The Vengeance of Rome - [Between The Wars 04]

by Michael Moorcock

  He confirmed what my warning instincts had already told me. In the general sweep of the country for those who threatened the well-being of the state, the Nazis had already arrested hundreds, perhaps thousands, many of whom had committed no crime and some of whom simply had the misfortune to bear names similar to those of socialists and others who had set themselves against all decency. We were victims of a huge, mad bureaucracy. The larger the bureaucracy, the bigger the mistakes it made. With the possible exception of Doctor Bach, who might well have run sweatshops, since he was a mass producer of clothing, it appeared we should all rightfully be in our own homes.

  Looking as if he might suffer a heart attack at any moment, the portly Doctor Bach put his head in his hands. Herr Helander, a thin, lugubrious young man, whose pale face and hair gave him a washed-out appearance, went to comfort him. ‘Cheer up, old chap. You’ll be out of here by tomorrow.’

  ‘That’s what you keep saying. It’s obvious why you are here. You were foolish enough to goad Herr Hitler in print. But I have done nothing. The only reason I am in this place is because I am a Jew. You know what these Nazis have been up to! And all you two did in your articles was to incense them even further! What good have you done for the likes of me?’

  Helander and Count von Zinzendorf und Pottendorf were quick to reassure him. There was probably a journalist or socialist called Bach. Several composers, after all, bore that name. Many prisoners had been released when a mix-up between them and others with similar names was discovered. It was just a matter of time before Bach would be back with Frau Bach. Meanwhile, said von Zinzendorf und Pottendorf cheerfully, what point was there in letting all this good food go to rot?

  Reminded of his manners, Doctor Bach mopped his head with a large, grubby handkerchief and asked us to help ourselves from his provisions. He and Frau Bach were not Orthodox, indeed they were completely secular, and the food was not kosher. As Helander and Pottendorf tucked in, I ate a little bread and sausage and felt somewhat more human. I was determined to get out of Ettstrasse before I began to degenerate like my companions. How quickly we lost the appearance which commanded the world’s respect. At this thought, I removed my overcoat, since it had grown a little warm, and folded it carefully. I placed it on the bottom right-hand bunk, to which I had been assigned. There being no other reading matter, I accepted the offer of Doctor Bach’s Völkischer Beobachter. The paper was full of triumph. Several threats to the security of the homeland had been narrowly averted in the twenty-four hours before going to press. Jewish communist interests were being attacked and suppressed. ‘You see what I mean?’ said Doctor Bach with gloomy satisfaction as I read the front page.

  Helander and Pottendorf were keen chess players and whiled away their time with mental games. I had always been impressed by this ability to visualise the whole board in play. They entertained me and took my mind off my own troubles as I waited to hear that I was free. The afternoon wore on slowly. Soon the sun began to set and I gave up much hope of being released that day.

  When we came to talk, Pottendorf mentioned how his wife had returned to Vienna to work for his release there. At this Helander’s brow clouded. His own wife had just been arrested, he said. No doubt she had been asking too many questions of the political police. However, she had been able to contact a lawyer, who assured her that she would see her husband within a few days.

  ‘And, for once, the lawyer was right.’ Helander smiled sardonically. ‘Last time we were allowed out for twenty minutes in the exercise yard, I glimpsed her waving to me from the women’s section. I paid Schwenk, the best of the guards here, and he got a message to her. She’s not been badly treated. His guess is that she annoyed them so much and proved such an embarrassment they locked her up. It’s just a warning, Schwenk thinks. He doesn’t expect her to be in for more than a few days.’

  I asked him how long he had been here. A month, he said. He was sure that he and his wife would be released at the same time before Christmas. He knew her parents must be worried sick.

  Still slumped on his bunk, surrounded by his array of food parcels, Doctor Bach snuffled and moaned. He doubted very much if his little girl would be seeing her daddy at Christmas. Pottendorf sat beside him and again attempted to comfort him. ‘Come along, old chap. We’re all in the same boat. It doesn’t do to lose hope. Have a chocolate.’

