Short Stories

“HITLER IN THE BARDO” (SHORT STORY)

A lost soul wanders through a supernatural salt mine in Austria, surrounded by the greatest artworks of Europe.

Adolf Hitler has just died by his own hand in a Berlin bunker but his consciousness lingers here, desperately searching for his salvation.

The smell of gasoline follows him through the damp passages. His right arm trembles. He moves between crated masterpieces - Michelangelo, Vermeer, Rubens - seeking one particular piece he believes holds the secrets to divine power.

“Hitler in the Bardo” is an experimental short story about death and rebirth.

Will he find the mystical artwork and the salvation he seeks?

Will he be born again?

2,000 words / 8 minutes of metaphysical reading pleasure

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‘If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of you.’ Hermann Hess

STEFANO BOSCUTTI

HITLER IN THE BARDO

It will be four years before he sees the light again.

Before he leaves this astral plane and is reborn into the world.

The gunshot is still echoing through Adolf Hitler’s mind. It’s not as loud as he imagined, or as dramatic. More annoying, truth be told.

Hitler remembers dictating and signing his last will and testament in the bunker, his secretaries weeping. Signing his marriage certificate to Eva Braun with Goebbels, Wagner and Bormann bearing witness.

Remembers retiring to his private rooms. Sitting side by side with Eva on the small couch, smiling softly as he handed her a cyanide pill. He wanted to be sure it worked. He watched as she bit down on the pill and gasped for air as the poison robbed her body of oxygen, of life. He kissed her dead lips then bit down on his own cyanide pill as he shot himself in the head.

Now he finds himself deep within a salt mine, wandering amongst thousands upon thousands of works of art the Nazis had looted throughout Europe and stored underground. He can hear Eva’s soft laugh but he cannot see her. He cannot see the millions who died during the war. All he can see is the endless art, paintings and sculptures stacked in wooden crates. Others wrapped and tied in blankets. Some open to the cool, damp air.

Michelangelo's “Madonna of Bruges”, Vermeer’s “The Astronomer”, Ruben's “The Farm at Laken”, Manet’s “In the Conservatory”, Böcklin’s “The Isle of the Dead”. All focal points of Hitler’s planned Führermuseum in Linz. All the riches of the world in the greatest museum in the world.

An architectural model of the city-wide museum had been made and brought to the cellar in the Reich Chancellery building above the bunker. As Germany crumbled under constant bombardments and attacks from Allied forces, Hitler would spend hours silently bent over the model, lost in thought and vanquished hope. Surrounded by dozens of leather-bound catalogues with colour reproductions of all the art it was to house.

Hitler has yet to realise he has lost the war and his country, that much of the world is in ruins. Humanity seared by countless atrocities, unparalleled destruction, senseless death and moral failure.

Hitler mutters to himself as he steps along the narrow wooden walkway. Mutters about saving the German state, the German people. About how the world seeks to murder Germans wherever they are.

‘We are fighting not only a campaign of physical assaults on the German state – the German people have experienced that throughout the centuries - but never again, never again.’

No one can hear his complaints except himself. He can smell the stench of burning gasoline, oily and bittersweet. There are no flames or warmth. His right arm shudders and trembles, his right hand twitches.

‘The core of the conflict, the global conflict, is the persistent refusal to recognise a German state imposed by others. There is no way to battle lies except to tell the truth.

Hitler glances at Raphael’s “Portrait of a Young Man”, van Gogh’s “Painter on His Way to Work”.

‘We want a real peace, a lasting peace, a peace through strength. A peace where our long-standing rights, the right of the German people to live in their ancestral homeland as a free and secure people are guaranteed.’

Hitler is narcissistic, entitled and paranoid. A culture of deceit surrounded him, a factory of lies. Self-centred and withdrawn, he told himself he was strong and steadfast.

But before his death he had been plagued by an irregular heartbeat and fainting spells. His body was failing him, his mind was disintegrating. In his heart he believed the arc of history would judge him as a righteous crusader, a saviour.

