From The Adorations (cont'd):

The thought passed through Stefanie’s mind, otherwise aswim with pro-Adolf (or at least pro-artist) feelings (or at the very least responding favorably to the mating dance of the eager male), that young Herr Hitler could on occasion be quite overbearing, when the mood took him, as the mood seemed to take him now—well, perhaps overbearing wasn’t quite the right word: importunate? Yes, but with such enthusiasm that he was hard to resist. The very opposite of monotonous, anyway. With his gestures he parried, feinted, and thrust; his face and hands were constantly on the go; he stared, lip-licked, and finger-fiddled. He demanded one’s attention, which almost guaranteed that he wouldn’t get Stefanie’s. Such self-confidence, she thought, would be apt, no doubt, in the presence of worshippers, but she worshipped him not, and couldn’t imagine anyone else doing so...he was an artist, after all! No one took the political ravings of artists seriously. Such palaver was for late nights in the smoky confines of a small garret eave-secreted in some great city’s Bohemian quarter (she dreamed, for a second, of herself in just such a garret: Life, Love, and Art, the blessed triumvirate of youth’s empire!). No, no one would ever beg him to repeat himself. No one would dream of designing society along his lines. No one would restructure his or her life according to the ravings of Adolf the Artist! She felt pity (constant companion of her future life), pity for the intensity and seriousness and probable future failure of a bright but muddled young man. Only eighteen she might be, but she’d already seen, in her own family, in her own father and uncles and cousin and various distant relatives, enough shortcomings and fallings-short and half-measures and life-imposed compromises to recognize failure in the making. Poor Adolf. And yet! The intensity was rare.

            A shiver passed through her, heralding another of her spells. Migraine, the doctor had said. Nonsense, had been Stefanie’s reply. She rubbed her eyes.

            Adolf didn’t notice. He had moved from the specific, his audience of one, to the general, an abstract, celestial audience of Hermanns and Frederick Redbeards and dumb but willing German yeomen. Talking all the while, he was gazing through the window at the sliver of blue Danube and the wooded Pöstlingberg beyond, momentarily indifferent to ambient banalities. He appeared to ignore, for instance, a mild metallic burning odor that caught in Stefanie’s nose right away.

      “Uggh.”

            The smell seeped faintly into the air, as if a frying pan had been left on the fire in the kitchen; then, suddenly, it was gone. Stefanie took a deep breath. She blinked away the rosettes of eyestrain. Specks of light danced before her eyes, then disappeared. In the distance there was a low screech, as of a chair being dragged across the floor. A warm breeze played over her neck.

            “German ideals, of course,” Adolf was saying. “We Germans have never had much luck with the parliamentary style of government. We have our own needs, our own dictates. Why should we try to imitate countries that after all are decaying from within?  These liberal and socialistic parties speak constantly of importing the French, or the English, or the American, system...”

            Adolf’s ideal form of government, however tedious to Stefanie, seemed to be arousing interest in other quarters, which was hardly surprising, she thought, as Adolf had developed a very audible, indeed hectoring, tone of voice; however, she had not been aware of other customers sitting down nearby, but one or two must have, behind their backs. Anyway, she was definitely having another of those attacks, longer than usual. She wondered if something obvious triggered them: strain, anticipation, excitement? Such attacks in a girl her age were quite absurd and irritating, like an insistently recurring bout of heart palpitations or some other ailment she associated with nervous old people who spent most of their lives taking their pulses and sipping muddy water at thermal spas...a violent throb in her temples was followed by a swiftly-dissipating mist that yielded to prism-like clarity with a hint, too, of prism-like distortion, or refraction, around the edges, like a shimmering gilded frame. On this particular occasion, while Adolf spoke of his ideals, through the dissolving blur and subsequent lens-sharpness Stefanie discerned the hard-edged profile of a stranger sitting in part-shadow at an adjoining table, smoke rising from an invisible pipe or cigar (odorless? perhaps it was a cigarette), his hands cupped in front of him, his legs crossed in somewhat grotesque fashion, as if he were seated sidesaddle on a horse. Was he a cripple? An athlete? Another artist, or agent provocateur? Stefanie idly shifted her full attention from her haranguing companion to this new arrival. Adolf seemed not to notice. The man’s face, apart from its profile—whose aquiline nose, weak chin, and high sloping forehead were as sharp as if they had been etched in glass—was oddly vague and imprecise, like a much-erased drawing. His shoulders, or what Stefanie could see of them, seemed to be shaking, as in silent laughter, although there was no corresponding mirth reflected on his features: perhaps he was ill? His eyes seemed to be closed, or deep in shadow. Stefanie’s attention was drawn again to his legs, which were as imprecise in outline as his face was in feature, as if heavy clouds were blotting out the sun (but they weren’t, because she could see through the window into the cheerful sunlit world beyond), yet in some way those legs were grotesque, incomplete—not that she could see at all clearly under the neighboring table....

