Book description
Rudolf Waltz's principal objection to life was that it was too easy
to make horrible mistakes. He was himself to become a double-murderer
at the age of twelve - on Mother's Day. This would at least make
subsequent mistakes seem fairly trivial.
Rudolf's father, Otto Waltz, had in 1910 bought a painting in Vienna
from a destitute Adolf Hitler, thereby possibly saving him from
starvation for a future generation. He made the further mistake of
setting himself up as an artist when he returned from Europe to
Midland City, Ohio, where everyone knew Otto couldn't draw for sour
apples. He had funds to indulge this grand illusion (in the splendor
of a vast converted 'medieval granary' studio, reminiscent of Mount
Fujiyama) because his father had made a fortune producing an
opium-and-cocaine-laced quack medicine called Saint Elmo's Remedy,
popularly known to be 'absolutely harmless unless discontinued'. The
Waltz inheritance even stretched to a troupe of black servants, which
was just as well since Rudy's mother was as disinclined to look after
a home as his 'artist' father was to paint.
