Sleep

I sigh but refuse to open my eyes. Despite having taken a sleeping pill and it still being dark out, I am wide awake. Why would I be granted a good night’s sleep for once? I almost snort. What a preposterous notion.

Ever since my mother had been murdered in the bedroom next to mine, sleep had been hard to come by. The night of her death, I had heard her speak to my deceased father again—or so I had thought until I had found her the following morning, hanging from the door that led to her en-suite with a belt tied around her neck.

The police had ruled it a suicide, but I know better.

A tear makes its way down my temple. Come on, I tell myself, don’t despair. You’ll find a way to survive the day as you always do. Try to find a positive thought before opening your eyes.

I caress my white satin duvet cover, enjoying the friction between the palm of my hand and the soft, luxurious fabric. A breeze rustles the lace curtains and caresses my face. I force myself to smile and focus on the tintinnabulation of the wind chimes from the neighbors three doors down.

See? Not a bad end to the night. My smile broadens.

Another deep breath before I force open my eyes.

My heart starts galloping and my breath hitches as panic descends over me. I close my eyes, convinced I am hallucinating. Isn’t that one of the side-effects of extreme sleep deprivation? But I can still see his afterimage on the inside of my eyelids as if my eyes have camera-flashed him onto my retinas.

I lift my lids again. He is still there. I force my breathing to return to normal—four seconds in, four seconds out—as I take in his brown hair, parted on the side, his bulging, steel-blue eyes and, of course, the down-turned, thin-lipped mouth topped by the rectangular mustache. It is as if he is there but not there. Like an image with the opacity turned down to 90%, allowing me to almost see the red velvet sofa behind him, but not quite.

Despite his ethereal appearance, there is no mistaking who this is.

He stares at me, unblinking, and nods his head once.

I sit up, calmed by my breathing exercise. “Hi,” I say.

“Heil,” he replies.

I wait for him to say more, but he remains silent and stares me down. The weight of his gaze is suffocating, the look in his eyes authoritative. I tear my eyes away from him to the shelf next to my bed. It holds the book collection of my late father. A few titles catch my eyes: the book thief, the boy in the striped pajamas, Anne Frank’s diary, the tattooist of Auschwitz... Even though my father had escaped the concentration camps, the camps had never escaped him.

Hitler clears his throat, so I turn back to him. He is still staring at me, but austerity has made way for wonder.

For some reason, this makes me smile.

“You are a strange woman,” he says. His words are clipped, his German accent thick, but I understand him well enough.

My smile broadens. “I must be if I imagined you into existence. I must have read too many of my father’s books lately.”

He shakes his head. “I assure you, I am quite real.”

“I very much doubt it.” I look down to where his behind touches the bed. “You don’t even make a dent in my duvet.” An urge to touch him overwhelms me, but just before my outstretched hand touches the sleeve of his double-breasted field-grey coat, he jumps up and moves out of reach. Where he sat, the duvet is still pristinely flat, no imprint left behind, and when I put my hand down, the satin feels cold to the touch. I shrug. “See? Figment of my imagination.”

A breath escapes his lips, and his shoulders relax.

“You seem relieved.”

“I am.”

“Why?”

He speaks through clenched teeth as if he doesn’t want to say what he is about to say. “Because if you think I’m not real, you won’t hurt me.”

I want to find out if he is telling the truth. “Come sit down and let me touch you.”

He seems to be struggling to stay where he is, but an invisible power forces him back to my bed and lifts his right arm toward me.

I trail my index finger over the back of his hand and clearly feel him there, but once again, no dent is made in my duvet as if he is light as air. “You can’t disobey me, can you?” I ask. He shakes his head. “Why do you find me strange?” He clenches his teeth. “Stop fighting it and just answer my question.”

His jaw unlocks, and the words come tumbling out. “Because you don’t immediately exact revenge on me for the atrocities you people think I have committed.”

“And this surprises you because?”

“Because I’ve been forced to visit survivors from the Holocaust and their descendants every night since I shot myself through the head 75 years ago.” He closes his eyes and puts his head in his hands. “Eva and I had only been married for a day, but they didn’t even let me mourn her death.”

“Who’s they?”

He looks at me with despair in his eyes as his mouth opens. “The g—”

He falls back on the bed as his fingers bend like claws, his eyes turn back in his head, and he convulses like a 2,000-volt electric current is making its way up and down his body.

Ten seconds later, his body relaxes, and he sits up again, sweat glistening on his forehead. His eyes are pleading when he says, “Don’t make me say it again. Yesterday’s punisher had me do this over and over. I can’t take another night of this.” He puts his hand on my arm. “Please?”

I don’t feel him until I put my hand over his. “So you have to obey me and can’t touch me, but I can touch you?” He nods. “And people have been using your helplessness to hurt you?” He nods again.

He looks wretched, but I don’t feel pity. “You deserve more pain than anyone could ever inflict on you. You do know that, don’t you?”