            “...I firmly believe, and I’m aware that I probably offend you, I know some educated young ladies of liberal conscience would be quite shocked at my words, ja, ja, but I must say it, I do believe in the importance of maintaining national characteristics, that is to say: No foreigners! Now of course—before you say how shocked you are, before you remind me how Goethe would disagree, and so on—when you think about it, this is precisely the Greco-Roman ideal. Have you read Chamberlain? One of the most eminent English authors, I only recently discovered him, and I must say I am finding him very stimulating... but I see you are shocked.”

            Stefanie was indeed shocked, but not at Adolf’s theorizing. She had found a precise comparison for the mental image evoked by the spasmodic shifting, or uncrossing (with hoof-like clattering of feet), of her neighbor’s legs: the stables at her Uncle Karl’s farm in the Salzkammergut, specifically (she remembered the acrid mingling of the smells, hay-urine-manure) the momentary loss of balance of a cow being milked. Or a horse stung by a fly. Or—and she squarely faced the final, diabolical image—a goat, startled, stumbling...the image was absurd, then terrifying for a second, then absurd and  terrifying; then, as soon as the image began to fade, so did the mysterious stranger at the neighboring table, gathering up him- or itself (what was the appropriate pronoun for an angel, fallen or not?) and heading for the door in the corner (what door? there was no door there), but on his or its way out—moving in an ataxic, jerky, pantomime-horse kind of way—turning to look back, as Stefanie thought, not at her but at Adolf, and in an unaccountably intimate, devouring way, like a lover, or long-lost family member, enormous eyes flaming with a hideous immortality, a misshapen head that seemed to culminate—yes, she could have predicted it  (had predicted it)—in an odd, stiff little coiffure that resembled horns...were horns. Of course.

            Then, thank God, he, or it, was gone, fading into a small whirlwind of shadow. The smell that lingered was one that had earned its place in folklore.

      Stefanie shook her head violently.

      “My God! I have seen the devil,” she murmured, head in hands.

            “Ah,” said Adolf. “You are ill?” There was a touch of impatience in his voice at this further sign of the unpredictability of this young woman, or women in general; indeed, his mind reluctantly filled with images of horrible illness setting in, unseemly dashing to and fro, a cab commandeered for the hospital, encounters with family members, feeble explanations offered and instantly dismissed, himself made to feel inferior again...

      “No, I’m quite all right,” she said. “But I will go home now, I think.”

      “But.” He was confused, nonplussed, surprised. “It’s not even two o’clock.”

            “And it was this morning we met! Already we’ve spent four hours together. It’s enough, Herr Adolf. It was enjoyable, yes, but it’s enough. My Aunt Marie will be wondering what has become of me. And I need to rest.“

            With a firmness of demeanor that impressed Adolf, while simultaneously pushing him to the brink of despair, Stefanie made preparations to leave. Sensing departure, their host Herr Herzl appeared, hovered, allowed a touch of hand-wringing impatience to show at Adolf’s laborious (because reluctant) counting-out of coins that nonetheless ended with a surprisingly large gratuity being tossed disdainfully onto the table (thus restoring the landlord to the state of bluff grovelling that was his trademark).

      “Many thanks, esteemed young gentleman. Your servant, Fraulein.”

