Marc Estrin

ORIGINAL BEGINNING AND ENDING

I was reminded the other day, while doing a radio interview, that The Education of Arnold Hitler was once a very different story -- far more bleak than the published version. In brief, having written a ghastly frame for the work, I decided to try -- for once -- a “happy ending”, just to see what it felt like. It was actually richer, and far more fun -- as you can see by comparing the published book to these, its original beginning and end:

ORIGINAL TITLE, ORIGINAL BEGINNING

THE SAD LIFE AND UNTIMELY DEATH OF ARNOLD HITLER

Words mark us as intensely as we mark them. Words for joy. Words for misfortune. Words for indifference and for hope. Words for things and for men. Words for the universe and words for nothingness.

 And behind each of them, life, in its simplicity or complexity, menaced by death.

Edmond Jabès

-- The Book of Margins

ONE

“What’s in a name?” young Capulet demanded, “That which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet.”

Really? Could medieval minstrels have sung {here a musical example of the song, “There is no Rose of such Virtu as is the Rose that Bear Jesu].

And would Juliet been half as enthusiastic to give up her maiden name to be married to Romeo Schwartzenegger?

The sad fact is that there is a lot in a name, a lot we control, but rather more that we do not. Humpty Dumpty’s assertion to Alice that it is only a question of “which is to be master”, man or word, represents at best a mid-19th century egg’s shortsightedness. No further evidence is needed to refute such oviod misconception than the sad life and untimely death of Arnold Hitler.

There he is, lying on rubble, barely recognizable to his own little white cat or to the crowd of astounded children gathered round his smoking remains. His arms had been fastened behind his back with bicycle chain, his legs tied with stout electric cord, the insulation now melted away to mingle the smell of burning wire with the smell of burning flesh . Next to the body, two empty cans of Coleman Heater fuel. His tormentors must have sat him down cross-legged, poured the gas in his lap, and watched him go up in flames with his head relatively spared, perhaps so he might better hear their final mocking. His leg bones are crossed, the flesh burned entirely away. His right thorax and abdomen are open, exposing charred liver and intestines. But his face is only slightly disfigured, skin minimally gone, musculature entirely intact, his expression fixed on some unimaginable province where all may be well again. As the paramedics scoop-stretcher him up, they find the bottle behind his back, locked in his chained right hand, an empty Schlitz bottle, corked as if for a long sea voyage. In it, a scrawled note: HEIL HITLER. THE REAL ONE.

Arnold Hitler. Arnie. Handsome, gentle Arnie. Who would have thought the beautiful baby, the engaging toddler, the bright young child, president of his elementary school class from the first to the sixth grade, the sweet junior high student -- the only one who could actually pet squirrels as they ate out of his hand, the brilliant and popular high-school student, captain of the football team and the chess club -- who would have predicted such an end? 

Anyone familiar with mass semiotic insanity of the late twentieth century, and the conceptual loony-bin that is America -- that’s who. Maybe even Arnold himself, once he discovered the unpredictably dangerous power of signifiers during his junior year at Harvard.

What, one might ask, is “semiotic”? The reader may find it irreverent, perhaps even obscene, to ask such a question in front of this nauseous spectacle. But it was semiotics (and antisemitics) which brought Arnold Hitler to this place -- an under-the-freeway bunker on Bruckner Boulevard, the Bronx, and to this condition -- a most exothermic giving-up-of-the ghost, carbonized in extremis. It was semiotics (and antisemitics) which stiffened his spine, as well as exposed it. It was semiotics (and antisemitics) which drove his belles dames sans merci. So then, without excuse: what is semiotic? (We know about antisemitics.) After all, we have to wait for the loading of the ambulance. 

We are not the first to ask this question. Already in their second exchange of love notes, Evelyn Brown felt compelled to inquire about the strange word that cropped up consistently in his wary love notes. “Arnold-pie,” she wrote, “I've never gone out with anyone so obsessed with semiotics. What's semiotics to you or you to semiotics?” 

