The Vengeance of Rome

by Michael Moorcock

  ‘And so there’ll be civil war?’

  ‘Röhm can threaten it and sometimes does, but he knows as well as Hitler that it would be a bloody massacre, eh?’

  ‘Of the army?’

  ‘Of the SA. Of us. Röhm has the leadership of at least a hundred thousand soldiers. Doesn’t he claim four million? He has stockpiles of machine guns and rifles and plenty of them cached all over Germany to be called upon at any time. But it’s much harder to stockpile tanks, planes and heavy artillery, no? Isn’t he, after all, the one who says that tanks will determine the wars of the future the way cavalry determined the wars of the past? Surely he has only infantry? The French would come in on Hitler’s side, and Röhm would be dogmeat, what?’ Doctor Strasser remained a realist. He laughed. ‘Röhm will have to go back to Bolivia. Or rejoin the Bolshies!’

  I knew this to be unlikely.

  Suddenly Otto Strasser put down his newspaper, walked to the glass door of the little cafe and opening it put his hand out in the Nazi salute. He laughed loudly as a man on the other side of the road, who had been loitering there since we had entered the place, turned on his heel and walked up the street, where he pretended to be interested in a shop’s display of surgical appliances.

  ‘Himmler’s man, almost certainly,’ explained Strasser, smiling and shaking his head. ‘Von Schirach must have said something when he got to Berlin. A telephone call and here we are.’

  I began to make plans to leave Munich as soon as possible. I had more than enough problems with Bolsheviks like Brodmann on my trail! I had somehow angered Il Duce and compromised Hitler. While Röhm could still be my way through to the important political figures of the day, I could not afford to be seen either in his company or in the company of his disgraced ex-colleague. My only hope was that the plain-clothes SS man had no interest in me. Surely Doctor Strasser was the villain? Von Schirach himself had known the truth of the situation and doubtless complained that Strasser had attached himself to me.

  After breakfast we returned to Corneliusstrasse. I had thought of going on up to the market, but Doctor Strasser was by now very sleepy and asked if he could stretch out on the bed for an hour or two. This reminded me that I needed to procure some sheets. He impetuously handed me some new marks and told me of a good ‘seconds’ linen shop in the area. For a man of such slender means, lie was generous with the money he possessed. My own was hidden, and I had no intention of touching it until I really needed it.

  Doctor Strasser’s instructions proved rather vague, and it took me some time to find the shop. I had a sense that I was being followed but could see nobody. The shop was big and filled to bursting with feather quilts and bedclothes. After some bargaining I was able to buy the sheets together with a heavy quilt and a pillow for a good price. The linen did not cost much to begin with, but I bargained the proprietor into giving me a price for the entire bundle. I was proud of myself. I even had some change left over.

  The linen shop was on a busy main street on the far side of the Viktualienmarkt. I could just see over my parcels. The old woman who owned the place came to open the door for me. As I was leaving, I glanced almost instinctively into the street. Some traffic had stopped suddenly as a policeman directed a horse-drawn delivery van which needed to back out of an alley. When an expensive Mercedes tourer paused I admired the sweep of its dark green lines until I heard a faint shriek.

  ‘Ivan!’

  In the back of the car, glamour personified, sat Mrs Cornelius, her hair a glittering platinum helm. She was waving animatedly for me to come to the car. Her companion, who sat up front with the driver, seemed agitated by the attention. She was tapping the chauffeur on the shoulder, trying to get him to pull over, but her companion was reluctant. I recognised him as her ‘Baron Huggy Bear’, Herr Hugenberg, the media magnate, with his hairbrush head and massive grey moustaches. He did not respond to my bow. As the policeman waved the traffic forward, he gave the chauffeur a signal to move on. Mrs Cornelius was left half standing in the Mercedes, calling out something I could not hear. Pursuing the car was impossible since I was carrying so much, and I was furious at my lost opportunity. I could only hope she was in Munich for some time and that our paths would cross again.

  My bedlinen in my arms, I watched helplessly as the huge machine sped into the distance. Then I began the plod back to Corneliusstrasse, reflecting on the even deeper irony of the address.

  In some depression I returned with my purchases, expecting Strasser to be impressed with what I had managed to get for the money. As I approached the house, however, I was alarmed to see the street door standing ajar. I knew I had drawn it shut behind me, and I had the key in my pocket. Afraid that Himmler’s men had taken action, I entered carefully and listened. No sounds came from overhead.

  Bit by bit, I advanced up the stairs, my sheets, quilt and pillow in my arms, until I reached the top floor and carefully pushed open the apartment door with my foot. Still silent as the grave.

  Nervously I entered the flat.

  It was empty.

  Doctor Otto Strasser had gone. He had left no note, but everything of his had vanished as if he had never been here.

  The Himmler man had scared him off. Strasser had used me to lure him away! My sense of being followed to the linen shop was based on fact. Returning downstairs, I saw he had taken his publications with him. Still no note. His wariness, I would learn, was well placed. Himmler’s men had more than likely followed his trail to wherever he had next fled. I could now settle safely into my flat and try to think through my position.

