Return of the Demi-Gods

by Rex Baron

  CHAPTER TEN

  Helen and Claxton’s apartment, Bayreuth

  All that evening, Helen could not erase the image of the beautiful pockmarked man from her mind. She lay across her bed, staring at the shadows on the ceiling that seemed to slowly ebb and flow, morphing themselves into unreal beings, like the underground race of demi-gods of which he had spoken. He had been so intense, when they had met that afternoon in the garden. He had told her that he loved her and expressed a passion that made her breathless and light-headed. But then, it suddenly occurred to her that it was not the man proclaiming his love to her, but merely the effects of the philter that Claxton had made to enchant the Prince. She sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed, and sat there for long moments considering what she had just realized. The philter had worked. She suddenly felt a newfound respect for Claxton, but knew secretly that if she ever expressed her admiration for his sorcery, she would lose ground in her struggle for power with him. Nonetheless, the philter had been a success, after all. That is, if you wanted to call making a deluded lunatic intent on ruling the world fall desperately in love with you… a success.

  At half past ten there was a sound rap on the apartment door. Claxton called for Ilse, but she was out of earshot, so he abandoned his reading and answered it himself. His surprise was outweighed by his pleasure at seeing young Carl-Heinz standing at the door, dressed in his livery as a chauffeur.

  “What are you doing here?” Claxton asked. “I don’t believe I asked you to bring the car around this evening. In fact, after what happened last week, I might as well tell you that I probably won’t be needing your services anymore… at all.”

  The Youth leader stepped into the apartment without being invited and removed his driving cap as he entered the drawing room and nodded his greeting to Helen.

  “Since I hadn’t heard from you, I assumed as much,” he replied with a half smile. “These are new times and things like Princes and the Opera will no longer sustain us in the new world.”

  When Ilse heard Carl-Heinz’s voice, she rushed down the hallway and appeared in the doorway with an expression of surprise. She held her breath and waited for him to explain his purpose in this nighttime visit.

  “I thought that in light of what has happened and the notices that performances at the Opera will be cancelled, you might need a diversion, something to take your mind off the troubles of these times… And I have just the place to take you that most Americans have never seen, and I think you will like.”

  Helen waved her hand in the air as a gesture of dismissal.

  “You can go on without me. The last thing I want to do at this point is to go sightseeing. I’ve seen enough castles and museums to last a lifetime,” she said wearily.

  Carl Heinz laughed.

  “No, nothing like that,” he assured her. “It’s a nightclub in Die Krankstrasse called Heisses Baby… something like hot babies. It’s in the cellar of a building that used to be part of the old hospital. They have a show…”

  The young man hesitated and looked to Ilse.

  “Wie sagt man… fussboden?”

  Ilse supplied the word and he repeated it to Claxton and Helen.

  “Ah, jaja,” he continued. “They have a floorshow with a singer and girls and boys who dance.”

  “Do they have any booze… alcohol?” Claxton asked with mounting interest.

  “Naturlich. I brought the car, so we can go in style. If it is our last night together, I think we should celebrate. What do you say?”

  “I’m in,” Claxton replied heartily.

  Helen was more than aware that during the entire exchange, as Carl-Heinz made his proposition to go clubbing, he never took his eyes off of her, and she wondered if his sole purpose in coming there was to see her again. She smiled at the idea and nodded her approval. She needed a dalliance, even if it was with a boy of nineteen, to take her mind off the images of the tormented Kurt Von Kragen that seemed to plague her thoughts.

  They changed into evening clothes and Helen even lent a pretty dress to Ilse, so that she might join them. At first the girl was hesitant about being included in the party, fearing that it would appear inappropriate to overstep the boundaries of her employment by socializing with Helen. But Claxton had insisted, and Helen had realized that it might be far more amusing to flirt with the young chauffeur if it was to be done in front of his girlfriend, and suddenly feigned an interest in making the drab little thing look as attractive as possible, in order to raise the stakes and make the game of seduction more competitive and interesting.

