The Vengeance of Rome

by Michael Moorcock

  I spent more and more time with Stabschef Ernst Röhm. He enjoyed speaking Spanish with me. He was at heart, he admitted, a monarchist, but he was also a realist. He had picked up many ideas about guerrilla warfare and revolutionary tactics in South America and was delighted to learn I had fought against the Bolsheviks in Russia.

  ‘I envy you that,’ he said. ‘What wouldn’t I give to have a crack at an entire division of the bastards.’ He loved war as much as he loved life. He was a man of his time and yet oddly out of his time. A man of ruthless hardness, if necessary, but of extraordinary tenderness, too.

  That tenderness of Röhm’s is what you find in his writings, especially those scandalous letters which he wrote from Bolivia and whose publication was intended to destroy him. He made no secret that he was the author. Only Hitler, he said, insisted they were lies. ‘All that hypocrisy will be swept away when we’re in power,’ said Röhm. ‘We’ll proclaim our sexual orientation the way the Greeks did — proudly and aggressively.’ He believed in the old Platonic ideal. As far as he was concerned, women had only one function, which was to give birth to healthy soldiers. ‘I don’t believe in treating them badly. But it’s as pointless to place a woman in a position of power as it is to put a soldier in the kitchen.’ I did not hold his absolutist views, but my blood was stirred by his vision.

  I think we were in the Bratwurstglockl, tucking in to sausages, vast Wiener schnitzels and spaghetti, when we first saw Hitler’s mistress. I had heard only the vaguest of rumours about Miss Raubal and was a little embarrassed. I had no interest in the private lives of our great men. Their public world is all that should concern us. Lloyd George, sometimes called the English Mussolini, was a terrible womaniser, yet he brought his country into the twentieth century and prepared it for the twenty-first.

  When Geli Raubal came into the restaurant, Röhm noticed her over my shoulder and pointed her out. She seemed a typical, silly Bavarian girl with a broad, pretty face and light brown hair. Surprisingly for the summer, she wore a blouse buttoned at the neck and wrists and carried a shawl. She was escorted by a young SS officer, a man so blond as to be, like my friend Kolya, almost an albino. I forget his name. She was very friendly with everyone, almost flirtatious, but there was a heated, unwholesome quality about her eyes I could not define, though I recognised it well enough. Suffice to say that Hitler was not the only man, or perhaps even woman, she would present with her favours.

  Röhm confirmed my impression. ‘She’s a slut.’ Röhm did not drop his voice. She knew him and was aware of his dislike. She pretended she had not seen us. ‘She’s going to get young Alf into trouble one day. And if you think I’m indiscreet — well, he beats everything. Did Hanfstaengl tell you about the sketches and the photos Schwartz had to fork out for? Or that damned letter? The stuff they found of mine and published was in comparison the work of a little old lady writing to the pastor. The drawings alone would have brought him down if anyone had seen them. That’s what I mean about him. He needs someone to keep a hand on his tiller.’

  Chuckling affectionately in that warm way of his, Röhm leaned back in his chair. ‘You wouldn’t think it, would you? He’s always been the same. I rescued him from a Red firing squad, you know. Just after the War when I was still with the Reichswehr, before we got disbanded by those Berlin wankers.’ All the time he spoke he was popping little white sausages into his mouth. ‘He thought he was a goner, poor bugger. Scared silly. Literally wet his pants. Great courier during the War. Blind brave, we used to say. He’d go into this trance and trust to his luck. I’ve seen men do that. They become fearless. He knows what it is to be scared for your life — what you’ll do to stay alive. People recognise that in him. They have experience in common. He knows their real grievances, how they think. He’s a brave little bastard sometimes. Under orders, anyway. He was like my pet dog after I saved his life, and he started working for me. A great Number Two. Would follow any orders. Faithful as they come. He kept getting caught, too. The communists caught him. Then we caught him, thinking he was a commie. Almost shot him, too! He’s always been a lucky bastard.’

