Chapter 1: Poker
The glittering lights of Buenos Aires at night were long behind him when Lang plunged into the heavy, thick darkness of his home. It was still and silent inside. The walls cut off every sound from the street; only the tick-tock of a clock tore at the silence, cutting off every passing minute.
Lang threw his hat on pier-glass table in the hallway and opened a door, revealing a velvet pitch-black room full of the faint yet tart aroma of celluloid.
Lang's home cinema consisted of a tiny projection booth with two projectors and a small theater. A year after Lang had moved into the house he hired workmen to remake a spacious and—for him, useless—living room into a cinema for one solitary viewer.
He switched on the projector and blinked at the bright light that filled the room. He took a flat, tin box out of one of the heavy boxes he'd brought in. It bore a great resemblance to a giant candy box. He scrutinized the label for some time, his graceful fingers wandering over the tin lid.
Finally, he opened the tin. The roll of ebony black film glittered, the sweet, almost intoxicating aroma of new celluloid filling his senses.
///
The projector was ready, the first reel of 'Pygmalion' was in, and a bottle of expensive scotch and an empty glass sparkled in the dark shade of the room.
Lang left that pleasant, enveloping darkness briefly to ensure that all the doors were locked and all the drapes drawn. He held on to the pier-glass in the hallway for a second. Its silver surface reflected a distinguished face with a whimsical mouth and inscrutable green eyes.
The telephone's ring ripped through the silence like the stab of a knife. Lang glanced at the clock—it was quarter past ten. He knew who was calling, and for a few seconds he simply stared at the ringing phone—after all, Professor Higgins and Colonel Pickering were waiting for him next door, far more interesting company than the person calling.
But the caller on the other end of the line knew how Lang felt about late-night telephone calls and held on. Finally, he gave up.
"Yes, I hear you," he answered, the light-hearted tone in his voice a sharp contrast to the impassive expression on his face.
"Landa! You, old rascal, come here—we're set up for poker and badly need your brilliant bluffing!" It was the trembling voice of August Hellstrom, full of his usual false cheer.
Former SS Standartenführer Hans Landa, now known as Caspar Lang, rolled his eyes. He replied in an almost carefree tone, "August, my friend, I'm sure you'll do very well without me—"
"Hell no, Landa! I want to win back what I lost last time! Come on, nothing will happen to your movies; come, we urgently need a worthy competitor!"
Landa paused to gaze at his perfectly groomed nails, letting Hellstrom think he was considering his decision. Finally he replied: "I'm afraid, I'm not in my best shape—"
"That's great," his caller interrupted, "it means I won't be left penniless again."
To hell with you, thought Landa. He glanced at his reflection in the telescope and practiced a friendly smile. When pleased with it, he responded cordially, "My dear August, you know perfectly well that I cannot abandon you when you're under the threat of bad competition in poker. I'll be there in half an hour."
///
Landa believed that weak players were an even greater evil than weak hands in poker. He didn't like card games much; he thought they were a waste of time, but poker he played willingly, provided that the players were good. When they were, each game became his own benefit performance—he was so natural at pretending to restrain his disappointment about his losses at the beginning of the game that even the most experienced player relaxed—and was then hooked. Landa never missed the opportunity to watch the confusion, disappointment and anger of those who lost. After he'd enjoyed their suffering for a while, he would then rise from the table and casually state that he couldn't rob his friends, leaving most of the money on the table.
But now he was heading for Hellstrom's home, where there were no good players, which meant another night spent with useless company.
///
Martha Hellstrom met him at the door. "Hans, my boy, I'm so glad you've come," her voice was weak and colorless. Landa hated when she spoke to him as though he were a child—Martha was only ten years his senior—but then he noticed her dilated pupils and forced smile. Frau Hellstrom was a cocaine addict, and within these last few months her addiction had only grown stronger.
"Dear Martha, how could I possibly ignore your husband's desperate plea?" he put on his standard mask of a sympathetic friend. "How is he?"
