22

Café Central was on a corner where two narrow streets met. One of them was called Herrengasse, which sounded to Corey like the word for an aquatic bird fart. Even before lunch hour, the sidewalk seats were nearly full, despite the chill in the air. People sipped espresso and ate pastries and little cubed sandwiches. They spoke in German, French, English, and languages Corey couldn’t recognize. The café had tall, vaulted windows. Through them Corey could see a cozy space of polished dark wood walls and marble tables. The sound of a tinkling piano spilled onto the sidewalk. As they entered, the smell of coffee and sweets made Corey drool.

“I’m nervous,” Leila said, clutching Corey’s arm.

“Hi, nervous. I’m hungry,” Corey replied.

“We’re standing here, about to meet Fritzie, and all I want to do is cry,” Leila said, “because I know his future. He’s such a nice man. He’s kind and talented and chill and a little goofy. He’s going to be all smiley and confident, and all I want to do is tell him to escape, go to America now, do something. But if I say that, he’ll think I’m a lunatic. And if I don’t . . .” Her voice trailed off.

“If you don’t, what?” Corey said.

“I’m the one who’s supposed to be positive. Glass half full. But how can I face him? How can I smile and tell jokes, knowing what happened to him?” Leila exhaled. “How do you even think straight when you’re doing this?”

Corey put his arm around her. “Hey, it didn’t happen yet. It’s nineteen oh eight. I can do this.”

“We,” Leila reminded him.

“We,” Corey repeated. “We’re going to get Hitler to the big-shot designer guy at the opera. And then I’m going to change the course of history, with no violence.”

“First I have to cheer you up, then you do the same for me. This is hard.”

“Time travel is not for wusses,” Corey said.

They went into the restaurant. Fritzie was sitting at an upright piano just inside the café. He wore a brimmed hat cocked to one side and a slightly raggedy scarf. His fingers flew over the keyboard. But it wasn’t a classical piece like the one they’d heard on the vinyl record in New York, at Leila’s apartment. It was a jazzy, bouncy tune with a pounding rhythm that was making customers get up from their seats and dance. He was grunting along to the tune, just the way they’d heard him in the old recording, back home.

Corey and Leila waited until he stopped, which he did with a big, dramatic flourish. As they joined in a loud burst of cheering, he spun around and saw them. “Ah, here are the Americans!” he said.

That led to another round of applause.

Leila was blushing. “We didn’t do anything.”

“You brought us ragtime!” Fritzie said with a big smile. “Your brilliant Mr. Scott Joplin. You know this music?”

“No,” Corey said.

“Yes,” Leila piped up. “And you’re amazing!”

“Thank you! You see, this is how I make money for my studies. Last week I perform at the school. Brahms, Beethoven, Bach. Tonight I play for important people at the opera house.” Fritzie’s face brightened, and he took Leila by the arm. “You come? Please! Is party. I will put you on the list. I play classical, too!”

“Uh, sure,” Leila said.

As Fritzie leaped up from the piano, Leila impulsively threw her arms around him. “Oh, Fritzie, thanks for everything you’ve done for us—the hospital, the lodging. . . .”

He laughed and returned the embrace. “It is my pleasure. And you, Corey, are you feeling better?”

Corey backed stiffly away. “I am, if you don’t hug me.”

They wandered out to one of the tables on Herrengasse, where Fritzie ordered from the waiter in German. “All of Vienna passes the Café Central,” Fritzie said. “We sit and eat and see famous people. Maybe Freud, Trotsky, Schiele. I will pay.”

Corey angled his seat out toward the street. All along Herrengasse, artists had set up easels and were selling paintings and postcards. Some of them were dressed in paint-spattered smocks, some were chanting to attract attention. “That poor man Otto almost killed yesterday?” Corey said. “Does he come here?”

“Adolf?” Fritzie said. “Manchmal. Sometimes. He does not get here early enough, maybe. This man, he is not very . . . how do you say . . . aggressiv?”

Corey could see Leila shudder.

The two of them lapsed into German. Fritzie spoke very fast, which made Leila giggle and ask him to slow down. But they settled into a rhythm, and it made Corey happy to see them bond.

Normally Corey didn’t drink coffee, and he winced when the waiter plopped a cappuccino down in front of him along with a croissant. But after a couple of sips, he liked the combination of the sweetness of cinnamon, the smoothness of warm milk, and the slight bitterness of coffee.

On the fourth sip, he nearly choked.

