of the auto. Helen and Claxton walked to the door of the chateau and rang the bell. A servant in the livery of a footman, with a long-tailed cutaway coat and knee breeches, answered the door and ushered them into a small but lavishly furnished anteroom. He bowed slightly from the waist and told them that he would inform the Prince’s secretary that they had arrived and requested an interview.
They sat for nearly half an hour before the same footman returned with the message that the Prince was indisposed and unavailable.
“But he must have misunderstood,” Helen insisted. “Please tell him that it’s Helen Liluth. I’m the singer he is sponsoring at the Opera.”
The footman did not respond, and stood poker straight with his white-gloved hands hanging purposelessly at his sides.
“Well, just go back and tell him that I’d very much like to see him and talk to him,” Helen insisted, as a mounting sense of panic welled up inside her chest.
“Yes, Madame,” the footman replied without altering his posture. “I’m sorry Madame, but Prince Henry is not taking any visitors that are not in his agenda for the morning.”
Helen shifted her weight on her feet, and dropped her studied pretense of being a lady.
“Look… whatever you name is. All I want is a moment of his time. I came halfway around the world to sing for him, and I think a friendly hello isn’t too much to ask.”
Claxton tapped Helen’s arm lightly, to try and restrain her mounting fear-driven aggression.
The footman stood mute, as he had been obviously ordered to do.
Once again, Helen attempted to storm the fortress with an appeal of words.
“Please tell the Prince that as Lucy’s dearest friend, he at least owes me the courtesy of a moment’s conversation. If I could just see him…”
She took a step forward, as if she were intending to brush past the footman, now in the role of guardian. As she did, he stepped in front of her to block her way and, without raising a hand, glared down at her as if she were some beggar from the street.
“I’m sorry, but you need to leave now. The Prince’s secretary has assured me that he is unavailable.”
Helen took a step back and stood there helplessly, as the realization of her rejection began to seep into her brain. The footman leaned in toward her, ever so slightly and delivered the final blow.
“I am instructed to tell you, Madame, that the Prince is not, under any circumstances, seeing visitors… and is especially, and most certainly, unavailable… to you.”
CHAPTER NINE
The streets of Bayreuth
The afternoon drizzle caught Helen unprepared as she walked from a sidewalk café back toward the apartment. She hardly noticed the drops of rain on her face as she moved against the gray sky, planning her next strategy. Over a week had passed since she had gone to see the Prince, to beg him to continue on with his generosity, and still she had not heard a single word from him… not even a note of farewell. She had not failed, she told herself, but merely made a tactical error. She had been mistaken to allow Claxton to prepare the love philter for the ball without her, and she had paid the price for her trust. But it had also been a grave error in judgment to assume that the Prince’s fond memories of Lucy would be enough to cement a social relationship. She was not Lucy, that much the critics had made clear, and there was no way to win over the critics or the audience, if Lucy was who they expected to hear. The Prince was lost to her now, and his support for the opera season had quietly been withdrawn.
She could not go back to New York. There were too many enemies there. Mrs. Mullridge and Celia hated her, and David would not be so pliable as he once was when under the spell of the amulet. She could never go back to America.
In California she had been only an ambitious bit player, the daughter of a day laborer and a midwife. As a child, her kind had been thought of as Gypsies, selling thimbles and cloth, as well as an alcoholic tonic or two in the local towns, as they passed through on the way to nowhere.
She had walked out of that life at fourteen. She had been sent out to deliver a charm to a woman in a town near Modesto. The woman had gone to the kitchen to get her pin money from a teapot on a shelf over the sink. Helen watched her from the small parlor room, and spotted a handbag lying unattended on the mantle. Without taking her eyes from the simple, trusting woman, she quickly tucked the purse up under her threadbare pinafore and ran from the house.
In a gully, not far away, she rifled the contents of the bag and found only a pot of lip rouge and a handkerchie
f with the initial ‘H’ embroidered on it in pretty yellow thread. She decided, at that moment, to call herself Helen, after Helen Twelvetrees, an actress she had seen on a poster. With the tip of her finger, she smeared her lips with the dark red color from the tiny pot. She would not go back. She no longer needed to be who she had been. She was Helen now, and Helen was going to be beautiful.
