Ach, once we’re over this somewhat rocky stretch of road, and once we’ve made a few modifications (including, in the fullness of time, the appointment of a rather more centrist head of state), there’ll be no earthly reason why we shouldn’t cruise on for the duration of the next millennium.
So. Goal number 2: mission accomplished!
*
My visit took place at the usual hour. Alisz was crouched on the stool with her hands slowly writhing on her lap.
‘All right, woman, you can stop your moaning. You can switch off the waterworks. I’ve talked to the physician. A simple procedure. Routine. She does it all the time.’
‘… But Paul. There are no women doctors here.’
‘There are 100s of women doctors here. They’re Haftlinge.’
‘The prisoner doctors haven’t got any instruments. They’ve got toolkits!’
‘Not all of them.’ I had Alisz sit beside me on the bed, and I strove to reassure her for a considerable period of time. ‘Better now?’
‘Yes, Paul. Thank you, Paul. You always find an answer.’
And to my great surprise I felt the retreat of those higher scruples which, in the presence of a fertilised female, generally inhibit me. I said,
‘Go on. Go on. Here. Just hoik it up a bit.’
And yes I went ahead and gave her 1 then and there. Thinking (and it was a form of words that I often applied to the larger situation), Well. In for a fucking penny. In for a fucking pound.
They are deeply necessary, my engagements with Alisz Seisser — for how else can I maintain my dignity and self-respect? I of course allude to the appalling conditions that obtain in the Doll villa. Alisz’s unfailing gratitude and esteem (not to mention her trills of amatory bliss) form a crucial counterweight to the, to the…
I am afraid of Hannah. There. It takes a certain kind of courage to commit such a sentence to paper — but it’s the case. How to describe this fear? Whenever we happen to be alone together, I feel a vacuum in my solar plexus, like a globe of hard air.
Starting on the night of the Dezember Konzert, Hannah has reinvented her appearance, her outward form. Whilst she was never a great 1 for the clogs and the dirndls, her raiment was always commendably demure. Now she dresses like a man-pleaser — she dresses like an experienced pleaser of men.
She puts me in mind of Marguerite, of Pucci, of Xondra, of Booboo. It isn’t so much the sheeny make-up and the sections of extra Fleisch on view (and the shaven Achselhohlen!). It’s the look in the Augen — the look of artful calculation. The thing about such females, do you see, is that they’re continuously aware of Bett, of Sex. And whilst this is an appealing trait in a sophisticated companion, it is utterly excruciating in a wife.
I can only liken the sensation, when we’re alone… not to the aftermath of sexual failure but to its prospect. And that defies all intuition: for the last 8 months, with Hannah, there have been no failures (and no successes).
And she continues, downstairs, to look preoccupied and smug. Is she dreaming about the effeminate charms of Angelus Thomsen? I don’t believe she is. She’s just sneering at the thwarted virility of Paul Doll.
… Last night I was in my ‘lair’, quietly imbibing (in moderation, however, as I’ve reduced substantially of late). I heard the knob give its creak, and there she was, filling the doorway in her green ballgown, gloved to the elbows, her naked Schultern taking the coiled weight of her Haar. At once I felt my blood go loath and cold. Hannah stared at me, unblinking, until I turned away.
She advanced. Very heavily, and very noisily, she sat herself down on my lap. The armchair was fairly swamped by the crackling pleats of her dress. How I wanted this weight off me — how I wanted it off, off…
‘Do you know who you are?’ she whispered (and I could feel her lips against the down of my ears). ‘Do you?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Who am I?’
‘You’re a young single man, and a fucking fool of a Brownshirt, a violent fucking buffoon who marches with the Brownshirts. Who sings songs with the Brownshirts, Pilli.’
‘Go on. If you must.’
‘You’re a fucking chump of a Brownshirt who, tired of thinking dirty thoughts and playing with his Viper, falls asleep in his bunk and has the worst of all possible dreams. In this dream nobody does things to you. You do things to them. Terrible things. Unspeakably terrible things. Then you wake up.’
‘Then I wake up.’
‘Then you wake up and you find it’s all true. But you don’t mind. You go back to playing with your Viper. You go back to thinking dirty thoughts. Goodnight, Pilli. Kiss.’
Aspiration number 3. To shatter Judaeo-Bolshevism once and for all.
Now let’s think. We haven’t had much luck, so far, with Bolshevism. As for the Judaeo side of it…
Not long ago there was a widely discussed murder, in Linz, where a man stabbed his wife 137 times. People seemed to think this was somehow excessive. But I immediately saw the logic of it. The night logic of it.
We can’t stop now. Or what were we doing, what did we think we were about, over the last 2 years?
The war against the Anglo-Saxons does not resemble the war against the Jews. In the latter conflict, we enjoy, in military terms, a distinct advantage, as the other side has no army. And no navy and no air force.
(Reminder: have that word with Szmul soon.)
So let’s see. Living space. 1,000 Year Reich. Judaeo-Bolshevism.
Result? 2½ out of 3. Yech, I’ll drink to that.
Emergency summit in the Political Department! Myself, Fritz Mobius, Suitbert Seedig, and Rupprecht Strunck. Crisis at the Buna-Werke…
‘This cocksucker was mixing sand with the engine grease,’ said Rupprecht Strunck (a very slightly gross old party, if we’re perfectly honest about it). ‘To screw the gears.’
‘Wirtschaftssabotage!’ I lithely interjected.
‘And they’d weakened the rivets,’ said Suitbert. ‘So they’d pop. They also skewed the pressure gauges. False readings.’
‘Christ knows the extent of it,’ said Strunck. ‘There must be dozens of the shitpigs, with a coordinator on the floor. And there must be a mole. Inside Farben.’
‘How do we know that?’ asked Fritz.
Suitbert explained. The evildoers only tampered with equipment that was a long way away from ‘first use’. So by the time you deployed this or that piece of machinery, and the thing jammed, stalled, collapsed, or exploded, nobody had any idea who’d put it together. Strunck said,
‘They’ve got a fucking calendar of 1st use. Someone’s given them a fucking calendar.’
I smartly said, ‘Burckl!’
‘No, Paul,’ said Fritz. ‘Burckl was just a sap. Never a traitor.’
‘And has the apprehended culprit been interrogated?’ I inquired.
‘Oh yes. He spent all last night with Horder. Nothing yet.’
‘A Jew I suppose.’
‘No. An Englishman. An NCO called Jenkins. We’ve got him in the crouchbox for now. Then Off will have a go. Then Entress with the scalpel. See how he likes that.’ Fritz stood, stacking his papers. ‘Not a whisper of this to anyone. Not a whisper to Farben, Doktor Seedig, Standartenfuhrer Strunck. Sit on your hands, mein Kommandant. Understood, Paul? And for the love of God, don’t go blabbing to Prufer.’