Martha didn't even turn towards the living room, which was filled with the drunken laughter and shouts of the poker players.
"He's worse." Martha pulled her silk shawl tighter around her shoulders, as if she were cold. The dim lights and long shadows of the hallway played strange tricks with her face. The shadows around her hollow eyes and her unnatural smile turned into the eye sockets and grin of a skull, startling Landa. He looked away from that deathly countenance.
Martha touched his hand Martha her fingers were ice cold. "They are waiting for you." She turned and went up to her room, and shortly thereafter he heard the hissing and popping of an old gramophone playing a sprightly prewar German tune.
Landa took off his hat, elegantly smoothing his hair back from his forehead, and entered the room with a haughty smile.
"Hans!" the host's cheerful exclamation sank in around the sudden, stilled silence of his guests. Hellstrom was already loaded and didn't care about their reaction to Landa's appearance. Landa stepped to the table, and the dim lamp lit his face like a floodlight.
"August," he nodded to his host. "Why, Herr Hoffman, Willy, Albrecht – you are here, too!" He lavished radiant smiles on the other guests, ignoring their dark, hostile stares.
The effect his presence had on others always made Landa feel an almost indescribable, cruel pleasure. Every time he appeared in public among his acquaintances from the war, all eyes were instantly fixed on him, and especially on his high forehead, once so fine but now blemished with the still prominent swastika-shaped scar—a parting gift from the commander of the American Inglourious Basterd squad, Lieutenant Aldo Raine. The fear in their eyes was a feast for Landa, because he could see each person live through those appalling minutes and experience his humiliation. It was at these moments that Landa thought he was in fact the only untainted, unmarked man in the room, and the rest of them actually bore the hideous scar on their foreheads. It was especially gratifying to him that this particular effect was not a one-time occurrence; it happened every time he appeared in his friends' circle.
"August," Landa broke the silence, and in an almost frivolous tone, asked, "You haven't squandered away all your money yet, have you? May I win some, too?"
"Come, take a seat," Hellstrom pointed to a vacant chair, "we shall clean out these sharks, me and you!"
Landa would have preferred the company of Lon Chaney and Boris Karloff to that at the table – two youngsters whose parents took them away to Argentina when the war broke out, the increasingly corpulent veterinarian Hoffman, who had worked as a doctor in Dachau, and August Hellstrom, whom Landa had known long before the Anschluss.
Poker was little more than entertainment to his host. August Hellstrom never passed and always played for high stakes, even if his hand was weak. He was sixty-two; his bald head shone in the lamp light like polished ivory, his pale gnarled fingers clutching his cards. Cancer had attacked his lungs several months ago and now his body was failing, like wax melting in fire; the only thing August could console himself with at this stage was drinking and gambling. He sat between Willy and Albrecht, and compared to these rosy-cheeked, fair-haired youngsters he looked like the living dead. The contrast was made even more striking by the fact that August talked a great deal, usually loudly—mostly tall tales about his pre-war life—with numerous expressive gestures, whereas Willy and Albrecht sat still and silent, as though frozen in place.
It was not the first time that Landa had played in this company, and he knew well the habits of the other players. Hoffman was always extremely cautious; he staked low and closely observed the stakes of the other players. Bluffing was lost on him, because he was too absorbed in the financial aspects of the game, always busily calculating. But lots of low stakes could easily wear him down. Willy and Albrecht were shy at first, they confused the rules and didn't watch their stakes, but then they were quickly carried away by the game and abandoned all caution.
Landa knew exactly how the evening would proceed. They would play one or two games, then the cooing Marika Rökk on the gramophone record sound from behind the wall. Martha would appear in the doorway, offering them coffee. Everyone except Landa would refuse. Then Hellstrom would run out of spirits and open a new bottle. This is how it always was—they would play poker, puffing on cigars or cigarettes, drinking coffee, gin, or whiskey—until four in the morning.
