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  'Ssshh!' said the innkeeper's wife. 'Listen! I think your husband is coming.'

  The doctor walked over to the door and opened it and looked out into the corridor.

  'Herr Hitler?'

  'Yes.'

  'Come in, please.'

  A small man in a dark-green uniform stepped softly into the room and looked around him.

  'Congratulations,' the doctor said. 'You have a son.'

  The man had a pair of enormous whiskers meticulously groomed after the manner of the Emperor Franz Josef, and he smelled strongly of beer. 'A son?'

  'Yes.'

  'How is he?'

  'He is fine. So is your wife.'

  'Good.' The father turned and walked with a curious little prancing stride over to the bed where his wife was lying. 'Well, Klara,' he said, smiling through his whiskers. 'How did it go?' He bent down to take a look at the baby. Then he bent lower. In a series of quick jerky movements, he bent lower and lower until his face was only about twelve inches from the baby's head. The wife lay sideways on the pillow, staring up at him with a kind of supplicating look.

  'He has the most marvellous pair of lungs,' the innkeeper's wife announced. 'You should have heard him screaming just after he came into this world.'

  'But my God, Klara ...'

  'What is it, dear?'

  'This one is even smaller than Otto was!'

  The doctor took a couple of quick paces forward. 'There is nothing wrong with that child,' he said.

  Slowly, the husband straightened up and turned away from the bed and looked at the doctor. He seemed bewildered and stricken. 'It's no good lying, Doctor,' he said. 'I know what it means. It's going to be the same all over again.'

  'Now you listen to me,' the doctor said.

  'But do you know what happened to the others, Doctor?'

  'You must forget about the others, Herr Hitler. Give this one a chance.'

  'But so small and weak!'

  'My dear sir, he has only just been born.'

  'Even so ...'

  'What are you trying to do?' cried the innkeeper's wife. 'Talk him into his grave?'

  'That's enough!' the doctor said sharply.

  The mother was weeping now. Great sobs were shaking her body.

  The doctor walked over to the husband and put a hand on his shoulder. 'Be good to her,' he whispered. 'Please. It is very important.' Then he squeezed the husband's shoulder hard and began pushing him forward surreptitiously to the edge of the bed. The husband hesitated. The doctor squeezed harder, signalling to him urgently through fingers and thumb. At last, reluctantly, the husband bent down and kissed his wife lightly on the cheek.

  'All right, Klara,' he said. 'Now stop crying.'

  'I have prayed so hard that he will live, Alois.'

  'Yes.'

  'Every day for months I have gone to the church and begged on my knees that this one will be allowed to live.'

  'Yes, Klara, I know.'

  'Three dead children is all that I can stand, don't you realize that?'

  'Of course.'

  'He must live, Alois. He must, he must ... Oh God, be merciful unto him now ...'

  Pig

  [1959]

  I

  Once upon a time, in the City of New York, a beautiful baby boy was born into this world, and the joyful parents named him Lexington.

  No sooner had the mother returned home from the hospital carrying Lexington in her arms than she said to her husband, 'Darling, now you must take me out to a most marvellous restaurant for dinner so that we can celebrate the arrival of our son and heir.'

  Her husband embraced her tenderly and told her that any woman who could produce such a beautiful child as Lexington deserved to go absolutely any place she wanted. But was she strong enough yet, he inquired, to start running around the city late at night?

  No, she said, she wasn't. But what the hell.

  So that evening they both dressed themselves up in fancy clothes, and leaving little Lexington in care of a trained infant's nurse who was costing them twenty dollars a day and was Scottish into the bargain, they went out to the finest and most expensive restaurant in town. There they each ate a giant lobster and drank a bottle of champagne between them, and after that, they went on to a nightclub, where they drank another bottle of champagne and then sat holding hands for several hours while they recalled and discussed and admired each individual physical feature of their lovely newborn son.

  They arrived back at their house on the East Side of Manhattan at around two o'clock in the morning and the husband paid off the taxi-driver and then began feeling in his pockets for the key to the front door. After a while, he announced that he must have left it in the pocket of his other suit, and he suggested they ring the bell and get the nurse to come down and let them in. An infant's nurse at twenty dollars a day must expect to be hauled out of bed occasionally in the night, the husband said.

  So he rang the bell. They waited. Nothing happened. He rang it again, long and loud. They waited another minute. Then they both stepped back on to the street and shouted the nurse's name (McPottle) up at the nursery windows on the third floor, but there was still no response. The house was dark and silent. The wife began to grow apprehensive. Her baby was imprisoned in this place, she told herself. Alone with McPottle. And who was McPottle? They had known her for two days, that was all, and she had a thin mouth, a small disapproving eye, and a starchy bosom, and quite clearly she was in the habit of sleeping much too soundly for safety. If she couldn't hear the front-door bell, then how on earth did she expect to hear a baby crying? Why, this very second the poor thing might be swallowing its tongue or suffocating on its pillow.

  'He doesn't use a pillow,' the husband said. 'You are not to worry. But I'll get you in if that's what you want.' He was feeling rather superb after all the champagne, and now he bent down and undid the laces of one of his black patent-leather shoes, and took it off. Then, holding it by the toe, he flung it hard and straight right through the dining-room window on the ground floor.

  'There you are,' he said, grinning. 'We'll deduct it from McPottle's wages.'

  He stepped forward and very carefully put a hand through the hole in the glass and released the catch. Then he raised the window.

  'I shall lift you in first, little mother,' he said, and he took his wife round the waist and lifted her off the ground. This brought her big red mouth up level with his own, and very close, so he started kissing her. He knew from experience that women like very much to be kissed in this position, with their bodies held tight and their legs dangling in the air, so he went on doing it for quite a long time, and she wiggled her feet, and made loud gulping noises down in her throat. Finally, the husband turned her round and began easing her gently through the open window into the dining-room. At this point, a police patrol car came nosing silently along the street towards them. It stopped about thirty yards away, and three cops of Irish extraction leaped out of the car and started running in the direction of the husband and wife, brandishing revolvers.

  'Stick 'em up!' the cops shouted. 'Stick 'em up!' But it was impossible for the husband to obey this order without letting go of his wife, and had he done this she would either have fallen to the ground or would have been left dangling half in and half out of the house, which is a terribly uncomfortable position for a woman; so he continued gallantly to push her upwards and inwards through the window. The cops, all of whom had received medals before for killing robbers, opened fire immediately, and although they were still running, and although the wife in particular was presenting them with a very small target indeed, they succeeded in scoring several direct hits on each body - sufficient anyway to prove fatal in both cases.

  Thus, when he was no more then twelve days old, little Lexington became an orphan.

  II

  The news of this killing, for which the three policemen subsequently received citations, was eagerly conveyed to all relatives of the deceased couple by newspaper reporters, and the next morn