The Vengeance of Rome (69 page)

While I now had my friends back, I was still something of a prisoner in Corneliusstrasse. Mrs Cornelius, Mr Mix and Seryozha were not always available to me, and I wondered if the film contract would ever become reality. I was again beginning to resume my earlier plan of getting to Mr Green, my Uncle Semyon's agent in England, picking up my inheritance and, if possible, settling in the UK for a while.

It crossed my mind that the British Foreign Office would be more than interested in what I had to show them. Von Schirach and Röhm had so far failed to interest anyone in my designs. Röhm said it was because everyone's attention was focused on getting and keeping power. Hitler had promised him the Reichswehr if he played a good hand. He told me not to approach Göring, whom he loathed increasingly, and I was beginning to wonder if Ernstie had any serious intention of helping me.

If it had not been for Baldur von Schirach, I might have despaired of the NSDAP altogether. I had some substantial conversations with the Youth Leader. Von Schirach shared my enthusiasm for the future. Once he saw my designs, he was ecstatic. Instinct told me he would understand them. He was deeply impressed. ‘But Herr Peters, you are a genius! I had no idea you possessed such sophisticated engineering skills. Surely you have studied at a great university!' I told him how I had been the youngest Professor of Physics at St Petersburg University.

‘Russia?' He was startled, frowning, no doubt working out my age.

Of course not, I told him. Florida. Thus I avoided a too complicated explanation. I had forgotten it was unwise to say anything of my Russian education or even of the important aristocrats with whom I mixed in those days. I had friends to protect. My American passport was worth too much to me. There was, too, always a chance that Mussolini would realise how he had been tricked into turning against me and recall me to Rome, even though I now had work, plentiful sources of
sneg
from the hospitable Prince Freddy, and a pleasant choice of lovers.

Little Zoyea continued to drag me to the cowboy pictures, even as I prepared for my rôle as the great Lord of the Prairie. I was besotted with her. She, of course, was equally besotted, mostly with my fame, though I think she saw in me some kind of twin spirit. Our ‘romance' blossomed. Her father, knowing our relationship to be as harmless as Lewis Carroll with his Alices, continued to smile on us especially since I was able to keep his organ and those of his extended family in spanking condition for a fraction of what it would cost them elsewhere. So I remained a popular fellow in Munich's ‘Little Italy'.

One Saturday night, when I had returned home from the Fraus' alone, I found a black Mercedes and its driver outside Corneliusstrasse. I recognised both, and sure enough Röhm was waiting for me when I got upstairs. He was a little distracted. While he had made every attempt to protect me, Frau Oberhauser had grown suspicious of his delays and wanted to know when I would be arrested. She now had the ear of Göring, and possibly of Goebbels, and she was threatening to take her case against me to them! Röhm was doing everything he could, but he wasn't sure how much longer he could keep her away from the others. We would have to make a decision soon. I told my friend and patron he could make whatever decision was necessary, as long as her lies did not become public. I was about to embark on an important new aspect of my career. She could ruin me. She could destroy me. Soon I would have some money. If that would help, he would have my first cheque. He embraced me very tenderly and said that would not be necessary. Indeed, he had brought me an envelope.

There was something profoundly sensitive about his last, almost embarrassed kiss.

In the following weeks my life changed dramatically. In spite of his geniality in Rome, Doctor Hugenberg was at first by no means friendly. He probably saw me as a rival for Mrs Cornelius's affections. He was mollified to some large extent by my enthusiasm for the great Karl May, my contempt for those who had attempted to blacken his name.

With his impeccably waxed iron-grey moustache, a sparkling grin and a rather boyish enthusiasm for flags and uniforms, Hugenberg was a man of about my height, of stiff, rather than military bearing with old-world charm. He wore high collars, pre-war finery. He had not served at the front but admired men of action and loved the cinema. During the War he had risen high in the ranks of Krupp. He still had connections to the firm but had realised early how control of the media was of utmost importance in a populist democracy. Bit by bit he had gained majority holdings in almost all
the important German studios. He also purchased many publications and was now in a position to publicise his own films and promote his own political ideas in a dozen popular forms. Hugenberg was no socialist and rather suspected Hitler's socialism. He was in fact a convinced monarchist, pointing to British and Scandinavian stability under a constitutional monarch. But he was a realist, prepared to believe what he called ‘the brown rabble' to be a useful defence against Bolshevism.

