The Vengeance of Rome

  I had read some of his articles in the VB. He was a little fanatical on the question of Jews but basically sound. Like almost every founder member of the Nazi Party (which his vows did not allow him to join openly) he was of below average height, with brown hair and a somewhat unweathered skin. I had heard that he shared a taste for morphine with Göring and Co. His deep-set eyes and shaggy appearance reminded me a little of Lionel Barrymore in his wonderful (if not entirely accurate) rendering of Rasputin the Mad Monk. Father Stempfle had some kind of lair in the woods outside Munich.

  His hand reached out to take my sleeve. His eyes betrayed a sort of malicious mirth. ‘Do you have some prejudice, young man, against people of my calling?’

  ‘Of course not, Father. I was not sure —’

  ‘That I would have anything to do with the likes of you?’

  I shook my head. Rather than draw further attention to myself I let him draw me down to the chair beside him.

  As soon as I was seated, he acted as if I were about to attack him, pulling himself back and looking wildly around for help. ‘Who are you? Explain yourself!’ Only when I introduced myself did he grow calmer, but in spite of initiating our meeting he remained strangely uncomfortable. I did not mind his refusal to shake hands. I think he suspected me of being Jewish. Indeed, I think he probably suspected everyone of being Jewish.

  He began muttering to me in a nervous manner, and whenever I tried to lean forward to hear him better, he would flap his hands. His general behaviour was eccentric. I supposed it characteristic of hermits that they should not feel particularly at ease in large crowds, but he was by all accounts not the most reclusive of Hieronymites. He had spent time at Röhmannsvilla. I understood from Röhm that he only occasionally acted as a padre, usually when some sensitive party matter was involved.

  Röhm and Stempfle, I recalled, did not get on particularly well. I could see why. I sensed something ungenerous and self-referential about the man. He was very brusque. When he did start to speak, he allowed no interruption. Stempfle, too, it emerged, was on the search for money. He had been to the Brown House and found it empty of anyone he knew. Claiming he didn’t have a penny, Strasser had told him to ask Amann. Stempfle had already been to Amann, who was out of town. The monk had been everywhere. They were threatening, he said, to cut off his electricity.

  I was trying to think of a way of asking him why he did not move to a cheaper cave when the waiter came over and told me I had a long-distance telephone call. Did I wish to take it in my room? Glad of the opportunity to leave the miserable priest, with a quick apology I wished him luck and went swiftly up the stairs to my room on the first floor.

  I picked up my instrument. It was full of static and half-heard conversations in a dozen languages. Somewhere in the background I could hear a woman’s voice, then a man speaking Italian, and then the woman again. I had expected Tom Morgan. But perhaps he had passed my number on.

  ‘Maddy?’

  ‘Maddy!’This was a shriek which shredded the static to a barely audible whisper. ‘Why would that double-crossing bitch be calling you? To laugh at you? To tell you that her new boyfriend is a better lover? That he wants to kill you?’

  Unmistakably La Sarfatti.

  I apologised even as she asked me when I had left Albania. The line faded again, and her voice became the distant shriek of a frustrated eagle. I was astonished to hear Albania mentioned again.

  ‘I have never been to Albania,’ I told her. I was not sure she could still hear me.

  She faded back in. ‘We all thought you were dead,’ she said. ‘Didn’t you know? Il Duce has put a price on your head!’

  I was unable to take this seriously. ‘What am I? An enemy of the state? Or does he think there was something between me and Rachele?’

  ‘Something between you and Rachele? Aha! I always knew the bitch was too good to be true. That might explain it. We were told you’d sold all our military secrets to the Albanians.’

  ‘I have no sexual involvement with Signora Mussolini! The only military secrets I know are my own. My own inventions. I could scarcely renege on myself.’ I now remembered the missing case. No doubt the thing, containing miscellaneous spare drawings and photographs, had been stolen by Albanian agents when we transferred in Austria. They might well have been following me. I was a fool to be so naive. Now the pictures, which were of no particular use without explanations, were in enemy hands. They might even think the models were real!

  I told her that it could all be easily cleared up. She must talk to Mussolini — or get him to talk to me.

  ‘Why would he talk to you, of all people, darling? He went to such elaborate lengths to get rid of you.’

  Her story was becoming increasingly ludicrous. If I had not had the telegram from Tom Morgan I might not have believed a word.

  ‘That’s nonsense,’ I said. ‘Why would Il Duce want to get rid of one of his key men?’

  ‘Because he’s taken a fancy to his key man’s woman? You idiot, Max. He got you out of the way so that he could have a clear field with that little American bitch.’

  ‘Maddy?’

  ‘It suited her, too. She hates you now. I tried to explain everything, but she wouldn’t listen. Darling, I’m your only friend here!’

  It seemed to me that Sarfatti had been intriguing far too much in Rome and that she had been poisoning Maddy’s mind against me. I felt attacked by an entire Amazon army. But why should I believe La Sarfatti? She must have several ulterior motives for calling me.

