Chapter Seven
Benito Pizza
The top floor of Viking TV
THE BUILDING WAS RATHER OLD, from 1957, with
plaster peeling from its corners. Its entrance was barricaded by massive
concrete blocks. Behind them, surrounded by piled-up sand bags, the German
Phoenix zonderkommando unit hunched up over their machine guns. The motors of
armored vehicles were growling in the back yard. Sniper teams kept watch on the
roof: guerrilla units had repeatedly attacked the Ministry of Propaganda and
Public Education. The twenty floors of this concrete behemoth housed state
television, radio stations, a dozen newspaper offices, a souvenir shop and the
pretentious Thule restaurant. The corridors inside seemed to snake every which
way. That and the eight elevators each leading to a particular department made
losing one's way extremely easy.
The TV channel took up the five upper floors, the best
and most sought-after ones. In order to get inside, any visitor had to show his
or her ausweis to the security guards
behind their bulletproof glass, then walk through a turnstile. From there, Viking
TV workers were in charge of the visitors. To get in, you had to first press
your hand to the scanner next to the sliding doors.
Opposite the elevators, a banner under the ceiling
quoted Dr. Joseph Goebbels:
We always tell the
truth. Well, almost.
In accordance with the Moskau Reichstag directive, the
television received 20% of the budget: same as the army. And they were worth
it. The Triumvirate leaders had had plenty of opportunity to convince
themselves that television could be much more effective than tanks and
missiles. Throughout human history, even the strongest of armies had had
trouble suppressing mass uprisings. But the TV screen allowed a much harsher
mind control than any amount of street patrols. TV officers' ranks began at
Scharführer; even their junior correspondents enjoyed the equivalent of
Generals' salaries and free luxury food parcels. Their equipment made their
colleagues worm with envy: all those excellent cameras, expensive cars and
high-speed Shogunet.
The marble lobby featured the bronze bust of Hans
Ulrich Rudel with his illustrious bald patch: the first man in space who'd
raised the Reich's flag on the Moon in 1952. His international fame, endless
autograph-signing sessions and half-naked female fans who besieged the
astronaut even on restroom trips had made quick work of Rudel's career. He'd
drunk himself into an early retirement within a year and a half, a record time.
He'd been grounded and transferred to a boring but cushy job as the head of
Berlin TV.
Hans Ulrich had zealously attacked his new job which
became a pleasant surprise for his superiors. He joined the Adolf Temperance
Society and didn't sleep nights coming up with new ideas for talk shows,
planning quiz games, and working on new stories for popular soap operas like The Woman of My Dreams. It was he who'd
turned the entertainment TV into the proverbial kraken entangling the minds of
billions of Aryans. A 1965 law demanded that every citizen of the Reich swore
an oath to watch at least three hours of TV daily. Factory workers began
installing special timers on all new televisions they produced. A number of
laws had been canceled since then... but this one was still in force.
"Achtung!
Newstime in ten minutes! Everybody get ready!"
Sergei glanced at his watch. He still had time before
rapping out the latest news, grinning inanely into the camera. That was
peanuts. Now the briefing at the TV Direktor's office in half an hour, that was
a dirrefent story. All news broadcasts were pre-recorded in conveyor-belt
fashion. The anchors had a list of prompts to choose from, lying in a special
recess on their desk: "a temporary drawback", "decrease in
radiation levels", "economic growth" and "the relative
growth of the reichsmark against the yen". The list had a special set of
phrases adapted to incidents of Schwarzkopf attacks: "needless
cruelty", "civilian casualties" and "terrorism has no
future".
The camera with a silhouette of Rudel on its side
pointed at Sergei.
They may say what
they want but Hans Ulrich is a genius, Sergei thought,
mechanically touching his Versace tie. Much
smarter than Goebbels. The Nazis didn't sleep nights trying to come up with the
very best ways to promote their propaganda but achieved only the opposite:
everyone was sick and tired of politics. And this alcoholic astronaut has come
up with the simplest thing: if you want to control the human brain, you need to
soften it up first. When all you watch is a sequence of inane entertainment
played out to mindless laugh tracks, you don't think. You don't have to choose,
only to react, like Pavlov's dog. Give him a beer and switch the TV to Tonight
with Marlene Dietrich - and you're free
to press his buttons.
Sergei wasn't afraid to admit (mentally at least) his
dislike of the Triumvirate. He considered himself an intellectual; he used the
Shogunet to read banned books online; he even left cautious anonymous comments
supporting the Schwarzkopfs' activities. In all honesty, so did most of Viking
TV workers. Passing a bottle of schnapps around after work, the journalists
would curse the "invaders" political and economic dominance with the
strongest of expressions. Once back in the office, however, they condemned
"guerrilla terrorists" with a double zeal.
"I don't know what to do anymore," Sergei's
fellow anchor Vasily Kolpakov, the Political Department's Sturmführer, had admitted to him
ruefully once. "I think I've developed a reflex. I take my seat, I see the
camera and my mouth just opens and starts to speak. I can't help it. The moment
I see the Führer's portrait on the wall, I can't stop myself."
Every TV worker had a similar set of excuses comprised
of clichés similar to those they had to use on air, "I need to feed my
family", "Somebody else will take my place" and "At least
we have some stability under the Krauts".
The sound of female laughter made him startle.
A manicured finger gave him a flick on the nose.
"Serge darling, what's this for a beak? Did your parents lose a bet with
God?"
Sergei forced a smile. Having swayed her hips one last
time, Masha the makeup lady disappeared round the corner of the corridor.