We are lucky to have his very own answer from a packet of such notes tied with pink ribbon in the upper left-hand drawer of a small chest of drawers in an upper story artist's studio on Hunt's Point Avenue.

“Dear Miss Brown,” he replied, “ 

Semiotics is the study of the functioning of signs in our language and culture. Like that stop sign at your corner, the one that says STOP -- with “Jews!” spray- painted underneath. [I did that, she thought. How nice! He noticed!] How is such a sign to be read and understood? If not “stop Jews”, how far does the signification “STOP IN WHITE LETTERS ON A RED OCTAGON” reach? “You, stopped at the stop sign, stop picking your nose! I saw you!”? (Forgive me for being crude.) But how does a driver know who or what is being addressed, or how far that address reaches? This may seem like a silly example, but it is close at hand, and many other examples are not so silly when they seriously interfere with people’s real lives. Let's talk more about this. [Bronx, NY, 7/11/72]

And talk about it they did, though not a lot. The issue was quickly obvious, and other issues became more important. Besides, they were both lookers, that’s for sure. Each wanted the other's genes curling up inside children. She was brilliant and unique, and he was as nice a guy as anyone could want, even-tempered, considerate, gentle, smart. And -- if you were Evelyn Brown -- there was his name. 

His name -- ay, that was usually the rub. Not everyone liked his name as much as did Evelyn. Most were uncomfortable with it, many were repulsed, some were revolted. His name attracted general outrage -- at least in the sophisticated cities to which he was eventually drawn. And yes, it was semiotics which brought him down. We have this, too, from a packet of letters tied with pink ribbon in the upper left-hand drawer of a far larger chest of drawers in an enormous rent-controlled apartment on Riverside Drive and 117th St, overlooking the great, grey-green, greasy Hudson River. It belonged to Jamie Bernstein, elder daughter of Leonard L. Bernstein, conductor of the New York Philharmonic:

“Jamie, Jamie, Jamie,” Arnold intoned, exasperated, 

You ask why I don’t simply change my name? So my name is Arnold Hitler. So what? Am I Adolph Hitler? Do I have a moustache? Am I a vegetarian who wants to kill Jews? What if my name were Hatler? Or Hotler? Or Hetler or Hutler? Would I be a different, more acceptable person? One little letter, one vertical line topped by a dot, and I become a monster? 

 To answer your question: I will not change my name because I shouldn’t have to. I shouldn’t have to capitulate to the forces of unreason. This world is savvy enough to be drowning in “free-floating signifiers”. Is only my surname to be an exception, the one signifier left in the world that is endlessly bound to only one signified? To change my name is to allow that to happen, to indulge the crude prejudices of unthinking people, to perpetuate the very hatred they want to see dissolved. Get it? You’re dealing with a man of principle -- a man who is principled enough in his devotion to ask you to go to the organ concert at Busch-Reisinger this Friday. Will you? Give me a call. 

 A [Cambridge, MA, 3/12/71]

They did go to the concert, but as usual, Jamie would not hold hands till they were well out of sight of the crowd. At her door, late -- well she just couldn’t bring herself to kiss a man named Hitler.

ORIGINAL ENDING

[Keith is finishing up a ceremony initiating new members into BAT -- the Bronx Army of Thor.]

She wouldn’t say what had happened in that conversation. But in the next month, Arnold noticed a change in the intensity of her attentions, more present, more loving, more serious. She brought him gifts: the second volume of the Book of Questions, newly appeared; a cassette of the Siegfreid Idyll, Wagner’s tender birthday present to Cosima. 

“So how come not on my birthday?”

 “I wanted to give it to you sooner.” 

She took him out to dinners -- from Saito through T.G.I. Friday’s to White Castle Hamburgers.

But the best gift of all was that she stayed with him every night, either at his place of hers. No more “I have work to do,” no more “I’d like to be alone.”

