Hard by the Door: The Antichrist Contagion (eBook)

Martin Wilson (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024 | 1. Auflage
233 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-3509-6473-8 (ISBN)

Infos

This present novel 'Hard by the door: The antichrist contagion' speculates that Hitler as a youth was infected with the Borna virus (a not entirely fanciful notion). The novel's hero, Heinz Linge, who, for a year, acted as Hitler's barber, emigrates to the US after the end of the Second World War. He marries Kate Mittelstein, who is half Jewish, and they have two children, a boy and a girl. The girl, Elizabeth, becomes the heroine of the novel. Portions of the story as here told are factual and are supported by citations. Offered in the course of the story is an explanation of Hitler's psychopathology in light of the severe illness he suffered as a sixteen year old.

Martin Wilson is a retired researcher in the field of plant biotechnology. He received a BS in Genetics and an MS in Evolution, Variation and Taxonomy from the University of Liverpool (UK). He received a PhD in Plant Cell Biology from the University of Leicester (UK). He spent the majority of his career working in the US on the cell biology of Zea mays (corn). He and his wife Barbara have four children and are currently living in Durham, North Carolina.

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Returning by plane from a vacation in Las Vegas, Heinz Linge, who lives in New London, Connecticut, finds himself sitting next to Kate Mittelstein. Heinz and Kate have both bought the same snack to tide them over the journey. This leads to a misunderstanding which sees Heinz imagining that Kate is simply helping herself to his snack. Kate discovers her mistake in the luggage claim area when she realizes her snack is lying untouched in her carry-on bag. There is an earnest apology followed by an invitation from Heinz to have a drink together. Feeling ashamed of her behavior, albeit unwitting, Kate agrees. Thus begins the first major romance in the story. They settle down together and when Kate is expecting their first child Heinz finally tells her about his unbelievable past. He had told her he was Swiss. Now he confesses to being German. And then the greatest revelation: he was known by Hitler having served as his barber for a year. He is wracked with shame for not having killed Hitler when he had the chance. Hitler was, he told his wife, simply insane. Kate reminds him that she is half Jewish. Head over heels in love with his wife Heinz tells her jokingly that now they must stop seeing each other. Kate, equally besotted, tells him she will always love him regardless of what he hadn't done. Their first child is a boy who is clever and wins a place at Yale. Their second child is a girl who grows up to be a nurse. Fanaticism reappears in Heinz's life when his boy marries the daughter of a born-again Christian. Heinz recognizes in the born-againners the same spirit that fueled the Nazis in Germany. The story follows Heinz and Kate to their deaths and then switches to Elizabeth, their daughter. Elizabeth is in possession of Heinz's greatest secret. Adam, her brother, who has gained a PhD in the field of in vitro fertilization, plays a role in the birth of Sonny a child of a colleague of Adam's father. Sonny becomes a famous architect and is given the task of creating a monument to all the victims of Nazi persecution. There are secrets here that only Elizabeth and her brother know. The story ends with brother and sister agreeing that they are right in taking these secrets to the grave with them.

Textauszug

Part One

Chapter One
The Barber of Wolfsschanze

‘I put out my lantern. I am no longer needed.’
Figaro, in the Barber of Seville by Rossini.

“Herr Linge!” Linge looked up to see Hitler standing in the doorway. He’d come for his biweekly haircut. He’d read somewhere that the hair on a human head grew at a rate of one eighth of an inch per week and so Linge was commanded to cut one quarter of an inch at each sitting. Linge fetched a sheet to cover Hitler’s military tunic and then draped it over his shoulders. He took up his comb and scissors and commenced cutting. He did this immediately because Hitler grew restive if he lingered with the comb. Hitler’s head nodded gently, an arrhythmic, slightly jerky motion, as he sat in the barber’s chair. This, and the degrading of his once sprightly step to a shuffle, were the legacy of the recent bomb blast he’d lived through, an audacious attempt on his life. The erratic nodding had become more marked over the last couple of weeks making the cutting of his hair more of a challenge. “Sind Sie Jude, Linge?” asked Hitler, abruptly. (Are you a Jew?). His sulfurous gaze rested briefly on Linge’s open, honest face. This was the voice, the voice that made men and women thrill with emotion. It rang out in the small room, apparently issued at the cost of great struggle from the now doddering colossus. The struggle, however, was an affectation. It was not related to the recent bomb blast. Rather it was a celebration of a triumph, a triumph over the cowardly, mustard gas attack the British had launched on the List regiment in 1918.1 The voice had a peculiar, rough, intimate timbre and a force, penetrating and incisive. All the Germans who heard him speak had been moved by this voice. They recognized in it the victory of the German spirit over the evil machinations of their enemies. When he raised his voice they soared with him, when he’d been playful, sarcastic, oh, how they laughed. The voice told them they would always be better than their enemies.

“Noch nicht, mein Führer!” replied Linge, cheerfully. (Not yet).This was his rote reply to the question Hitler always asked. The first time Linge had said this Hitler had been nettled. “Gefährlich, Linge,” he had admonished, wagging his finger. (Dangerous). This, Hitler thought, sounded mocking. That was impossible, though. This insignificant man wouldn’t dare to disrespect him. No, he must mean that he, Hitler, had up to this time kept the Jew from the gate. It was just a cheerful comment on their on-going struggle with the foul beast. The Führer relaxed in the barber’s comfortable chair. He said, as he always did, when Linge joked like this, that he wanted Linge to tell him when he converted to Judaism. Then he would consider it an honor to perform the circumcision.

