I Sleep in Hitler's Room Read Online Free PDF Page B

(Shoot first, think later . . .)

    They must be fighting for something, only I’m not sure what it is or whether in fact they’re fighting not for it but against it. This place looks like a stable, actually. I’m not saying that in a bad way; stables can be good. The graffiti is the only evidence that this place is inhabited by people, not horses. The people, all youngsters, are moving in and about the various graffiti-filled rooms, looking busy. The most common activity here is beer drinking and smoking. So I get a beer, light up, become like them, and start talking to them. A young man tells me how Those Nazis got him the other day, beat the hell out of him, and how he almost, just almost, had to bid life goodbye. It’s a miracle that he survived. They are dangerous, the Nazis, he tells me, and they lurk everywhere in this land.
    That’s what we are doing here. Fighting the damn Nazis.
    There is a reason to life, I guess, beyond just fighting the police: Fighting the Nazis.
    This weekend, Rote Flora and other institutions of the radical left in the area will celebrate the defeat of the Nazis. My luck, I came at a good time. The fight goes on: one day the police, another day the Nazis, and in between a few beers. It takes me about an hour to feel at home in the Rote Flora. The box office—yes, they have one—sits empty. Good place to be. I go there, sit on the dirty chair, and get ready to sell tickets. Youngsters come to me and ask what’s the plan. God, if I only knew! I check the pile of postcards to get familiar. I should know, shouldn’t I? I am the Box Office Manager, after all. Oh, here’s something interesting, a postcard that reads:
hitler kaputt!
What is this? Oh, yeah, a concert at the Rote Flora.
    These kids, mama’s milk still on their lips, are celebrating
hitler kaputt!
What year am I in? What century?

    I know I’m going to lose my mind in this Germany, long before I write a single line about it. A voice tells me: Forget the book! And in my mind I write a letter to Rowohlt Verlag.
Dear Publisher:
    Get yourselves another idiot.
    Then I write another one:
Dear Unwilling Capitalists,
    I will do it only if you pay me one billion euros.
    Then another one:
Dear Friends,
    I need a psychiatrist to accompany me 24 hours a day. Please supply at once.
    My contract with Rowohlt is pretty short and quite simple. I write, they pay. But it has a clause there, stating that I cannot write anything obscene. I want to scream Fuck You! Only I can’t. Not now. I am the box-office manager of the Rote Flora and I’ve got to behave.
    Anybody for
HITLER KAPUTT!
?
    A guy from Nigeria stops by.
    “What’s new, man?” he asks.
    Just finished my beer, need another one, I say.
    “How many would you like? I buy.”
    Give me a few.
    Oh boy, I really lost it.
    He goes out to buy me the beer.
    I can tell I’m into trouble. How long can I fake it?
    I better switch sides. Fast. Maybe I should get me some Nazis to protect me, before these kids start throwing empty bottles on my head.
    I get off my box-office manager’s chair and walk about. Where can I see the Nazis? I ask the kids.
    “Everywhere,” they say.
    Everywhere?
    “Yes, everywhere.”
    I got that. Can they show me to just one,
bitte
? I don’t really want to see many. One, two, three, or let’s say four. That would be enough. Can anybody show me four?
    “No.”
    Three?
    “No.”
    Two?
    “No.”
    I feel like Abraham of the Bible, bargaining with God over a few righteous men in Sodom.
    Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink, as Coleridge says in
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
. Nazis, Nazis, everywhere, nor one for me to see.
    They hide them, these leftists! They hide my Nazis. These kids want all the Nazis for themselves, I can see.
    I run out of the building. Got to get me a Nazi that’s all mine!
    But where? How?
    I walk about in the streets of Hamburg asking people to do me a favor, a big favor: Get me to a Nazi.
    The mavens immediately