The Vengeance of Rome (49 page)

‘I'm getting used to this sort of thing,' said Röhm comfortably. He came and sat down next to me. ‘Let's have a look at it together, Mashi, shall we? What a naughty little type you seem to have been …'

It must have cost a fortune to assemble that dossier. I was astonished at its detail, a careful and clever selection of material designed to show me in the worst light. The praise, for instance, that I had received for my political speeches in the USA was mentioned nowhere, nor was my extensive work with the knights of the Ku Klux Klan. My acting career was all but ignored. Mucker Hever's version of events was given where my steam-car was concerned. He was quoted extensively, but with no mention of his jealousy. My misfortunes were presented as if I had planned a series of elaborate swindles. Yet I had always earned my living honestly. My own trusting character, which rarely questioned a contract, or indeed demanded one, was what had let me down, not some venal ambition.

‘We couldn't have done better ourselves,' said Röhm. ‘This is OGPU quality.' He spoke with some humour. To my enormous relief he understood
the dossier to be a fake. ‘You've obviously offended some powerful Bolshies, Max.'

I thought at once of Brodmann. Obviously the new Frau Oberhauser could not have put the dossier together herself. Brodmann and his Chekists had compiled the file and passed it on to her. They intended to ruin my status with the Nazis.

I saw Brodmann recently in the pub. I needed to have words with him, but he was always too quick for me to confront. Passing the Soviet Embassy in Bayswater, I pointed him out to Mrs Cornelius. She said it could be any old Russian Jew. It could be me, she said. She knows how to upset me.

Generous as ever, she begins to distribute her son's largesse. ‘Double vodka, Ivan?' she says, waving a fiver. ‘Same again all round.' I take the money and go up to the bar. Mo Collier is glancing at a book while he pretends to wash glasses. It is called
The Anarchist's Guide to Applied Terrorism
. These untried young men think revolutionary politics is a romantic game. One cudgel landing a few times across his narrow little bottom and he would soon discover what kind of game it is. Personality disappears under punishment. The Communists and the National Socialists did not believe in babying their political opponents. It was the nature of the age. Only the flyers had time for chivalry. On the ground and in the streets it was total war. But what the history books will not admit is that we were often defending ourselves. We were forced to fight fire with fire.

Collier ignores me and my proffered note. Suddenly he picks up a brass handbell and begins to ring it. ‘Time!' he yells furiously. ‘Time!'

I put the money in my pocket.

‘There's one thing I am sure of,' said Röhm after we had looked at the file. ‘You're not Jewish. I can smell a Jew at a hundred paces, and you don't smell like a Jew. You smell like an Italian-American. Believe me, it's absolutely distinctive. But it would be bad news for you if Hitler, or worse Himmler, saw this. They're like Father Stempfle. Anyone who isn't pale as a corpse and with a shock of blond hair is potentially a Jew. This, I'll admit, makes most of us potential Jews. We're going to have to start offering more precise definitions if we're going to deal seriously with the problem of separating citizens from non-citizens.'

‘They would believe me Jewish just because a crazy woman has accused me? Just because I have Mediterranean looks?'

‘Some of them will believe you're a Jew if you can walk and talk and count up to ten.' Röhm laughed heartily and gave me a friendly punch. ‘And if they thought you'd been inside the Brown House! Oy vey! They'd be
looking for a Jerusalem colonel to cashier on the spot.' He made as if to flick a cigarette lighter. That was SA code for a gun. ‘No, Mashi, I've no intention of losing you just yet.'

By this I understood that he was not going to pass the file on. ‘Oh, I'll do what I've done before in situations like this. Usually, when someone's discovered to their horror that some local SA boss is of the Spartan persuasion, I pass on a page or two of the more innocuous “evidence”. Just looking at that makes it clear the person is exaggerating. They seem to be the lunatics and nit-pickers. That way if she asks Hitler about it, he'll say he's seen it and dismissed it. She won't be able to pursue it, and everything will be fine. There's nothing to it.'

I told him I would be for ever in his debt.

He smiled that shy little smile of his. ‘Oh,' he said, ‘repayment shouldn't be too arduous for you.'

My relief was enormous. Our celebration was extensive. The cocaine consumption alone was staggering! That same night, a couple of hours before dawn, a car called for Röhm. He had to go back to Berlin. I was rather pleased. I would need time to recover from his somewhat excessive demands.

‘Time!' cries Collier. The sound of his bell would cut through even the happiest ambience. Here it sounds as if it tolls for the end of salvation. Grey heads rise up. Bottles are lowered or hastily lifted.

