Three
Schreck startled to attention and cast aside his cigarette as Hitler, with Geli in tow, emerged from the club far earlier than expected. “Heil, mein Führer,” he called out, posture erect, arm extended, heels clacked together.
He opened the rear door as Geli bounded inside without a word.
Geli, still buzzing from her performance, nudged a sweaty strand of curls from her forehead and turned to her uncle as he sat at the far opposite side of the spacious rear cabin. “I don’t understand,” she said. “Why did we have to leave so soon?”
For a moment, she thought Hitler would continue stewing, punishing her with his silence as he was wont to do. “Uncle Wolf—”
“It was a disgusting spectacle,” he spit. “I could tolerate it no longer.”
Geli frowned. In private, when he would shed his meticulously molded public face, Uncle Wolf could be moody, distant, bitter, recalling petty grudges—the wannabe artist twice rejected by Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts, the man convicted of treason after an embarrassingly ill-conceived coup attempt.
Sometimes, she had confided in friends, it seemed as if his only true motivation was getting back at those who had disrespected him.
“Disgusting? A spectacle?”
Hitler looked out the window. “One song is enjoyable,” he said. “Three songs is a spectacle. I am the future leader of Germany. I am not to be upstaged.”
“Upstaged? I—but—you told me to sing. It was your idea. The encore was your idea, too—”
“Sing a nice song and be done!” he exploded. “But prancing around onstage like some common whore? This is the thanks you show me?” He shook his head furiously. “It was a mistake to come. I do you this favor, and you repay me with sabotage!”
“A… common whore? I was only singing a song, Uncle Wolf. And I didn’t sabotage you. People enjoyed it!”
The Führer belted out a hearty, mocking laugh. “You think they applauded because they enjoyed your performance? They applauded because I applauded. They followed my lead. They were just as embarrassed by your performance as I was. But they wouldn’t dare say so.”
Geli fell back against the seat, brooding. She’d experienced such a wonderful high on that stage, and now she was being yanked firmly back to earth.
“We’ll finish this conversation at home,” said the Führer.
“I don’t want to go back to that…” She shook her head, her curls bobbing.
“That… what? That what, Geli? What was it you were going to say to your Führer?”
She turned to him. Though he was in shadow, his eyes, steely and intense, shone bright.
“Nothing,” she said.