Who
Is Klaus Gorschmak?
Excerpted from the forthcoming novel,
HITLER’S NEW TENANTS
During the 1930s, isolated from the
high-rollers of his own Conservative Party, yet still feeling personally robust
and randy, Winston Leonard Spenser-Churchill—“Winnie”— decided to take a leave
of absence from all of politics and instead to become a butcher.
His career choices were limited at that
point. He had been turned down as a
cricket match play-by-play announcer and color commentator for the BBC, and he
had not been able to pass the physical examination required to become a British
Isle Fuller Brush Salesman.
With war clouds darkening the English
horizon to the East, our still young patriot realized that in times of war few
of his countrymen would be able to resist a nicely fileted slab of good British
Beef. He matriculated himself at the
Blenheim Palace of Beef in Oxfordshire, but soon was made to realize that the
word “matriculated” meant “going for a degree” rather than “accidentally cut
himself with a kitchen knife.”
Nevertheless, he was able to stem the
flow of blood by applying a large patch of good old British court plaster,
while simultaneously warning his fellow students about the severe serration of
the classroom kitchen’s ironware.
When the time for the school’s
annual field trip to the Schmearblut
meat-processing section of Düsseldorf, Germany, had arrived, young Winston was
patched up and packed, ready to go. Most
readers will remember that the Schmearblut
section of Düsseldorf was the famed site of the 365-C Horshtclopen Strase address, Adolph Hitler’s boarding house, a
residence overwhelmingly populated by butchers, meatpackers, and meat
processors. At some point during
Winston’s trip to Germany, probably during the tour of the Horshtclopen Spam processing facility, the young Englishman happened
to catch the eye of an exuberant young butcher, bachelor, and dedicated deviant
named Klaus Gorschmak.
Although a practicing heterosexual
himself, young Winnie (Klaus soon began adding the sobriquet “the Pooh”) could
not help but be flattered by the attention shown him by this young German, who
comported himself flawlessly and who displayed above average Arian good looks,
as well as some unadulterated lofty career plans involving beef and pork. The two young men began accompanying each
other on extra-curricular jaunts around the city and the neighboring countryside,
while comparing their dreams and goals, along with their preferences for
brazing.
For the rest of his life, Churchill was
to insist that nothing untoward or even remotely physical was ever exchanged or
considered between the two imminent meatpackers, yet all young European
butchers at that time enjoyed the practice of jocularly referring to their
reproductive organs in flesh or meat related terms. Thus, Klaus would often point to Winston’s trousers
and exclaim, “Oh boy, that’s where Peenie Number One resides.” In nothing more than a show of international
cooperation, Winston would return the gesture and declare that Klaus’s plaid
slacks were offering their shelter and warmth to “Peenie Number Two.”
Both men would giggle innocently.
In conversations with his fellow
classmates back at the butcher school barracks, Klaus would openly and proudly
refer to Winston as, “That sweet little English muffin of mine.”
After a heartfelt and openly emotional
parting of the ways as the Brits boarded the Blenheim Palace of Beef school
bus, a farewell that was not without tears from either party, the bus pulled
out for the coast of Normandy and for the Cross-Channel Ferry Service back
home.
Winston managed to put the entire episode
behind him, convincing himself that the brief encounter was nothing more than a
youthful romp between two kindred spirits, perhaps bordering on an
indiscretion, but certainly nothing more than that.
The viscidities of politics and war soon
forced the young Englishman back into the political arena, an area where the
term “blood, sweat and tears” had no sexual connotations nor overtones. Suddenly in England, there was a war to be
won, a country to be saved, a way of life to be preserved, Cabinet meetings to
be observed, cigars to be puffed, brandy to be sniffed. Nearly all carnal thoughts were kept far from
the soon-to-be Prime Minister’s mind, in this case the word “carnal” referring
to both meat processing and eroticism.
However, back across the Channel on the
Continent, thoughts of the delightfully plump Englishman were never far from
the mind and imagination of the youthful Klaus Gorschmak.
The incessantly-infatuated German began
sending emotional letters and postcards to his amoretto on a nearly daily
basis. These stacks of letters bordered
upon the fringes of rampant sexuality, and the postcards at times went beyond
the fringe, such as the one picturing two obviously mating manatees frolicking in
the waters of the Pötenitzer Wiek Bay,
on the eastern shore of the Priwall
Peninsula, in lower Trave, an area
long known as a potential meeting-up spot for secretive young German omnisexuals
and their older, more nefarious stalkers.
