Return of the Demi-Gods

by Rex Baron

  Helen remained unmoved by this realization. She fixed a smile on her face and ventured forward again into conversation.

  “We have a custom in my country, a gesture of good will between opponents.” She proceeded to unfasten the gardenia from her lapel and extend it to the young woman in tweed. “I hope you'll accept this as a token of friendly competition.”

  Her smile radiated down the length of her arm to the small white flower in her hand. All eyes fixed on it for a solemn moment, before the professor urged his young friend to accept it. The young woman cautiously snatched it up and silently clutched it in her hand.

  “Oh, you must let me pin it on for you,” Helen insisted. “You see that's part of the custom.”

  She retrieved the token from the young woman's hand and pinned it to her tweed lapel, before she had an opportunity to resist.

  “There now,” Helen said, patting the blossom gently with her fingertips. “I just wanted you to know how fair I can be. And as they say in my America… may the best woman win.”

  Helen shook the hands of both the professor and her young competitor. Her parting question to Herr Ziegler dealt with the issue of default in the competition. He assured her, somewhat puzzled, that the choice was strictly between the two women present. This was an honorary position based on merit and work, not a democratic one subject to election, he explained. There would be no other contestants. The answer seemed to please Helen, and she took her leave of them with much outpouring of charm.

  Claxton waited close by, anxious to hear what details had slipped out of earshot.

  “There is nothing to tell,” Helen said, without emotion. “The old pig is screwing the girl. That's Isa Becker, my competition.”

  Following a half step behind, he tried to keep up with the energy of Helen's stride. “What are we going to do?” he asked.

  “WE are going to do nothing,” she said, calmly reaching for a glass of punch. “It's already taken care of.”

  They strolled the gallery, examining the distorted figures of abstract nudes and the twisted lumps of bronze entitled with people’s names but bearing no resemblance to the human form. They loudly clucked their tongues and shook their heads in disapproval at those most scorned by the exhibiting committee.

  At four o'clock, the crowd began to dissipate.

  “Let's get out of here,” Claxton insisted. “I could use a drink and I'm sure a stiff one wouldn't hurt you any either.”

  Helen held up her hand to silence him. She watched Miss Becker formally shake Ziegler's hand and start for the street. Claxton tried to speak, but was once again silenced.

  Helen's eyes burned into the young woman's back as she followed the tweed figure out the door with her eyes. She held her breath for a moment and seemed to mutter something. It was as if she were singing a nursery rhyme in a low whisper. Finally, letting out a little moan of release, she was once again silent.

  A shrill car horn sounded violently from outside the hall and a woman's scream was heard. Nearly everyone present rushed through the door to the street, but Helen held back, slowly making her way out into the violet light of the early twilight.

  There on the pavement, under the wheel of an auto, was Isa Becker, her head turned toward them. Her face bore a blank, almost peaceful expression, like a forgiving china doll shattered by the tantrum of an unruly child. Her tweed jacket was flung open, pulled asunder by an arm that stretched unnaturally out at an oblique angle from her body.

  “She just stepped into the street like someone walking in their sleep,” Helen overheard a woman explain. “It was as if she just didn't see it, as if for her the auto wasn't even there.”

  Herr Ziegler stood trembling, allowing the wall of the building to support his weight.

  Helen approached and kindly placed her hand on his arm.

  “I'm so sorry,” she said. “You know where you can reach me if there is anything I can do.”

  She disappeared into the crowd to find Claxton. A shadowy smirk crossed over her lips as she thought of the professor. Eleven o'clock, the time of the appointed assignation, would come and go as just another lonely hour for the old fool.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Ministry of Propaganda, Berlin

  Claxton let the door of the Kultur Kammer slam shut behind him and headed for the seclusion of a back stairway, where he might fortify himself with a sip from his flask, unobserved.

  Meeting Theodora Hessler at the tennis match had been a fortunate stroke of luck. For three years he had waited for an opportunity to work his way into the Ministry of Propaganda, and at long last, with the introduction from his fat friend, he was able to meet her Heinzy, the formidable Herr Hessler. The meeting had been brief but not without promise.

  Herr Hessler looked up from under a hedge of black brows, appraising him and weighing his every word. He made it clear, without hesitation, that it would be awkward to have an American in the Ministry. Even though Claxton and his wife were in the country for nearly ten years, foreigners were never above suspicion. On the other hand, he had made the point that Claxton might be of use, due to the fact that he not only spoke English as a first language, but also had some following as a popular radio personality and was once a famous American picture actor.

  “You're not Fred Astaire,” Herr Hessler had quipped, “but popularity of your type, as much as it escapes me personally, is valuable to the Reich.”

  Claxton left the office uncertain of his position. Herr Hessler had shown his teeth as he extended his hand. It was a smile of sorts, an imitation of what one might see anywhere on the street, but as if executed by an animal that somehow lacked the necessary musculature to successfully carry out the simple gesture.

