A Narrative: "Dreaming Aloud"

1

He was a Nazi, serenely vile, inviting us to kill him, not caring whether we did so or not. "Which of you will pull the trigger?" he inquired. "It is a great honor, even in dreams, to kill one as consummately cruel as me. It is an open-and-shut case. The question here is not whether I should be shot, but which of you two will do it."

The two of us were me and my girl friend, both members of an underground easily conjured, or continued, after watching a movie together earlier that evening about the Nazi occupation of Poland. The film was Ernst Lubitsch's "To Be Or Not To Be," about a Jewish Warsaw theater troupe that must pretend to be S.S. officers and later a Nazi entourage with the crowning presence, a la Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds," of Hitler in it.

"Well," the Nazi said, "which one of you is to pull the trigger. This is taking forever and dreams like this aren't supposed to last longer than a few moments."

2

He was as Nazi as they come, as exact a stereotype as my subconscious could construct, and deserving of death. "It isn't often you get the chance to be the instrument of your own deliverance," he said, tied to a chair which he could position to face either of us. "All one of you has to do is pull the trigger."

3

He was a Nazi, "Eichmann-grade" as a friend used to say whenever we talked about latter-day embodiments of evil such as Pol Pot and Augusto Pinochet. He knew he was on loan to my dream as some lifelike verisimilitude of villainy. "Men wish to kill me as often as they wish to sleep with Helen of Troy," he said with pitying pride. "Personally, I would prefer a night with Cleopatra, but then I know what it is to kill as fulfillment of a lifelong ambition. Date rape of a goddess is a pleasure I have not known and, if one of you fulfills this dream, shall never know."

4

He was a Nazi, worth killing just to keep his hands off Marilyn Monroe or any other archetype of universally agreed upon beauty.

I wanted my girlfriend who held him at gunpoint and who had lost her father in WWII to do the honors. Vengeance was rightfully hers, especially since she didn't believe in God, and so was not usurping a divine right. But I knew it was for her to decide.

She handed me the gun. "Here, Shylock," she said, "You've got 6 million reasons. I've only got one."

5

He was a Nazi, strangely venerable in his commitment to evil, exquisitely comfortable in his willingness to represent glint-free darkness. He asked us for a cigarette. Mo pulled a pack of Merit's from a yellow faux-leather handbag. She proffered one to him. "As you can see," the Nazi said, "my hands are tied. Can you do me the favor of placing it between my lips and lighting it?'

She did as she was told.

6

He was a Nazi, both rigorous and relaxed at his occupation. He inhaled deeply and let out a filigree of smoke that would have impressed anyone who saw it. "I suppose you think I am dreading the moment of my execution," he said. "Or maybe you think I shall have the reward of making one of you become like me. Neither is true because neither would change the fact that I have done everything in my life that I set out to do. There is no unfinished business. None whatsoever."

7

He was a Nazi, as practiced and proficient in embodying evil as time and circumstance would allow. "Did you hate each Jew you killed?" I asked him, wanting to scratch my suddenly itching nose with the nozzle of the gun.

"David," he said, "I am no white dog German shepherd trained to kill on sight. If anything, I am a dog catcher, sending unwanted strays to the pound. I pride myself on the distinct lack of pleasure or reward I take from my job. It is a duty. I am not stupid enough to suppose we could not, by some caprice of karma, trade places. That is what I hate and love most about this job: the sheer interchangeability of victim and victimizer. This time I get the luck of the draw. Why be boastful about one winning hand?"

8

He was a Nazi, and he was annoyed with his dualistic world where all flesh could not be his own. "If it is any consolation," he told me, "you can flip a coin to see which one of you will kill me. Heads it's you, David; tails it's your girlfriend."

"I have a name," Mo interjected.

"In circumstances such as this," he reminded, "everyone is an alias for the dreamer, even me."

"I no longer fear that I harbor your depths or its needs," I said.

"Then why am I here?" he asked. "So you can kill the part of you I symbolize."

"Bullshit," my girlfriend hissed, grabbing the gun from my hand. "You are here to be forgiven."

"But I don't wish to be forgiven," the Nazi said, his face enwreathed in cigarette smoke.

"What do your wishes have to do with this?"

9

He was a Nazi, a fact which no longer seemed to bother me or interest him. "Shoot at his feet, shoot the heels off his boots," my girlfriend ordered. "The God I don't believe in and the God you do both need to have fun."

"Give me back the gun, Mo," I commanded. She did as I requested. "Your time is up," I told the Nazi, loosening the ropes so they fell to the floor.

I took aim, slowly pressed the trigger, and asked, as I prepared to fire, "Care to dance, mien commandant?"

--David Federman, Ardmore, July 17, 2010