Röhm was silent. He turned away in shame.
I understood him well and was even sympathetic. The struggle he must be having with himself! His whole body was shaking. This was tearing him apart. For the love of his Fatherland and all he held dear, Stabschef Ernst Röhm was prepared to blackmail his ‘sweetest love’ and destroy almost everything honest and pure between us.
‘Only you could pull it off, Mashi. You have the skills, the physique, the actor’s gift . . .’
‘You want me to pose as some dirty little whore —’
‘A game, Mashi. Just a game. We’ve played it before.’
‘I have not played that role for you, Ernst. Never.’ My heart was sinking. I knew what this meant. Our idyll was drawing to a close. Yet still I resisted the inevitable. ‘Why not get some girl from the street? She needn’t know —’
‘We can’t risk it. Just as we can’t risk any more killing. Half the cops in Germany are waiting for a chance like this. That’s why you, at least, are guaranteed your life, Mashi.’ He turned, red-faced, with tears in his eyes. And then I realised the full horror of what had been contemplated.
‘You’ll lose nothing, Mashi. And the Fatherland will gain everything!’
I still wasn’t sure I could do what he wanted. ‘He would realise the deception, Ernst. You know he would.’
‘You haven’t seen the shape he’s in. Believe me, the pills have taken every ounce of judgement.’
‘Then how will this work?’
‘The way it has always worked. What do you think that little slut used to do for him? She kept him moving forward. I don’t know what you call it — but it got rid of any guilt he might be feeling about what he was doing.’
‘Guilt?’
‘There were things he promised his mother. Other loyalties. He had to give them up. He had to give a lot up, Mashi, to get where he is.’
I could not resist those pleading eyes. My friend was desperate. As a Christian I could only forgive him. I would have to help him. I, of all people, had come to understand how Christian duty must sometimes come before personal feelings. I bowed to his necessity, but an enormous sadness filled me. I knew a great love affair was finished. Love was what we both sacrificed.
That night Hess arrived from Munich driving the massive Mercedes received from an industrialist well-wisher. His old friend Father Stempfle was with him. Röhm had already suggested how I dress and had packed a bag for me. I was wrapped in one of his greatcoats. Perhaps instinctively recognising me from that encounter in the hotel, Stempfle looked at me with the same peculiar, gloating disgust he offered to most of the world. He moved so that he sat across from me with Röhm and began to eat a liver sausage, smacking his lips and glaring at me with happy sadism. The leather of the seat was cold. I felt utterly helpless.
Röhm had brought a case of chilled champagne and huge vacuum jug of coffee that he kept making me drink. He also had a sack of plums. He would check his watch and make me eat five every hour, while Father Stempfle coached me in a litany which added to the queasiness I soon felt from the fruit. The priest must have milked every single lurid detail from the girl and added experiences of his own. Of course, thanks to my sojourn in Arabia, none of this was unfamiliar to me, but I was aware how precision was important.
As we drove I wondered who else Stempfle had told about his discoveries. Hitler himself had recommended Stempfle as Geli’s confessor. As a good Catholic she needed someone to whom she could retail her sins, and Hitler needed a priest he could trust. Had Hitler deliberately set Stempfle up as Geli’s confessor to learn the last of his niece’s pathetic secrets? Was he aware of every infidelity or planned liaison? Whatever the motives, Stempfle had been her most explicit inquisitor and had heard every moment of her private life with Hitler. He had copies of the letters and drawings he had bought back on Hitler’s behalf. He showed me Geli in a variety of postures. They were familiar enough but not especially palatable.
‘Dirty little slut,’ said Röhm, glancing through the pictures. ‘You can tell she liked it.’