  Claxton took a hearty second swallow from the flask and tried to remember the instructions he had been given in regards to filling out the forms of application for the vacant position. He must remember to send flowers to Theodora, he reminded himself. Perhaps chocolates would be more to her liking, he considered, then decided on a bouquet of summer flowers with a suitably charming note, implying his availability on a social level equal to her own.

  He whistled to himself as he stopped a cab and headed across town to the studio space that Helen had rented in the Vogelstrasse. He paid the driver, and powered by his good news, bounded up the stairs like a much younger man.

  He threw open the door to see Lexi on a scaffolding, wearing a long lab coat, chipping away at a huge block of stone. She turned with a gasp and clasped her hand to her heart.

  “You startled me,” she said.

  ““I'm sorry, my dear,” he offered honestly. “I was looking for Helen. I have a bit of news.”

  The woman glared at him from her position of prominence.

  “She's gone off with Ziegler. I needed her to get him away from here so that I might get some work done. Helen tells everyone that it is impossible for her to create while observed. I wonder why?” she said snidely.

  Claxton ran his fingers over the grooves etched into the stone.

  “This is very impressive. What are you working on, or should I say what is Helen working on?”

  “A statue,” she answered flatly, chipping a bit of stone off into his face.

  “I can very well see that… if you don't succeed in blinding me in the process of making it,” he answered.

  Lexi chipped away at the stone in silence.

  “You needn't be so hostile. I'm not responsible for your imprisonment here you know.”

  “Your wife is,” Lexi answered abruptly.

  Claxton moved away from the chisel's line of fire before he answered.

  “You have no one to blame but yourself,” he said. “Everyone knows it's common policy not to permit Jews to enter a competition, especially for a government job.”

  Lexi weakly muttered something about not being Jewish, then slammed at the chisel with her hammer.

  “It was very silly of you to masquerade as a Gentile, my dear,” Claxton continued. “If you had be
en discovered, it would have gone very badly for you and your family. You might have even been shot. So you see, in an odd way, Helen might have done you a service after all.”

  “Leave my family out of this. They know nothing about it, and have nothing to do with it,” she said, her eyes burning with anger.

  “They have everything to do with it. They're the very reason why Helen has this hold on you and can keep you here doing this work for her own advancement. I'd say they were the single most important thing to do with it.”

  He examined the tip of his gloved fingers and wiped away the residue of stone powder on the leg of his trousers.

  Lexi stopped her work and faced him squarely.

  “You can afford to be smug now, but a day will come when your nationality, you Americans, will be as unwelcome here as my people are now. Then you will see what it is to have nowhere to go, to wonder why you should leave everything you and your family have worked for over generations, just because someone posts a piece of paper in the city hall.”

  “That may be,” Claxton answered coolly, “but my time, fortunately, has not yet come, and until that day, we intend to make the most of the opportunities that arise.”

  Claxton leaned close to the scaffolding and steadied himself against the structure with one hand while he surveyed the length of Lexi’s shapely legs with inquisitive eyes.

  “You're too hasty in your judgment, my dear,” Claxton laughed. “I am a relatively amusing person and extremely influential with your captor. I could be a great ally to you, if you only allowed it.”

  He cautiously touched her leg with his hand and lightly traced the back of her calf with his glove.

  Without warning, Lexi brought her hammer down hard on the metal railing of the scaffold, bruising the fingers of the hand with which he supported himself. He brought the injured hand to his mouth with a loud shriek.

  “You little bitch,” he shouted angrily. “I was willing to help you, but for all I care, you and your pathetic family of liars can go to the devil.”

  Claxton stormed across the length of the studio to the door and the hallway beyond.

  “We already have,” Lexi called after him.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Outside Munich, Bavaria

  Herr Ziegler stood just up hill from the lake to insure an unencumbered view. His arm swept across the horizon, like a potentate offering a reward to a newly converted loyalist.

  “All of this is what Germany means in the subconscious mind of the average man. It is the pine forests of the Rhine and the beautiful vistas overlooking the farms here in Bavaria, with glimpses of the peasants as they go happily about their daily tasks.”

  Helen could not stop herself from letting out a snort of laughter at the absurdity of his observation.

  “There is no such thing as a happy peasant, and there never has been, either in the time of Barbarossa, Frederick the Great or now,” Helen remarked. “It is all just a myth manufactured to soothe class and social differences.”

  Herr Ziegler smiled with approval at his new protégé.

  “Exactly,” he said simply, folding his hands across his stomach with satisfaction. “That is just the point. We need to create three distinct orders in our culture, the military, the industrial soldier… those who toil at the forges of industry, and finally, the agricultural soldier, armed with his hoe and rake, doing his work for the good of the Fatherland.”

  Helen rolled her eyes. “This sort of thing would never go over in my country.”

  “Yours is a country of self-serving fools and Capitalists,” Ziegler replied. “Surely that is the simple explanation of why one as clever as you has chosen to cast its foolishness aside and join the ranks of the New World Order.” He patted her arm the way an owner would pat a clever farm animal. “The New Order of Germany, echoing the values of its great past, is what we strive for.”

  He pointed in the direction of a stone castle built on a hillock above the lake. It was the very image of a fairy tale castle with its high turrets and spirals, glistening with gold in the sun.