  By eleven thirty they were in the maroon Packard heading toward the cellar of the old hospital and the Heisses Baby nightclub. According to Carl-Heinz, it was the perfect time to arrive, because absolutely nothing good happened before midnight.

  “I don’t want something good to happen,” Claxton had replied. “I’m going out because I need to be bad. The Germans are a bit too virtuous for my taste, I need to be in a place where The Fatherland and The Family are two phrases that they’ve never heard of.”

  Ilse was positioned next to Carl-Heinz in the front seat as he drove, but he constantly called to Helen with his eyes in the rearview mirror, drawing her attention away from Claxton’s conversation in the back. Finally, the car turned down an alleyway and Carl-Heinz pulled off into the shadows and parked. They were in the middle of nowhere, in a dark, damp street without a single soul around to hear your screams for help, an idea that Claxton found irresistible.

  The young driver led the way to a darkened doorway at the rear of a large brick building. There was no lighted sign to greet them, no colored neon to designate that they had arrived at a place that made its living in decadent celebration, only a filthy peeling door the color of mud.

  “Are you sure we’re in the right place?” Helen asked, as she clutched her velvet wrap at her throat and surveyed the dark alleyway with dread.

  “Absolutely,” the young man answered. He knocked on the door in a series of rhythmic taps and within seconds, it opened and a lanky young man dressed in a dinner jacket stood beckoning them to come inside.

  “I hope you brought plenty of money. You are going to need it,” were the only words that he spoke to them as he led them down a steep flight of stairs to a large basement room the size of a ballroom.

  “I was expecting a suffocating little dive, like the ones in New York, but this place is enormous,” Claxton said, shouting over the sound of loud music and a hundred people, reveling in a party well under way.

  Carl-Heinz leaned in to answer.

  “It used to be the morgue of the old Krankhaus. It was the hospital for tuberculosis so there were many casualties,” he stated flatly.

  “Well, at least it makes for a bigger dance floor,” Helen added. “You know me, always the one to look on the bright side.”

  Their young driver led them into the densely packed crowd of drunken revelers. All around them were people of every age determined to find a moment of excitement and sensuality amidst the drabness and poverty of a city that had scarcely recovered from its war-torn years. They came to this place that once housed the dead in order to feel alive for one brief moment in time… to experience desire and lust, and all the things that the New Order now sanctimoniously disallowed.

  The irony of it had not escaped Claxton, as he ran his fingers along the drawers in the wall that had once contained bodies of the victims of a deadly disease, and were now filled with barrels of contraband alcohol and homemade gin.

  Carl-Heinz whispered into the ear of a waiter, betraying the fact that he was no stranger to this particular den of iniquity, and the young man showed them to a good table near the large wooden dance floor. Claxton noticed that his handsome chauffeur squeezed the arm of the swarthy young man before they took their seats and he departed to bring a round of what passed for cocktails in this place.

  Helen was amused that little Ilse seemed so out of her element, and stared open-mouthed around the room, as if her ve
ry own Carl-Heinz had led them into the bowels of Hell itself. In spite of the lovely lavender evening dress that Helen had loaned her, she was totally bewildered and might have been some hapless schoolgirl, who had wandered in by mistake, not realizing that this was a place where grownups came to flirt with danger.

  Carl-Heinz caught Helen’s attention by intentionally brushing his little finger against the side of her hand as he reached across the table to take a cigarette offered by Claxton from a silver case with a large glass sapphire on its lid. He nodded his acceptance and leaned in to accept a light, once again making contact with Helen’s hand.

  Within a moment, the waiter, who Claxton had now likened to the American movie actor Buddy Rogers, because he was perky and bouncy, had returned with a concoction made of wood grain alcohol, flavored with a hint of pine and colored with a blush of red food dye. He told them that it was the specialty of the house… a pink gin… very English and very expensive. Carl-Heinz explained that it was not thought indelicate to mention how much things cost in the Germany of today because it was considered a status symbol to be able to pay, and the responsibility of the host or purveyor to inform you that what they were offering was of a value that few could afford.