  I was rather astonished at Röhm’s confidences, especially offered in his ordinary voice in a large restaurant, but he was not a close-mouthed man at the best of times. When he took some schnapps or ‘coked’ he was even less tactful. We had hit it off famously. When he was in Munich, he often sought me out. We had a rapport I had only known previously with my beloved Kolya, similar to that which still existed between myself and Mussolini.

  In spite of Mrs Cornelius being my best friend, she has always called me ‘a bloke’s bloke’, by which she means I have a certain affinity with other men of action and intellect. While I have enjoyed wonderful relations with women of all ages and classes, I will admit a particular understanding between manly equals translating to the most extraordinary levels of human feeling. Life is lived on the highest possible plane at an unprecedented level of intensity. Not understanding that herself, Mrs Cornelius is inclined to belittle it. She believes all our idealism, all our visionary yearnings, are to do with sex. She has been infected by one of the very people she claims to despise. I speak of that member of the Unholy Triumverate, the arch-Jew Freud, who set out to undermine the cornerstones of Christian idealism and very nearly succeeded. Yet let them make a few disparaging remarks about the Lutheran Church, and the Nazis are characterised as atheists and devil-worshippers! Most Nazis were in fundamental agreement with Martin Luther. Whatever their other failings, both knew the danger to society of the tribe which calls the world its nation.

  Mrs Cornelius sighs for me. She says I was a fool not to marry.

  A fool not to marry you again, I say.

  The days in Munich dragged on. I became bored, anxious for some action. I considered telegraphing Mrs Cornelius at St Crim and risking a visit there. When my boredom grew uncomfortable, I decided to take myself up to Berlin, but then I received a telephone message from the Stabschef’s adjutant, which was to alter everything I understood about myself and the world! Röhm would be in town late that afternoon and would be delighted if I would dine with him at the Bratwurstglockl. He named an hour. I said I would be there.

  Although this was not the first time I had dined with the Stabschef, it was the first time he had made this kind of formal appointment. It gave me an extremely pleasant sense of anticipation. Evidently I was about to be accepted into the Nazi inner circle.

  Believe me vain, but I am a firm believer in destiny. Some events are meant to take place, just as some people are meant to meet. Fate or coincidence does not bring us together, but a special kind of destiny. How often has the average person met someone famous and influential? Very rarely. Yet how often do influential people meet? All the time. One has only to pick up a political biography to understand this. In those dark days after the World War, with civil strife erupting on all sides, a few men had the vision, the character and the ruthless will to justice to take control of events. There exists an instant mutual recognition between great men and women. Röhm was one such man. I was another.

  ‘It is as simple as that,’ I tell Mrs Cornelius.

  She shrugs. ‘Brown shirts or brown ‘atters — it all comes down to exercising Mister Willie,’ she insists. ‘Or rather ‘im exercisin’ you.’ Sadly, she has seen too much of the coarser side of men. She was never greatly attracted to romance, only to power.

  Röhm was already at the restaurant when I arrived. He was standing beside a table, his feet planted wide, his hands folded behind his back, enjoying a joke with his lieutenants. They sprawled in a comradely heap across the big padded benches and, though a little drunk, continued to treat him with respect. He was one of them and understood them. The essence of all the Nazi leadership’s authority was based on protocols which were the antithesis of Bismarck’s. These were men of the people. Men of action. Men of practical common sense. Men who looked after their own. Young men with blood in their veins. Men who had known all the terrors of war, who had
been baptised in fire.

  When Röhm saw me he grinned with pleasure. His men knew me by now. We were all regulars. Some whistled greetings. Some had friendly nicknames for me, which I took in good part. They called me ‘the Spanish onion’ or ‘Cowboy Joe’. I waved and gave the Fascist salute. Röhm strode over to me and caught me by the arm, steering me towards his usual table, a dark, secluded archway set on the far side of the cellar and offering a view of its length.

  I ordered us both large steins of the dark, rich bock beer he enjoyed here, and before we decided on our food he suggested that after we had dined we drive out to see his new house. I could stay overnight and be back in Munich by the next day. I might find it enjoyable. There were a few people he wanted me to meet.