‘Your glasses, gentlemen, please. Look to your glasses!'

This English ‘closing time' is a nuisance. Mrs Cornelius offers Collier some incoherent insult. ‘An' they say the Nazis was tyrants!' She takes my arm. ‘Come on, Ivan. We'll ‘ave a drink at ‘ome.'

Outside the sun is still trying to break through. We stand on the concrete pavement near the public toilets while Jerry and Frank reassure their mother they will be visiting her soon. Billy Beesley rolls from the newsagent removing the paper from two Mars bars. He has eaten one before he rejoins us. A little brown stuff, like blood, trickles into his jowls. ‘Well,' he says, ‘I have some parishioners to visit. I'll say pip-pip for the mo.' Miss Brunner, it seems, has already left. We watch Beesley's stately mince as he disappears into the crowd.

‘‘E looks like ‘e's found himself another mark,' says Mrs Cornelius without much relish. ‘‘E's only been out a week. Poor cow ‘ooever she is. Anyone deserves better than Billy.'

She and I cross the road and continue down Blenheim Crescent. Half the houses on the other side are boarded up. I hear there is some plan to build a new luxury complex. Who will occupy it? The gypsies? The blacks?
The old council houses are no longer good enough for their tenants! It makes me sick. Those people would still be grubbing in the dirt for insects to eat if it were not for the 10 per cent or so of us who are remotely civilised. And they say they have a right to better living conditions! What qualifications have they for these rights? That they were born? In that case the rats and mice have rights. They, too, were born. Let us make sure they are housed in five-star hotels.

‘Well, look ‘oo it isn't,' says Mrs Cornelius.

The frail, thin figure of Major Nye is making its way up Blenheim Crescent towards us accompanied by another, slightly bulkier figure. Both wear khaki raincoats belted at the waist. They have bowler hats and umbrellas, pinstriped trousers and well-polished black shoes and wear the same regimental tie. It is all they have left of an empire they once defended with all their finest idealism, courage and discipline.

They raise their hats when they see Mrs Cornelius.

‘Hello, old boy,' says Major Nye to me. ‘We were rather hoping we might bump into you when we didn't find Mrs C. at home. We knew we were a bit late for the pub. We've been having fish and chips in Ladbroke Grove.' His skin is so thinly stretched over his almost fleshless head that it seems transparent, marking the veins and bones, tracing the progress of his blood. His pale grey eyes are as amiable and as baffled as they have been since Suez, when his entire understanding of his responsibilities changed. Beside him, a little browner, just a touch plumper, but otherwise almost a twin, is his old regimental colonel, Jim Pym. They have been enjoying their monthly reunion. Both men are so fragile these days that I cannot see them continuing this pleasant ceremony for much longer. They will have to speak by telephone, I suppose. And then one will die and the other will die. Their wives are already dead. Their children, I gather, have mostly emigrated. The best they can look forward to is being accepted by the Chelsea Pensioners. At least it will give them the chance to wear a uniform again.

Like myself, Major Nye has been on the sidelines of some monumental events, but I do not believe he ever played the same kind of crucial rôle as I played in the rising dominance of the Nazi Party. I personally will be very sorry when I can no longer chat with him. We are of a similar age and have had many similar experiences around the world. Also, of course, we were both in love with the same woman. That is why he still comes to Ladbroke Grove.

We return to her basement for tea.

Major Nye always called Hitler ‘that grubby little agitator'. He had no time for Röhm, sadly, or most of the others. ‘Göring seemed jolly enough on
the surface, but frankly I never had patience for any of them.' He believed that the best in Germany had been wiped out by the War. Only the cripples, the walking wounded, the exiles were left. The business people were almost as bad. ‘They possessed a very low standard of intelligence,' he says. ‘The brains had either been killed or had enough sense to stay out of the limelight. German government was in the hands of a few survivors. It wasn't fair to punish them the way the French did. France just wanted the rest of the Allies to hold the poor bastard down while she kicked him a few times. She's never recovered from being beaten so often by Bismarck. In French history, Napoleon was a fluke. Not that he and Hitler didn't make precisely the same mistakes. Men of destiny always do, don't they, old boy? At least,' he added, ‘Napoleon had had the sense not to let businessmen or the army make political decisions. They were the absolute worst people at that. Any time business or the army dominate politics, that's when you might as well pack your bags and leave. The one thing the British Army understands,' he says, ‘is to stay out of the brawl. Getting into it was the German Army's greatest mistake. They should have held aloof. But I suppose they were too afraid of Röhm.'