  The young chauffeur toasted the party at the table.

  “To what might be our last night together, with me as your driver,” he said, exchanging eye contact with first Claxton, then Helen.

  “I for one will say that I’m sorry to see you out of that uniform. You cut such a dashing figure in it,” Helen replied.

  Claxton laughed aloud.

  “If you replay what you actually just said, my dear Helen, I’m sure you would be more than happy to reconsider the possibilities.”

  Carl-Heinz raised his glass to each of them and smiled with a worldliness that was beyond his years. They raised their glasses in return, and as they did, the Aryan youth took notice of Claxton’s gold watch on a gold mesh strap.

  “What a beautiful clock you have on your arm,” he said with unrestrained admiration.

  “Das ist eine Armbanduhr,” Ilse corrected his English.

  “Your wristwatch is very beautiful. Is it gold?” he asked without acknowledging her help.

  “That isn’t a sort of question one asks. And I certainly didn’t ask it when Douglas Fairbanks gave it to me for Christmas a few years back.”

  “Ah, so… and who is this Douglas Fairbanks?” the young man asked with true interest, as he leaned forward, touching Claxton’s wrist with his fingertips to examine the watch.

  Claxton sighed in frustration that the celebrity of his acquaintances was completely foreign to his two young companions, robbing him of the power to impress them and make them think he was glamorous and exciting by association. He gave Carl-Heinz a pat on his hand and replied.

  “Dear boy… Douglas Fairbanks is one of the most famous moving picture actors in America.”

  “Like Rudolph Valentino?” the boys inquired excitedly. “I should very much like to meet Rudolph Valentino. He is such a good dancer.”

  Claxton merely nodded in agreement.

  Carl-Heinz rose to his feet, extending his hand, and asked Helen if she would like to dance. He ignored the look of distressed jealousy that played over the face of young Ilse, who sat across from him, and led Helen onto the dance floor, making his way through the crowd with his shiny black boots.

  Claxton tapped his fingers on the table and grinned at the girl who sat opposite him, her cheeks flushed with emotion.

  “Oh, you know you mustn’t mind our Helen flirting with your beau. She so enjoys playing with people’s emotions and breaking hearts.”

  “And you don’t mind? You’re her husband, after all,” the girl stated with unmasked reproach.

  “Well, not technically, but for all intents and purposes, we are husband and wife,” he answered for the sake of clarity.

  “They were making eyes at each other the whole way here in the auto,” Ilse informed him, hoping to strike a jealous nerve and elicit a response.

  “Oh, even before that,” Claxton replied. “The moment he stepped into the apartment they were locked in each other’s eyes. That, I believe, is the standard romance novel description.”

  The young woman’s mouth dropped open, and Claxton let out another taunting laugh at the naiveté of her reaction.

  “Oh, you poor young thing,” he said, as he took another painful swallow of the pink slime masquerading as a cocktail, and patted her hand in a fatherly fashion. “If you’re going to remain in our employ, you’ll soon get the hang of it.”

  “But I assumed that when Miss Helen left the Opera, my services would no longer be needed… like Carl-Heinz.”

  Claxton tapped his empty glass on the table.

  “No, your Carl-Heinz is a luxury I will no longer be able to afford, but Helen will still require a maid and dresser. She might be fired from the Opera but she’s not going into a convent, and we’re going to have to socialize even more, from now on, to try and scrape up some new prospects for the future. Who knows, maybe I’ll even become the new rage in the German film business. I understand that some really innovative work is being done here.”

  “That was before the war, I’m afraid,” Ilse informed him. “There is no money in Germany now for the luxury of moving pictures. We sometimes see the ones made in your country, but Italy and Germany only make a handful of films a year now.”

  Claxton frowned at the prospect of having his career aborted before it had even begun.

