Golden Boy. Paula Astridge
drama society of hers and was off to one of their interminable Friday night meetings.
So he turned to Wolters and asked: ‘Is this man Hitler worth the effort?’
And Wolters nodded: ‘Willie’s right. You should come. I can guarantee you won’t be bored.’
It always flattered Wolters when Albert deferred to him like this, implying that his opinion was the best and final authority. Having taken that opinion on board, Albert slapped his hands on his knees, stood up and said: ‘All right, come on then. But I’m warning you, I’m only staying for a few minutes.’ As an afterthought, he turned to Geis: ‘Rob, are you coming?’
It was one of those rare moments when Robert Geis had little to say. All that was loud and colourful about him changed to grim grey as he looked up at Albert and shook his head.
‘It’s not for me, I’m afraid. I don’t much like what the man has to say or the fact that there are so many people willing to listen to it.’
Albert was disappointed. He didn’t like leaving his friend behind to sit and drink alone. Nor did he particularly fancy the prospect of sitting through the boring political bash without Geis’ sarcastic input. Well there went his entertainment for the evening. He had been counting on his friend’s pithy little remarks to get him through. Well someone had to share the joke at his other friends’ expense, for taking this Adolf Hitler’s radical carry-on so seriously. He could not believe that a group of supposedly educated men could be so easily hoodwinked. But then, Albert was a cynic by nature. Nothing surprised him anymore … except the man himself when he walked on stage.
Hitler was not rigged out in uniform, as Albert expected, but moved unassumingly to the centre of the platform, dressed in a conservative, navy blue suit. When he opened his mouth to speak, his words were quiet and dignified. Not aimed at addressing a hysterical rabble, but rather an exceptionally composed audience, among whom were some of the most highly educated and celebrated professors in the city. Many of them had chosen to show their support by joining him on stage. Sitting in a semi-circle of chairs behind him, this selection of the scholastic elite made for a formidable backdrop.
There was no maniacal hype, no threats, no sedition or slander, nothing contentious whatsoever in what Hitler had to say. Quite the contrary. He was all positiveness, all enthusiasm and pride in his country’s future, providing that much needed infusion of hope that his audience was craving.
‘So what do you think now?’ Schelkes asked, nudging Albert.
‘Shhh’ he responded rudely, — for the first time in his life forgetting his manners.
He didn’t care. Not when he was straining to hear every last word Hitler was saying. Not when he was being held transfixed by the man who was to change his life forever. And if Hitler’s speech was not enough to sway him completely, then the brutal actions of the police that followed it were. As far as Albert was concerned, there was no excuse for what happened next.
The morning newspapers read:
‘20 CRUSHED TO DEATH 150 CRITICALLY INJURED!
… the mounted police had no choice but to subdue the rioting mob at the Rally, using force to bring it under control.’
Rioting mob? What rubbish! It was nothing more than a dangerous beat up by the press to explain why so many innocent people had been slaughtered by so-called upstanding officers of the law.
Whistles had blown and sirens had sounded, giving the unsuspecting audience only a split second’s warning before they were set upon by that band of uniformed thugs. Rampaging their way on horseback through the milling crowds, they had lashed out indiscriminately with their weapons and bludgeoned their victims to death. In the stark terror and confusion, Albert had quickly lost sight of his companions. He was jostled, pushed and pulled by the panic-stricken crowd as they ran helter-skelter to escape the carnage. There had been no way out with a 50-strong contingent of mounted police thundering their way through the confused, confined space, their startled horses wheeling, bucking and shying in the hot, savage chaos.
Twice, Albert was knocked to the ground — the second time finding himself on hands and knees coming perilously close to being trampled to death. Had he not grabbed hold of a passer-by’s leg he would not have been able to haul himself back up onto his feet. Dazed and disorientated, Albert was then not physically or emotionally prepared to stand and watch as a woman fell screaming to her death. Right before his eyes, she was thrown, pinned and trampled into the ground under the weight of a huge black stallion. She never had a chance to get out from underneath it. The frenzied beast, with its wide, wild eyes and flaring nostrils reared and screeched as it landed its flailing hooves on her unprotected head and chest, pummelling her face to an unrecognisable, bloody pulp within seconds.
Before Albert could think or move, it was too late. She was dead. Thus, it was surely only masculine impulse that had him run to stand over her shattered body to protect it from further harm. Thrusting the full weight of his body hard up against the stallion’s flank in a futile attempt to push the animal away, he could feel the heat of sweating horseflesh against his chest and the stench of its frantic, foul breath in his face.
‘Move your damned horse!’ he yelled up at its rider, having to step back to avoid the spur on the heel of that helmeted policeman’s black leather boot. Three times he kicked out at Albert, twice finding his mark. The left side of Albert’s face was black, blue and bleeding in evidence. Through the mad cacophony of noise around him, his voice was lost, its angry, frantic cadence rebounding only to drum in his own ears. The sound of which was the last thing he heard before that truncheon came down with a hard crack on his skull.
Stumbling, he reeled but did not fall. In a state of glassy-eyed, body-numbing shock he lurched forward with his arms outstretched for balance as if he were a blind man feeling his way through the dark, his ears deafened but ringing in the piercing, penetrating silence. He could see, but not hear the crowd as it flew feverishly around him like a macabre expressionist painting. A living, breathing, nightmarish montage of frantic faces zooming in and out of frame – their mouths gaping wide open in voiceless screams. In their unrestrained terror some of them reached out desperately to him for help.
But he did not — could not stop to save them, when he had to save himself. He had to escape his own very close and present danger. It was a matter of survival, his primitive instinct having him brush all else aside to secure his own. A desperate single-minded selfishness that somehow helped him grope his way, at last, to safety. There he collapsed down on a filthy street gutter, like the town drunk, throwing up before burying his spinning head in his hands.
It was only then that he saw the blood trickling down between his fingers. He hadn’t realised that the blow to his brow had actually broken the skin! This alarming thought had him tentatively reach up to touch the deep gash at his temple. It was warm, wet, pulsating, and frightening.
‘Hell!’ he said out loud.
So now he had blood in his eye, a thin red river of it running down to colour his world a murky pink and then drip onto his cheek. Quickly, he rifled through his right jacket pocket and then his left, in search of the handkerchief Margret had insisted he take. For the first time glad that she had won the argument he’d put up, on a daily basis, to leave it behind. Pressing its white, cotton fabric to his forehead gave him a measure of reassurance. A few, deep restorative breaths and slowly he came to his senses. Not only, thank God, hearing and seeing quite clearly again, but focusing back on the here and now. Understanding that by accident and assault he had stumbled on the truth and the direction his life was to take.
Yes, it was a pretty devastating way for it to happen, but for Albert that was the way it had to be, something big and shocking enough to shake him out of his snug, smug existence. To bring reality crashing down around him like the policeman’s brutal blow to his head.
This was life, real and raw. A savage departure from his safe little world in which he had been reserved a privileged corner. For the first time in his now seemingly cosseted, meaningless life, he had been stripped of individuality. He’d had no say, no power, and no magic