He and Colonel Pym often discuss matters of strategy.

Mrs Cornelius takes down her best teaset. She balances the teapot on a pile of magazines while she clears a space on her coffee table. ‘Sorry about ther smell,' she says. ‘I think it's ther cat.'

‘Well, it's always been a mystery to me,' says Colonel Pym, ‘why any decent army officer should not have taken one look at Herr Hitler and seen at once what a little turd he was.'

‘‘E was vulnerable,' says Mrs Cornelius, searching for her biscuits. ‘That's orlways a plus in a politician. It's ther same with them pop stars, innit? Women recognise it. Men c'n sense it, but they never know wot it is. ‘Itler could've been knocked art at any time, but they all looked after ‘im. Why d'yer fink them rich old ladies loved to mother ther little bugger? They thought ‘e was a sensitive artiste. ‘E was the Liberace of ‘is day.'

We are silent. Not one of us can think of a response.

During the following weeks Röhm had certain rooms in his villa set aside for meetings. He made me stay away from them. People would be driven up to one particular door and admitted. They never saw the rest of the place. Their impression was of an austere military base.

Röhm said the meetings would have bored me. He admitted that most of the time he himself was bored. ‘But if we're to defeat the Antichrist,' he said jokingly, ‘we must make friends even with swine. At least for the
moment.' He was clear-headed about his political ambitions. I did not agree with all his views, but there was no doubting his integrity.

Röhm shared this with Strasser, whom I met at last. The great-hearted chemist came to dinner with two or three of his people. After the others had left, I joined the two friends for drinks. Strasser was charming. He smelled of the most expensive cologne. His clothes were of excellent English cut. Strasser made me feel very comfortable. He had seen my films. He did not, as some of the SA chiefs did, take me for Röhm's fancy boy. We discussed literature. I told him about the English fiction I read. I mentioned G.H. Teed and Anthony Skene. He himself was a great fan of Schiller. ‘He is humane,' he said, ‘in a way that Goethe is not.'

Strasser was the greatest gentleman who ever led a political party. His terrible mistake was to remain true to his ideals. That, I fear, could be the sad epitaph for many of us.

I will not forget those evenings of camaraderie during the late summer of 1931 when it was still possible to plan for a golden future, to dream, as they say, the impossible dream. I feel I was privileged. The threat of the Baroness laid to rest, the mystery of Mussolini's behaviour at least partially explained, I felt able to relax.

The talk that evening soon returned to Hitler. Among these people, Hitler's ups and downs were a constant subject of debate.

‘He's a bloody Austrian,' said Röhm. ‘What do you expect? He's sloppy and easygoing most of the time. He just happens to have this charm, this gift. We can't switch it on and off whenever we feel like it. We can't twist the public round our little fingers. And so we're annoyed! We're jealous.'

‘I'm annoyed,' said Strasser, passing a big hand across his head, ‘because he's compromising every principle we ever stood for. That's why I'm annoyed, Röhm.'

‘He's pretending to compromise.' Röhm poured champagne for us. ‘You know him. He'll soon bite the hands that feed him. You worry too much about that. After all, you're prepared to sort out an arrangement with Farben.'

‘That's to do with my business. And none of us argued against the strategy of taking money, if offered, and doing precisely what we want to do with it. I just wonder what cattle trading Hitler is doing on
my
behalf!'

‘I don't mind him putting his tongue up a few arseholes,' said Röhm. ‘It's what's going on in Prinzregentenstrasse that I'm bothered by. Apparently there was another row recently. All the neighbours heard it. Her mother was involved at some stage. She's on Hitler's side. She'd have to be. The scandal
would be even worse for her, wouldn't it—Hitler's sister helping him bonk her own daughter, his niece. And what bonking! She wants him to pay for singing lessons in Vienna. He wants to keep her with him, though he's never there. He suspects something—and he's right. He can't let her go. He's terrified she'll tell someone else about their private lives. Geli knows her power all right. She's already threatening to send his letters to his “new friends”, people who are on the brink of giving us millions. If they see some of the mildest of the pictures I've seen, they might offer to buy a few for their own collections, but I don't think they'll be the supporters Hitler needs. She's already picked up the phone and rung Thyssen. He didn't know who the hell she was, luckily, and put the receiver down on her. That's what I heard from Hess. Of course, Hess doesn't take any of it very seriously. He sees everything as a kind of play going on in front of his eyes. He's a perpetual audience! He never criticises. That's why Alf loves him so much.'