Locked in a prison cell.
Eating, smoking, watching TV
and waiting for their bail.
Thirteen filthy truck drivers
Oh, how bad they smell...
If you met them, you’d agree with me
And hope they stay in jail!
38
The Evil Brain Lives!
Sunday morning, 10:30 AM: Paul Anderson was sit ing in his dining room contemplating the most momentous decision he’d made in weeks
— whether to eat an apple or a pear for his midmorning snack. He lived a dul life and he liked it that way. His job as a mail clerk was steady & predictable, and it paid the bil s. His girlfriend, Wendy, was a schoolteacher whose idea of fun was to sit at home and watch old movies on TV.
Unfortunately, he also had a pal named Benny, who had decided that Paul needed more excitement in his life, and had made it his mission to ensure that it happened. So, on that sunny Sunday morning, when the clouds were tranquil and the birds were chirping, Benny burst into Paul’s house unannounced, carrying a birthday present for his friend.
“Paul, where are you? I’ve got somethin’ for ya! Paul, what are you hiding for?” he shouted as he ran recklessly around the house.
He had been in such a hurry when he entered the place that he had run right past the dining room without noticing that Paul was there. And so he charged into each and every room, frantically searching for the man who was calmly eating an apple at the dining room table.
39
Finally, he ran back downstairs and saw Paul. “There you are! Where’ve you been? I’ve been lookin’ all over for ya!”
“I was just eating,” Paul answered.
“Look, I brought you a birthday present. And only three weeks late. Go on, open it up.”
“All right – relax already! I’m almost finished,” Paul said, as he continued chewing. “Hey, you know Wendy’s coming over in a few minutes.
We’re gonna go bowling – you want to come along?”
“Sure, I’ll go. You gonna open that or what?”
“All right, all right – I’m opening already!” Paul tore the wrapping paper off the box, wondering what was inside. From the size of it, it was probably a clock-radio, he imagined. A moment later, the box was open, and Paul examined its’ contents. He jumped back in horror. “What the hell is this?” he asked.
“What’s it look like?” Benny responded cheerfully.
“I’m afraid to say.”
“Don’t be afraid. Tell me.”
“It looks like a brain,” Paul replied.
“You’re right on the money, pal!”
Paul took a few seconds to consider the situation. “You got me a brain for my birthday?” he asked. “What is this, an insult? Are you telling me you think I’m stupid or something?”
“No, of course not. You’re very intelligent!” Paul stared at the brain sitting silently inside the box. “This isn’t a human brain, is it?” he asked. “If it is, I don’t even want to know where you got it from. You didn’t kill anyone, did you?” 40
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Is this why you’ve been spending so much time in the cemetery lately?
Have you been robbing graves again?”
“No, no, I’m all through with that.”
“Well what, then? How do you explain this? What the — what kind of present is this?” he demanded.
“Okay, look,” Benny replied, “I knew you’d react this way at first, so just calm down for a minute and let me explain.”
“Please do.”
“Okay. Remember those classes I was taking at City College last year?” Benny asked.
“I knew it!” Paul exploded. “That medical class! You stole the brain from the laboratory, didn’t you?!?”
“I’m not talking about the medical class — I’m talking about that Russian language class I took. Remember that?”
“Oh, yeah. So?”
“Well, as you may recall, I picked up the language pretty good. So, for the last year or so since the class ended, I’ve been subscribing to these Russian and Ukrainian magazines, you know, to keep up on my language skills. And then about two months ago, wouldn’t you know that I come across this ad in one of those magazines.” Benny withdrew a magazine from out of his jacket, opened it up and dropped it on the table. Paul picked it up and looked it over.
“Which ad are you talking about? The circled one?”
“That’s the one!”
“I can’t read this! It’s in Russian! What does it say?” 41
“It says ‘Hitler’s Brain For Sale — four million rubles or best offer.’”
“Four million rubles? How do you have that kind of money?”
“It’s only 65 bucks.”
“Ohhh. Hey, wait a minute — wait just a cotton-pickin’ minute! Are you telling me that this is the brain of Adolf Hitler?”
“The one and only.”
“The Adolf Hitler who ruled Germany, started World War II, perpetrated the Holocaust?”
“You know any other Adolf Hitlers?”
