Chapter 24: Mein Piggle, Mein Pain

'I just want to know where we're supposed to meet this plane,' said Piotr gruffly. 'I can't drive aimlessly forever, you know?'

The car was momentarily silent. Well, not silent. You see, Molotov had been weeping into a hammer and sickle handkerchief since they had passed Leipzig - but that had quickly become background noise.

'What the fuck is wrong with you?' Hermy-G snarled at last, his voice slightly shaky despite his rage. 'Igglepiggle was our friend. Our brother. He died for us. He's literally Jesus. And who the fuck are you? I bet Igglepiggle's last words were 'Tell that Russian Untermensch  to stop being such a little bitch...'

Piotr blinked. 'He never said that...'

'Well...he definitely thought it!'

Silence. Molotov began to sob even harder. Next to him lay Adolf, screwed up in a tight ball, hands pressed over his ears, desperately trying to will himself out of existence. He wished it was him still bleeding blankly into the concrete. Failing that, he wished he still had Igglepiggle - so at least he would have someone to talk to about his worthlessness. His aching mind wouldn't leave him alone. It played Stalin's words (or lack thereof) over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

'Joseph...do you love me?'

Silence. A silence louder than the Battle of Britain.

'Uhhhh guys,' perked up Jürg apprehensively, reminding the others that he was still there. 'I don't mean to interrupt but - what the Scharfe Maxx just happened? What do those strange men want with us? And shouldn't we call the poli-'

'Babe, not now,' Da Real Heinrich-H exclaimed, 'I swear to God - you're always asking questions!'

'Like some kind of... intellectual,' Göring added with disgust, 'I thought you knew what you were getting in to! But if you're too much of a child to handle this relationship, then-

'I-I just want to be included!'

Piotr sighed loudly. He turned to Joseph, who was staring blankly out of the window, smoking five cigarettes at once.

'Comrade Stalin?' he asked, cautiously. 

Stalin didn't move. The smoke curled around his head, a crown of mist. 

'Joseph?' Piotr repeated.

Still nothing. Just a long, slow exhale. And then a soft husky whisper of a name.

'Adolf...'

...

In the heated tension of the BMW, nobody risked a word for the rest of the journey. It was already past their bedtimes when Piotr jerked the car to a halt in a random (completed unimportant) field. Everyone spilled out as Göring and Himmler began assembling their usual makeshift camp. 

Hitler disappeared wordlessly into a tent. Stalin watched him go like a father dropping his child off at fascist kindergarten. As a single tear threatened to spill from his handsome orbs, he cursed himself under his sulty, Russian breath. 

Then, now without breath, he approached the tent...

The flap of the beige canvas tent fluttered like a nervous, Aryan eyelid. Inside, Adolf sat on a folding chair stolen from a British pub, whispy arms crossed, staring at an oil painting of a raccoon seig heil-ing in a military uniform. It wasn't clear where it had come from. Nothing ever was.

Stalin stood just outside the flap, hesitating. He realised he feared nothing more than the silence between him and the gorgeous German inside.

He cleared his muscular throat. 'Addie? It's me.'

Silence.

'I wanted to say I'm sorry. About Igglepiggle and about...everything...'

More silence. Then the soft, unmistakable sound of someone angrily chewing a paprika flavoured crisp. And then.

'I needed you, Joseph...' came a broken, German whisper. The way the Führer said his name made Joseph's thick arms quiver with suppressed emotion. His mustache began to switch like a caterpillar on amphetamines. He wanted Adolf Hitler so badly...

'This is all a communication error, Addie - I swear. C-can't you see my love language is staring at you while you sleep and not having you pushed out a window?'

'Oh, how romantic!' Hitler emerged at the mouth of the tent, his own lips quaking with melancholic rage. His beautiful little body was hidden by his treacherous uniform, his brown eyes wetter than his quivering urethra. 'Tell me, Joseph, do all your little girlfriends get to survive your purges, or am I just so special?'

Stalin took a step back. 'What-'

'You heard me...' Adolf began to sob.

'Addie, I'm a homosex-'

'I don't want to hear you excuses.' The Führer's tone was final, resolute. 

Stalin took a shaky step backwards. He felt uncharacteristically small.

Hitler was properly glaring at him now. 'RAUS!'

'You'll regret this,' said Joseph sadly.