Mrs Cornelius has fallen asleep in the chair she allows no one else to use. Sometimes I think the thing is organic, a part of her. It sustains her like a life-support system. Every so often she returns to it and replenishes her energies. The very smell of that chair suggests some kind of amniotic concentrate. The noises she makes, deep within herself, resemble the distant yelps of feasting animals. With her head thrown back, her teeth out, her crimson mouth open and her blue mascaraed eyes closed, she seems in a kind of rapture. Her head, gloriously auraed in streaky reds and browns, resembles a primitive sculpture, some pagan Goddess of Death, some Rhiannon of the Portobello Market. To others she might seem ugly, but I see only nobility on that growling mask, the mark of wisdom, long experience and inexhaustible power.
We have both known the heights and the depths. We have ruled hearts and been ruled by them. We have known worldly prestige and fame. We have enjoyed the fruits of our successes and explored the byways of pleasure with tolerance and open minds. We have seen history made and realities changed. We have not lost sight of our dreams. We have seen them fade and sometimes we have had to put them aside. This century has not rewarded faith. We did what we had to do. We made our compromises and we survived.
‘He might want to lick your arse and nuzzle your cunt,’ said Father Stempfle, his lizard hands shaking as he guided me through the letters. ‘Here’s what you should do.’ He showed me the moulded rubber.
Hess was clearly glad to be driving. He had already been tortured by what he heard of the compromising letters and drawings and had refused to look at anything. Even Putzi Hanfstaengl had leafed through them, to his dismay. But all Hess had between himself and the chaotic infinite was his loyalty to his leader. He clung to that loyalty as others cling to a religion, in spite of all contradictions and rational evidence. His grip on sanity, on life of any kind, depended upon that loyalty. Hess was oddly disassociated from real life, as if he was watching a film which bore no relation to his ordinary existence. He studied the world with a kind of bemused, accepting smile. Nothing in the universe meant more to him than loyalty to Hitler. He appreciated the influence of men with firm ideas about what was valuable and what was not. It made him a worshipping parrot, a useful man, a typical Number Two. Hitler was fond of him and admired his faithfulness. ‘His very soul is brown,’ he would say.
We raced through dark little medieval villages and quaint hillside towns, past farms which had survived Germany’s troubles since the time of Charlemagne, past ancient pastures and rich orchards, all the wealth of old Bavaria. Röhm made me do something to Father Stempfle to make sure I knew exactly what they were talking about. Stempfle kept his eyes shut through the process and made noises through his teeth. Röhm, knowing how much the perverted divine hated it, grinned from start to finish. The relish he was taking in the old man’s dismay helped me get through the process, I will admit. I felt a kind of secondary pleasure in Röhm’s sadism. Nonetheless, I had to gag out of the window.
‘You’d better not do that later,’ said Röhm. He stroked my shoulders; he caressed my thighs. ‘You know I would never normally ask you for such a sacrifice.’
He looked at his watch. He made me drink some more champagne and eat five more plums. I protested. I did not have the stomach for it. Everything would be over soon, he said.
A huge silver moon hung in the black space between the mountain peaks. The car grumbled and whined up the steep roads. Birch and pine forests fell away below us. There were lights in distant valleys. Tall hills surrounded us. The air was richly scented by the trees and wild flowers. Röhm said this was his favourite time of the year up here. He became strangely melancholic. He knew that something was dying in both of us. The last of the summer wine, he said. He and Hitler had always planned to end their days here when their work was completed. He had a feeling something was stealing his future.
We passed through a dark village. A few more minutes and the car p
ulled up outside a small lodge decorated with fretwork in the typical local style. It stood on a hill in its own grounds among the trees.
‘The view is stunning at dawn,’ said Hess. ’We were happiest here, eh, Ernstie?’ He and his Führer had spent some of their best times here. Hitler had dictated Mein Kampf to his adoring secretary as his fame grew.
‘Carefree days,’ agreed the Stabschef and sighed.
Gregor Strasser was waiting for us at the top of a flight of wooden steps. He was unshaven and unslept. He looked at me and pursed his lips, as if he shared my own opinion of my inability to play the necessary part. My legs were weak. I could hardly walk. My stomach was churning. I wanted desperately to go to the toilet, but the special clothing I was wearing prevented that.