This is how far she had come, halfway around the world, to be the abandoned protégé of a Prince. An infamous opera singer, whose fame was chronicled in the newspapers of a country whose language she could not even read. It had been a mistake to come to this place. Her efforts had come to nothing, and in a small way, she felt that Lucy had had her revenge. She could hear the sound of the young singer's laughter mingled with the relentless drizzle. She walked faster to blot out the sound of it inside her head.
As she rounded the corner near Haus Wahnfried, she saw the street erupt in violence. A group of Labor party activists and some other unknown political faction clashed in a conflict of bottle and fists-throwing. Each group carried placards scrawled with tall crimson letters, but she did not understand what either side defended.
The angry crowd blocked the street with their violent confrontation, making it impossible for Helen to pass. She flattened herself against the garden wall of the villa as a young boy, his face bloodied, made his escape past her. A bottle shattered against the wall inches from her head. She stood frozen in fear. She closed her eyes and tried to put herself in a meditative state, to summon the blue light that would protect her. But before she was able to focus her will, her consciousness leapt back with a jolt, as she felt a hand on her shoulder. Her eyes snapped open to see Kurt Von Kragen, the young man with the scarred face, his intense, pale eyes holding her in their protection.
“I suggest we get out of the middle of this. Unless, of course, this sort of thing is exciting for you.”
She remained silent as he led her around the side, through a gate that opened into a quiet back garden. Once inside, it was as though the disturbance in the street belonged to an age that had not yet come. Beautifully manicured trees and shrubs lined a perfectly symmetrical little Victorian garden, complete with a path weaving through a shady arbor, overgrown with honeysuckle and jasmine.
Helen took a moment to catch her breath, then at last, she spoke.
“How did you know I was there, in the street, alone?”
“I told you I could read your thoughts.” He smiled an unfathomable smile, suggesting both full sincerity and a facetiousness at the same time.
“Then you must know what I'm thinking now,” she said.
“You'd like me to think that you despise me. You'd like to think that yourself, but you do not. I am not at fault for your losing the Prince,” he said.
“What do you mean?” Helen made a single attempt to deny what he said, but his pale blue eyes contained the truth. Like shining drops of water, they seemed to reflect what lay around on all sides, allowing nothing to escape their scrutiny. Mirroring what she knew was hidden inside, they held the truth like Grail cups.
She had not wanted Prince Henry. From their first meeting she found him feeble and colorless, despite the importance of his rank. There was no power in his presence for her, and that was what she knew she longed to possess.
She turned away from the steady stare of the young man and walked toward the edge of the garden. A small, engraved stone lay along the garden path, not far from a large flat, unmarked slab.
“It's a little tombstone. There is someone named Russ buried here,” she said with interest.
“It's a dog, Herr Wagner's dog.” Kurt bundled his long raincoat around his legs and sat cross-legged on the large rectangle of stone. “Just a few feet away from his master,” he added, patting the slab with his hand.
“You mean Wagner is under there?” Helen asked with surprise. “He isn't in a churchyard or a cemetery somewhere?”
“Perhaps he was outside the saving of the Church,” Kurt said with an irreverent smile. “In his time, some thought him to be the devil… come to stir up discord in the music world. Today he is considered a genius, so you see… it's all a matter of time and perspective isn't it, just like I told you before?”
“What was going on in the street just now… and how did you just happen to be here?” Helen asked, as she followed his example and pulled her overcoat tightly around her.
“It's a little disagreement between the intellectuals, who believe in the Hohl Welt Lehre and the local fools,” he answered, shifting his weight on the cold stone.
“I take it then that you're not on the side of the fools. Somehow that surprises me,” Helen said with a taunting smile. “But what does Hohl Welt mean?”
“Hollow world,” he answered. Kurt rose from the gravestone and strolled toward the jasmine-covered arbor. He thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his coat and considered a long moment before continuing.
“I know that you have the power and the understanding to comprehend what I am going to tell you.”