  Out on the dance floor, Helen could feel Carl-Heinz’s hand moving farther south down her back, finally resting at the top of her buttocks.

  “Now, there’s an original move for you,” she said with a laugh. “But I suppose at your age, surreptitiously grabbing a woman’s ass seems like an acceptably suave maneuver.”

  Her dancing partner quickly found a more respectable place for his hand.

  “Oh, don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind in the slightest if you put your hands wherever you like… it’s just that I like it done a little more… not forceful… but more commandingly, with more finesse, like a real grownup man might do.”

  “You’re humoring me and treating me like a child,” Carl-Heinz replied with a hint of annoyance. “I’m nineteen and going into the Storm Troopers any day now. You might find that if you let me, I can be a very exciting lover.”

  Helen pressed her lips close to his ear and whispered. “I personally think that a man should always keep his word. And if I accept your suggestion, I’ll definitely make sure that you do.”

  She let her lips graze the skin of his neck, ever so slightly, as they took one more slow turn around the dance floor. But Helen waited until they were well in the sightlines of Claxton and little Ilse before she turned Carl-Heinz’s face toward hers and pressed her lips firmly onto his mouth, holding them there for long seconds, insuring that the kiss would deliver the kind of pain she hoped for on the spectators. When the music stopped, Helen led her young paramour back to the table and dropped into her chair with a huff of exhilarated excitement.

  “Well, well, at first base already. I admire your efficiency,” Claxton observed flippantly.

  “What is this first base?” Carl-Heinz asked with real interest.

  Claxton waved his hand, as if to dismiss the question.

  “Oh, it’s nothing… an American sporting term, that’s all.”

  “And what sport is that,” the young man persisted.

  “Let’s just say, it’s one played without a ball,” Helen replied, as she took a welcome sip of her second drink.

  At that moment, a tall, dark-haired young man appeared on the small stage in front of the band. He was dressed in a well-cut white dinner suit and had accentuated his eyes and lips with just enough color to appear vibrant and beautiful in the dim light of the city’s premier cabaret. A spotlight reflected the sheen of his heavily oiled hair, and when he stepped into the glamorous shaft of blue-white light, his green eyes sparked like fire
flies illuminating a summer night.

  “Who is that rather flamboyant character?” Claxton asked Carl-Heinz.

  “He’s the singer here. He calls himself Raoul in order to be more exotic, but I’ve been told that his real name is Friedrich. His father is some kind of diplomat and pays him an enormous allowance just to stay away from home… and to not embarrass the family with his Uranian ways.”

  “What are Uranian ways? I thought Uranus was one of the planets,” Ilse inquired in confusion.

  Helen answered her question.

  “Uranians are the third sex… at least that’s what the doctors call them. They are boys who like boys and girls who like girls.”

  Ilse stared back at Helen in bewilderment. Helen tried to clarify.

  “Well, not just LIKE, as in being friends… but people who like to have sex with their own gender. Boys who like to fuck other boys.”

  “But how is that possible?” the young girl asked, as Claxton and Carl-Heinz simultaneously burst into gales of laughter.

  When Claxton recovered from his amusement, wiping a tear from his eye with the palm of his hand, he turned to Carl-Heinz.

  “There you go. Since you’re now out of a job, there’s your meal ticket,” he said with enthusiasm. “If a faint-hearted creature like that is getting piles of money on a regular basis from dear old dad, just for making himself scarce… If I were you, I’d make friends with him in a hurry and let him bankroll your cause, or whatever else you want the money for.”

  The young chauffeur’s eyes widened at the thought, and his mouth turned up into a smirk of interest. As the crooner in the spotlight began to sing “Goodnight Vienna,” Carl-Heinz signaled for the waiter and ordered another round of drinks for the table.

  Well into her third drink, Ilse was suddenly more than inebriated and began to feel the effects of the wood grain alcohol as agitation. She peered intently through narrow eyes at the Nordic-looking young German who sat opposite her and snorted out an angry laugh.