Paul found himself speechless. He stared at the brain for a few more moments, considering the situation yet again. Finally, it struck him —
this was a joke! “This isn’t Hitler’s brain!” he said. “You can’t buy Hitler’s brain thru mail order!”
“Why not?” Benny asked.
“Because you can’t! Besides, Hitler blew his brains out with a gun, and then the other Nazis burned his body so that no one could identify him.”
“Wrong.”
“Wrong?” Paul asked. “What history books have you been reading, pal?”
“I’ve been reading underground Russian newsletters,” Benny replied,
“and corresponding with with some of the soldiers who were there in Berlin back in ’45 who remember seeing Hitler taken away in chains.
That’s what led me to this ad.”
“Are you kidding?”
“No, I’m not kidding. See, when the Russian Army got into Berlin in
’45, they found Hitler there, alive and kicking. So they grabbed him 42
and took him back to Moscow, where they tortured and killed him. But they told the Allies that story about him killing himself and burning his body so that no one would interfere with their plans to torture him. Plus, they figured they’d get some valuable state secrets that they didn’t want to share with the West. Anyway, after they killed him, they sliced and diced his body into a thousand pieces, and saved the brain for research purposes. They had it in Moscow for decades, but a couple of years back, when everything went kablooie over there with all those Republics breaking up, the brain sorta got lost in the shuffle. My sources tell me that it ended up in the Ukraine, in the hands of some dentist who has a liver problem — he needed some fast cash for an operation, so he was willing to sell the brain for a song. And now you have it, buddy. You can put it on your mantle or something. This’ll be a great conversation starter at your next party!”
Paul regarded Benny suspiciously. “I don’t believe it,” he said.
“You don’t believe what?”
“I don’t believe that this is Hitler’s brain.”
“What do you mean you don’t believe it?” Benny asked incredulously.
“I’ve checked this out thoroughly! Look, it even comes with a certificate of authenticity!”
“Let me see this,” Paul said, examining the certificate. “Oh, this is nice.
This is convincing. Look, where are you from — the backwoods of Arkansas? How can you fall for this?”
“Fall for what? This is a legitimate deal!”
“Sure it is. And I’d like to sell you some swampland in Florida.”
“What am I gonna do with swampland? I — all right, very funny. Okay wise guy, what if I could prove to you that this is really Hitler’s brain?”
“Well, I suppose that would make things more interesting.” Just then, the doorbell rang, and Paul knew it must be Wendy. “Come in!” he called.
43
“Okay, great. I’ll see you later,” Benny said as he grabbed the brain and hustled out the door, passing Wendy as she walked in.
“Oh, hi, Benny” Wendy said as Benny slipped past her. “What’s in the package?”
“Oh, nothing. I’ll see ya later.” And with that, Benny was gone.
“What was that all about?” she asked Paul.
“Well, see, he thinks that he bought H. . uh, I’ll tell you later — you ready to go?”
“Yeah, I’m ready.”
“Okay, hang on a sec, I gotta get my ball.”
***
Friday evening, 9:57 PM: Paul and Wendy were hanging out at Paul’s place, watching Gold Diggers of 1935 on TV, when suddenly Benny charged in through the front door, skidding to a stop in the middle of the living room.“Paul! Wendy! Oh, am I glad to see you two! You wouldn’t believe what I’ve been through these last few days!”
“This wouldn’t have anything to do with that stupid brain you bought, would it?” Paul asked. “Because if it does, I don’t want to hear about it.”
“You gotta hear about it, man. You gotta help me. The brain — he’s crazy! He wants to take over the world again!” Wendy turned to Paul. “What’s this all about? Is this what you wouldn’t tell me about the other day?”
“Yeah,” Paul answered. “See, Benny thinks he bought Hitler’s brain from a mail-order ad.”
44
“He’s out in the car,” Benny interjected. “You want to see him?”
“Yeah, sure,” she replied.
“No, you don’t want to see that – it’s disgusting,” Paul objected.
“Yes I do – I think it sounds cool.”
“I’ll go get him,” Benny offered. “But I warn you – this isn’t for the faint of heart!”
Moments later, the brain was sitting in a jar on Paul’s kitchen table.
Wires connected the brain to a lone stereo speaker sitting just inches away from the jar.
