The Vengeance of Rome

THIRTY-THREE

‘He has a beautiful mouth.’ Röhm settles himself back in the deep seats of the car. He removes his soft hat, smoothes his military head. His scars are livid in the occasional flashes of artificial light from a streetlamp or window. He is periodically flung into deep, sharp shadows. Out of uniform, he always seems a little plastic and uncoordinated, as if the belts and stiff flannel help sustain his equilibrium. In repose he looks like a disappointed child. As I remove the lipstick and mascara, he sighs. The cigar he smoked before leaving is still on his breath.

‘Did you notice, Mashi, what a soft, beautiful mouth the Führer has? Like a girl. Of course, he’ll want to kill us both after this. He’ll savour the wait. Like a cat. He’ll hardly know he’s doing it, then he’ll pick his moment. That’s what he’s good at. He understands sadism because he understands masochism, it involves patience, passivity. Only a few days ago he and I were reflecting how the world runs on sadism. Do you follow me, Max?’

My friend radiates a strange, euphoric humour. Perhaps sensing our lack of intimacy, he has become unusually loquacious. ‘The de Sades run the world. At the top, the cruel but high-minded soldiers, aristocrats and creative artists. Their orders are translated by honest bureaucrats, esteeming authority above everything, passing on the orders to brute sadists at the bottom. My SA boys, for instance. Scum for the most part, but the middle layer gives a political legitimacy to the whole operation. The decent middle doesn’t understand the addictions and joys of sadism. They can even produce civilised rationalisations for everything! They’re trained to understand only the notion of just punishment. They can’t imagine the calculated use of terror as a refined political instrument. We have to accept these realities, even if we don’t discuss them in public. The better we know our system, the better we can use it to effect. If we are to rebuild German civilisation, we have to rid ourselves of the grime of Judaeo-Christian repression. We must learn to be healthy brutes again. Alf and I used to talk a lot about that. The power of cruelty, you know, to achieve high ideals. Channel your desires one way, and you become a criminal psychopath. Channel them another way, and you become a great political leader. We worked it out years ago. In the War. Those Jews in Vienna, imitating real people as ever, took our insights and sentimentalised them for the millions. Their pseudo-philosophers and -psychologists had a stranglehold on popular culture. But we were sustained by our secret knowledge. More romantic days, Mashi, in many ways. You’re lucky to have me as your own personal guide!’

His wounded face shakes with humour. ’I am your Virgil. You are my Dante! The conversations one has at the height of one’s ecstasy! Every so often you remember them, and a taste of the ecstasy comes back. At least a taste of it, eh? I envy the young. I hate them.’ Almost reminiscently he fingers his crotch.

Scarlet, white and gold, the great crucifix swings like a pendulum across my field of vision. How could Christ create Dachau? Scarlet and rich, dark gold through the scented smoke. Kyrie eleison! Kyrie eleison! The crucifix sways in the hazy air. What Jew could know such grief, such joy in Christ?

When he said ‘kill us both’, did he mean himself and Strasser?

Strasser was in front with the driver and heard none of this. He had folded his huge, shaven head down into the collar of his camel-hair coat and appeared to be sleeping.

‘Well, he’d hardly bother with me,’ I said.

The Stabschef looked at me in surprise. His mind had been elsewhere. He seemed to have forgotten his earlier remarks. Then he smiled. ‘Oh, don’t be too sure. Alf and me used to play such games. Such bloodthirsty games.’ Röhm began to laugh. ‘He has a memory for detail, our Alf, even if he’s inclined to forget the broader issues.’

‘Not in that state.’ I had now removed all the make-up. Not at that level of possession. Something else had taken hold of him. I was a symbol. A memory. A substitute. I no longer existed.

‘Especially in that state,’ said Röhm. ‘I know. He can be a mean little pincher and hair-puller, our girlie. Never remembers a favour. Never forgets a slight. Still, I only said he’ll want to kill us. I didn’t say he could. It’s me and Strasser have to worry. You’ll be fine, Mashi, while I look after you.’ Then he chuckled in that pleasant, easy Bavarian way he had and slapped me on the knee. ‘Alfy can be tricky, but not that tricky. I’m his strength and he knows it. I keep his feet on the ground. Without the SA, the parliamentary party’s nothing. We’re the muscle and they’re the brains. I’ve never pretended to be anything else.’

