The Vengeance of Rome (45 page)

I can never forget those films taken in Egypt. What if they should turn up some day? The likelihood is not impossible. Röhm, Hitler, Streicher and Rosenberg all have extensive collections of erotica. I cannot remember
whether my face was ever visible or not. Röhm, of course, would not need to see my face to recognise me.

Mrs Cornelius and I went to the pictures every Friday afternoon. We had pensioners' passes. But when the Essoldo in Portobello Road changed to the Electric Cinema it became impossible. We had been able to see three features at the Essoldo for 1/6. The Electric charges you a pound for one foreign film whose photography is out of focus, whose plot is indecipherable and whose subject appears to be the director. Progress, indeed. All that has not changed are the seats and the sound system, which remain as bad.

I saw the work of the transvestite adman Warthole there. Naked boys pretending to be cowboys and vampires. What is so original about it? I asked. They were not so long ago, those wonderful parties. Some SA wag called it the ‘Kaligulahof'. ‘Mr Handy Andy' should make a film about that villa, its luxuries and elaborate fantasies. I could help him. I could write the script. I am not ashamed. Nobody was forced. Those Hitler Youth lads had as much fun as anyone. Besides, I had no choice. Kind-hearted as he was, Captain Röhm was used to being obeyed. He became my only source of income after Mussolini's money stopped arriving. I had enemies in Rome, but I could not investigate, of course.

Mrs Cornelius was quite aware of my circumstances. She never blamed me. She thinks perhaps I should have anticipated the problems. But how could I anticipate what happened? How could anyone? People judge you too readily. They think you deliberately choose your fate. They do not understand how you gradually slide into situations from which escape becomes impossible. What seems a temporary diversion on your life's road looks, in the perspective of history, like a culmination, an example of your inner evil! But I had absolutely nothing to do with any murder. I still could not swear who killed her. Those who knew were shot or fled into exile. Father Stempfle was killed in Dachau, but I never saw him there. Stempfle was one of the keys. Who has heard of him today? The past disappears without record. History becomes a means by which we escape from shame or promote our special interests. We invent whatever we need and forget whatever is inconvenient. Such is life in this sordid Disneyland where wealthy tourists bring in the only money.

Walt Disney was inspired by Mussolini's idealism. He wanted to build a benign corporate state where every American was happy and nothing ever happened to anyone. He died before he could realise this utopia, but they froze his head so that he can return at any time to redeem us. He made
so many dreams seem real. I am forced to face the fact that all my dreams came to nothing.

‘Up like the rocket and down like the stick,' says Mrs Cornelius, guiding me from the newsagent and back into the crowd. ‘That's you all over, Ivan.' A pack of miniature mongrels runs past, under one stall and out of another. A cyclist swerves to avoid them and falls against a display of tomatoes. We move expertly away from the conflict. We have reached the old core of the market, where fruit and veg are still sold, where frustrated locals make every effort to hold their own against the foreign influx. They sell the boojies the rotten tomatoes and the bruised fruit. Friday it is mostly hippies and scalp-heads, dealers of every description. They bring no money in. Whatever they make they take away again.

Here the shops are cleaner and sell recognisable things. We pass both rival fishmongers' slabs, the cheap butcher's, the chain baker's, the white goods shop, the draper's, the hardware shop, the electrician's, the Venicia Café and the baby shop. As we approach the pawnshop, the black bulk of Bishop Beesley, not at first recognisable as human, blocks our way. He is considerably fatter than Göring and, of course, is not a real bishop. His real name is Billy the Mouth and he is again released from prison. Like his daughter he is a confidence trickster. Mitzi is currently in Holloway. They rarely meet. Beesley is wearing his familiar dark suit and pullover, a white shirt just visible. It gives him the ecclesiastical look he feels comfortable with. He wipes his hand on a blue handkerchief. ‘My dear Colonel! And the lovely Mrs C.!'

He is meeting a mutual friend in the Blenheim Arms, he says. He insists we have a quick one on him. His ship recently came in. ‘In a small way, you know.'