            Adolf retrieved his cane, clapped his artist’s cap on his head, and bowingly gestured for Stefanie to precede him. They went through the door into the burning sunlight of the Hauptplatz.

            “I would be most grateful”—oh now he reminded himself how lovely she was, with her hazel eyes, golden hair and honey-brown skin, his longed-for Stefanie, dream-companion of his haunted nighttime hours!—”if you would consent to accompany me again, Fraulein Stefanie, perhaps to the opera performance I mentioned?”

      “Ja. Perhaps, Herr Adolf.”

      “And now? May I? Escort you, perhaps?”

      “I have a visit to make. Thank you, but no.”

      “I kiss your hand, dear young lady.”

            Adolf Hitler did so, and bowed, relief and disappointment struggling within him: Relief, that he no longer had to play the courtier (not that he did so very well), pay attention, laugh at jokes, agree with the nonsensical opinions of another, flutter about, think of banalities, spend money; and disappointment, of course, at leaving the current object of his desire, who might now be on her way elsewhere for good, outraged or shocked or disappointed or disgusted—yes, he could all too easily imagine the type of smooth-talking middle-class or aristocratic Hungarian and/or Jewish skirt-chaser who might win her heart, a man with a box at the opera, a yacht at Fiume, a house in the Vienna Woods, and a well-rehearsed line of seductive patter; exactly the kind of suave Romeo, in fact, he had disapprovingly taken note of in Vienna. Just the type, he was sure, who would eagerly engage in silken chit-chat about Goethe and with supreme confidence offer his arm on the dance floor; raise a cape-cloaked arm to summon a cab out of nowhere on a rainy night; airily speak French, and Italian, and English, and say “old chap,” and order expensive aperitifs; the kind of devious, disloyal, untrustworthy cosmopolite, in short, who would undermine Adolf’s very notion of nationhood, i.e., civilization itself. Through his confusion he glimpsed, as he often did, salvation, with himself as Wagner reborn, successfully manning the barricades in a great social and cultural revolution, a French Revolution for Germany...and Austria, too...anyway, Stefanie was too young, that was it. Deeply as he desired her, he knew himself to be too mature, too seasoned, too steeped in learning and philosophy, too elevated by the fates and amibiton to waste time on a girl, or girls. Some day one would heed the call and join him in his quest; but she would be more pliable, more understanding, more loyal, than the temperamental, if beautiful, Stefanie. The thought of the future and what it would hold reassured him, as it always did. He gave his cane a flourish and took out his pocket-watch. (Faintly, regret trembled, prompted by the fresh memory of Stefanie’s awe; then it vanished, vanquished.) Two fifteen. That would give him a good three hours or so in the library. He was halfway through Chamberlain, and wanted to finish the book before going home to Leonding. He would tell Mamma he had shared a torte with Stefanie von Rothenberg. She would be impressed.

            As for Stefanie, deeply shaken, she tried to explain her experience to the statues and altar and immanent God at the Mariakirche, a dark, chilly place dimly illuminated by red-flickering candles honoring the forgotten dead. But for a priest, the church was empty, yet it was full of the vast echoes of a living silence: footfalls; a creaking beam; a door closing; a scuffling churchmouse...dear God, said Stefanie to God, make me normal again. If what I saw was real, make me blind; if a vision, make me see as others see.

      There was, of course, no reply. Then the priest shuffled by.

      “Father.”

      “Yes, my child?”

      “I want to make my confession, Father.”

            She confessed, but Father Rupprecht was an old priest who’d been in Linz since the days of Metternich and wanted only an easeful slide into dotage and death, with no sudden intrusions of mysticism and hallucinations to upset his nice parish and tear open his neatly-wrapped package of a remote Christ triumphant and remoter God serene. Grudgingly (he had an appointment with an osteopath, then a game of chess at Meinherr Schmitz the barber’s) he heard Stefanie’s confession, which she watered down accordingly; then, paternally, impatiently, indifferently, he extended the benediction.

      “Go in peace, my child.”

      In turmoil she went.