When Doctor Hugenberg learned from Mrs Cornelius that I had fought against the Reds and was an officer in the White Cossack cavalry, his manner warmed all the more. He wanted to know how a young American flyer had wound up in such strange circumstances. I said that I had wanted to take a crack at the Bolshevists. In normal times, of course, I would not have risen to the rank of Colonel. He understood, he said. He knew how rapidly they had wiped out White officers wherever they could. A relative of his was a great friend of Hetman Skorapadsky. He had heard some wonderful tales of Cossack courage. I had a poorer opinion of the Hetman. He had fled back to Berlin leaving us at the mercy of Petlyura, for whom I had been forced to build my Violet Ray and who failed to save Kiev because he lacked the sense to defend the electric power lines feeding my invention.

Petlyura was assassinated in Paris by an angry Jew furious at his alleged pogroms, but his lieutenants were ingratiating themselves with the German authorities as White exiles. The only thing Greens had in common with Whites was that both had been defeated by the Blacks and the Reds in alliance. That the Reds had betrayed the Blacks was almost inevitable, so now we even had Blacks, as well as disaffected Reds and Greens, pretending to be White. Enough, Mrs Cornelius remarked, to turn anyone Blue. Meanwhile, Hitler's Browns made strategic alliances with men offering the bright, multicoloured banners of monarchy! He was convinced, said Doctor Hugenberg at dinner one night, that variety and tolerance were the watchwords of a constitutional monarchy. A republic was always too open to corruption. Look at America with her gangsters and crooked judges! Karl May himself made such points in his romances.

I reminded my new employer how, as Russia collapsed into chaos, I consoled myself with the works of Karl May, absorbing the tales of Arab and Apache, which May had collected on his own adventurings in the Middle East and Far West. Baron Huggy Bear smiled when I assured him that no calumnies levelled against that great German novelist by Red cynicism or right revisionism would ever be received by me with anything but the utmost contempt and disgust. I reminded him that Benito Mussolini,
also a keen reader as well as a published novelist, supported King Victor Emmanuel. Hugenberg let me know that Hitler, too, was a fan, though, sadly, scarcely a king. A set of May's books had accompanied Albert Schweitzer into the Congo on his personal mission of honour. A great Christian, said Hugenberg dutifully. He himself was a devout Catholic and was clearly relieved to know of my Spanish connections and my uncle, the cardinal.

Hugenberg had heard good reports of me from the more sophisticated party members such as von Schirach. He knew, of course, that I was a friend of Mussolini's and was glad I had become a co-religionist.

I now regret that for a while I turned away from the faith of my ancestors and embraced Rome. Sometimes it was not always easy to find others of my faith or a place to pray. I have to satisfy that spiritual dimension. I needed to pray and could not always choose where I prayed. I prayed to my mother. I prayed for Esmé. I prayed even in that synagogue. I prayed in the cathedral. For some years my yearning soul sent its messages up to heaven and received no answer.

In Germany I often felt that God had deserted not only me but the whole country. Was He in those elaborate Baroque churches with their pink cherubs and blue-eyed staring angels, their simpering Jesuses? The Greek Church is solid, its artefacts direct reminders of the early Church. These South German churches are infected with sentimental Lutheranism of the worst sort, their relish for the Baroque making them more like the contents of a confectioner's window than a place of worship. Believe me, my flirtation with Rome did not last for long, but while it was necessary, I had to accept the best option.

At least during my time in Italy and Southern Europe I learned to understand the Romish Church. In the end it too betrayed me. There is only one foundation and expression of my inner faith, the true core of my belief, the first Church of the Christians ruled over by the benign Greek whose spiritual centre lies in Byzantium. But when in Rome, as the English always say, speak as the Romans. The Serbian Church in Latimer Road has some of that old spirit.

These churches embrace me. They are stern and take their religion seriously. Even there I do not always find sanctuary. I was in the Moscow Road church when I was arrested and charged with those loathsome crimes. Is there no respect any longer for holy sanctuary? Whoever hated me enough to accuse me, to infect innocent ears with such filth, can have no hope at all for their eternal soul.