  I had earlier suspected that I was again being invited to join an inner circle. I had said little of my intimacy with Mussolini or some of the other leaders of world affairs, but his instinct recognised me. Of course I accepted.

  We ate a large and leisurely dinner. Then Röhm’s handsome young chauffeur arrived to tell us our car was ready. The Stabschef was already a little tipsy. He sang some sentimental Spanish song he had learned in Bolivia. He opened his window so he could breathe in the rich, scented air of the Bavarian capital. ’Ah! One has to acknowledge the pleasures of peace. But they are only won through the hardships of war.’

  We stopped at my hotel where I packed a small bag containing a change of clothes, a box of cocaine and some papers I preferred to keep with me. Then we were off, driving through the haze of twilight into what seemed to me at that moment an infinitely rosy future.

  I was glad of the chance to see a little of the surrounding countryside. The neat, well-ordered Bavarian fields were a symbol of the best of Germany. The German’s natural sense of harmony is only occasionally perverted by experiments in social democracy. It is expressed most finely in his music and his mathematics. They are masterly bookkeepers. They exemplify so many of our Christian virtues. They are the Yankees of Europe. Sometimes, of course, they can exercise those virtues a little too fully, as with their generosity towards the Turks.

  Röhm, as usual, was stimulating company. He continued to drink a little more than he should, but the stress of his responsibilities was tremendous. The only expression of his insobriety was a somewhat looser and coarser tongue. He loved to relax in manly company, to forget for a few hours the ‘Prussian manners’ he was forced to cultivate as an officer, a member of the Reichstag and a senior senator in the Bavarian parliament. He spoke of his frustrations with the bloodless, feeble self-abusers he was forced to keep company with, of the protocol he had to observe so as not to let Hitler down. He would do nothing, he said, to damage Hitler’s chances of becoming Chancellor.

  Feeling a little abandoned by Il Duce and wondering about my future, I was quietly pleased to have Röhm’s friendship. While never wielding power for himself, only for the common people for whom he held it in trust, he was the most powerful man in Germany. Without him, Hitler and Strasser could not move. Without his troops, Hindenburg and the old guard could outlast and, if necessary, outfight Hitler. It crossed my mind more than once that I was becoming close friends with the future Duce of Germany, but at that time I had no intimation of Röhm’s real secret.

  I relaxed beside him in the staff car’s huge back seat while he discussed the work of German painters he admired and asked if they had their American equivalents. I said that the ‘folkish’ movement had taken odd forms in America. The favoured art form these days was the cinema. Even great artists worked for Hollywood, designing sets and drawing storyboards. He had visited Los Angeles on his way back from Bolivia and had been impressed by the palm trees and the lovely houses. How surprising things were there! How German! With a touch of North Africa. A friend of his was over there. Did I know Ludecke? He was a good Nazi. I had to tell him that my own political links in America were with the Ku Klux Klan. Sadly, I added, the Klan had been taken over by opportunists, its original ideals forgotten.

  Röhm was sympathetic. The National Socialist movement was threatened with the same kind of takeover. He was uneasy with this searching out of businessmen for bedfellows. If the party needed funds, Hitler should send a bunch of Hitler Youth boys out whoring. ‘There must be plenty of takers for those beautiful, rounded little arses.’ It would be a quicker, more honest and no doubt more lucrative way of raising the money they needed. ’But Hitler hardly cracked a smile at my suggestion. Alf’s getting very serious these days. Very straight.’

  The Stabschef had a hamper for the journey. As it grew dark and the car rushed on through quaint little villages and rolling fields, he took out a bottle of champagne and popped the cork. His strange, battered face had an almost melancholy quality to it, and I saw a hint of sadness in his eyes which he tried to disguise. I did not know what had happened to put him in this mood. He was doing his best to rid himself of it. I wanted to tell him he did not need to pretend anything, that he was with an equal, one who would respect all his secrets.