  Bach said miserably that while we were doubtless all in the same boat, some of us were first-class passengers and some were not. He had begun to chew inconsolably on a caramel when a warder shouted something at us and swung open the door. We were allowed to fetch water from the communal sink, and I was issued with two rough blankets. When I again tried to ask when I could expect to be released, the warder repeated that he was not party to the decisions of the bigwigs. Supper, brought round by a trusty, was unappealing, so that evening we dined off Doctor Bach’s bounty. He could barely bring himself to eat a thing.

  The four of us played cards until midnight when the light in the cell was switched off. As soon as he was in bed, Doctor Bach began to sniffle again. We were all as sympathetic as we could be in the circumstances. Again Pottendorf assured him he would soon be free, but Bach grizzled into his pillow for half an hour before his enormous snores filled the cell, finally subsiding into a kind of wet whiffling noise which in turn became a rhythmic sigh.

  Distrusting the blankets’ cleanliness, I lay down in my clothes praying to the gods of good luck that I would be free by morning. In case my clothes should at some time be taken from me, I hid my cocoa in my mattress. I took only a little as soon as I was convinced everyone else was asleep. I wasn’t sure I could take more than one night of this company. Apart from Pottendorf, I had nothing in common with these people. I was far too valuable to the Reich. The Nazis were practical people. They would not waste human resources. A few journalists and businessmen more or less would not be missed. But they needed scientists if their dreams of a revived, purified Germany were to be realised. Göring was bound to respond to my message.

  The bells of the nearby cathedral tolled the quarters. I found them more comforting than intrusive. In the early hours of the morning, however, when all the others slept and the only sounds were the distant moans of the disturbed mental deficients in the special block, I had a sudden sink and was forced to draw on my precious store of sneg before I again relaxed. My mind sharpened, I tried to go over what I had learned. I concluded a mistake had been made. Röhm would not want me in here. Neither would Hitler. If my involvement in the Tegernsee plot were discovered I would be quietly murdered, I was sure. I also dismissed the involvement of Brodmann, my Bolshevik nemesis, or Prince Freddy. My best bet was to try to contact Hanfstaengl. Although he had claimed to have been inundated with pleas for help, I was sure he would go out of his way for me.

  At six o’clock we were awakened by the warders banging on our doors, warning us to ready ourselves for our ablutions and breakfast. The prison servant, a mournful old slattern in a long overall, came in to clean the cell, splashing her bucket of disinfectant about so that we gagged on the smell. We were then forced to assemble outside with our bowls while some kind of awful soup was slopped into them by a shifty trusty whose long moustache bore witness to a score of his own meals. Happily, Doctor Bach’s provisions were still edible, and we ate more sausage and bread, washing it down with the remains of his tea and the thin coffee issued to us.

  I told Count von Zinzendorf und Pottendorf that he must, like me, feel unhappy about being confined with common criminals but he reassured me. ‘The whole damned building is packed with politicals. Every day they take a few away, often to Stadelheim or Dachau, and every day they bring still more in.’

  At about nine o’clock a warder flung the door open and ordered us all into the corridor. We were marched in military order and forced to stand to attention while he checked names on a clipboard.

  This ritual ended, the warder pointed at our Jewish colleague. ‘Heinrich Bach. You are to remain outside. You others
will return to the cell.’

  With the door closed behind us, we speculated on the reason for Bach being taken away. We could hear his questioning whine in the corridor until his voice faded, and another door clanged behind him.

  Count von Zinzendorf und Pottendorf thoughtfully placed the remains of Bach’s provisions into his own smart, leather suitcase. He was an old prison hand now, he said, with an apologetic grin. Bach had been using his overcoat as a blanket, and this Pottendorf straightened, plumping the straw pillow and smoothing it. The rest of the food he replaced in Bach’s cases, which he settled upon his own bunk. He did not tell us why he was doing this, but since he was the oldest inhabitant of No. 47, we assumed he knew what he was about.

