Return of the Demi-Gods by Rex Baron

Author:Rex Baron [Baron, Rex]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-11-14T22:00:00+00:00

At afternoon tea, Helen and Claxton sat blessedly alone in the salon of a hotel, enjoying the metered mathematical sanity of a chamber group playing Mozart, and the absence of the agitated energy of emotional youngsters.

“Well, our determined little Ilse finally snagged the elusive Aryan beauty,” Claxton said, breaking the blessed silence. “I must say that I’m amazed, and didn’t think she had it in her to pull that off. I can’t help but think that you might have had something to do with it… but I won’t ask.”

Helen responded to his suspicion with a little grin that she quickly hid behind her teacup, as she brought it to her lips to take a sip.

“Our little Ilse, as you insist on calling her, is as much of a fool this minute as she was the night when we went out to that club, and she got sick in the car on the way home. All I can say is that I’m glad to be rid of her before she starts blowing up and waddling around like a big fat blonde walrus.”

She took a drag on a cigarette that she held between her fingers and blew out the smoke, as if ridding herself of the unpleasant thought. Claxton watched her in amused disbelief.

“Your total lack of any feminine quality that resembles nurturing, and the complete absence of anything that might even remotely pass for a maternal instinct is fascinating to me,” Claxton observed. “You honestly haven’t a motherly bone in your body.”

“My body has better things to do than to push out fat, little screaming humans. I wouldn’t want me for a mother, so why would I inflict that unfortunate circumstance on somebody else?”

Claxton nodded at the wisdom and dubiously inverted generosity of her response.

“So, what do we do now?” he asked rhetorically. “We haven’t heard a word from the Prince or the director of the Opera in weeks now, and it looks like they have both cut us loose. We have no prospects and no friends… over the age of nineteen. So, where does that leave us?”

Helen took another drag on her cigarette and breathed out the grey smoke, examining it, as if she were reading the oracle at Delphi, gauging its height and the configuration into which it flowed, looking for a message… some direction from the gods.

“We still have some money and I have mostly new clothes. That means that we can go anywhere and show our faces without looking like we don’t belong. The way I see it, we’ve got nowhere to go but forward. We can’t go back to New York or California. There is nothing there for us.”

“We’d fairly suffocate from the smell of burnt bridges,” Claxton quipped.

“Germany is where our future lies,” Helen mused aloud, as her eyes traveled up toward the ceiling to follow a wisp of used smoke. “There are big changes going on in this country, and that means big opportunities. Like someone I met here once told me… there is a new Germany coming, a Germany that in a few years we will scarcely recognize.

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