November 9th, 1972 was different. 

“Another Thorsday night. What’s Big Boy going to come up with now?” he asked.

“I don’t know, but we’re not going. I always meditate tonight. Half my stuff for the whole year comes to me on this one night.”

“What’s so special?”

“Kristallnacht. Thirty-four years now. You know what that was?”

“When the Nazis smashed up synagogues all over Germany.”

“Synagogues, businesses, homes, cars. It was the beginning of the end, the moment people knew worse days would surely come, that darkness had come up to speed. 

Such a beautiful word, Kristallnight -- for a night of weeping children, for a night when death ran thorough so many hearts. As misnamed as you are. We can hear the crystal starlight shatter. Sweep it up in the agonized morning and gathered it in heaps. You know about breaking a glass at a Jewish wedding?”

“I know they do it. I think it’s an odd kind of toast: ‘May your love last as long as the number of pieces,’ -- or something like that.”

“That is perhaps the American Pollyana version. You know what the real meaning is? ‘Though now you stand together in your most glorious hour, at any minute, the whole universe can shatter like this glass. So treasure your happiness while you may.”

“Really?”

“Would I lie to you?”

“No.”

“So anyway -- Kristallnacht. You can see why I want to be alone tonight, yes?”

“Yes. I’ll cuddle up with Surrogate Sal.”

“But before you go, I want to sing you a little song.”

“Eve of Destruction?”

“You think I only know one song? This is a song I learned camping out in the Bernese Oberland. Wandrers Nachtlied. It’s Schubert, with words by Goethe.”

“Heavy team.”

“Both offense and defense. Get undressed and lie down in bed.”

“It’s only eight o’clock. And I have to go home.”

“This is a late-night lullaby. Willing suspension of disbelief, bitte.”

Arnold did as she had instructed. He half thought it might be a gambit towards a quickie He lay in her -- in their -- huge bed while she sang to him in a gentle, radiant voice. 

Über alle Gipfeln

ist Ruh,

In allen Wipfeln

Spürest du

Kaum einen Hauch;

Die Vöglein schweigen im Walde,

Warte nur, warte nur, balde

Ruhest du auch.

Sing with me...They sang the simple end together, more connected than Elsie and Jack Point ever were:

Warte nur, warte, nur, balde

Ruhest du auch.

“You think I really will have peace?”

“Yes.”

“Soon?”

“Yes.”

She kissed him gently on the lips, and sent him home.

It was a Kristallnacht. Orion was rising over the horizon, his sword as sharp as the November air. In the time Arnold took to walk from Hunt’s Point Avenue to his bunker under the Expressway, the tip of the weapon became visible, drawing itself slowly out of the wounded heart of Brooklyn. He could clearly see the Great Nebula, that vast cloud of glowing gas which one day would give birth to other stars. Balde ruhest du auch. He did feel at peace, a small part of the Whole.

They were waiting for him in the darkness of his bunker. Before he could turn on the light, he was wrapped in bicycle chain and electric cord, gagged behind concrete and steel, and tied at the waist to the bed. Keith stood in the corner holding a Yahrzeit candle, and watched as Thumper, Ken Death, Fag Killer and Puke attended efficiently to business. When the scuffle had subsided, he spoke.

“Rather than have a regular Thorsday lecture, we thought we’d advance to praxis, one of your good Marxist terms. But not, of course, without a little theory, and a little art, you and I being so highly educated. Good for the boys, too, right boys?

“Right.”

“So we’ve rehearsed a small talmudic drama, a short one act play -- the one act being the final act, the Endlösung, as it were, participatory -- kind of a happening.”

“And we’re sure you’re gonna find it enlightening,” Ken observed.

“But first, the theory: What is the ignition temperature of human flesh? Thumper?”

“Five hundred and sixty eight degrees.”

“Celsius or Fahrenheit?”

“Fahrenheit.” 

