Scenes from the Secret History (The Secret History of the World) Read Free

much.”
    But no matter what its contents, this tome had already stolen his sleep.
    After Adelard departed, he looked around at his spare quarters.  Four familiar whitewashed walls, bare except for the crucifix over his bed.  A white ceiling and a sepia tiled floor.  A cot, a desk, a chair, a small chest of drawers, and a Holy Bible comprised the furnishings.  As prior, as Grand Inquisitor, as the queen’s confessor, no one would have raised an eyebrow had he requisitioned more comfortable quarters.  But earthly trappings led to distractions, and he would not be swayed from his Holy Course. 
    Before opening the Compendium , he took his bible, kissed its cover, and laid in in his lap…
    The full chapbook is available here: The Compendium of Srem
     

    1923-1924
     
    Aryans and Absinthe
     

     
    …introduces us to Ernst Drexler.  His connection to the super-secret Septimus Order is never mentioned in the story, but he’s obviously got an agenda.  He plays a pivotal role in the shape of the twentieth century, and his foppish son, Ernst II will be a major player in the last few decades of the Secret History.
     
    As for the story itself: Early in the summer of 1993 Douglas E. Winter called to invite me into his latest anthology.  Revelations would consist of a novella for every decade of the twentieth century, each story centering on some apocalyptic event.  He told me to pick a decade.  I chose the 1920s – Weimar Germany, specifically.  The arts were flourishing but the economic chaos and runaway inflation of the times were so surreal, so devastating to everyone’s day-to-day life that people – Jew and gentile alike – were looking for a savior.  A foppish little guy named Hitler came to prominence presenting himself as that savior. 
    I did extensive research for “Aryans and Absinthe.” Charles Bracelen Flood’s remarkable Hitler: The Path to Power (Houghton Mifflin, 1989) was a major source.  I wanted to get the details right so I could make you feel you were there .  I was pretty high on it when I finished.  I thought I’d captured tenor and tempo of the times, felt I’d conveyed an apocalyptic experience. 
     
    The opening segment follows:
     

    Aryans and Absinthe
    (sample)
     
     
    Today it takes 40,000 marks to buy a single US dollar.
    Volkischer Beobachter , May 4, 1923
     
    Ernst Drexler found the strangest things entertaining.  That was how he always phrased it: entertaining .  Even inflation could be entertaining, he said.
    Karl Stehr remembered seeing Ernst around the Berlin art venues for months before he actually met him.  He stood out in that perennially scruffy crowd with his neatly pressed suit and vest, starched collar and tie, soft hat either on his head or under his arm, and his distinctive silver-headed cane wrapped in black rhinoceros hide.  His black hair swept back sleek as linoleum from his high forehead; the bright blue eyes that framed his aquiline nose were never still, always darting about under his dark eyebrows; thin lips, a strong chin, and tanned skin, even in winter, completed the picture.  Karl guessed Ernst to be in his mid-thirties, but his mien was that of someone older.
    For weeks at a time he would seem to be everywhere, and never at a loss for something to say.  At the Paul Klee show where Klee's latest, "The Twittering Machine," had been on exhibition, Karl had overheard his sarcastic comment that Klee had joined the Bauhaus not a moment too soon.  Ernst was always at the right places: at the opening of "Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler," at the cast party for that Czech play "R.U.R.," and at the secret screenings of Murnau's "Nosferatu," to name just a few.
    And then he'd be nowhere.  He'd disappear for weeks or a month without a word to anyone.  When he returned he would pick up just where he'd left off, as if there'd been no hiatus.  And when he was in town he all but lived at the Romanisches Cafe where nightly he would wander among the tables, glass