Helen followed along and listened, unaware that the rain had started again.
He told her of an expedition, headed by a retired military officer, the purpose of which was to prove that the earth was hollow and that there existed under its outer crust a race of demigods known as the Thule. This race of superior beings could communicate with men above ground telepathically. At strategic points along the Earth’s surface, the lines of communication became stronger and more receptive. This place in Bayreuth was just such a point. Wagner had realized it, and he insisted the opera house be built on this site. He believed those who saw and heard his operas in this chosen place, this vortex of communication, would be inspired mystically to realize the truth underlying the myths of their ancient origins, which he illustrated musically by his work.
He had the stage built with two proscenium arch, one inside the other, separated by the orchestra pit. The outer stage represented the world of reality. It was the place where mortals stood and listened. The inner stage was the domain of the gods, whose consciousness could only be opened to the mortal man by the intervention of music. The sounding of singular chords on the tonal scale could build a rainbow bridge, uniting the two stages, linking the consciousness of man with that of the gods.
“Musical chords are deeds made perceptible,” Kurt said. “They resonate as truths, and that's why a human soul is moved to believe in love and all the high ideals with the simple playing of a tune.”
Helen was stunned into silence. She pulled a flower from the trellis and breathed in its fragrance, to clear her head of the things she was hearing. It was too much. She half hoped that he had invented this wild story of super beings under the earth in an attempt to impress her. She could forgive him that, but the thought of his sincerity made her uneasy in his company.
“I want to be certain of what you are saying,” Helen began cautiously. “Am I to understand that you're here, trying to communicate with these underground gods, studying to be some sort of Medium with this Herr…?”
“Eckart,” Kurt supplied the name. “No,” he laughed, “I'm afraid that isn't my field.”
“What do you expect to communicate to these Thule?” Helen asked with a cynical expression.
Kurt smiled. “It's not what we intend to communicate, but the information we expect to receive. They are a superior race, spoken about as gods of the underworld in our ancient mythology. When the time is right, they will tell us how to conquer the world.”
“You people must be crazy,” Helen said. “It's no wonder your heads are being crushed out there in the streets.”
Kurt's expression clouded over. The life seemed to drain from his clear eyes and his mouth twisted downward.
“There is much resistance, but like all great truths, the struggle in the years yet to come will prove us right.”
There was a coldness and cruelty in his face that sent a chill through Helen's body as he touched her. She watched the light play along its angles and
planes as he spoke, reminding her of the lean countenances of religious icons, the faces of saints, touched by divinity, that she had seen in churches as a child. Once again, his eyes shone with the light of one transfixed on a vision, just ahead, out of the reach of normal sight. Her attention returned to his words with a jolt.
“I am captivated by you. I love you,” he said. “Since that first night at the ball, the moment I saw you, I knew you would understand all I am telling you.”
He pressed his lips to her mouth and held her in an inescapable grasp.
Her head swam, as her consciousness seemed to fill with the brightness of his distant purpose.
“No,” she shouted, pushing him away. “I told you I am not in the market for a cheap little affair. Now, more than before, I must be sure about my choices. I can't afford another mistake.”
“You ambitious little fool,” he said, repelling her from his embrace. “You are mad for power, yet you can't see the possibility right before your eyes. You're too blind and small-minded. You look for wealth and power in the hands of crippled aristocrats and greedy industrialists, and are blind to the coming of the New Order, a total transformation of the world as we know it, to a new Republic of untold richness for a thousand years. I'm going to be part of that. It is in our future… yours too… I can see it.”
“You're mad,” Helen shouted, gathering her coat around her. “Stay away from me. I don't want your pitiful love. Why don't you crawl underground with the rest of your self-made gods and leave me alone.”
She turned and ran from the garden, gratefully making her way to the street. She had no fear of the violent crowds. They were welcome to her after the eerie peacefulness of the world she had just escaped, the Victorian world of graves with its suffocating scent of night-blooming flowers.
Kurt called after her. “There is more power to be had in my world than in all the crumbling kingdoms of Europe,” he shouted angrily. “You will see what a fool you were not to love me.”