“Okay, so you’ve connected the brain to a speaker – this has got to be the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen. What happens now?” Paul asked.
“Well, he should start talking,” Benny replied. “I don’t know what the problem is. He was yelling at me in the car all the way here – he just wouldn’t shut up! It was very frightening.” Wendy examined the wiring. “Maybe one of these came loose.” Benny looked closely and began adjusting the wires a bit. “You know, this whole thing is very eerie – when you hear him start talking, you’re not gonna believe. .”
“Aaaah!” shrieked a strange voice from the speaker. “Du schweinhund!
Was ist los mit du?”
“There, I got it – see?” Benny said proudly, as Paul and Wendy’s jaws dropped in shock.
“Benny! Benny! Kommst du hier, ja?” the voice beckoned.
“Yeah, in a minute, okay?” Benny replied. “See?” he asked his friends,
“he speaks German. He’s Hitler!”
45
Paul still couldn’t believe it. “Just because he speaks German doesn’t mean he’s Hitler,” he said. “A lot of people speak German.” Benny smiled confidently and addressed the brain: “Hey, brain! Who are you? You’re Hitler, right? Hit - ler?”
And again the hideous voice sounded from the speaker: “Ja, ja!” it said.
“Ich heisse Hitler! Während des tausendsten Mal, mein Name ist Hitler!
Ich bin Adolf Hitler, dummkopf!”
Fortunately for our heroes, it didn’t take fluency in German to understand what the brain had said. Anyone who’s watched half a dozen epi-sodes of Hogan’s Heroes could make the translation.
“Get him to say something else,” Wendy insisted.
“Okay,” Benny replied. “Hey, brain – speak! Come on, Hitler, say something! Sprechen Sie! Sprechen Sie!” He whistled to the brain as if he were commanding a dog. “Speak, boy, speak!” And the eerie voice responded once more, this time sounding somewhat annoyed. “Ich belohne Sie froh Dienstag, wenn Sie Ihre Freunde heute töten!”
“What’d he say?” Paul asked.
“Benny’s face had gone white. “I think he said he wants me to. . kill you,” he said.
“What? Kill me? What’d I do?!?”
“Yeah, and he says this kind of thing all the time, too! Always giving me orders – trying to get me to do terrible things. He’s crazy, I tell you!
Crazy!”
“And he wants to have me killed, eh?” The thought of it ticked Paul off. “I own you now, Hitler!” he shouted at the brain in the jar. “You’re mine, man! I’m gonna stick you on my mantle and you’re gonna enter-tain at parties, and and if you don’t like it, you can lump it, buddy!” 46
“There’s one thing I don’t get,” Wendy chimed in. “Assuming the brain is who he claims he is – well, what I don’t understand is how it’s alive.
I mean, he should be dead without a body to support him.”
“He was dead,” Benny explained, “until I brought him back to life.”
“How’d you do that?”
And so Benny told the tale of how he had revived Hitler’s brain. .
“I set the brain down on a table,” he began, “while I mixed various chemicals in my kitchen sink. I’ve studied lots of things over the years
– psychology, biology, foreign languages – but I don’t know squat about reanimating old brains. So, I just started mixing together any old thing I could find – some Ajax, a little hair tonic, some mouthwash, you know
– whatever. After a while, the stuff started bubbling, so I emptied the water the brain had been stored in and poured my concoction in the jar with it. Well, as far as I could tell, nothing happened, so I went to bed.
Then, I got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, and who did I see there but the brain. He had followed me there!”
“How did he follow you?” Wendy inquired. “He’s only a brain!”
“I don’t know. He’s got strange powers. The only thing I know for sure is that that brain is pure evil. No good can come from having him around – he’s got to be destroyed! Only I don’t know what to do with him. I’d flush him down the toilet, but he’s too big!”
“What do you mean, you want to destroy him?” Paul asked. “He’s my brain now. I want to keep him.”
“Oh, I’m afraid that’s out of the question, home-boy.”
“Why’s that?”
Benny was stunned. “You can’t go inviting evil into your house like this! It’s like inviting Satan himself over for dinner! It just isn’t done!” 47
“Well, I’m certainly not gonna just throw it away. This thing is a histori-cal relic. It’s undoubtedly worth a lot of money. At the very least, I’ve gotta keep it until, you know, maybe I can sell it or something.”
