Chapter 1. Our story begins with the murder of a German man at his farm near the farmhouse at Lüsebrück, near the frontier of Belgium. In the house, an American woman and her three daughters were sleeping peacefully in their beds. The farmer had emigrated from Bremen in the early 1920s, and as a German nationalist he spoke English and claimed to have had no political opinions about Hitler or the Nazis. He told anyone who would listen that in Nazi Germany all he cared about was raising a large family in the spacious farmhouse. He even had a slogan for his life's work: " _Es geht alles bergab_ "—it all goes downhill. The family was poor, but it included some well-behaved children. The farmer loved to read; he bought _Mein Kampf_ when it first appeared in 1926 and _Adolf Hitler: His Political and Military Career_ when it was published in English in 1939. In that version of Hitler's biography he read the following sentences and he liked them: "When I look out over Germany, I experience a feeling of joy. But this joy can also turn into the most profound sadness because, although I am the man whom nature has made the _creator_ of the German nation, I have never recognized this in myself. Indeed, for a long time I have only seen the evil, which I have to destroy."* "All goes downhill," thought the farmer. "How right I was!" In the night he had a dream in which a small black and white dog with long hair came to him and said, "You don't see, but I see." The next morning the farmer took the morning paper to the bedroom of his eldest son, who would soon be twenty. It was opened to a front-page story about the attack on Paris by the Luftwaffe on the previous day. One report said that five hundred people had been killed, and the other that fifteen hundred were reported dead. "Why do they always exaggerate?" said the farmer. "Not now, Papa," his son said. "Go back to bed." "This may be a good moment to kill myself," the farmer said to his wife. He thought the German men in the French capital must have known they were about to die. Then he slept a few hours, woke up, and drove to the city. " _Es geht alles bergab_ ," the farmer repeated as he marched with thousands of Germans in front of the Arc de Triomphe. He was stopped by a group of French policemen. "What is your business in Paris?" they asked. "I'm a farmer," he said. "What do you do in Paris?" they asked. "I sleep there," he said. "When you sleep there, what do you do?" they asked. "I love to sleep," said the farmer. "What do you love?" they asked. "This is the French language," said the farmer. "It is complicated." The policemen said, "You'll have to come with us," and they took him to a large room with only half as many people as he had seen in the crowd in front of the Arc de Triomphe, where they kept him overnight. The next morning he was driven to the German embassy and turned over to the German secret service. "Papa!" said his son. "I'm glad to see you." "How are you, dear boy?" "Bad," he said. "I found out something about our history last night." "Do tell," said the farmer. "I found out we don't win wars." "I'm in the same boat," the farmer said. "I'm just saying it for your sake. Don't get so serious. You know what I was thinking?" "What?" said the farmer. "Maybe we should kill ourselves and make the French proud." "I must look a fright," said the farmer. "Thank you for your kindness." "Maybe I can cheer you up," said the son, and he took off his shirt and turned it inside out so that the farmer could see that his back was also black and white. The farmer laughed. " _Heil Hitler!_ " he said. " _Heil Hitler!_ " said the son. "The two of us are so beautiful," said the farmer. "We are beautiful, and they will never recognize it." In the prison the farmer decided that if his life was going to be spent in chains, he would not wear black and white, so he decided to dye his hair. "Where are we going?" he asked the soldiers who brought him to the gallows. "To the gallows," they said. "Where is that?" "In the square," they said. "How far is that from here?" asked the farmer. "About three kilometers," said one of them. "Don't be afraid," said another. "I'm never afraid," said the farmer. "Is there time to take a leak?" "Yes, sure," said the soldiers. The farmer went to the door of his cell, pulled out his penis, and held the soldiers while they counted three, thinking: _If I get a move on, I can urinate before they shoot me._ But he didn't get a move on. " _Halt!_ " he heard a soldier shout. He turned around. " _Zurück!_ " he shouted, and they let him go. " _Heil Hitler!_ " shouted the farmer, and he took off like a bullet. The first thing the soldiers heard on the gallows was the farmer saying to the executioner, "Are you ready?" "No," said the executioner. The farmer shouted: "This is a German saying!" The soldiers did not know whether it was a German saying, so they brought out their machine guns and blew the farmer away. A Frenchman who had observed the whole incident shouted: " _Heil Hitler!_ " ### 2 One year later the farmer's son was also in prison, in a room with five other people in Paris. "Is there a light?" he asked. "A light?" said one of the other prisoners. "Are you blind? Look at the light coming in the window." The farmer's son then learned that he was not blind, but had always been blind. That made him cry, and the men in the room talked with some enthusiasm about their crimes, in a manner that, while suggesting a great deal about their views on murder, seemed mostly to have to do with a fondness for jokes about Jews, whose name was suddenly and loudly repeated several times, with the aid of a few words of French they had learned in prison. "Who is the commander of the army?" asked the Frenchman whose window the light was coming in. " _Raphaël!_ " said a voice behind him, and he turned around to find a huge man with a scar on his cheek and two more deep cuts on his chest. The Frenchman nodded. _Raphaël_ , he thought. The farmer's son looked at the enormous man and said, " _Raphaël?_ " "Yes," said the farmer's son. "Why?" "You sound like him," said the big man. "Have you ever heard the one about _Raphaël?_ " "I'm not from Paris." "Did you know the man whose name I have taken?" said the farmer's son. "We share the same name," said the farmer's son. "I don't understand," said the big man. "There is something on the back of my head," said the farmer's son, holding his head at an angle. "I put it on in this room." "But you must be right," said the big man. "Look at this man." The men in the room stared at the Frenchman with the bandage on his head. "You were at the scene of the crime?" they asked. "Of course," said the farmer's son. "And I bet you killed him," said the big man. "But can you prove it?" "I'm right there," said the farmer's son, pointing to his chest. "You can't show me a bullet hole?" said the big man. "It went through my wife," said the farmer's son. "I don't understand," said the big man. "That's what happened to me," said the farmer's son. "It happened to both of us." The men in the room shook their heads and said nothing. "That's a nice name you have," said the big man. "Why don't you tell us another story? I heard that he had a wife, too." " _Him?_ " said the farmer's son. "We are both right here," said the big man, pointing to his chest. "We have nothing to hide." "I don't understand," said the farmer's son.