He frowned for a moment and dug hard at a thumbnail, trying to clean it. His hands were not entirely knotted with arthritis and were still one of his best features. A sculptor’s hands, strong and sensitive. No stranger would guess his daily pain. Scarcely a bone in his body had not been broken during and immediately after the War.

‘That’s how I function and how I want to function. As a simple soldier. Once Alfy’s brought the SA into the Reichswehr, all tension will be over. We’ll have a people’s army with people’s officers. Alf’s got to keep the generals sweet, but my men have been promised jobs and are getting impatient. They need proper army discipline. Alf will play the plutocrats at their own game. When the time comes their heads will roll. At heart he’s still one of us. It’s not him I’m worried about.’ And then as if he had said too much, he closed his mouth so tightly that his lips whitened and made the scars over his nose and cheek look like the valleys of the moon. ‘He won’t kill you, Mashi. I’ll see to that.’ That was the end to our conversation. He smoothed his moustache like a grooming cat then, drawing on his gloves, fell into a half-sleeping silence.

Was he speaking the truth? Or had he merely succeeded in binding me further to him? Without his patronage, I was in danger. Or so I must believe until I learned otherwise. I did not have the courage to ask Röhm how he knew the extremes of Hitler’s behaviour.

The morning was still dark when we stopped at Röhm’s favourite roadside cafe for breakfast. Strasser preferred to wait in the car rather than go into that typical steamy Bavarian working-man’s place, stinking of boiled sausages and strong coffee, and full of burly, ruddy fellows in blue overalls and heavy work shirts. I felt a little threatened by their closeness and their curiosity, but Röhm was clearly at home, joking and hand-slapping his way up to the counter to order our food while I sat in the booth nearest the door. I could still smell shit. I had no liking for the place. Its masculine philistinism was tangible. Two or three SA lads sat together at a table, but they had their backs to us. Röhm seemed relieved when they walked out without recognising him.

One of the workers did ask Röhm if he wasn’t Captain Röhm of the Nazis and, when he reluctantly admitted it, thumped him on the back and wished him all the best. I wanted only to leave. Of course, that acceptance was exactly what Röhm enjoyed about the place. In the past he’d joked about what they’d say if they found out the ‘smear’ stories, so vehemently dismissed in the Völkischer Beobachter, were only a fraction of the truth.

He relished the weight of their heavy hands on his back and arms. Their congratulations. Their manly approval. Their balls. He blossomed. Good luck! Good luck! Grüss Colt! Grüss Gott!

Even I picked up some of their approval by association, especially when I explained my bad German. ’Amerikaner!’ they roared happily. They all had relatives in Texas and Wisconsin. Many people forget that the greatest American settlement after the colonial years was by Germans.

I envied Röhm his sense of place and people. I had lost both in Russia. I longed for the comradeship I had known with Shura in Esau’s in Odessa’s Moldavanka. We, too, might have formed a corps and gone off to fight together. Shura and I could have driven the Bolshevik from our homeland and put a beneficent new Tsar upon the throne. A Tsar who acknowledged the universal rule of Christ and the eternal grace of Jesu Kristos, Lord of the Greeks. Raboni!

We took Strasser some coffee and sausages and returned to the car. ‘You’d better get yourself a girlfriend,’ Röhm said thoughtfully, not looking at me. ‘You know — something smart or tarty — whatever you prefer, as long as people notice. It’s just a precaution, like dragging a false trail and turning signposts. Standard practice. For my own part I intend to spend more time with my mother and sister.’ Absently, he again patted at my leg and continued to stare out of the window. He spoke in rapid associative phrases, revealing him as the fine field officer he had been. ’Yes, that’ll be useful. Cover all our backs. And we’ll have to see what we can do with those engineering ideas of yours. The one thing Alf and I are agreed on is that armour’s the secret of winning tomorrow’s wars. Musso’s going to have to give you up. The bigger, better and faster the armour, the quicker the victory.’

Because of our particular histories, I had never been much of a Germanophile, but I had high respect for Germany’s great writers like Goethe and May. And I liked their hard, practical approach to modern problems. The Greeks were their models. That balance of mind and body, that celebration of human ingenuity. These Nazis understood that the future lay in a healthy populace, a rigorous pursuit of excellence and of technological superiority.

