Finality

Stoic stare into the gray soup, or more like muddy broth hovering in seeming perpetual suspension over the lake large enough to allow the yonder side to express a dim strip denoting land.

Seemed he might speak not to the companion but acknowledge a glimmer of absolute knowledge courtesy of that gray broth hovering in seeming perpetual suspension.

At the least he of stoic wisdom had at ready words that had to be nothing but apropos to what any who knew the speaker might expect. Oh and the speaker shall bear the name of Jacob.

And so Jacob spoke.

“There is nothing to be done. Nothing to say. Nothing to be done.”

Jacob’s companion of a much greener age could not be expected to have the years of stoic bearing as had Jacob, as would anyone old enough to vividly remember Bismarck, be he considered devilish or angelic. This younger companion will be Henry. And Henry will be the grandson of Jacob.

And so though the times had turned dark, Henry could not be expected to have grown out of what Jacob’s generation would call an idle and foolish idealism. However, the generations were what they had to be.

“This resignation on your part, I wish we need not feel this way. Believe these things. I wish we could know that a finality did not exist, or exist so absolutely. Or if we really are in a finality, the greater agony is not knowing if this finality will be tomorrow or next day. I mean to hear you whose mind is wise as I know, hear you declare there is nothing to be done. Not a single thing. No hope. No reason for a hope. Do you even wish?”

“Wish. What is a wish? Shall I say I wish I could wish? Shall I say when I was your age I had my share of wishful moments? Shall I deny it? Nothing I ever wished for came to pass. That is what I can tell you. What I can tell anyone. So yes. I ceased wishing. Propagandists love wishful thinkers the most by the way.”

In the distance sounded a new barrage of thunder, though no longer new and not really thunder. It was also closer than yesterday’s thunder. Or even thunder from the morning.

“I have heard that a team of top-notch people have not completely lost hope. Scientists have almost completed the weapon that will turn the tide just in time. And they who advance have been utterly surprised at our grit of refusal to surrender. We have inflicted great losses to them.”

“I thought I warned against giving ear to that news they show in the cinemas. I’d just as soon tell them what I’ve harbored all these years of misery courtesy of their utter stupidity. Broadcast, campaigning for, always the stupidest ideas to ever gain more than a foothold. And then to top off all the stupidity they do the stupidest thing with invading Russia. To think that a corporal could become our military savior leader. To think that my own son would’ve turned me in had he heard me say Fuck the Fuhrer. And to think if you were but a couple years older… Oh but that feels so grand. Fuck the Fuhrer. If those can be my last words… yes let them shoot me, hang me, yes, let them. Fuck the Fuhrer. How great it feels to speak those three magical words. The mere thought of speaking it to their faces.”

Jacob indeed shouted Fuck the Fuhrer. Shouted it twice more. Could’ve been a song.

More thunder. Broth blanket swaddling the lake seemed darker.

“Funny what I recall just now – that summer afternoon in the barn when you spoke of going to Switzerland.”

“And I nominate failure to act on that idea as the greatest mistake. Forty or not later than forty-one would’ve been the time to do it, or try. But your father… true believer. Stupid true believer...had he but heard me whisper of it.”

Befitting mood befell the moment; mutual knowing: people and buildings turned to dust, rubble, destruction, while not so far, but too far now, in a country observing neutrality… thunder to them would be thunder announcing spring rain, rather than bombs. Would their cities have the kind of degenerate cabarets the Fuhrer had shut down?

“So we get a reason for a dark chuckle in this most morose hour. Whether they have degenerate nightlife in the Swiss cities Zurich or Geneva? Well maybe they do not. But they could. Oh but our fuhrer, our chosen one, cleansed the cities of degenerate vice; burned all the naughty literature, restored art befitting our supposed people. Dear God! If I have to listen to one more note of Wagner! And now he brings us total destruction falling from the air, from the sea, from the east. What a marvelous deliverance from degeneracy!”

The time had come to go inside, fix supper, which would be another night of boiled potatoes.

Jacob sticking his hands in his coat pockets, and in the right side, fingers fondled the Luger left by Jacob’s son who had become a true believer; died for his belief at Normandy. Died as an officer. It was as though the fondle itself summoned the end. As though the butt trembled in premonition.

Rumble of a truck. Suddenly not just rumble but the real thing. Two officers and ten troops striding towards Jacob and Henry. Troops and officers alike, muddy, disheveled, hopeless, lifeless. No time for Henry to go to his hiding place.

Questions absent of humanity barked about why this perfectly able youth was not in Berlin helping with defenses; carrying a tank fist.

Jacob’s one wish did come true with his last words being Fuck the Fuhrer.

Henry clung to the brightest words from the latest propaganda reel as he was escorted to climb into the truck; be fitted, issued, helmet and tank-fist. Of course Henry had no chance.