  ‘But my projects,’ was all I could think to say before the line grew noisy again. I had the impression she was telling me I had served my turn in some elaborate strategy of Il Duce. I did not for a moment think it likely, yet I had been surprised at Mussolini’s sudden decision for me to go to Germany and at Maddy’s complete refusal to see me.

  She began to reply. She spoke of Spain and Greece and Albania, of a way to convince them there was absolutely no point in trying to resist an Italian army. Something about ‘psychological warfare’. It was another of her concoctions. She was addicted to intrigue and gossip.

  ‘. . . convinced the OVRA had caught up with you . . . Austria . . . the Albanians . . .’ Fewer and fewer words came through. Eventually I broke the connection.

  I was cutting myself a line of cocaine from my diminishing store when a knock came at my door. I was expecting no one. I slipped my materials into a drawer and got up to answer.

  At any other time I might have received my next visitor with considerable enthusiasm. I had dreamed of her ever since I had seen her on the Munich Express. But now I was alarmed, reluctant to admit her. She stood in the corridor frowning. Her wonderful hair caught the light from the window. She was dressed in layered silks of pale blue, yellow and light green. Her grey eyes held a slightly puzzled amusement. Her perfect skin glowed. Her perfect hand reached towards me.

  ‘Good afternoon, Colonel Pyat,’ she said.

  * * * *

  TWENTY-SIX

  I hardly noticed she had used my Russian rank and name. I kissed the tips of those well-shaped fingers. I stepped back to admit her to my room. I had anticipated this moment more than once, but now I was only shocked.

  ‘Good evening, Fräulein von Ruckstühl,’ I replied.

  ‘Oh, I’m still Kitty to you, Prince Maxim.’ She knew the effect she had and was enjoying my reaction. ‘I nursed a crush on you for years. I used to ask Esmé about you. Don’t worry. I’m not here to propose a liaison.’

  I was not at that moment disappointed.

  I apologised for the size of my room as I offered her one of my chairs. She shook her head. With swift, impatient grace she moved to the window and opened it slightly.

  ‘I thought I’d better tip you off,’ she said, taking out a silver case from her slim leather purse and lighting a flat Turkish cigarette. ‘My mother is nuts.’

  ‘Come,’ I said. ‘I was unable to get in touch with you. I had no intention of abandoning either of you. H
er distress is understandable.’

  ‘That was for the best. She took up with an Armenian fur trader, and he got us both to Leipzig. Then she met Herr Oberhauser, and we moved to Munich. He’s stinking rich — or was the last I heard — and gave her everything she wanted. Except one thing, of course.’

  ‘A child?’ I thought she had mentioned a son.

  ‘That brat’s not yours. It was you she wanted. All her frustration turned to hatred. She’s paid detectives, clipping agencies. She’s got a full-sized file on your activities since you left Constance. Scrapbooks and everything. You’d be flattered. The French airship swindle. The American airship swindle. You seemed to specialise for a while.’

  She put another cigarette into her holder and I lit it for her. Her gorgeous red lips were arched in a bow, an almost admiring smile.

  ‘I assure you, Kitty, I am not a swindler. I have, I will admit, been a little gullible on occasions. But that is my idealism.’

  ‘Believe me, Max, I don’t give a crap about your motives. I really am just here to warn you. My mother’s close to Herr Hitler. He used to come to our house. She’s helped him in all sorts of ways. I think she’s got a crush on him. She used to hold his head in her lap and stroke him. Pretty sickening stuff. Apparently he has lots of older women who like to look after him. A creep, of course. But that’s beside the point. She knows you’re Jewish, and she intends to let everyone else into the secret.’

  ‘You mean she believes I am Jewish.’ The implications of Kitty’s news were almost too much to take in.

  ‘Well, whatever you say. The old cow thinks she has proof. She says you were born in Odessa in the Jewish Quarter. She found that out from some relative of yours. A cousin? A girl?’

  ‘Wanda is dead,’ I said. ‘And so is Esmé. I was born in Kiev of old Russian stock.’

  ‘Well, she’s got it all down there in black and white. You have a little time. She wants to go to the Brown House and hand it over to the Führer personally. But he’s not likely to be back from Berlin for a while. You can easily clear up any business you might have in Munich. He’s not likely to have time for her just now. That’s it. I just came to do you a favour. She says your real name is Crick.’

  ‘I have never heard it before. She thinks it is a Jewish name? My name is the one I gave her. I have since Anglicised it to Peters. There is nothing sinister about that. In modern Europe it’s no longer fashionable to be connected with the Russian aristocracy. In fact, it is positively dangerous. I am a Christian of the Greek persuasion. I was born in Kiev and moved to St Petersburg. Certainly I knew people in Odessa. I spent my holidays there as a child! And I would, no doubt, have bumped into some Jews. Indeed, I had a friend —’

  ‘I don’t give a shit if you’re a wop, a dago, a Yid, a Yank or all four,’ she said suddenly. I was alarmed by the coarseness of the language issuing from that perfect mouth. Her manner was the norm among the young in Germany. A cynicism, an aggression, a hardness was cultivated by these girls. You could not, I suppose, blame them, given the world they had grown up in.

  Kitty put out her cigarette and stepped rapidly towards me. Her golden face moved close to mine. I smelled something delicate on her breath. She kissed me lightly on the lips.