My ambition was still to get to England and work for one of her forward-looking engineering firms, to exploit my patents as a recognised inventor. Mussolini had betrayed me. Another mind poisoned against me. I had money waiting for me in Whitechapel. Relatives. Yet I sensed something in the German soul yearning for what I had to offer. Ernst and the others had the courage and the vision to be clear about what they wanted. Nothing less than a renewed Fatherland.

Would it be here, rather than under a Duce whose mind had been poisoned against me, a Duce no longer approachable by the common man, that the revolutionary machines of the future would be embraced? As usual my idealism, my hopes for improving the world, were leading me to become involved in the politics of a race that had never much engaged my attention, while my original plans to reach England were increasingly neglected.

I blame myself as much as Röhm. We had so much in common. Our views on history and politics were almost identical. Only in our solutions to the problems were we in any sort of disagreement, because I had experienced Red Terror at first hand. He was a persuasive, flattering host. His cocaine came from Vienna, from the same source as Freud’s. I had not enjoyed this life of luxury so much since Hollywood. But my vocation was forever calling me. I felt an even greater need to get to a drawing board, to found an engineering works and begin one of the projects I had planned. Though Röhm appreciated my worth as an inventor, if I was to stay, I needed to meet someone who envisioned Germany’s future in the hands not of a disciplined workers’ army but of a scientific elite working in harness with that army.

I began to speak of this to Röhm, but he was not in the mood to listen.

‘We’ll go to the pictures tomorrow afternoon,’ he said. ‘There’s a film I want to see at the Karlsplatz. A comedy. It’ll cheer us up. We’ll meet at the Kino. Fourteen forty-five sharp. In the foyer. Dress down. We’re going to have to take some ordinary precautions.’

As I have said, Röhm was rapidly distancing himself from me emotionally. For once in my life I was too dim to realise it. I should have known a soldier like him could not afford to lose himself in love. Part of his contradictory nature was explained by his masculine duty being constantly at odds with his feminine sensitivity.

The sun had still not risen when we returned to Röhmannsvilla. Yet I had to remain in the car while Röhm went cautiously in to get my things. Strasser said very little. Not once had his eyes met my own. He seemed no friendlier towards Röhm. No doubt he considered himself superior to us. He was a deputy, of course. He had a wife. A business. He had his own car. He would drive it home.

Our chauffeur restarted the Mercedes’s engine. Röhm was embarrassed and a little apologetic. He offered Strasser a reassuring gesture and turned to me. ‘It’s no good your staying at the villa. We’ll have to avoid too much friendly association for a bit. Don’t want you to be endangered, you know. Don’t want anyone putting one and one together and making two, eh?’

I murmured that I appreciated the need for discretion, but what would our driver report? Röhm was amused by this. His driver was a trusted SA man willing to die for his Captain if necessary.

We drove directly to Munich and the Königshof. Noticed only by a frowning night porter, I made my way swiftly to my room. Dawn came at last. The night seemed to have gone on for ever. Another foul dream over. I must admit I was totally exhausted and wished only to forget the entire disgusting episode. Why had I allowed myself to be dragged into Röhm’s scheme? And for what? How could that perverted creature in Tegernsee ever hope to be Chancellor of Germany?

A man’s life plan takes him down some strange paths, I thought. Then I sniffed one of my powders and, my mood much improved, was soon in a deep and dreamless sleep.

I slept until noon when I was forced awake by the loud banging on my door. Thinking it was a telephone message from Röhm to change the time, I dragged on a dressing gown and stumbled to answer the knocking. Instead of a busboy, I was greeted by a somewhat surly Frau Socking, the head housekeeper, who had until now been rather pleasant. Her speech seemed rehearsed. ’I am sorry, Herr Peters, but you have to vacate your room today.’

‘At once? An emergency?’

‘Refurbishment works,’ she said firmly but without conviction. ‘The manager has asked me kindly to ask you to find fresh accommodation.’ She softened apologetically but recovered herself. ‘By tomorrow.’

I was baffled, suspecting every kind of attack from every possible source. Had Hitler found out about me? Unlikely. Had Röhm turned against me? Equally unlikely. Mussolini’s people? My male and female nemeses, the Baroness, Frau Oberhauser, and Comrade Brodmann? Surely neither of these would have influence over such a respectable hotel? I protested. I would speak to the manager.