Despite the diametrically opposite
attitudes toward their relationship, the careers of the two men began to follow
parallel courses. In May of 1940, the
British Constitutional Monarch at the time, George VI, asked Churchill to grasp
hold of the national joystick as Prime Minister of Great Britain. Churchill accepted the position, with the
stipulations of receiving complimentary laundering service for his entire term
in office, and that from that moment on all cigars of seven inches in length
and a fifty ring size would be known as “Churchills.”
Meanwhile, across the Channel, the
fortunes of young Klaus Gorschmak also began to soar. After sending “his Winnie” a congratulatory
message on going from “Prime Beef Cake to Prime Minister,” Klaus developed a
method for canning pork which the Führer himself declared to be, “Better than Spam! Much better than that stinking American Spam
shit!”
Klaus was offered the positon of Minister
of Fatherland Carnal Pursuits, an office from which he would hold providence
over the eating habits of the Third Reich’s army and navy. Herman Göring kept control of the Luftwaffe’s
menu, which the Field Marshall insisted be based upon the serving of organic,
non-Kosher meat products at least three times a week.
Despite the rigors of his high office
during the duration of the greatest war the world has ever seen, Klaus never
wavered from his commitment to corresponding with his post-pubescent main
squeeze. Klaus realized that he was
putting his career and his very life in jeopardy each time he mailed off a
borderline obscene but certainly graphic package or letter to 10 Downing
Street. Affairs of the heart often
overrule caution and good sense, and in this case they did, no contest.
Churchill was busying himself with
keeping the British upper lip both stiff and erect (with no sexual connotations
implied) as Nazi V-1 and V-2 missiles continued to rain down incessantly upon
the streets and buildings of London and its surrounding areas, or at least as
incessantly as the German high command had the time, energy, and budget for.
Churchill had convinced himself as well
as Parliament that this horrible firestorm could be weathered, that the British
spirit could be sustained, at least until the American President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt could be cajoled into to enter the fray and take over the heavy
lifting of the War. Churchill was
sending daily telegrams to the American leader, citing moral obligations along
with messages such as, “C’mon, what’s keeping ya?” and “Go ask Elinor, she’ll
tell you what to do.” Churchill prayed
daily for some sort of miracle, like maybe those crazy Japs bombing Pearl
Harbor.
By “keeping calm and carrying on,”
Churchill remained obstinately convinced that the Brits would never
surrender—with Yanks or no Yanks by their side—until the morning on which a
depressed delegation of Parliamentary members arrived at his house on Downing
Street. Churchill had his valet seat the
group in the parlor and offer them thirty-year-old brandy and even older
cigars. Yet, one look at the crowd
convinced the Prime Minister that this was not going to be a very pleasant
visit. Both the Lords and the Commons
averted their eyes from those of the Prime Minister. They chose instead to simply smack their lips
from brandy and attempt to blow smoke rings, rather than face the very unpleasant
subject of their mission.
Finally, Lord Fudge-Catsmeat-Mangy of the
House of Lords broke the ice. His fellow
lords said they preferred their brandy neat, but Fudge broke a chunk of ice
into his brandy and proceeded to drop the following bombshell (an expression
that had fallen out of favor since the Nazi air attacks): “Mr. Prime Minister,
let’s quit. Let’s surrender, let the
Nazis have their way with us, waddaya say?”
Churchill couldn’t believe his ears, and
because of wartime rationing, had no other ears to rely on. “What did you just say to me, Lord
Fudge? Did you just tell me that you
want to capitulate to the Germans? Did
you just say that to me? Are you talking
to me? You talking to me? You must be, I’m the only one here.” (Actually, there were quite a few other
ministers besides Churchill who were present, yet these words somehow became
the basis for Robert DeNiro’s monologue in the film, Taxi Driver.) “This isn’t
Neville Chamberlain you’re talking to, buddy, and this ain’t Poland we’re talking
about. This is me, and I am England, or
at least a reasonable facsimile of same.
Quit? Quit, you say? Quit, my ass.”
“But, sir,” Fudge replied, nearly
wearily, “I am saying that there is no way we can hold out against this Nazi
onslaught.”
Churchill begged to differ, yet even his
begging seemed powerful and strong. “Oh, sure we can, don’t be silly. I’m sure the Japs will attack Pearl Harbor
any day now. Then, the Yanks jump in, we
get ourselves a couple Liberty Ships floating, and we’re home free…”
Fudge interrupted his leader, something
you couldn’t do without serious physical repercussions in places like Germany
and Russia. “Mr. Prime Minister, please,
allow me to… no thanks, cigars make my stomach a bit queasy, but thank you for
the offer… Mr. Prime Minister, the British people have barely managed to
survive the onslaught of V-1 and V-2 rockets.