  His business finished, he sat down again, crossed his legs and offered us all one of his fat Turkish cigarettes. Helander and I accepted gratefully. As we smoked the richly scented tobacco, Pottendorf explained his actions.

  ‘If Bach returns, then his goods are here for him. If he does not, then we keep the overcoat and the food. Decent food costs a fortune here and sometimes the guards are forbidden to bring it in. I take it none of us has the money to spend on such delicacies?’

  ‘You think Bach is being released?’ I asked.

  Pottendorf sighed. ‘I have a feeling he will not return to our little home,’ he said. ‘I have noticed that the new authorities have a tendency to place German Jews together in the same group of cells. Maybe they suspect all Jews of being socialists and communists, I don’t know. Maybe they plan some sort of mass interrogation. Or a special camp, even. The guards are likely to let us know where he has gone. They’re good-natured, if uneducated, fellows, most of them. They know we are gentlemen and not criminals. Helander here served in the trenches with one of them. He was here when war broke out and volunteered on our side. That sort of thing isn’t forgotten. They’re old soldiers, mostly, and have a common feeling for those who fought in the War.’

  ‘Unfortunately,’ I said with a sudden attack of irony, ‘I fought in the War on the other side!’

  Pottendorf said he had no experience of the Eastern Front. He had heard it was pretty hellish.

  ‘Not so bad from the air,’ I said.

  The revelation that I was a pilot increased my standing immediately. I could feel their respect. I had forgotten how flyers were regarded as ‘knights of the air’, chivalrous and courageous no matter which side they were fighting on. Pottendorf, understanding this very well, said he, too, had served in the air force until being shot down and injured. He had been unfortunate enough to be blinded with shrapnel. He removed his darkened glasses to show me his rather bloodshot eyes. ‘Happily, my sight was restored. Since then I have devoted myself to peace.’ He believed that it was his pacifism which had brought him to this pass since Nazi militarism had first turned him against them.

  In spite of having been on opposite sides, our flying days gave us something in common. I told him how my own career had ended when my captured Oertz had crashed into the sea off Odessa. We discussed the difficulties of flying the Oertz. He had never piloted the plane himself, he said, but had heard a great deal about it. Wasn’t it difficult to get up and land but performed well once in the air? A somewhat unreliable plane, but a beauty. He was not surprised my machine had let me down. The Oertz was notorious. He asked which squadron I had flown with. I told him that I belonged to the 11 th Don Cossacks and had been seconded to the air force.

  ‘So you were cavalry originally!’ He was delighted by this coincidence. He, too, had been in the cavalry before joining von Bek’s famous ‘Staffel’. He enthused about the Saxon air ace, who had died aged twenty-two, engaged in a dogfight with a squadron of Canadian and American Camels led by the famous US flyer, Billy Batson.

  Helander was not particularly interested in our reminiscences, though he expressed every admiration for the men of the flying corps. He had once envied us, in fact. For all our short lives we stood a better chance of a decent death than the poor bastards who filled up no man’s land with their wounded bodies, sometimes taking days to die. We admitted that as airmen we had a better war than many. Who wished to face the prospect of lying in mud and filth, holding one’s own guts in, perhaps for days, and crying out for help which never came?

  Lunchtime arrived and still no sign of Doctor Bach. We asked Link, the guard, who only shook his head, repeating the usual mantra about not being in on the decisions of the prison’s commanding officer. About an hour later, however, our cell was unlocked, and two policemen came in, casting a cold eye over our quarters. They wanted to know if Doctor Bach had left any property behind. Pottendorf, holding one of his Turkish cigarettes between his fingers, coolly indicated the overcoat. One of the policemen shouted at him, telling him to stand to attention and to put his cigarette out. In his beautifully modulated Austrian accent, Pottendorf asked which he should do first.