Realising I would be meeting Röhm in a couple of hours and knowing that he had considerable influence in Munich, I decided to avoid serious confrontation. After bathing, ‘coking’ and preparing myself elegantly for the day, I strolled down to the lobby and ordered some coffee. At the reception desk I asked to speak to the manager, knowing he was almost certainly at his lunch. Sure enough he was not currently available. I left my card and said I had an important meeting this afternoon. I would return later. Meanwhile I assumed my room would not be disturbed. I would no doubt be ready to leave by that evening or the next morning. I also took it for granted that the presentation of a bill would not add insult to injury. I spoke with some force. I had no intention of being identified as a common bilker. They knew that I was a Hollywood star. To his credit the youth at the reception desk dropped his gaze, blushed and promised to pass on the message. I made it clear that I was extremely displeased.

My own belief at that time was that my association with various high-ranking members of the NSDAP had not improved my standing at the hotel. Röhm and Strasser were associated with the party’s left wing and had once even proposed a pact with Soviet Russia. The party was not, after all, the party of the rich and powerful, but the party of the poor and powerless. What was more, hoteliers were infamous snobs. Too many Prussian noblemen had declared themselves socialists for a gentleman’s politics to be trusted any longer.

Influential anti-Nazi elements in Munich included top policemen and politicians. The press speculated wildly about the Raubal case. Some hotels, shops and restaurants went so far as to refuse Nazis service. What possessed them to punish only the Nazis, when the Sozis were equally guilty of excesses, I need not tell you. The flow of stolen imperial gold from Russia into Central and Northern Europe at that time was as steady and as unstoppable as the Rhine herself.

I had already experienced the management’s animosity, and they had been cavalier in moving my room. Whatever the reason — and I did not suspect a mistake - it was prudent to look for a hotel that would give me credit. My credit at the Königshof was overextended. No doubt this had not improved their attitude in spite of my assurance that I was due to receive sums from Los Angeles and New York at any moment.

Without credit, however, it would be difficult to find a decent place. I would have to make some rapid arrangements. Taking a discreet pinch of ’snuff’ on my wrist, I strolled through the pleasant autumn weather to meet Röhm at the Karlsplatz. No doubt he or one of his powerful friends might be able to help. Yet underlying my pleasure in the day was a shadow of a question. Had I already been betrayed? I pushed the ideas aside. I am not by nature a suspicious man.

In compliance with Röhm’s request, I had dressed ‘German’ in my borrowed Crombie and Tyrolean hat with a big scarlet scarf flung over my shoulder. On the inside of my lapel was my party badge, the fashion among many middle-class Nazis.

Still something of a somnambulist, I managed to get to the big cinema at Karlsplatz. An historical extravaganza was playing as the main feature. I remember being mystified by the title, Der Kongress tanzt (Congress Dances). Would I have to endure some unfathomable expressionist film of which the Germans were so proud? I had already seen Caligari and the like, and while I had found Der Golem especially involving, I was not a great fan.

I entered the lobby at the same time as my friend in his wide-brimmed beaver hat, a loden overcoat with a tall wolfskin collar, dark glasses, the usual make-up over his scars. Today Röhm, too, wore his badge inside his lapel. Pretending to take an interest in the posters for coming presentations, he indicated I should join him in the men’s urinal. As soon as we were alone, he gave me my ticket. We would go in separately, he said. I had not, he was sure, been followed.

This was surely overly cautious? But Röhm was a planner; his success was due to his ability to foresee every possible detail. So we entered the auditorium individually after the lights had dimmed. When it was safe, we joined each other in the dark of the expensive back rows. He had bought one of those boxes of chocolates they sell in foyers. He told me to eat all the dark ones. He preferred milk. He shouldn’t have chocolate at all with his arthritis.

Even as we settled in our seats, the interior was slowly transformed to a glorious cathedral of multicoloured neon. There came the wafting scents of spring roses. Pretty blonde girls in traditional costume went up and down the aisles freshening the air with spray guns. Then the whole theatre vibrated to the roar of a single, massive chord. Playing selections from well-known film scores, from the lovely operettas of Strauss and Lehar, the great organ began to rise from the pit.

My Virgil seemed tense, but he was jovial enough in his passing remarks, loosening his clothing and lighting a cigarette. The back of the Kino was completely empty. A few couples occupied the front seats together with some solitary men, but nobody was interested in us. Unusually, Röhm smelled of spirits. I heard the swill of a bottle in his pocket.