  But the truth is I did little thinking that week. I made some attempt to contact Mrs Cornelius. She was not registered in any Munich hotel under her own name. She had probably returned to Berlin with Hugenberg.

  I also became a little obsessed with ‘Zoyea the Gypsy’, for the exotic minx had not appeared again in the market, and there was no sign of the organ-grinder or her brother, not even a distant, mechanical note from the barrel organ. The market traders all told me that ‘the Italian’, as they called him, was working the more lucrative parts of Oktoberfest. You could make a small fortune during this period if you were prepared to go where the money was. He would, I was assured, be back in late October.

  I now had a telephone and could talk to Röhm, who would ring to let me know when he had time to pay me a short visit. They were scarcely ever more than that these days. He was always very careful not to be seen and rarely wore his uniform without covering it with a civilian coat.

  These were momentous times, he said. The National Socialists had taken Hamburg — a notorious Red stronghold! The vote had been overwhelming. Hitler’s policies promised to unify all sides — and how the German soul yearned for unity!

  Röhm was amused when I told him how Otto Strasser had suddenly vanished without warning. ‘I’d heard he’d been here. He pinched the petty cash, I gather. They’d been keeping it handy for emergencies. And our dear Otto turned up. Always an emergency!’

  Röhm told me later that Strasser had the survival instincts of a rat. The man could slip away at the first sign of danger. A sixth sense Röhm respected. People like that had survived in the trenches. He was frankly admiring. ‘As the Titanic left Liverpool, Doctor Otto Strasser would have been seen tiptoeing quietly down the last mooring cable back to dry land. If I had any sense at all, I would keep Strasser around and use him as a barometer. If Strasser smells trouble, then you should be ready for trouble.’

  One of the saddest ironies of my long life is that my friend Röhm left it too late to take his own advice.

  He was gone again soon enough, back to Berlin where the action was, with all kinds of preparations to be arranged before May. Even now they were making a play for power and had to seize every opportunity presented during the next weeks. Our ’therapy’, he said, had worked well. Alf, thank God, was more or less functioning again, though his old fire was slow to rekindle. He should be in good enough shape by Christmas to do what he had to do. Only Hitler,
croaking, screaming, weeping, imploring and going through a silent-film actor’s entire range of emotions, could infuse the party members and the electorate with that same sense of mission, of marching together for the glory of a greater, better Germany. A German Germany, said Röhm, pulling on his boots. A Germany for the Germans, he added, fastening his belt. Strong, masculine, progressive. Something good could still come out of all this.

  As he was leaving, I asked him point-blank if there was any truth in the rumour I had heard that he was being backed by I. G. Farben. He was wearing his full dress uniform, on the way to a function. One gloved hand was on the hilt of his sword. He had disguised his scars, and in that half-light he looked as he must have before the War, arrogant and handsome. He paused, frowning to himself, then turned to look me full in the eyes. ‘He thinks I’m working for him, but he’s working for me. I’m happy to take the money he’s offered whenever a meeting has been organised. But his head will roll with the rest when the time comes, little Mashi, never fear.’ He spoke with quiet conviction.

  With the beginning of October came a soft, light rain. It brought a melancholy air to the city as the memories of the festival faded and Munich returned to normal, already beginning to plan for Christmas. Röhm had lent me some money so I was able to buy an umbrella, under which I made my daily walk to the market. I was by now known to the traders who behaved towards me with good-humoured insolence. They called me ‘Professor Popoff’ for some reason of their own, but they were not bad people and treated everyone pretty much the same. I loved the powerful smells of fresh vegetables and newly slaughtered meat. I so strongly associate these smells with my little Zoyea that even nowadays, when out in the Portobello Road and passing one of those elaborately stacked stalls with its ornate gold and green lettering, I am instantly reminded of her. I can still see her little bare brown legs and feet twinkling across the asphalt as she dances with her tambourine, innocently striking all the poses of the harlot and drowning me in her eyes. I became totally absorbed in her.

  She is an animal. A wonderful cat. Her curiosity is never still, fixing on you for just a moment, long enough for you to yearn for her to look at you again. Her attention is forever on the next thing, the next person, the next scene. She is greedy for everything life offers as if she knows her time on earth will be short.

  She is a flirt but she flirts without knowing what it is she promises. I do not let those glances mislead me. It is my heart that longs for her again, not my loins. I have lived with such disgusting allegations for most of my adult life. If a man cannot love the innocence and sweetness of little girls, he has no soul, no feeling. Of course I would have wanted a wife, children of my own. She said she had found my mother. Esmé betrayed me. She took my children. Her companions were the ghosts of the unborn. How their voices fill the high, stone arches, mingling with the roiling smoke, the heavy scents, and I can see something again of the heaven I lost when I was driven from my native land. White, green and gold. Sharp. From within it slices gently into the lining of my stomach. Slices a long scar on the inside of my belly. A piece of metal swings in my stomach like a pendulum, and I wonder if I am not entirely artificial now, kin to the mechanical woman of Metropolis.