  When he laid a large line of cocaine upon his beefy wrist and took it like snuff I knew for certain that I had found a kindred soul. I accepted his line, holding his wrist with my fingertips as I bent my nose to some of the purest South American snow I had enjoyed in years. In Bolivia the Stabschef had developed a refined taste.

  At my prompting Röhm spoke of his youth, of his exile to Bolivia after the Munich putsch. He laughed. ‘Before I arrived in Bolivia, buggery was unknown there!’ He had met only one ‘schitzy’ to his taste, just towards the end of his stay. He had admired those ‘dark-eyed Latin beauties’ from afar, had groaned for them, far preferring them to blonds. Yet no one understood. He would rather have been in prison. He had exercised great discipline, he confessed. As a lieutenant colonel with considerable responsibilities, he could probably have ordered one of those luscious creatures into his bed. And now, he added almost under his breath, here he was, tête-à-tête with just such a beauty!

  He was a little slurred in his speech. I was not entirely following his thickly accented Bavarian. He switched off the interior lamps. We travelled in complete darkness, with no light save the reflection of our own glaring headlamps. I, too, had known the pain of exile and the terrors of captivity. In sympathy I reached towards his arm.

  A little to my surprise, he turned on the light to look at me briefly. His eyes filled with tears. I murmured a question. There came a pause, a silence as the car’s great engine continued to pound and the wheels carried us deep into the German heartland. Then, suddenly, that noblest of all Nazis doused the light once more and seized my hand in his. His deep, thrilling whisper declared his most profound passion for me.

  That love, he said, was the purest he had ever known. It was driving him mad.

  * * * *

  TWENTY-FOUR

  I take Mrs Cornelius to the canal. The council have now paved parts of the towpath, and it is a little easier to avoid the dog muck. Nothing wholesome grows in that sparse manure. They never clean it up. Once every six months some swarthy municipal playboy minces down and dabs a fastidious broom at the stuff. What a privilege to see you, I say. Sarcasm is wasted on him. He would probably understand Turkish if I was willing to compromise with him.

  He whines that they are understaffed. Certainly you are, I sympathise. I often see you hiding in the cemetery pretending to work. Occasionally you lack a fourth for poker. But you carry on. You play with cards so faded and damp you depend on complicity and instinct to identify the suits. Sometimes I hear you disputing a flush.

  The rain is a filthy drizzle. The grey grass exudes a kind of phlegm. The canal gives off vapours that hang like poisoned ectoplasm in endless valleys of vandalised warehouses. As the pedestrian underclass we have no alternative but to pass through these desolate canyons. The miasma is particularly bad under the bridges and is no good for my chest. Mrs Cornelius complains that it gets in her muscles and arteries ‘like freezin’ slush’. The troglodytes living in the nearby storm dra
ins and sewers have painted warning challenges on the walls. I am reminded of Germany in the early thirties. Advertisements for concerts and lectures are sprayed with gibberish. Some letters have been misremembered or are upside down. Their only coherence is in what they symbolise. Which these days could be anything. William Blake, the famous British lunatic, is their most popular hero. Like all their predecessors they proclaim the triumph of blind faith over reason. The written word becomes a formal image and loses all meaning, no more than a growl or a reassuring croon, a badge. Nowadays more and more of these subterraneans write in Arabic or Persian. Carthage never sleeps.

  ‘We witness the end of language,’ I say. ’The destruction of memory. The death of culture. This is what your Harold Wilson has done for the country. So much for Labour’s golden promises!’

  ‘Nobody misses culture much, Ive, love.’ Mrs Cornelius believes she comforts me. ‘Or language.’ With a slender scarlet nail she dabs delicately at the corner of her crimson mouth. ’Just the people ‘oo’ve got time for it. Which isn’t many. If the op’ra went tomorrer most people wouldn’t notice. When was you last at Covent Garden anyway?’

  ‘That’s scarcely the point.’ I am remembering those great pre-war performances. Those wonderful, gay Viennese.