Strasser led us in. The place was unnaturally hot. It smelled of perfume, boiled sausage and other sourer scents I could not identify. Strasser apologised to Röhm and Hess for the state of the place. He had not thought it a good idea to get a woman in.
I sensed an odd silence about the room, as if we were attendant upon a recent death, a lying-in.
‘This is crazy,’ murmured Strasser. ‘It can’t work.’
‘Then come up with a better idea.’ Röhm, aggressive and impatient, was used to coming to decisions and then moving with them, like any soldier. ‘It’s worked before.’
‘But with a real girl. A particular girl.’
‘Believe me, Strasser,’ Röhm insisted. ‘It’s not a real girl he’s obsessed with. What have you told Alf about this?’
‘He doesn’t care. He’s spiralling down deeper every day. He’ll be completely catatonic at this rate. Like shell-shock. He and Hindenburg will make a perfect pair, each about as gaga as the other. The public will be spoiled for choice.’ Strasser spoke with a fierce edge to his voice, as if he himself were on the point of psychological collapse. ‘Meanwhile, the bastard’s draining the life and soul out of everyone.’
‘You didn’t tell him?’ Röhm indicated me.
‘I said there was someone coming to help him .. .’ Strasser looked me up and down once and turned away, nodding. ‘Well, I’ll admit the make-up’s convincing. Someone’s got a good memory.’
Röhm told me to put on the wig and the mask. He pulled the greatcoat off my shoulders. ‘A little masterpiece,’ he said.
Hess uttered a sudden burst of bovine amusement, as if the Minotaur had at last seen the funny side of things. I don’t believe he had any clear idea what was going on.
‘A dead ringer for our little canary,’ said Röhm.
Mrs Cornelius’s red lips curve in a smile of pure delight. She dreams of her happiest moments. Her great bosom lifts and falls; her hands are now as gnarled with arthritis as Röhm’s. They lie in her lap like the claws of a venerable bird of prey. We were never really predators, Mrs Cornelius and I. I am remembering my youth. I look down at my threadbare plaid shirt, my old cardigan, my grey flannel trousers, my dirty shoes. How is it that we so rarely see ourselves through our younger eyes? What would I have made of an old man like me? Would I have shown him respect, acknowledged his pride and his history? Or would I have mocked him as the young mock me now? They believe I am like them. That all I have to back my opinions is prejudice and ignorance. Yet I have stood shoulder to shoulder with great men in the face of unvanquishable evil - and have vanquished that evil. How many of these ‘bother boys’ can say the same?
I do not claim the experience left me unchanged.
Röhm went to get Father Stempfle out of the toilet. The priest had done all he could, he said. He was a hermit and needed privacy. He began to whine something about his fee. For a priest who had taken the vows of poverty and spent every waking hour talking of Jewish greed and rapacity, he had a very clear idea of his own financial worth. At the Bratwurstglockl they all said he was buying children from some slum dealer over in Cologne, but what he did with them, if anything, nobody really knew. Our normally tolerant, easygoing Stabschef had a genuine contempt for the man. Röhm said he’d had enough of Stempfle’s ‘finer feelings’. Stempfle’s future and everyone else’s depended upon kicking Hitler into some semblance of rational humanity for when they went to see the Reichspräsident on 10 October. It was up to party members to support any measure which would get the leader back at the helm. Anyone who didn’t use their fullest efforts was a traitor and would be treated like a traitor. He made a flicking motion with his thumb, as if to start a cigarette lighter. Stempfle had been at the Brown House often enough to know what that meant. Röhm told Stempfle to stop spluttering and run me through a couple of points again. The old lizard was shaking worse than I was by the time Strasser led us upstairs to the loft bedroom where Hitler slept.
He knocked on the door. A wet, enquiring noise came from the other side. Strasser seemed to think this was a good sign. ‘Ernst’s brought someone to see you, Alf.’