  ‘You don’t want to get in too deep with the Nazis anyway,’ she said. ‘You might find it’s hard to get out again. They have a lot of funny friends.’

  She opened the door, paused, shrugged and was gone. Almost immediately I regretted not seizing my opportunity. She was ten times the woman her mother was. She was right. I had made a mistake in returning to Munich. I cursed my own impatience. I had never needed a real friend more.

  Mrs Cornelius sits in the corner near the dartboard. Her sons have disappeared. She looks up at the television over the bar and sips a small port and lemon. ‘Egypt was your moment, Ive,’ she tells me. ‘You should ‘ave turned rahnd and gone ‘ome.’ I cannot follow her. They are showing a newsflash. A politician has been shot in Cairo.

  Egypt, I will admit, was a watershed. In some ways I still feel as if I am living on borrowed time. I had grown reconciled to death there. I had begun to desire it. If Kolya had not rescued me I would have been blinded, then maimed, then left to die, rotting, in al-Habashiya’s garden, mulch for his cruel roses. I have been in a thousand nightmares in the course of my life, most of them before I was forty. Sometimes they merge together. They know only so many ways, after all, of brutalising a human being. But perhaps God was training me for my task. What I learned in Egypt helped me survive in Dachau.

  ‘Time!’ cries Collier suddenly, his head below the bar. ‘Time, ladies.’ The Bishop looks at his watch. ‘It’s nowhere near Time, Mo.’

  Scowling, Collier straightens up. He tells Beesley he was quoting Eliot.

  The crowd in the pub thins out now as the nine-to-fivers go back to their jobs. Soon there are only the customers who do not work regular hours. They consist chiefly of Irish drunkards, Caribbean pimps and drug dealers, cockney scroungers, hippie layabouts, complaining old crones, whining pensioners, unemployed criminals and people like ourselves, who were here when the area was more respectable. Not so long ago it seems you never saw a black face in this pub. And everyone drank out of glasses or mugs. Now you are offered the choice of the bottle or a glass. Another blow for progress and against civilisation.

  Almost every evening we saw pretty much the same crowd, reading its papers, playing darts and shove-halfpenny, intermittently chatting. The pub made a profit. Everyone was happy. But now jukeboxes, stand-up nights, stripteasers fill the place with noise. We are all consumers and consumed. They tell us we cannot afford to slow down. In the old days the carpets and curtains might have grown a little threadbare with the years, but the quality was unmistakable. Nowadays we see no such thing as quality. They know only cheap, bad ways of making things. We are soon due for extinction at this rate. We are creating a generation that will not read or write but will spend its time picking consumer goods from a TV catalogue. All it needs is a picture to point at. The Americans lead the field in this, which is probably why the Voice of America seems to grow increasingly less intelligent as the years go by. Once they addressed me as an adult. Now I am a ten-year-old. And as they speak less and less of any substance, their voices grow steadily louder. They substitute volume for content. Is it because they have to yell across those wide spaces?

  I came to relish solitude in the desert.

  I could not go back to the United States. Yet I still long for Hollywood as it was in its Golden Age, in the years of my fame. Perhaps if I had been content with fantasy, I would still be there, an honoured has-been taking cameo parts on Rawhide and I Love Lucy. But my interest was always in reality. I had vision and skill. I wanted only to put my talents to practical use, for the good of humanity. My cities would fly. The world would be rich with growing things. Disease would be banished. Death would be defeated. There would be no pain. No polluted air. No fear. No hunger. No melancholy. Individuals would all work together for the common good. None among us would be disadvantaged in favour of another. The slavery of interest, of usury, would be abolished.

  I think my mistake was to put too much trust in others.

  Visionaries like myself and Röhm were inclined in our innocence to believe we should support politicians to fulfil our dreams. But politicians are by nature compromisers. This means that they are forever looking for the middle ground. Therefore they always disappoint us. But what moves societies forward are leaders who disdain the happy mean, who seek the extremes of social experiment. Very rarely are we given a Mussolini or a Hitler, whose ideas match our own, who are not compromisers. Yet even these, as I believe I have shown, are subject to the machinations and petty ambitions of followers who eventually bring them low. Even these fail in the end.

  I suppose I am one of the very few people who ever heard Hitler say he was sorry.

  Röhmannsvilla became a retreat for me. Nowhere else was I welcome. I got there as soon as I could,
taking my luggage. Tom Morgan had been in touch telling me to lie low. He would try to establish my innocence, but I heard nothing. Too many other things were going on. The whole of Europe was growing increasingly agitated. Political assassinations became unremarkable, the order of the day. More and more were out of work. Civil strife increased. First the great Austrian banks went down. Then the German banks were closed. Then the great Allianz insurance company. Every institution that had been rock-solid a few days earlier was now discovered to be a crumbling facade hiding a stinking mountain of unpayable debts. Newspapermen were being moved to new locations. Nazis who had never had their names in the newspaper were giving interviews to the foreign press, which meant that Putzi was kept permanently in Berlin. Only Röhm had any time for me. I was his comfort, he said. His relief.