  I saw that film and several others at the same time in a very good cinema not far from the Viktualienmarkt. While it showed new films during the week, the theatre had a bill of older, silent films for Sundays. They offered a single price in the afternoons, so it presented the best bargain. To be honest, I was in a mood for musicals and comedies rather than the gloomy fare I received via Messrs Murnau, Lang and Pabst. I slept through most of the second part of Doctor Mabuse, though I had enjoyed the original stories. They lacked the texture of the best Sexton Blake adventures and were far more fantastic, but they passed the time. Blake’s exploits are based, of course, on the real life of the famous military spy and counter-espionage agent Sir Seaton Begg, for so long in command of the now disbanded MI7. For a while he was my friend Major Nye’s immediate boss, though he never directly admitted it!

  Lilian Harvey became a great favourite of mine. The English actress was Germany’s biggest popular star. Her performance in the rather whimsical Three from a Filling Station was not quite as good as in Der Kongress tanzt. But her talkies were a little more expensive. Leni Riefenstahl was an athletic actress who appeared at her best in fur against a background of snow. I saw her in several of these ski and climbing epics, shallow things, depending mostly on the German audience’s appetite for endless snow and ice. Perhaps the German race really did long for its distant Teutonic homeland? Die Weisse Hölle von Piz-Palü was one of her last. A white hell indeed. These pictures were chiefly interesting when they concentrated on the aeroplane-rescue sequences. While they were hugely popular in countries with Alpine areas, they were virtually unknown elsewhere, a very specific genre, like the English Carry On film, where a deep knowledge of the culture is required to understand the nuances which are the true stories underlying apparently superficial nonsense. Having been starved for so long of the popular cinema, I must admit I became something of an addict. I still did not feel very secure on the street. In the darkness of the afternoon Kino, I was safe.

  I went to the cinema almost every day, making sure I left and returned via the Viktualienmarkt. I longed for a companion, someone delicate and tender, to care for.

  They came back as the traders had predicted. The entire little troupe looked rested and alert, as if they had been on holiday somewhere. They had probably been eating rather better than usual. A few coins in the boy’s clattering box and I was soon chatting with Signor Frau, who came originally from Genoa and was a great enthusiast for Mussolini. Rather than return to Genoa, Signor Frau had eventually decided it made more sense to rent a little house in one of the older parts of the city, near what he called ‘the sheds’, where a number of barrel organs were stored, rather like taxis, and rented to individuals who found it irksome or expensive to maintain their own instruments. He had prospered during the festival. That money would be put aside for the lean months. His barrel organ was beginning to fail him, and the old bastard of a mechanic would charge him a fortune for repairing it. Things were going badly for him as just the other day his monkey had caught cold. He feared it might die.

  The monkey recovered. A rapport developed between Frau and myself. He cultivated the moustache and rather long hair, the bright shirts, the hat, jacket and knickerbockers of his calling, which, he explained, the Germans expected of him. At home, however, he wore the same clothes as everyone else. As far as I could tell, he had lived in Munich so long his German was without accent. He admitted, laughing, that most of his Italian was now in his singing. He scarcely even spoke it at home. His wife was German but had been killed in an explosion at the fireworks factory where she worked. Flares. Three days before the armistice, he said. Their baby had just been born, and his boy was two. His wife’s sister had looked after them. Then she got married and moved back to Hanover. Heckie, the girl, was old enough to look after the house. He patted her shoulder. ‘She’s been my little wife.’

  They were good children, he said, and a great support to him. They were his consolation. He had never remarried. To be honest there was less strain. He didn’t think he could marry another German woman. They were kind-hearted and treated you like a king but were a bit too neat and tidy for his taste. Heckie was a proper little woman. She ran the household and a good deal of the business. I can smell her warm skin, her soft brown neck, her curls, her strong little body straining and squirming under the first intimations of her sexuality.

  That mixture of fresh vegetables, herbs and spices was for me the smell of wealth and comfort, of certainty. Of romance. And also the smell of dawning lust. I can hear the cheerful staccato of the barrel organ, snatches of song, excited chitter of the monkey jumping on the singer’s shoulder, a sour-faced boy moving through the crowd with his box, her delicate brown limbs flashing in shafts of sunlight falling through the dusty glass above. The cheap
lace of her costume flaps and bounces on her perfect little body. Those flounces are a vulgar and unnecessary augmentation to her grace and natural elegance. Her lips curve again in a sweet red smile. She promises me so much. She promises me a return to my past, to a time when I was happy.

  How she twirled and skipped as her surly older brother moved among the crowd, while her father, his grin apparently as spontaneous as ever, stroked his happy little monkey, turning the handle of the barrel organ, singing along with the machine in a rich baritone. ‘Fa la la la! Fa la la la! ’ In his tall-crowned felt hat, short green jacket trimmed with gold, brown corduroy knickerbockers, green stockings and bright red shoes, his broad, flashing grin, his earrings, which could be removed at night, he was everything he was supposed to be. The costume was scarcely any different to that worn by peasants in most of this region, from northern Italy through Austria to southern Germany, yet the Italian still found himself called a gypsy when he went out into the smaller provincial towns. Heckie would get touched for luck. She hated it. When not performing, she was a grave child who took her domestic responsibilities as seriously as her professional ones. Her only abiding enthusiasm she kept to herself.