He throws out his hands. “That’s what everyone keeps telling me,” he stands up and begins to pace, his black, knee-high boots squeaking on the hardwood floor, “but I only wanted to make the world a better place. A beautiful place, like the landscapes I used to paint. I battled unemployment down from six to one million in only four years, I built dams, autobahns, railroads, I supported architectural development, but no one pays any mind to my accomplishments.”

I pull up my legs, shuffle back, and lean myself against the padded headboard. “Your accomplishments are canceled out by the fact that you killed two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe.”

He rolls his eyes. “Yes, and millions of Roma, Sinti, Slavs, homosexuals, disabled people, Jehovah’s witnesses, and whoever else was standing in the way of my goal of racial hygiene. Why does no one understand the vision I had for the future? A Utopia of Aryans living in peace and prosperity.”

“No Utopia is worth the lives of 40 million people.”

He stops pacing and towers over me. “Spare me your condescension.”

I fight the urge to hide under the duvet and level his gaze, comfortable in the knowledge he can’t hurt me.

“During my lifetime, I was the pariah of every superpower that mattered. If the world leaders haven’t managed to turn me around to their way of thinking, and, despite their best efforts, your 27.393 predecessors haven’t managed to convince me either, do you think your words will matter to me?” He walks to the foot of my bed, shaking his head. “I was trying to make the world a better place, but people fought me every step of the way.” He sighs and sits down, looking defeated.

After a moment’s silence, I say, “Have you ever considered that if everyone around you is the problem that maybe you’re the problem? Have you ever stepped in our shoes and tried to see the world through our eyes?”

He cringes. “I have. Because it’s the only way to have this end. To have them grant me blessed oblivion. But I can’t.” He looks me over, disgust clear on his face. “I can’t look at you and your aquiline nose and see anything more than a subhuman. A germ that needs to be exterminated.”

I hear the words, but the horrible implication doesn’t really sink in. “So you prefer agony to seeing us as humans?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t prefer it, but I’m unable to change how I see you. Don’t you understand? I want nothing more than to be reunited with my Eva, but they won’t let me until I acknowledge the error of my ways, and I can’t. I’ve tried, but I can’t.” He bites the inside of his cheek as tears brim over. “I can’t. So move on to the painful part because talking is going to get us nowhere.”

“You’ve lost your mother young, right?” His eyes widen as he nods. “What would she have thought if she had seen you carry out your plans?”

A smile crosses his face. “She would have been proud. I was her firstborn and her favorite.”

We sit in silence for a while. I try to imagine what he must have been like as a child. Had he been good-natured? Playful? Had he enjoyed being cuddled and read to by his mother? I shake my head and my eyes prick with tears as an image of my baby boy flashes through my mind. It has been 15 years since he drowned, but I can still see him in my mind’s eye so clearly. The way he used to sleep in his moon and stars patterned sleeping bag with his hands lying on either side of his chubby cheeks, the way he would scream with laughter when I tickled him. Had Hitler ever been as innocent as my Ralphie had been?

“So, how are you linked to the war?”

The mental image of my baby blinks out as I am pulled back into the present. “My father. But he has died from Alzheimer’s five years ago.”

“Horrible people, those. None are crueler toward me than those with no vivid memory past the fifties.” He smirks. “But they’ve been dropping like flies for decades now, so I’ll soon be freed from their tyranny.”

I suppress the urge to kick him and take a deep breath instead. “The pitiable tyrant who suffers from tyranny. How’s that for irony?”

He ignores me, stands up, walks toward my desk, and looks at the pictures on the shelf above it. His eyes widen as he picks up an antique, silver-plated photo frame. “Is this your mother?”

I nod. “She died October 14th of last year.”

His eyes bulge, and his face turns red, but whatever is trying to escape his lips, he manages to keep it in. I wonder whether the compulsion is lessening, but then I realize I haven’t asked him a question. “Who is my mother to you?”

He clenches his jaw, but it doesn’t help. Through gritted teeth, he says, “I was forced to spend time with her last year.”

Comprehension dawns on me. “When?”

“October 13th, just before midnight.”

Heat flashes through me, and my face contorts with grief as tears brim over. “What happened?”

He shrugs. “She must have been eager to rejoin your father, or maybe she couldn’t deal with meeting me. They are usually very good at picking those strong enough to deal with the madness of meeting me, though. In any case, they must have chosen her because she looked just like my Eva.” He puts down the frame and turns toward me. “I’m sorry for your loss. She was a fine Aryan, even if she had a bad taste in men and gave birth to a half-human.”

Finally, anger rises in me, and this time, I don’t suppress it. “Who’s they?” I whisper with my lip curled up.

“The g—”

I smile as his head hits the edge of my desk hard before he falls to the floor.

When the convulsions subside, I ask again, “Who’s they?”

“The g—”

I continue to ask the question, and he continues to try to answer. When the sun’s rays penetrate my lace curtains, the image of him dissolves. He disappears, looking like the shell of the man I found sitting on my bed when I awoke.

Even if I have trouble believing what has just happened, a new-found peace washes over me. My mother’s murderer will be punished until eternity. It is more than I could have ever asked for.

The following night, I go to bed with a smile on my face. Within minutes I drift off into a restful sleep that continues until my alarm clock goes off at 8 in the morning.