  “Neuschwanstein,” he said, poking the still afternoon air with his finger. “That Ludwig was an idiot, but no fool. He created a symbol of the past using modern plumbing and technology to do it. He realized, in all his madness, that courage is buried in the same heart with romance, and that one can evoke the glamour and passions, the romance of the past, to access the more primal, stronger emotions of aggression that lay behind them in the same breast.”

  Helen yawned. Ziegler pointed to a yellow bunker-like fortress built on a nearby embankment. It had none of the whimsy and ethereal beauty of its companion castle, but clung low to the ground and stretched itself out as if it somehow understood the dangers of warfare and the strategies of safety.

  “There is castle Hohenschwangau,” he said. “It is the ancient bastion of the Royal House, atop that hill for centuries, and yet, the new castle, built less than a century ago, far better expresses the spirit and romance of the country and its people.”

  “My feet are hurting,” Helen said, shifting her weight. “We've been tramping through these little villages like Fussen here, nearly all day. You've pointed out fifteenth century this, and twelfth century that, and for the life of me, I don't understand what it has to do with our designing statuary and decoration for the Ordensbergen, or any of the other new municipal buildings.”

  Ziegler explained. In the same way that the New Order intended to encourage a fear of Modern Art, in order to discourage intellectualism and bring the people back to recognizable common values, so, it was deemed appropriate that all new buildings should either be designed to evoke the awe inspiring power of ancient Greek and Roman classicism, or to remind one of the solidarity of village life, where everyone has a share in the protection and shaping of a local community.

  “Many of the new public buildings and housing developments are designed to resemble charming clustered villages, complete with high raked roofs and picturesque woodwork decoration, so as to emulate work done by the craftsmen guilds during the medieval age,” Ziegler explained. “Die Heimat, the homeland, must be defended and it's far easier for the mind to identify with the ideal of protecting the village from intruders than it is for the modern disassociated urban consciousness to rally round and muster courage for the sake of lifeless buildings, devoid of any personal association or romance.”

  “It's a major form of manipulation then,” Helen said, her mouth dropping open in amazement. “You're planning a takeover of the world and brainwashing these poor souls into believing they are only protecting the sanctity of their pitiful little village.”

  “Correct again,” Ziegler shouted with a resounding laugh. “There is great power in mythologizing the past. We each have our own personal mythology, who we think we are. Even if we are raised in the same household with a sibling, they will not remember the past in the same way, with the same symbols and significance that we do. A country's mythology may be manipulated too, in order to put emphasis on certain qualities and less on others.”

  “So we are to build the cities of the New Order to perpetuate this mythology of wholesome village life?” Helen asked with surprise. “But where is the power in that?”

  Ziegler rubbed the side of his head as if stimulating the brain. “The power lies where it belongs, not with the people, who are incapable of correctly handling it, but in the hands of an elite corps, trained to create a new world for the common good. You, my dear, are a small but, might I say, welcome addition to that special force.”

  Ziegler placed his hand on her arm as she had seen him do to Isa Becker that day at the Gallery before the accident. She smiled a professional smile and moved away from under his touch.

  “It is beautiful here,” she said. “It's no wonder Ludwig and Wagner and the others chose this place to frolic around in the moonlight, singing arias from Tristan. It's the middle of the twentieth century, and yet here in this place, standing below a Gothic castle, even if it was bu
ilt less than fifty years ago, it feels like the Middle Ages. One might envision knights on horseback returning from the crusades, coming through the forest at any moment.”

  “And that is just the kind of vision we propose to inspire. We will recreate in our work a time when national values and those of the church and state were clear and indelible.”

  Once again, he rubbed Helen’s arm, as an indelible signal of what else he hoped to propose.

  •••

  Ziegler insisted that they stop at a small Biergarten for a cool drink before returning to the grayness of Munich. A little, blonde kellerin with her hair wound in a braid appeared with two frothy steins of beer and plopped them down on the coarse wooden table with an innocent smile. Her pale breasts were visible above her dirndl, pressed together like two loaves of unbaked bread, swelling in the late afternoon sun.

  Herr Ziegler watched her ample form glide efficiently back toward the tavern and sighed audibly.

  “I suspect you're missing your friend Isa,” Helen said pointedly.

  The professor looked up from his mug with guarded interest.

  “Oh, it's no surprise to me that you had a special interest in that young woman, and I know that there was never any real contest between us.”

  Ziegler tried to protest, but was cut short.

  “I saw the way you looked at each other that day of the exposition, how you whispered and yet tried to appear so detached and unacquainted. It was when she allowed you to carry her handbag for her that I knew you had been, shall I say, intimate. There isn't a woman on Earth who will allow a man to hold her handbag, unless they are married or lovers, and even half the married ones won't exhibit that trust.”

  Herr Ziegler's eyes brightened. He appraised her with a look of satisfaction.

  “I'm sorry about that girl,” Helen said for effect.

  “I too am sorry,” he echoed her words. “She was a lovely girl, but I somehow cannot help but think that fate intervened and made the proper selection after all.”