“No, no, no!” Benny protested, and then stopped himself. “Wait a minute
— yes! That’s a great idea! I know a lot of people who would pay top dollar for this thing! The only problem is, how do we contain its’ evil?
I mean, this thing’s ready to start World War III as soon as it can raise an army! And he’s charismatic, too. He had me on the phone the other night contacting arms dealers for him! He’s got a sort of hypnotic spell he casts over you! We’ll have to be very careful with him – for starters, we’ll have to keep him under lock and key, except when showing him to potential buyers.”
“Okay,” Paul said, “that sounds reasonable.”
“All right then. You lock him up and I’ll talk to some people I know who might want to buy him.”
***
Weeks passed, and Paul & Benny interviewed several people interested in buying the brain: World War II buffs mostly, but also a few would-be entrepreneurs who thought there was money to be made somehow.More ominously, Benny had heard that some neo-Nazi types had gotten wind of what was going on, and freaky-looking skinheads had begun appearing in the neighborhood, and driving by Paul’s house.
“You know,” Paul concluded, “we’re never gonna sell this brain. No sane person will want to buy it!”
“What are you talking about?” Benny asked. “I thought we decided to sell it to that one guy – the guy in the suit. I thought he had some dynamite marketing ideas for the brain!”
“No, we don’t wanna do that. If the brain gets out there and gets all that publicity, who knows what kind of havoc he’ll wreak? After all, we never did think up any way to contain his evil.” 48
“You’re right,” Benny sighed. “So what are we gonna do with him?”
“I don’t know. Do you have any fireworks left over from the 4th of July?
Maybe we could just blow him up?”
“Nah, I don’t have any left.”
Paul paused to give the matter some thought. The whole thing was beginning to seem like more trouble than it was worth. “Well, okay then,” he decided, “let’s just sell him to that guy. Let him deal with the evil powers!”
“Sounds good to me,” Benny agreed. “You get the brain. I’ll call our friend.”
Paul walked upstairs to his bedroom, opened the closet door and removed the safe-box into which he had deposited the brain a few weeks earlier. He spun the combination wheel to the right, then left, and then right again. Finally, he opened the box and saw that it was empty.
The sight chilled him to the bone. He called Benny, who was wasn’t exactly horrified, but he wasn’t happy about it, either. (Benny wasn’t the kind of guy who worried too much about matters of great consequence.
He could, however, easily become quite panicked about more trivial is-sues, such as misplaced car keys or being served day-old bagels.) Then, as they returned downstairs into Paul’s living room, they were greeted by yet another unwelcome sight — five neo-Nazis brandishing night-sticks.
It was clear that resistance would only invite a severe beating, and so Paul and Benny allowed themselves to be tied up. Their heads were then covered with dark hoods and finally they were hustled out of the house and shoved into the back of a van that quickly whisked them away.
A few hours later, the hoods were removed, and the boys found themselves inside a huge, marble hall. Third Reich-style German flags were hung all over the place, and hundreds of brown-shirted soldiers stood at attention on each side of the room.
49
“This place looks familiar,” Benny whispered to Paul. “I think this is Kozlowski’s Catering Hall. My friend Ted Lipshitz had his wedding party here last summer!”
“Sieg Heil!” a voice called from one end of the hall.
“Sieg Heil!” the soldiers shouted back.
It was a scene right out of Leni Reifenstahl’s Triumph of the Will, except that it wasn’t in black & white, and the voice inciting the soldiers into a murderous frenzy wasn’t der Furher in his full glory, it was just his brain sitting inside a jar, connected to a stereo speaker. Not exactly what the fascist loons had in mind all those years they spent dreaming of his return. Nevertheless, they seemed pretty worked up about it.
Paul and Benny stared up at the stage where the brain was sitting. On one side stood a ridiculous-looking Hermann Goebbels wannabe, dressed up in full Nazi regalia. And on the other side stood — Wendy.
“Wendy!” Paul gasped. “What are you doing up there?” But Wendy wouldn’t even look in Paul’s direction. Instead, she gazed lovingly at the brain in the jar and gently stroked the glass.
“Chicks, man!” Benny sighed. “They always go for guys with strong personalities, no matter what they look like!”