Now our spy network, which you might recall is known only as MI-6, cool
name, has managed to intercept and decode a group of messages that hold a much
more ominous resonance.”
“English, English, talk to me in
English,” the Prime Minister admonished.
“Ominous? Resonance? Wha-a?”
“Sir, Mr. Alan Turing, our brilliant
young Enigma codebreaker…”
“He’s the one who’s a bit light in the
loafers, isn’t he?”
“Yes, Mr. Prime Minister, that’s the
guy. We plan to have him castrated as
soon as the war is over, but for now, that guy is one whale of a codebreaker.”
“Sure, we’ll keep him around… for now.”
“Turing has been working with the
American film star, Hedy Lamarr…”
“She’s a babe, all right. She’s the one invented radar too, didn’t
she?”
“Yes, Mr. Prime Minister, she did.”
“Can you imagine a brain like that in a
body like that? You wouldn’t know where
to begin, would you?”
“Yes, Mr. Prime Minister, she’s very attractive. Hollywood knows how to turn them out all
right. Anyway, Turing and Hedy, working
together…”
“At least she won’t have to worry about
Turing putting the moves on her in the lab late at night, am I right?”
“That’s true, Mr. Prime Minister. Good point.
But anyway, the two of them have managed to crack the code used in a
series of clandestine messages having been sent from someone in the Nazi high
command to someone in our own government, some highly placed British official
whom we haven’t yet been able to identify.”
Churchill said, “Some Nazi-loving
turncoat, no doubt. Some Jolly
Roger. I’d like to get my paws on him,
he wouldn’t be so jolly then.”
“Well, as I said, sir, as of yet, we have
not been able to identify either individual, the German or the Brit.”
Churchill took a sip of brandy and
checked his cigar ash. His personal best
for cigar ash length was two inches without dropping off, but he was always
looking to better it. He asked, “So
what’s these messages say?”
Lord Fudge took a scroll of paper
from his vest pocket and began to read.
“Here are some samples, sir: ‘Peenie Two is loaded and ready to
launch.’ Here is another: ‘My Peenie Two
holds the power to topple the staunchest of friends and the vilest of enemies.’
And this: ‘I can’t wait to have Peenie Two enter your British space and
explode.’”
Then MC Rollie Comp-Cromp of
Threepwood-on-Muckley piped in, “There have been unsubstantiated reports, Mr.
Prime Minister, that this new P-2 is one thousand times more destructive than
the V-2.”
Churchill’s English face didn’t have
much color to begin with, but now it lost any pigment it had once managed to
hold onto. The man stood astounded,
shamed, befuddled.
Fudge: “Mr. Prime Minister, we as a
country have barely managed to sustain our survival beneath the withering and
constant onslaught of V-1 missiles, followed by the much more powerful
V-2. Now, Hitler has apparently
developed a weapon ever more potent than those we have already been subjected
to. This Peenie Two will annihilate us. We must immediately offer the Germans our
terms of surrender. I am afraid it is
our only course of action.”
“Well…” Churchill hemmed, and then
hawed, “Let’s not go off half-baked.
This Peenie Two might not be as bad as it sounds. On paper.
People exaggerate.”
“It gets worse, Mr. Prime
Minister. Our spies have just told us
that an actual photograph of the Peenie Two missile has been send by currier to
one of our high ranking officials. It’s
obviously an effort to impress us with the power and danger and toxicity of the
weapon. There is a vote scheduled for
the floor of Parliament tomorrow to surrender to the Germans. Mr. Prime Minister, I am afraid it is our
only viable course of action. The
British Empire must swallow its pride and capitulate, before it’s too
late. That rhymed. Capitulate, too late.”
As the Parliamentary contingent was
leaving his house, the stunned Churchill was tapped on the shoulder by his
valet, who handed him a plain brown legal sized envelope, with no return
address, but with seventy-cents worth of Nazi postage affixed, postage that
Winston realized could certainly be used to round off his stamp
collection. He had his valet vacate the
room, opened the envelope, and he stared at its contents through tear-moistened
eyes for a good ten minutes. The valet,
insulted that his master didn’t allow him to look at the photo, absconded to
America, where he was to father another generation of gentleman’s gentleman
that bore his surname. Chives.
Needless to say, Sir Winston Churchill
was unable to sleep a wink that night.