Strasser opened the door.
Röhm took me through. The place reeked of staleness and oriental perfumes. Joss sticks and scented candles were burning everywhere. In the far shadows was a small double bed with an old-fashioned canopy. Books and papers had been discarded one on top of the other. Ornaments and other objects lay in corners. Some of them were smashed, as if they had been flung against the wall.
‘Alf,’ says Röhm. ‘How’s tricks?’
‘Cup of tea, Ivan?’ Mrs Cornelius has woken up. She yawns and gusts. ‘Cor! Wot old age will do ter yer. Wot’s ther time? Me watch ‘as stopped.’
She rises from her chair to make the tea. I watch her moving like an old steamer, still graceful, still sturdy. She is well over seventy now.
I collect the dirty cups and follow her into the kitchen.
‘Look, Ivan.’
She is craning to peer through the basement window above the sink. At eye level it faces the tangle of weeds and overgrown shrubs she calls her garden. She strains until she can see the sky.
‘It’s brightenin’ up.’
Röhm went in first. He made a kind of crooning noise, as if to soothe a troubled dog. The sound was clearly familiar to the creature in the hidden depths of the bed. I heard a muffled response.
Röhm moved swiftly and lightly, like a soldier expertly making his way through no man’s land, until he was over there in the semi-darkness with his old friend, stroking his head, rocking it against his lap. The queer pathos of the scene aroused the most profound and unexpected feelings in me. I understood Röhm’s instinct to comfort and nurture the drooling, unlovely thing on the bed and was actually disgusted by my own tenderness.
The eyes turned towards me. I saw no change in them, no pain or warmth or desire which might inspire my feelings. Instead, something in the set of the head, the movement of the mouth, the turn of the wrist, a kind of mimicry of real emotions, were as successful at involving me as if they had been real. Instinctively, like a great screen actor, Hitler was able to arouse in me real concern and pity. I do not believe he was at all conscious of what he did. I think I understood him. It scarcely mattered to his artist’s soul if the feelings he inspired were inappropriate or even false. To inspire the feelings was sufficient. (An artist with the soul of a gangster, Major Nye thought.) Only incidentally did this bedridden creature exploit its own condition. Of course I had been completely unprepared for this. I felt faint in that airless room. I marshalled my emotions. I had relied on my panic and my terror getting me through the ordeal, but I could see how these unexpected responses might also help. In some amazement I found myself entering into the mood. Röhm looked up and nodded to me. Tentatively and a little unsteadily I moved slowly towards them.
‘Here she is, Alfy,’ whispered Röhm. ‘Here she is.’
Hitler’s pale, bloodshot eyes shifted from my mask to my legs to my panties, my crotch. His skin was a mottled silvery white illuminated with the deliquescence of a corpse. The familiar face, so stern and confident in his pictures, was puffed and lined with exhaustion. I noticed gelatinous moisture on his head and arms. The eyes remai
ned a yearning vacuum, the eyes of an unfed incubus. I recoiled and then recovered. I made a sympathetic feminine sound. Once this was over, I reminded myself, I would be free. I was sick of fantasy. I would go to England, collect the money waiting for me, and resume my life.
Hitler spoke. His voice was a reedy vibrato, the voice of a sick child. ‘Wer ist es?’
‘Your friend,’ murmured Röhm. ’Deine Freundin.’
I held the dog whip like a sword as I drew a deep breath of the hellish atmosphere.
‘Dein Engel.’
I composed a smile.
‘Your angel.’
* * * *
TWENTY-EIGHT
I lift my left leg and bring the red spike heel down between Hitler’s naked shoulder blades. I push him flat to the dirty carpet. The spike depresses his white flesh and leaves an almost bloodless mark. I press again with the right foot. Another deep impression. The black leather of the dog whip caresses the back of his head. He is blubbering some sentimental nonsense into the pile.
The Vengeance of Rome Page 40