He limped off across the empty field, calling back quietly:
«I'll be in your car outside, waiting. If you want, I am yours for the final scenes. If not, no, and that ends it.»
The director and the producer waited until Adolf had climbed to the top of the stadium. They could hear his voice drift down, cursing those other three, the man with the bushy eyebrows, the fat man, and the ugly chimpanzee, calling them many things, waving his hands. The three backed off and went away, gone.
Adolf stood alone high in the cold October air.
The director gave him a final lift of the sound volume. The crowd, obedient, banged out a last «Sieg Heil.»
Adolf lifted Ms free hand, not into a salute, but some sort of old, easy, half-collapsed mid-Atlantic wave. Then he was gone, too.
The sunlight went with him. The sky was no longer blood-coloured. The wind blew dust and want-ads from a German paper across the stadium floor.
«Son of a bitch,» muttered the old man. «Let's get out of here.»
They left the torches to burn and the flags to blow, but shut off the sound equipment.
«Wish I'd brought a record of Yankee Doodle to march us out of here,» said the director.
«Who needs records. We'll whistle. Why not?»
«Why not!»
He held the old man's elbow going up the stairs in the dusk, but it was only halfway up, they had the guts to try to whistle.
And then it was suddenly so funny they couldn't finish the tune.