The almost-scripted evening advanced flawlessly, with the hosts and the guests all playing their parts, without inspiration as it were, when suddenly Hellstrom remarked, "Dieter would have been thirty-four this week."
It seemed to Landa that another dead man had joined them at the table. Hoffman stared at the pile of bank notes and coins in the middle of the table. Willy and Albrecht ignored the remark. Each suspected the other of cheating and tried to peer at each other's hands. They were hothouse plants, after all, grown far from the war, and the name of Dieter Hellstrom meant nothing to them.
"What do you think? Would he have made oberstleutenant?"
"I'm sure he would have," Landa didn't want to go further into the subject.
August poured himself another full glass of gin, took a sip and went on. "He was a very talented boy, wasn't he, Hans?"
"One of the best." Hans offered the shadow of a mournful smile, but his eyes were still cold.
"One of the best…" August smiled with pride. "He would boast that the words "Good morning!" were enough for him to distinguish where a person was from."
Dieter Hellstrom, a Gestapo major, really had been one of the best young officers to serve in the Reich's armed forces. He was a true bloodhound, an outstanding dog of the Fuhrer's pack. Defining accents was his forte. Hellstrom-junior could distinguish not only German and Western-European dialects, but also a great number of accents of the former Austria-Hungarian Empire. This wonderful gift made him the perfect spy-hunter, and it was this same gift that killed him. Dieter Hellstrom died in a tiny basement bar—the "Louisiana" —in the French village of Nadine, where he was tracking his last, entirely accidental capture, which would have brought him the best trophy of his career.
Landa had seen his body with his own eyes; riddled with shots, lying on the floor among cigarette stubs and broken glass. Both the hunter and his prey were dead. There were two bodies near Hellstrom— Wilhelm Wicki and Hugo Stiglitz, both members of the Inglourious Basterds squad—as well as the corpse of British Lieutenant Archie Hickox, disguised as a hauptsturmfuhrer.
Although none of the eyewitnesses were alive, it was not difficult to see how it all happened – Dieter's keen ear must have caught Hickox's British accent, and he just couldn't let the opportunity to capture him pass, even though he was alone. He had probably been too excited to acknowledge that the forces were unequal. Even so, Hellstrom would have been proud of himself—Aldo Raine lost two of his men, and the ingenious "Operation Kino" turned into a trivial farce.
"They called him Landa Junior," boasted August, "He could have become an oberstleutenant…"
Or he could have been hanged from a gibbet with the rest of the Reich's finest, Landa thought with bitter irony. He looked at the clock and was relieved to see that it was already past four.
"Why don't we finish this hand and call it a day? I'm running out of money," he said briskly. His "confession" made Willy and Albrecht suddenly smile cheerfully.
"It seems you were right—it's not your day!" August winked at him and drained the last of his gin.
Landa offered a false sheepish smile and shrugged his shoulders. He could see the faint stains of pale light at the floor near the window and was more than ready to escape this vault. He willingly lost the rest of his cash.
While Willy and Albrecht shoved their scanty winnings into their pockets, and Hoffman buttoned up his cloak, Landa—a cunning smile on his face— told August obscene anecdotes in a low voice. When the rest of the guests had left the Hellstrom home, he put on his hat and pulled it slightly over his eyes, like a villain from a film noir. He scrutinized himself in the mirror for some time, evaluating his looks.
The gramophone scratched out "Ich brauche keine Millionen" to its conclusion, and Martha Hellstrom emerged to see Landa out.
She started telling him something—something about August, but he didn't hear her. His thoughts were already carrying him back home. Nevertheless, he was gallant enough not to betray his impatience and boredom. He bid a courteous farewell to Martha and slipped out into the twilight of the hall corridor, where the light of dawn breaking could be seen in the big window.
The pearl of the morning beckoned him with its cool air and the subtle scent of damp leaves. A new day was breaking.