Mrs Cornelius accepts, and I cannot be rude. We leave Portobello Road and enter the pub's graveolent interior. Quintessentially English, the smell of fried pies and cigarillos blend with bitter beer and harsh spirits. Dark shoulders press together. Little women, holding their own like defiant fowl, slip in and out with glasses of wine. Shifty boys pass miniature paper envelopes back and forth and argue over money. They glance at well-groomed office girls who sit at the bar grinning and smoking or rummaging through their purses. On the other side of the counter the glowering features of little Mo Collier glare with contempt on all and everything. The world is not up to standard. He smoothes his carefully cut moustache. His neat, dark head sports another idiosyncratic haircut, doubtless the current fashion. ‘Near-mutton dressed as almost-lamb,' says Mrs Cornelius spitefully. She was
never prepared to like him. He stands with his eyes avoiding his customers, flexing his muscles and catching glimpses of himself in the polished copper. A pocket Hercules in his fashionable sports vest. The Bishop insists on his attention. ‘Two halves please, Mo, and a small, dry sherry. Ah, there she is!'

A coiffure that was once pure Pre-Raphaelite flame, but now owes something to Mr Sonya in Elgin Crescent, bobs above the mass. Miss Brunner used to run a local girls' school before the scandal. She is now in private tuition and dresses with the same tempting severity which makes the Bishop her slave. As far as we know, there is no other man in her life. The Cornelius boys tell stories, but neither can ever be trusted to know the truth, let alone tell it. Her uncompromising grey-blue eyes note our presence and are lowered in a brief greeting. She bears herself with a kind of diseased dignity. She is thoroughly groomed but cannot disguise the aura of corruption which surrounds her. She has no power to charm, only to command. She takes a Pernod and makes it clear she has come to meet the Bishop, not chat with us.

A long head hunched in a corduroy donkey jacket turns from the bar. Frank, Mrs Cornelius's youngest boy. His features are inclined to sag. I think he is on morphine, like Göring. They say he works for Hoogstraten, the property tycoon, and tends to ape his new boss. He wears a striped Jaeger shirt and an old school tie. He is better groomed than his brother, at least. He smiles at me, says something to a companion and comes over. Tentatively Frank kisses his mother, apparently unsure what he will pick up. He squeezes my arm in an aggressive and unwanted demonstration of camaraderie. ‘How's tricks, Colonel?'

They are always here on Fridays. Even Major Nye comes in on occasions but was offered voluntary retirement and can only rarely afford the fare from Kent. Family business is now his only excuse for visiting the city. We see a few others from time to time. We are the survivors, I suppose. Our means of survival might not always bear much discussion, but I name no names. We have no power. Therefore we cultivate tolerance. The acceptance, I suppose, of the inevitable. We huddle together for comfort. We remind one another of our stories and our great days. Most of us have had a few of those, at least.

I had no plans to spend more than a week with Captain Röhm, but he insisted I stay. Also at his insistence, and with some relief, I shaved off my imperial. He appreciated the action. I was his ideal companion, he said, for this wonderful idyllic place. Then friends turned up. Before I knew it a week had gone and then another. Messengers were sent to the post office, but
nothing arrived for me. I had to stay there. Röhm was sometimes absent for a day or two, but there was plenty to do. I spent hours wandering around the vast uncompleted villa. The chief bedrooms and bathrooms were in use and there was a large public room, but most of the rest was only half finished. Röhm never had time to let the builders come back. Somebody was always staying there. But when I was on my own, I might be the last man on Earth.

The spirits of hunters and woodsmen had inhabited the thick, surrounding wooded hills since the beginning of time. I had rarely experienced such peace. I found a beautiful illustrated set of Karl May and absorbed myself in tales of
Old Shatterhand
and
Winnetou the Kiowa
. Röhm also shared Hitler's taste for Edgar Wallace who was, he said, the soundest of British writers in their best traditions. Wallace had been a professional soldier, and like Buchan had a pretty clear idea of the Jew question. On Röhm's recommendation I read
The Fellowship of the Frog
and one or two others. They had none of the appeal of the best Sexton Blake stories and were interesting only when they described some aspect of London criminal life. Through them I grew to know Limehouse, Soho and even Wapping, which was where Wallace was raised, by a bookie, with Jews on all sides.

Forgetting the questions which shadowed my mind, I could read in perfect tranquillity. There was never any threat. One was never taken unawares. Röhm had guards posted at every approach. He feared only the communists. Brodmann could not find me.