  Not sure of his ground, the policeman told him to put the cigarette out and stand to attention. With his fingers, Pottendorf extinguished the burning tip and brought his arms to his sides. The policeman then turned his attention on me, roaring a string of insults, not least of which was that I was a stinking Jewish swine who had published libels against the German people. I would soon get my reward, as ‘that scamp’ Bach was going to get his. It seemed impolitic to enlighten him.

  Meanwhile, Pottendorf learned from the man’s companion that Bach had been transferred to Dachau where he would be ‘allowed to do an honest day’s work’ and so earn his freedom. At least it seemed the poor Jew was on the road to liberty. The Völkischer Beobachter had been full of praise for the institution, which was to be the model for many other facilities where antisocial elements were sentenced to hard labour until ready to rejoin the ranks of decent Germans. I supposed it would not do the overweight Bach a great deal of harm to get fit and work off some of his extra pounds. I could imagine his tears mingling with his sweat as he lifted his pickaxe, helping to build the bright new nation dreamed of by our Nazi visionaries.

  As Pottendorf remarked, at least that night we would not be kept awake by Doctor Bach’s symphonic snoring! He looked forward to meeting him on the outside when he would be slender and trim. But we never heard of him again.

  Next morning the guard knocked at the door. Six o’clock and dawn had only just broken. I woke from a pleasant dream in which I had returned to my uncle’s place in Odessa to enjoy the plump embraces of Wanda, my old love.

  ‘Get up, you lazy sons of bitches. Fold your blankets. Time to wash your filthy selves!’

  Half an hour later the square hatch in the door was swung back. Coffee and bread were pushed through. We drank the coffee, bad as it was, but ignored the bread. Again we feasted on the unfortunate Doctor Bach’s leftovers,

  I fully expected to be notified of a hearing and to be released by that afternoon, but the hours dragged on and no such notification was received. We took turns in pacing the tiny cell. Pottendorf and Helander did their physical jerks. After a while I lost patience and rang the electric bell to attract the warder’s attention.

  ‘What is it?’ came his voice from the other side.

  ‘I need my case to be heard. Important matters await my decision. I need to know the reasons for being placed in protective custody.’

  The warder promised to report my request.

  Surreptiously sustaining myself with a little of my coca, I waited for the rest of the day. Pottendorf and Helander said nothing. They seemed strangely non-committal when I asked them what they thought was happening. Of course, they had been in Ettstrasse rather longer than I.

  At last, when the afternoon was fading to twilight, the door opened. I arose hopefully only to stare into the face of one of the SA who had earlier come to claim Doctor Bach. His companion stood just behind him. Next to him stood a short, slender creature whose face had the pallor of one living by night rather than by day. He wore a well-cut grey silk suit of a rather exaggerated line, a pale blue shirt and a tie of light turquoise. In h
is buttonhole was a fading pink carnation. His hair was oiled and parted sharply and was as black as the patent-leather shoes on his feet. His eyes stared peevishly into the cell.

  ‘Do you really expect me to spend the night with this rabble?’ he asked the policeman. He turned to say more but was shoved roughly forward.

  ‘He can have Bach’s blankets,’ said the warder, laughing behind the policemen. ‘They’re not too dirty. If you don’t mind Jew-sweat.’

  ‘My hearing!’ I managed to shout before the cell door was closed on us again. ‘You told me you would find out about my hearing.’

  ‘No notice, so far,’ he said through the bars. We heard him and the police stump off up the corridor. Coarse laughter. We heard the far door slam.

  I slumped down on my bunk, oblivious of the newcomer.

  Pottendorf, ever-polite, offered the man his hand. ‘Greetings, sir. Welcome to our club. I am Count von Zinzendorf und Pottendorf, this is Herr Helander and the gentleman over there is Professor Peters. I take it you are not a German.’

  The little man bridled. ‘Why should you think that?’

  ‘Because I’m gaining some understanding of the minds of our captors. Our previous cellmate has been removed to be with the other Jews, and we are all foreigners. I am Austrian, Herr Peters is American and Herr Helander is Swedish. You are . . . ?’