The horns of his dilemma were cataclysmic; it was by far the horniest
dilemma he had encountered since assuming office. It was a dilemma even hornier than Klaus
Gorschmak himself.
The dilemma which Churchill was facing:
If he kept the clandestine identity of
this “Peenie Two” a secret, then his country would relinquish its sovereignty
and independence to the malevolent Third Reich, the surrender based upon fear
of an ultimate weapon which did not even exist.
On the other hand, if he came clean and made public the true essence of
Peenie Two, he would forever be branded by history as a puff and maybe even a
wanker.
The conflicted national leader paced the
floor for the better part of the night.
No record has been kept of the number of cigars smoked, nor the number
of brandies sniffed and then sucked down, but rest assured it was plenty, no
doubt about it.
By the time that the morning sun had
risen behind the majestic tower that held Big Ben, and the chimes of the big
timepiece had struck five, Winston Churchill had made his decision. He had his second-string gentlemen’s
gentlemen (with Chives Sr. having absconded) inform Parliament that he would be
addressing the joint session that morning.
He then sent a work order and a plain brown envelope over to the Royal
Reproductive Office, Photography Division.
A few hours later of that same morning,
as each member of Parliament arrived at his desk for the unprecedented
emergency meeting of the joint houses, both Commons and Lords alike, each
Parliamentary member found a plain brown envelope sitting atop his desk.
Their wartime leader, a man whom they had
all come to admire and respect, stood at the podium and asked them to open
their envelopes and study the contents.
“This, gentlemen…” he said, in one of his most oft-repeated quotes, “…is
Peenie Two. As you can see, it is fully
inflated.”
The two Houses of Parliament each reacted
differently.
On one side of the aisle, the members of
the House of Commons (HC) immediately recognized (in general terms at least)
the subject of the photograph. Waves of
quiet mumbling, followed by comments and question, rolled from desk to desk,
from row to row, right up to the gallery:
“By Jove, whose wang is this, anyway?”
“I say, old chap, to whom is this monster
attached to?”
“Hung.
Positively hung. A bit of a
sticky wicket right there, wouldn’t you say?”
And…
“I wouldn’t want that thing to get mad at
me, eh what?”
Simultaneously though, across the aisle,
members of the House of Lords (HL) remained confused by the image:
“Hello, this rather seems to be a very
destructive missile to be sure. What,
pray tell, is that flap there, some sort of guidance system?”
“Seems aerodynamic don’t you know, and
certainly quite capable of carrying a destructive payload.”
And…
“Yes, if this is what Herr Hitler is
sending over upon us, I feel our cause is lost.”
Butlers, advisors, and interested parties
could be seen whispering into the ears of the confused Members of the Lords,
each communication resulting in a look of startled enlightenment, soon to be
replaced by ones of revulsion and disdain.
After all the confusion had been cleared
up, and even the Lordiest members of the House of Lords had been clued in, a
joint resolution of both houses was passed unanimously by voice vote, declaring
that the recent panic over being attacked by the Peenie Two missile was
uncalled for and completely extraneous, and that the War could go on as
planned.
By his transparency, Churchill had saved
his country, but he was never again to enjoy his previously possessed amounts
of admiration and respect. From that
moment on, even lasting through many post-war political debates, his opponent
would merely have to drop a casual reference the “Peenie Two Debacle” in their
rebuttal in order to gain control of the conversation and completely deflate
the Prime Minister.
Far worse, across the channel, the career
of Klaus Gorschmak was abruptly truncated, with his total military honors being
replaced by total military mockery. Once
word of his indiscretions had spread across all the Reichs, Klaus was a
shattered shell of a deflated (both emotionally and physically) man.
Klaus was forced to give up all hope of
ever reuniting with his former potential paramour, and he vowed never to
correspond with Winston Churchill ever again.
Klaus was to remain faithful to this vow for the rest of his life, with
the one exception being a hastily scribbled note informing his beloved that a new
Dunkin’ Donuts was opening on Normandy Beach and everything was half off.
At one point in his ignominy, in the last
few hours of a drunken revelry at Hitler’s Eagles Nest in Berchtesgaden, Klaus was forced to dance across the mirrored floor
of the dance hall wearing an old house coat of Eva Braun’s and no underwear, as
the officers of the Third Reich shouted out taunts like, “Peenie Two! Look, I can see his Peenie Two!”