As usual he talked about the Jews. “Have you ever been close enough to smell them Linge?” he asked, beginning a favorite theme. “It’s disgusting. They try to act like people, to deceive us, but they just can’t do it. And when you look closely Linge, you can see – they aren’t people. They are not like us. No, even a trace of Jew blood is enough. Just a trace is enough to corrupt a

German and that’s the tragedy. The corrupted German must also be liquidated along with the full Jew. Look at crowds of them Linge, there’s no hiding place then!” He went on to tell Linge he didn’t need any scientific investigation of Jew physiognomy. One sniff was enough for him. “We are going to eradicate that stench, Linge. Eradicate it!”

As Linge ran the comb through Hitler’s hair he noticed an unusually large number of

individual hairs coming away. Probably that mad bastard Morrell and his crazy potions, he thought. Well, if Hitler lost his hair Morrell would almost certainly lose his life no matter what the cause of it. And that, he thought, would be no great loss to the medical profession. It could also mean the end of his own life so he thought he would sound an early warning. This would help him when the accusations began to fly. He was just a simple, well-meaning servant and couldn’t possibly be the cause of Hitler’s hair loss. "You’re shedding, my Führer. Shedding! I can’t understand it. It’s not summer yet!”

“Was?” (What?). Hitler flared up, eyes flashing. The two Reichssicherheitsdienst men who accompanied Hitler everywhere exchanged a look and blanched. The barber did enjoy a degree of intimacy with the Führer, but there was no telling when it might suddenly end and end badly. Hitler reached up and grabbed a clump of hair between his thumb and forefinger. He angrily yanked at it and it came away. “Immer was von mir dabei haben,” (Something to remember me by) he said, as he gave it to Linge.

Linge bowed, affecting to be deeply honored. “Mein Führer.”

Hitler resumed his ruminations on the Jews. They were parasites, blood suckers, dirty and dishonorable, perverters of all that was good in the German race. They belonged in the pigsty but they would come out into the world of men. Money was all the Jew ever thought of, money and how to get it. How to take it off its rightful owners, people who had earned it with hard work. They had to be extirpated, not just from Germany but from the whole world. He was going to have to go to England and then to America to finish the job. “I may not live to see it,” he told Linge, sadly. “But I’ve always been lucky. Those treasonous bastards didn’t get me with their bomb, did they? It was a miracle. In the last war I was in the sights of a Tommy but he didn’t pull the trigger.2 He took pity on me, Linge! On me! Oh yes, I have been chosen. Germany can never be defeated while I’m leading our country.” He stared ahead, lost in thought, relishing his divine protection.

Linge finished cutting his hair, removed the sheet, and brushed off his tunic. Hitler walked out without saying goodbye. Linge never saw him again.

The next day Hitler and his vast entourage moved from Wolfsschanze back to Germany, finally ending up in Berlin. Someone else took over removing the biweekly one quarter of an inch.

Linge wondered at the time why he’d been left behind. He thought back over his time in the Führer’s presence. He’d felt as if he were playing a deadly game where one wrong move could consign him to, at best, a quick painless death, at worst to a death preceded by weeks of torture and disfigurement. He thought back over his exchanges with the Führer. He knew that sometimes he’d come close to being killed. Anyway, now Hitler had definitely left the compound most probably, it was rumored, for Berlin. Maybe the group of functionaries that surrounded Hitler had simply forgotten about him.

He knew after a couple of months that he’d been replaced. There had been no urgent summons to Berlin to take up his duties again. Maybe Eva Braun was cutting his hair now. That, he thought, was the most likely explanation. Knowing he was approaching his end Hitler had withdrawn into domestic intimacy for the remaining months.

Linge had tried to talk to him. “Noch nicht!” was not an isolated sally. He once brought up the question of converted Jews and their lack of a racial aspect. Perhaps many people in the distant past had converted. Maybe, he allowed, it was just a minority but still – what was their race?

Did they even have one? Hitler didn’t rise to the bait. It was all just a cesspool to him, the eternal Jew had contaminated everything. The security men had been amazed. Here was his barber engaging Hitler on racial questions! It was fantastic!

Sometimes Linge couldn’t help himself. Irreverence just bubbled up within him. He couldn’t subdue it for very long. Even facing the void, escaped into after an excruciating, screaming death, he still prattled on. It was his way of retaining a shred of sanity in the fetid, noisome world that surrounded Hitler. One day he’d told Hitler that his masculinity was greatly admired by the British tommies. They’d even made up a song about it – new words to the Colonel Bogey march. Churchill had tried to suppress it but he hadn’t succeeded. “This, mein Führer, is what they sing.” He cleared his throat and began to sing:

“Hitler, he has an extra ball,

Göring just two and very small,

‘Immler has something similar,

But poor old Goballs has no balls at all.”

Hitler laughed until he cried on having the song translated for him. It might have ended badly had Hitler shared the song with someone of a more sober disposition – someone like Bormann, for example. But, miraculously, he never did. And Linge’s ability to speak English? Well, of course, everyone knew his mother had been English, so this was unremarkable. And didn’t the Führer often speak admiringly of the English? He did! It was just that ‘blöde Kuh’ (bloody cow) Churchill and his cronies that were causing all the trouble between the Aryan nations.

Looking back on his time with the Führer it was the voice that stayed with Linge, the voice, hoarse, rasping, questing for intimacy, familiar and intrusive. To Linge, it always sounded as if Hitler was talking to some other Linge, some inner, secret person concealed within himself, some loathsome chiaroscuro flickering behind the good, honest man that...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 1.8.2024
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Historische Romane
• ISBN-13: 979-8-3509-6473-8 / 9798350964738