Wretched bitch! Saying something like that in front of everybody! Someone was
bound to put two and two together. Then it would start all over again: visits
from the SS Race and Settlement Office: 'How did you manage to get past us with
that kind of schnozzle?' Again he'd have to submit his family tree, pass blood
tests and undergo phrenological control. He'd have to grease their palms once
again, too, because they were bound to discover that his maternal great-grandfather
was half-Armenian. Being a non-Aryan wasn't just bad form: it was plain
uncomfortable. To get any job these days, you needed a certificate from the
Race Office.
Sergei knew quite a few people who had sunk all the
way to the gutter, living in one of the Arbeitslagers
- barracks for forced migrant labor employed for the Reichskommissariat's
needs. The statute of Moskau forbade all Aryans to do menial work like sewage
cleaning, railtrack laying or even the selling of fruit at village markets. A
special agreement with the Nippon koku allowed the importation of millions of
Chinese slaves who didn't cost anything and worked 24/7 for a bowl of rice.
This was the kind of life awaiting all non-Aryans.
Sergei shuddered.
Oh, no. He'd rather become a brothel supervisor.
Anything but the arbeitslager.
He switched on the mike. The countdown had already
begun on the plasma screen. Three, two, one...
"Dear Damen
und Herren, welcome back to Viking TV! Let me begin with our headlines. The
Reich's cities are being consumed by a wave of renaming. The citizens of Veliky
Novgorod demand their metropolis be returned its 9th century Swedish name of
Holmgard. This event is supposed to coincide with the building of the temple of
Loki - the Scandinavian god of fire - in the city's main square. Yesterday the
population of Krasnoyarsk sent a petition to the ruler of the Nippon koku,
asking his official permission to be called City of Fragrant Chrysanthemums. A
sushi festival held for the Reich tourists by the new Shichō - that's Mayor to
the rest of us - of Uradziosutoku has been a resounding success. The guests
received balls of rice topped with slices of grayling, dogfish and omul[i].
Abdullo von Zimmerblut, the Führer of the Reichskommissariat Turkestan,
finished Friday prayers in the Ashgabat mosque by issuing a statement
threatening the pig farms of the Reichskommissariat Ukraine with airstrikes.
Meanwhile in the Crimea, Prussian colonists have celebrated the beginning of
the holiday season with fireworks, simultaneously tripling their rent for the
holiday makers. Apparently, this is how they start every summer season which is
why last year tourists chose to ignore this traditional holiday destination.
The new Oberkommandant of Moskau has pronounced traffic jams part of our
national heritage, officially refusing to do anything about them. In Hollywood,
Japanese producers have begun shooting Episode 57 of their blockbuster
Godzilla. This time the giant sea monster is about to head off to Greenland to
destroy an Eskimo village, the last place it hasn't yet been to. Stay with us!
After the commercial break, my colleague Fräulein Irina Nosov will continue
with tonight's news."
A commercial began, showing a very happy, very fat
housewife in a frilly dress who looked like a native of Bavaria, Russland and
Ukraine all rolled into one.
"When I make my wurstsalat," she chirped,
"I always use Eva Braun, the only mayonnaise which offers my food the
taste of the Reich's victories. Low radiation levels, only the best artificial
coloring, and lots of safe anti-cholesterol additives. Eva Braun: the eggs that
taste like those your Wehrmacht granddad stole from the poor old village
lady!"
It was followed back-to-back by an ad for the Benito
pizza chain. Its cooks had topped international rankings with their "Duce
pizza": tomatoes, mozzarella and a cooked carrot fashioned as Pinocchio's
nose. In Moskau, pizza and sushi were in close competition. The ad was nothing
new: shots of steaming pastry and deliciously runny cheese followed by the
promise of a twenty-minute delivery time.
The closing shot showed an actor impersonating Benito
Mussolini, with bulging eyes and a tightly pursed mouth.
"Benito pizza!" he shook his fist at the
camera. "Immortal like the Reich!"
Irina began reading the news, her voice ringing with
enthusiasm. She'd only been working for a couple of months. Normally, new
workers gave it their all.
Funny people, these
Italians, Sergei thought. They
make even a dictatorship look like a circus show. While all we have is the
labored drama and haughty airs. Why is our regime even trying to fight the
Resistance when it's perfectly clear that the Forest Brotherhood can't be
defeated? Why can't they admit that every empire needs an enemy, otherwise it
reduces itself to a street sausage vendor? The kind of affairs happening in the
1940s! Those were the days! Bolshies, Semitic plutocrats, Wall Street
tycoons... We consciously decided to stop blaming the Semites while they had
always been humanity's perfect scape goat. As were the Bolshies - another dream
trademark. So convenient to blame our problems on.
The news edition was over. Sergei scooped his papers
up from the desk. The weather forecast began.
"Have you got your radiation meters on?" the
slim, tall blonde weather girl asked cheerfully. "Well, you shouldn't
have! Today we expect radiation levels to drop considerably. It might have
something to do with the activation of two new sarcophagi around the nuclear
power stations in Voronezh and Kostroma. The temperature is ninety degrees
which is quite normal for December. Enjoy the sun!"
Between the global
warming and radiation leaks, Sergei thought, the inhabitants of Moskau wouldn't know what to do with snow if it
jumped on them. What kinds of times are these? We wear shorts in December; air
conditioners sell like hot cakes. The Reich's plant breeders promise everyone
to start banana plantations. That would officially make us what we've been for
quite some time: a run-of-the-mill banana republic.
He heard footsteps and rose. Two officers in gray
business suits were walking toward him, followed by the news Oberst, pale and
buttoning up his suit jacket as he walked.
"Sergei Kolychev?" one of the strangers
asked, a seven-foot giant.
He nodded, feeling his insides turn to ice. The Gestapo. Did that mean they already
could read human thoughts?
"We need to ask you a question concerning one of
your ex-colleagues."
Sergei was confronted with a small picture. A pencil
sketch.
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