'I already do,' Hitler muttered, turning away.

Words having failed him, Stalin was forced to retreat. The tent flap closed behind him with the finality of the bullet that had plunged into Igglepiggle's chest. He felt as he had after conquering Berlin - strangely empty, as if something was missing. Something had been left unconquered...  

Outside, Jürg, Göring and Himmler were having another argument. Piotr was interrogating a cow.  Molotov had found a bush and curled inside it like a discarded bottle of vodka. He was still wailing into the void. 'He made me feel like I was real,' he whimpered loudly for all to hear. 'He brought me to life with his thick Nazi cock! He said he'd be there for me forever...'

Stalin sat down beside the fire, lighting another fag (he had to replace Adolf somehow).

Moments passed before a tearful and slightly hesitant Jürg requested to join him. Neither Göring nor Himmler were anywhere to be seen. They sat in silence for a while, listening to the snores and sobs beginning to trickle from within the tents out into the night. Jürg was attempting to roast a marshmallow on a stick lit from Stalin's cigarette. At last, the Swiss man's loneliness gave in; he turned to the well proportioned Slav beside him.

'Hey,' he smiled nervously. 'You don't look ok...'

Stalin looked down at his youthful companion - his beret was on sideways, and his socks had little bars of chocolate on them.

'No,' he replied flatly. 'I am not okay. I am... compromised.'

Jürg nodded solemnly. 'Would you like to talk about it?'

A surprised Joseph found that he actually did. His mouth moved before his brain could slap a redacted stamp across the thought.

'Well, as you can tell, Adolf won't speak to me...' he said simply. 

Jürg didn't interrupt. His chestnut eyes had somehow perfected an open yet non-threatening gaze. It was giving neutrality with a warm mug of hot chocolate.

'I-' Stalin seemed to hold his breathe as he uttered the words, 'I don't know what to do...'

Jürg sighed. 'I feel you. Heinie-Pie and Hermzy keep calling me clingy. And they got mad earlier because I didn't want to sleep in the glove compartment. They said I disrupted the polycule's tactical nap flow...'

He look up sadly into Joseph's yellow eyes, 'I think maybe I should go back to Switzerland...'

Stalin didn't respond right away. He stared up at the stars, imagining they were little kulaks getting liquidated by the moon. It made him feel slightly calmer.

'How do you it?' he asked eventually, his voice barely a whisper. 'Be so open about how you feel, I mean. The very thought makes me want to accuse someone of industrial sabotage...'

Jürg tilted his head, thoughtful. 'I don't know really. I guess I've always been like this. My mother says I was born crying about the emotional distance in the delivery room.' He gave a small laugh, then added, 'I don't know how to not feel things. Even when it makes people uncomfortable. Even when they tell me I'm "too much" or "a security risk to the Reich".'

Somewhere in the distance, Molotov let out another long, haunting wail.

Jürg leant forward. 'Don't tell anyone this, Joseph... but I don't actually know what a Reich is! Or why there's three of them!?? I've been too embarrassed to ask anyone, but keeping it a secret has eating been me alive. Maybe you can help me? I don't know if you have those in Russia...'

Stalin sighed. He wasn't really listening anymore. After a while, he turned back to Jürg and went on, his voice so soft the other man had to lean even closer to make out his words.

'Well...I don't know how to do it. How to tell Adolf how I feel. It's alright for you... But it's easier for me to kill millions of people than to say those three, pathetic, little words.'

The Swiss man nodded sympathetically. 'I like your nice, entirely theoretical and poetically hyperbolic metaphor!' 

Stalin smirked faintly. In the darkness, Jürg didn't notice. He considered the Russian, thoughtfully. 'You could try writing it down? Or maybe... a dance? I don't know - that always works for me!'

Stalin stood up abruptly. 'No. There will be no dancing.'

The wind teased the horny grass. Beside the tents, Piotr was angrily pitching a tent upside-down with the disembodied nipple of a cow. As Joseph retreated, the night deepened, as if Germany itself had given up on its sanity.

Now inside his tent, Stalin continued to watch Jürg's reclining figure. It was beginning to rain...but the young Swiss man stayed where he was, singing a folk song from Bern as he fingered another marshmallow in his slightly shaky hands. Joseph found himself wondering if love really was enough. Surely the Geneva Convention had a clause about polyamorous war crime fugitives. But what of his love?