Nothing was ever proven, of course. Before God, I am innocent. I know that my looks are against me. The English suspect anyone who is not exactly of their pink-and-pale-grey complexion. If your face has not been hacked by razors and exposed to its daily dose of grimy rain, you are at once suspect. Perhaps you bathe too much? Perhaps you have beliefs? Perhaps you are going to disturb the order of things, befriend their open-minded children, put foreign notions into their heads, infect them with broader ideas than the narrow xenophobic snobbery which the British call an education? Sometimes I yearn for Germany in the old days.

In the intervening weeks I saw nothing of Röhm. I received the occasional word via von Schirach, but the Nazi elite were completely absorbed in politics. I was desperately short of money and forced to borrow what I could. While I could not rely on Mrs Cornelius for ‘snow', I was lucky in my acquaintance with Kitty, for she had unlimited supplies. But she was proving an exhausting mistress. She found my little place in Corneliusstrasse insufficiently comfortable, she said. She hated the area, too. Occasionally we would go back to Prince Freddy's bizarre and elegant apartment, but I never felt at home there. Kitty apparently felt no jealousy towards Mrs Cornelius but knew nothing of Heckie. Kitty was familiar with every foible and perversion in the sexual almanac and would have suspected me of all kinds of obscenity. Finally, to placate her, I promised her I would soon have a new, more suitable flat.

As soon as Doctor Hugenberg had personally interviewed him in London, our Old Shatterhand finally arrived to join us. Desmond Reid was in fact an excellent version of just the tight-lipped, arrogant type of Englishman I described. He wore blazers and perfect flannels, an Ascot stock at his neck rather than a tie. His square-jawed good looks and pencil-thin moustache were typical of the contemporary English actor.

Reid had already made several films with Hitchcock in Germany and England. He had featured in a number of ‘Sexton Blake' serials as Blake's arch-enemy, the albino Count Zenith. Indeed, I admired him in the movie version of
The Affair of the Runaway Prince
where he had interpreted the rôle of Blake's most deadly opponent, who played the violin, smoked opium and took to crime to relieve his ennui. He also appeared in
The Mystery of the Silent Death
,
Silken Threads
and
The Great Office Mystery
, all of them two-reelers never quite achieving the same standard and later eclipsed by
Sexton Blake and the Hooded Terror
, with a different actor playing Blake. A
rapidly rising star, Desmond Reid had a classic profile and might have been a German of the higher type. Visually, he was a perfect ‘Surehand', while his acting was adequate, as was his French and German.

We were introduced at Hugenberg's party celebrating the re-election of President Hindenburg and the defeat of Adolf Hitler which had, by all accounts, sent the Führer into another of his retreats listening to Franz Lehár, reading Edgar Wallace, and no doubt exercising the dog whip he carried to impress Germans with his mastery of men.

Reid had just finished a job in Potsdam, where UfA had a large studio. He had played a cruel commissar in a film set against the background of the Russian Civil War, a historical nonsense, but Reid's screen presence was unquestionable. For the sake of art, I was willing to enjoy a superficial friendship with him. Hugenberg also found him politically sympathetic, for though strongly pro-German, Reid was a great imperialist, a supporter of king and country. He thought the German war would never have been fought if the Kaiser hadn't panicked at the socialist victories of 1914.

Hugenberg and Reid agreed energetically that the wedge driven through their great natural alliance by Edward VII's flirtation with the French had thrown the world into chaos. Red Republicanism was the certain progeny of that bastard union arranged merely so the Prince of Wales should not lose the services of Parisian whores. For that he turned on his own German relatives. His own cousins and siblings. Later, Reid would become a famous correspondent for the
Daily Mail
and would frequently write articles in support of the Fascist cause.

Mussolini was Reid's hero. The actor had known Pound, Fiorello and d'Annunzio. He had been with them in Trieste. They were all great romantics of the old school, he said. ‘Worthy to stand side by side with Marat or Browning.' He spoke with warm admiration of those wild idealists whose actions had done so much to improve the morale of the Italian people.