That was when a short man with comically quick, bouncing steps sped by on Herrengasse. His hair flapped up and down in the breeze. Even though he carried a big sack over his shoulder, he was so slight and shabby that people didn’t move an inch for him, as if he were invisible.

But there was no mistaking the face of the man they met in the hospital, Adolf Hitler.

Corey elbowed Leila. “There he goes.”

He sprang from his seat, making sure to shove the croissant in his pocket. The pain in his back nearly smacked him down, but he forced himself to move. Staying to the walls, Corey threaded through the people toward the center of town, following the odd gait of Hitler. He finally lost Hitler in a crowd of people at an open square in front of a stately columned building. There he stopped, frantically looking around.

“Corey!” Leila’s voice called out from behind him. She came running up and took Corey’s arm. “Where is he?”

“I don’t know,” Corey replied.

Leila glanced around too. “I told Fritzie you ran off because you were freaked out by the sight of a rat.”

“True, kind of. He believed it?”

“I think he thinks Americans are strange. So yeah.”

“There!” Corey said, spotting a familiar blotch of greasy black hair in the crowd. Hitler was standing near the front, facing the steps of the building. From the front door, a bearded man emerged, clasping his hands together in front of his tweed suit and smiling at the crowd.

As they responded with loud cheers, Corey and Leila made their way toward the front. “Entschuldigung, bitte . . . Entschuldigung . . .” Leila repeated. Excuse me, excuse me.

The man descended the steps slowly. He waved at individuals he spotted in the throng. His beard was full and fluffy, a light shade of reddish brown, and his smile seemed to warm the crowd.

“Ahhhh, Corey, Leila, guten Abend!” Hitler said as he saw them approach.

“Hey!” Corey said, pushing aside elbows. “Listen, we had a few things we wanted to talk to you about—ow!”

“You are still hurting, Corey!” Hitler said. “You are brave, strong. Like proper good German. Bleib hier! Stay here! You will enjoy der schöne Karl.”

“‘The handsome Karl’?” Leila said.

Hitler smiled. “This is what people call him. He is our mayor, Karl Lueger.”

“Mei-i-i-i-ne Damen und Herren!” The man’s voice boomed out over the square, without the help of a microphone. The crowd fell silent, and Lueger began to speak. He was slow at first, cracking a few German jokes that people laughed at. “Haw!!” Hitler guffawed. “He is very funny. He talks about the rats in our sewers, which are as big as Pferde. Horses. He gives them names. Schlomo. Chaim.”

Jewish names.

Corey and Leila both stiffened. “Hilarious,” Corey drawled.

As the man continued, his face grew somber, his eyes glowering. His words began taking a steady rhythm as his hands moved. He gestured to the crowd, pounding one fist into the other hand. His r’s rolled and his p’s spat.

Even though he didn’t understand a word, Corey felt sweat trickling down the sides of his head. This guy’s speaking style reminded him of Hitler in 1939. “What’s he saying?” Corey whispered to Leila.

Her face was drawn and fearful. “Well, he made a transition from talking about rats to talking about Jews.”

“But he’s the mayor,” Corey said. “There must be Jewish people living here. He has to represent them, right?”

“He’s saying that they’re sucking money from ordinary citizens,” Leila said. “They’re responsible for the poverty in the streets. They’re dirty and . . . Do I need to go on?”

Corey shook his head.

Next to him, Hitler nodded. “Ja,” he whispered. “Explains everything, no? So klar. Clear.”

“Wiener . . . über . . . Juden!” Lueger bellowed.

Corey glanced at Leila. “‘Viennese people over Jews,’” Leila translated.

“But that makes no sense,” Corey said. “The Jewish people who live here are Viennese, right?”

“Wiener über Juden! Wiener über Juden! Wiener über Juden!”

Most of the crowd chanted in a bored, singsongy tone. But Hitler was shouting, his voice loud and screechy. His face was red and strained, his eyes almost not human. As if he’d transformed into some other creature.

Corey’s blood froze in his veins. This was the man he’d seen in the Bürgerbräukeller. Not the hapless, homeless artist that people picked on in the streets.

Corey wasn’t the only one to notice. Leila had grabbed on to his arm, her jaw hanging open in shock. She was seeing what he was. All around them, people cast startled looks toward Hitler. Some burst out laughing, others turned away. Even Mayor Lueger seemed a little thrown, his eyes darting toward the sound.

Right now, in 1908, the behavior may have been annoying and weird. But in a couple of decades, Corey knew, it would have a different effect. It would move three thousand people in a doomed restaurant to rise to their feet. And inspire an entire country toward a plan of mass murder.