He views Courbet’s “The Stone Breakers” and Canaletto’s “Piazza Santa Margherita”. He’s looking for one artwork in particular, an altarpiece stolen from St. Bavo’s Cathedral in Ghent.

The gunshot is still echoing through his mind. Water drips down the glittering, crystalline walls of salt. Hushed voices slither past as he makes his way past more paintings, more statues. Past van Rijn’s “An Angel with Titus’ Features”.

Light seeps out of a passageway. When Hitler enters he sees the spectacular altarpiece he’s been seeking on the floor of a vast cavern, the altarpiece he believes will be his salvation.

“Adoration of the Mystic Lamb”, a looming 15th-century polyptych in twelve panels by Hubert and Jan van Eyck, is an enormous masterpiece that depicts a hue of biblical figures and events in great detail and vivid colour.

Painted in 1432 by the Flemish brothers, it’s one of the most important artworks in history. The first major oil painting that marked the transition from Middle Ages to Renaissance art.

Directional light, the softest scale of illuminations in the gradation of shadow, the construction of space through light and shade, symphonies of reflection and refraction. Divine illumination saturates the painted world.

In 1794 Napoleon’s invading troops stole four panels, which ended up on display in the Louvre. After Napoleon was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, Louis XVIII was restored to the throne, and as a thank you to Ghent for sheltering him, he returned the robbed pieces.

A year later, more panels were stolen and ended up in a Berlin museum. After Germany lost the First World War, all the panels were returned to Ghent as a condition of the Treaty of Versailles.

During the Second World War the panels were en route to the Vatican for safekeeping when they were stolen by the Nazis and hidden with other looted works in a salt mine near the Austrian village of Altaussee.

The lavish altarpiece was to have stood at the centre of Hitler’s planned museum, proof that he was able to save Germany from the First World War’s humiliation and make Germany the pinnacle of culture. His hometown of Linz the jewel in the crown.

But for Hitler it evoked more than historical significance and visual splendour. It contained a coded map to Roman Catholicism’s lost treasures - the Crown of Thorns placed on Christ’s head, the Holy Grail used by Christ during the Last Supper and the Spear of Destiny, the head of the spear that pierced Christ’s flesh while he hung on the cross.

Hitler believed these treasures would give him supernatural powers to win the Second World War. The more the war turned in favour of the Allies, the more desperate he became.

Whoever possesses these precious relics and understands the powers they serve holds in his hands the destiny of the world.

Hitler stares down at the central panel of the altarpiece, the titular piece. An expansive, verdant scene where a lamb stands on an altar on a small green mound, surrounded by worshipping angels, prophets, apostles, saints, bishops, confessors, martyrs, righteous judges, and the knights of Christ.

The light of the world is here. The angels have multicoloured wings and hold instruments of Christ’s passion, the cross where Christ was lashed, the nails that were driven through his flesh, the sponge dipped in vinegar. The antependium on the upper portion of the front of the altar is inscribed with the words taken from John 1:29; ECCE AGNUS DEI QUI TOLLIT PECCATA MUNDI - Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

The lamb stares at Hitler. A wound on its breast gushes blood into a golden chalice, yet it shows no outward expression of pain.

The head of the strangely alert lamb is no longer surrounded by a glowing nimbus, a halo of golden rays. In the sky above, there is no dove of the Holy Spirit, no pulsating corona of light radiating long, golden spires that touch the angels and the ground.

There is no celestial wonder, there is no epiphany, there is no refuge.

The gasoline fumes become stronger, more pungent. Hitler’s eyes burn as vertigo and nausea overwhelm him.

He struggles to breathe as darkness descends and his thoughts begin to dissolve and the gunshot echos away.

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The moral rights of the author are asserted.

No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.

Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.

This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of Adolf Hitler and others, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s atmospheric imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)

Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at boscutti.com

STEFANO BOSCUTTI

HITLER IN THE BARDO

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