Hangman

He toys with the book as with a puzzle. It captures his attention—as a shard of glass, a bright thread; he paws at it. But it does not hold him. He does not care for it.

The Grasshopper… a verse from the Bible, is it? He reads through the part where the author has him on trial. He does not flinch. It does not even make him smile. The defense, it is pathetic. Not at all what he would say. The punishment is just.

He stands, glances at the cover briefly. He tosses it aside—which with him is a barely violent motion. He crosses over to the window, looks out. The office around him is very still; simply furnished. He would hardly know with what.

He is thinking about the book, maybe. That there is some grain of truth in it. Or more—that it is dangerous. Highly dangerous, even. May inflame the wrong minds. It will have to be banned, burned like the others… and the author…

Or perhaps the thought has not even crossed his mind. He stands there expressionlessly, unmoving. A stone man. The skyline darkens bit by bit. His eyes cloud. Perhaps he sees Berlin out there… or another city entirely…

He was young then. And he used to stand there too, often like this. Perhaps it was the book that brought it to mind (if his thoughts could ever be said to connect so simply). He too lived in his High Castle... He sees the place where he stood, in his mind's eye, a decade or so ago. He did not see it so clearly then.

An alternate universe… an open car… a tight turn… His mind grasps at biblical visions—and as suddenly shies away. A constant game is at work within him. Gears turning madly, cogs constantly wearing away. He projects it onto the outside world to avoid facing it. Prowls around as a third person. The flame leaps up, the brightness. He feels the heat. Cringes, turns away. As if knowing what would happen if he touched it.

He hardly knows how he spoke back then. Like the King that roars. But when the redness faded—it was there. He understood then. He would have thought it beautiful, had he any conception of what beauty was.

This is the square where I took them—those who defied me—and hung them up by the thousands!

He would like to have it proclaimed on their walls. Blasted over their radios. Written upon the skies, perhaps. For his thoughts tend there. The papers, the tens, the thousands, it is not enough. Enough to punish the deed, perhaps. But never the thought.