According to the rules, Röhm or his aides, but not guests, could make telephone calls. It seemed impolitic to try to contact Mussolini, but I began to wonder what he would think if I had disappeared. Believing me the victim of foreign agents, he might send people to look for me, to rescue me. It would be best if I got in touch with him soon. Why had my money been stopped? I made plans to return to Munich. I neither wished to end my idyll nor offend the great Stabschef, but I have an exaggerated sense of loyalty. I felt it my duty to go, at least for a while. Reluctantly my host agreed, and at the beginning of August on a particularly hot day, I returned to the Königshof.

There was some problem with a room. They had been told of my absence and put my trunks in storage. But they had not been told of my return. I was waiting impatiently for the matter to be settled and crossed the lobby to buy a
Völkischer Beobachter
when suddenly I was on the other side of the revolving newspaper rack staring into the frigid face of the Baroness von Ruckstühl.

I was too surprised and too exhausted to pretend. I lifted my hat.

‘My God!' she said. ‘Where have you been? You smell like a whore.'

The mistake was a genuine one. Having no time to bathe, I had borrowed some of Röhm's cologne before leaving the house.

‘Good afternoon, Leda,' I said. ‘You look well. Are you a guest here, too?'

‘Why should I be a guest here?' She spoke belligerently, without affection, but I sensed a quiver of the old spark.

I must admit I was reluctant to leave her until I had some idea of what she was doing in Munich. Knowing her hatred of me from the incident on the train, I blew, as best I could, upon older embers. I told her how attractive she was, how she had lost none of her sex appeal, her beauty. Could we perhaps have tea together? A woman of that age is always hungry for such praise. She told me, rather urgently, that she was married. She was now Frau Oberhauser. She did not warm to me. I said it would be good to speak to her alone, to go over old times, to tell her what had happened to me, how I had been trying to contact her. Neither of us referred to the meeting on the train. I was now, of course, clean-shaven.

‘But you have nothing to tell me,' she said. ‘I already know all there is to know.' Her smile was unfriendly.

‘I do not understand,' I said. ‘I have been abroad for so long.'

‘Indeed,' she said. She was lucky enough to be in possession of an entire dossier on my movements since I had left Constantinople and turned up in Paris in the expatriate community. She had some wonderful news cuttings from America, for instance. As she murmured her triumph, I could barely keep my composure. She spoke quietly and we were not overheard, but I suspect she did not care if there were listeners. It appeared, she said, that I had swindled my way across at least two continents before hiding myself in Cairo.

I told her that I had had no chance of defending myself. I had been protecting others. She knew me. Was I a monster?

I do not believe I have ever been as wounded by laughter. I begged her to take a glass of tea with me. ‘And now I know where you are,' she said, and swept into the crowded lobby, leaving through the glass doors to a car. I still did not know where she lived. All I had was a name. I seriously regretted my impatience in leaving Röhmannsvilla.

It took several hours for a room to be found for me. Some sort of crisis was afoot. The political situation in Germany remained highly volatile. Banks were closing down, and ordinary people were panicking. The radio and newspapers appealed for people to keep their heads. But they had nothing else to lose. There were dozens of rumours about seizures of power,
tycoons fleeing the country, a peasant army on its way to Berlin. They grew increasingly fantastic. I had too many other things on my mind. I tried to put a telephone call through to Rome, to Margherita Sarfatti. I could contact no one else without arousing suspicion.

I barely understood the news. So much had been going on, I suppose, that it was impossible to explain. New names were everywhere. Old ones had vanished. This situation was critical. That one was calm. In the end I decided to wait until I met a party friend who would explain everything to me.

Luckily the hotel made no fuss about my bill. They had been reassured earlier by Putzi's involvement with me and had seen me arrive in an SA car flying the Stabschef's flag. My room was a little small and at the back of the hotel looking down on the garages, but I was lucky to have it.

I made several more telephone calls. Erna Hanfstaengl, Putzi's sister, told me her brother was in Berlin. ‘They're all in Berlin, Max. There's a different crisis every twenty-four hours. I doubt if anyone will be back in Munich until the weekend at least.'