“Good boy. Go to the head of the class.”

“And what, FK, is the temperature of burning Coleman Heater fuel?”

“Eight hundred sixty degrees.”

“Celsius or Fahrenheit?”

“Fahrenheit.”

“Excellent. That’s Gabriel Daniel Fahrenheit, Arnold, our Enlightenment friend from Gdansk, who, besides inventing the mercury thermometer, also discovered that other liquids besides water have a fixed boiling point -- like blood. Now, class, given those two numbers, 568 and 860, would you conclude that Coleman Heating fuel could ignite a bad human being?”

“Yes!” the class called out.

“All right, that’s the theory. Now for the play. Arnold, this is a conversation between several imaginary rabbis. Rabbi Schwartz will be played by Nigger Thumper; Rabbi Skelett by Ken Death, Rabbi Schwule by that old FK, and Rabbi Unflat by the one and only Puke. Last but not least, yours truly will assume the role of the Tzaddik Bal Shem Tov.”

He knocked his Yahrzeit glass three times against the bookshelf.

“Let the play begin.” 

Schwartz: “But don’t you tink ve vill be caught if ve chust boin him alive?”

Skelett: “Dat is a very gut qvestion. Let us go ask the Bal Shem Tov.”

They shuffle their feet in place, not giving up their hold on Arnold.

Schwule: “Rabbi, Rabbi, ve haf a very difficult qvestion for you.”

BST: “Vat is it my children?”

Unflat: If ve are goink to boin dis Mr. Hitler alive, don’t you tink ve vill get apprehended by the authorities?”

BST: “Vere does this Mr. Hitler lif?”

Schwartz: “In a shelter under de freevay.”

Skelett: “A bunkeh.”

BST: “Children, I tink everyting vill be all right. The New York Polizei are not noted for diligence ven investigating deaths of bag-people and sqvatting bums. Gut riddance to bed rubbish, I belief is their motto. Of this ve have ample evidence. I tink you may just go ahead.”

There was a pause, then they all of them bowed.

“What, no applause?” Keith asked, indignant. “After all our rehearsal? And a very original script?”

“His hands are tied, boss.”

“Oh, oh. I see. Well, that’s all right then. We can proceed to the special effects. Men, you may pour the Coleman.”

Arnold was calm as the fuel soaked through his coat, through his shirt and pants and on to his skin. In his head, far beyond the insanity of the hour, the record was stuck at 

Warte nur, warte, nur, balde

Ruhest du auch.

Keith came up to the bed and pulled a book of Pinky’s Palace matches from his Burberry. Pinky’s Palace Club and Sports Bar, with an appropriate silhouette. He opened the book.

“Let’s see...She loves me, she loves me not. She loves me, she loves me not. She loves me, she loves me not. She loves me!” And he pulled that match from its paper home.

Keith had never done this before, nor had BAT. He had never killed a bird or tortured a cat. He had never hunted or fished -- the idea of threading a worm on a hook had always seemed too cruel. But now he felt he was about to embrace the Truth. He felt Thomas Aquinas urging him from potency to act. Ripeness is all. Things were very close to ripe. 

He closed his eyes and struggled against a sudden cloud of fear and abdication when he felt it coming -- that uprush of tuned clarity and passion he had longed for and rehearsed. Urgency. Obligated urgency of act. Stepping, slipping into the stream of Now. 

He struck the match, and the tiny burst of photons lit up his soul with clarity and focus. Aquinas said that only intense actions will strengthen. Only intensity will lead to moral accomplishment. It was time to bring the new Keith to life.

He dropped the match on Arnold’s lap.

As the flames shot up, the five men jumped away from the body. Keith felt unprecedented freedom as he and his beloved sailor swam proud -- away together into freedom. And following that freedom, unprecedented gratitude.

He removed the glass from the candle, and with a heavy boot, smashed it and its Hebrew verse into pieces. Mazel tov.