“I can’t believe it,” Paul stammered. “I always figured that if she was gonna cheat on me, she’d at least do it with a guy who had a body!”
“Silence!” the Goebbels wanna-be interrupted. “You,” he said, pointing at Benny, “have the secret to eternal life! You must give it to us, for der Furher needs the precious fluid!”
“Uh, yeah,” Benny responded, “about that. . ya see, the thing is I don’t really remember how. .”
“DO IT!” Goebbels commanded, as Benny was dragged up onto the stage by a pair of Nazi thugs. On a small table next to the brain were all 50
the ingredients he had used to create the life-giving potion.
“Come on, Benny,” Wendy begged him. “You did it before, and you can do it again!”
“Yeah, well, what if I don’t want to do it?” Benny asked.
One of the Nazis jammed the barrel of a pistol into Benny’s ribs. “Then you die!” he growled.
“Oh. Well, in that case, where’s the Ajax?” Benny asked, as he began fumbling through the various bottles of chemicals and household clean-ers.
“Wendy, how could you rat us out like this?” Paul yelled from his chair in the middle of the dining hall.
“Oh, get over it already!” she yelled back. “I can hang out with anybody I want!”
“Yeah, but Hitler? Since when did you become a Nazi?”
“SILENCE!!” Goebbels roared, and directed his men to gag Paul.
Meanwhile, Benny continued mixing his chemical concoction and scan-ning the room nervously. He was right, he thought. This place was Kozlowski’s Catering Hall. “Paul’s right, you know,” he told her. “He’s always treated you well, and this is how you repay him? And besides, hooking up with a guy like Hitler is never a good idea. You wanna end up like Eva Braun?”
“Just shut up and mix the chemicals, OK?”
“I had a friend who had his wedding reception in this hall,” he continued. “His bride had an ex-boyfriend who was a really bad guy, too, and he actually showed up at the party that night. He was drunk and bent on causing trouble. And so he came right up onto the stage that we’re standing on now and started fighting with the DJ.” 51
“Be quiet and work!” Goebbels said angrily, but to no effect.
“So they were rolling around, you know, this guy and the DJ, punching & kicking each other, and they accidentally knocked over this big speaker the DJ had brought with him, and it fell into the socket box behind me.”
Wendy looked behind Benny and could see the box on the wall.
“That box controls all the lights and the sound system in this room,” Benny went on. “And so when the speaker fell into it, all the lights got turned off, and it was pandemonium in here until the police arrived.
They got the lights turned back on and arrested my buddy’s wife’ ex.”
“Yeah, so what’s your point?” Wendy asked. “That I shouldn’t be dating Hitler or any of these other Nazis ‘cause they’re bad guys? I know that, and I don’t care. You’re not my father, OK?”
“Nah, I don’t care who you date,” Benny answered. “My point is that if the electricity in this place goes out, it’s gonna make it very difficult for your pals here to catch me!” And with that, Benny took the jar full of chemicals he was mixing and flung it into the socket box. Sparks flew like crazy out of it, and all the lights in the hall went black.
And just like at Ted Lipshitz’s wedding, it was total chaos. Some of the Nazis tried to grab Benny, but mostly ended up grabbing each other instead. Others tried to rescue Hitler’s brain, but instead knocked it onto the floor and stepped on it about a hundred times, mashing it into a goo-ey paste. Goebbels tried to turn the lights back on, but succeeded only in electrocuting himself and inadvertantly setting fire to the building.
Benny, on the other hand, knew the layout of the facility well enough to make it off the stage, grab Paul and pull him out into the parking lot. He then untied him and used the ropes to seal the exit doors shut, locking the Nazis inside the burning building. “Wow, that was some adventure, wasn’t it?” Benny said as he tried to catch his breath.
“Adventure?!?” Paul shot back. “That was terrible! We almost got killed! And not only that, my girlfriend dumped me, and now she’s in 52
there frying along with those neo-Nazi scumbags!”
“Yeah, well, ya gotta break a few eggs to make an omelette, right?
C’mon, buddy, let’s go home.”
Police and firemen were just beginning to arrive as Paul and Benny ambled over to the nearest bus stop. The fire turned out to be tough to put out, though, and the building burned for hours, ensuring that there were no survivors, and no evidence of Adolf Hitler’s only trip to America.