'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 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.'