As would be expected, this humiliation
had a profound and lasting effect on the former Minister of Fatherland Carnal
Pursuits, a title which was now draped in irony and condescension. The entire episode sat toxic within the man’s
heart, and it morphed into a supreme hatred of anything to do with Nazis or the
Nazi party. Klaus lost any previous
shred of decency or normalcy, as he vowed to devote the rest of his pitiful
life to dishonoring the Third Reich.
His departure from rationality led him to
believe that Adolph Hitler had never died in that bunker in 1945, but rather
had escaped and was living under various assumed identities in places around
the world. Klaus committed himself to be
the world’s greatest Nazi hunter, and his greatest achievement would be the
capture, internment, and execution of the number one Nazi of all time, Mr.
Adolph Hitler.
Following a lead that many former Nazis
were living quietly in Argentina and posing as mail-order shoe salesmen or
masochistic dentists, Klaus flew to South America, but this search only led him
to the former head chef at Dachau, who was now running a roadside enchilada
stand that he didn’t even own. The quest
then led Klaus Gorschmak to Costa Rica, where an interior decorating firm said
to be infested with ex-Nazis turned out to be nothing more than a case of
inferior color coordination.
With his mental breakdown now nearly complete,
and with his incompetence as a Nazi hunter having replaced his former
confidence, Klaus returned to his earlier neighborhood, the Schmearblut section of Düsseldorf,
intending to live out his life sleeping out in the strase-gutter, eating out of dumpsters, and reading soiled porn
magazines which displayed buxom women partially clad in outdated war
paraphernalia.
But last chances to win the ballgame
sometimes come right before that Two-Minute Warning being sounded. One evening, while lying in a gutter on Brustanegal Street, Klaus heard two
drunken pedestrians discussing a situation presently evolving across the ocean
in America. By selling copious amounts
of his own blood to the area blood bank, and equal amounts of his own semen to
the local sperm bank, and by redeeming a packet of Green Stamps issued by the
local grocery chain that he had discovered in a dumpster while dining, Klaus
was able to book passage on a cattle boat destined for New York City.
The cattle boat was to set sail from
Managua, Spain, connecting with a shuttle service that left from East
Berlin. Before setting foot on the
shuttle, Klaus helped himself to a chunk of the Berlin Wall. He gently placed the rock in his knapsack as
a remembrance, fully realizing that because of the dangers inherent in his
plan, he might very well never see the beloved tourist attractions of his
Fatherland again.
Arriving in New York City, Klaus ran up a
bill at the local YMCA that he never intended to pay. For three days he spent his entire time
mapping out the details of his plan and working out its insidious specifics.
Here is what the assailant knew, or at
least what he thought he knew:
Adolph Hitler had survived his suicide in
the bunker at the end of the war, when he had made a death pact with his
mistress, Eva Braun, in which each of them would kill the other by firing a
Mauser .638 hand gun. Hitler had
gentlemanly offered to go first, so of course, when Eva’s time came to return
the compliment, she was unable to reciprocate.
Hitler had then shaved off his moustache,
put on a pair of Groucho Marx eyeglasses, complete with fake eyebrows, nose,
and mustache (which in no way resembled the original), and made his way past
Russian and then American troops by initially singing some Russian folk songs
quietly, as if to himself, and then segueing into some Frankie Lane gunfighter
ballads to fool the Americans and put them at ease.
Hitler arrived in America having
convinced himself that he had a better than average singing voice, and he
managed to cobble together a fairly successful career in show business. He had assumed an alias, of course—no one
would hire a band singer whose name was that of a mass murderer and the world’s
foremost proponent of genocide—but since he didn’t want to part with his fairly
stylish collection of monogrammed shirts, he had chosen a name which roughly
approximated the original.
From there, Hitler’s career had
grown slowly but steadily, and it was finally to reach its climax in November
of that fateful year.
Hitler’s hunter, Klaus Gorschmak,
checked out of his dingy room at the YMCA, explaining to the house mistress
that he was returning to his homeland of Indonesia. He told her that he was leaving all of his
possessions in payment for the back rent.
Other than the clothes on his back, the only thing Gorschmak took with
him down the stairs and out into the street was that chunk of his beloved
Berlin Wall.
There on the street, he kept lightly
fingering the souvenir, as he blended into the crowd and looked to his left, up
Broadway, awaiting the arrival of the 1956 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.
-30-
Author’s Note:
Yes, that’s right, Dear
Reader! You have correctly ascertained
this shocking plot development! Indeed,
the unknown assailant who had thrown a piece of the Berlin Wall at Al Hibbler
during the 1956 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade was none other than one Klaus
Gorschmak!!!
I hope I have used a sufficient amount of
these: !!!
-30-