We began as usual with a newsreel. The excitement of the current political situation, the dominance of the Nazis in the Reichstag. The need for strong government. A rally of Nationalists and their own supporters, the impressive Stahlhelm battalions. Various Nationalist politicians were prominent. There were pictures of Hindenburg and of Hitler, of von Schleicher, von Papen and various other politicians. A general milling about outside parliament. Sozis raising their clenched fists in the air. Storm Troopers giving Nazi salutes, clearly in defiance of a disapproving constabulary. Nazi deputies returning the salutes as they made their way en masse into parliament. Socialists returning the clenched fist signal. All it needed was a deputy or two making scissors with their fingers and we should have had the entire scissors-paper-stone routine. Perhaps that was the origin of Churchill’s famous V-sign?

A mixture of Nazi uniforms and conventional pinstripes. Hess and Strasser mounting the steps. Scenes inside the Reichstag. Where is Hitler? Goebbels speaking to the congress. Shots of the corner of Prinzregentenplatz. Policemen interviewed. Considerable space given to the death of the niece of ‘prominent young Munich politician’ Adolf Hitler. Various other men gesticulating urgently. A general sense of tension and uncertainty. Röhm seemed horrified when, for a few moments, his gigantic uniformed image appeared on the screen. He was, of course, an increasingly well-known figure. No mention of him was made by name, but the marshalled ranks of Storm Troopers were testimony to his power.

I do not remember if there was sound. In those days the news-reels did not always have it, since most regional theatres were not converted. Röhm seemed unhappy with the reporting. He said that it was UfA news and that meant it was slanted towards the ideas of a few reactionary old industrialists who wanted to restore the Wittelbachs and the Kaiser. He relaxed into innocent amusement as we watched a concoction called something like Nie wieder Liebe. I found it mildly funny but Röhm was roaring and slapping at himself, his bottle forgotten. He was in excellent spirits when the two-reeler came on, a Western with Buck Jones. Jones was a new star, the best type of All-American boy, righting wrongs and rescuing fair maidens. Full of wild action and wholesome heroics, the film was well above the usual quality. People find it fashionable to mock at morality these days, but I see nothing amusing in showing evil thwarted and virtue triumphant. Röhm loved these tales. He nudged me once and whispered in fun that Mr Jones was an even better rider than I. The film had been given a decent budget. The subtitles were German, of course. Not a talkie, but a musical soundtrack had been attached. Röhm agreed with me that he would rather have a live orchestra.

Next came a pre-war Douglas Fairbanks Keystone comedy in his old style, with organ accompaniment, the titles in Gothic German, giving them all a vaguely Victorian quality, but the sparse audience filled that great cinema with appreciative laughter. Mack Sennett was a hero in Germany. They were fond of saying how much of the technology had been invented by Germans, how many of the American film-makers had German names. I sensed a peculiar feeling of goodwill towards America in those days, because the USA had not fallen into the vengeful trap of the rest of the Allies and made vast, unmeetable reparation demands on the defeated country.

With over a third of her citizens of German origin, America had no great animosity towards Germany. America had not been the cause of inflation. Wall Street, as Germans were fond of saying at that time, was not Wisconsin. When Röhm explained the reality, it made perfect sense. Most of Germany’s major national debts were either paid in deliberately inflated currency or written off. Big Business had taken advantage of a disaster which left ordinary families destitute but allowed private companies to make massive profits in foreign currency. Until the government produced the new hard mark those few fat businessmen benefited very well from inflation. Their profits were not poured back into the needy country but sent to Switzerland, England, Liechtenstein and America. Röhm understood this as well as any Bolshevik.

The understanding was beginning to dawn on the victors, too, I think, that an impoverished nation impoverishes the nations it trades with. The French and American Jews in particular had been quick to take advantage of Germany’s rock-bottom prices. With his eyes fixed on the screen, Röhm talked through the Keystone comedy in a low monotone which only I could hear. He was clearly a man obsessed. He had come here with the intention of forgetting his problems, but the problems had followed him into the Kino.

He only fell completely silent when the main feature, a glossy confection set in Vienna some time early in the nineteenth century, began, a talkie. I must admit, I was astonished by the quality of the sound. It was as if a full orchestra was playing in the theatre and the voices of the performers filled the air like a choir of angels. Slowly I was drawn into the wonderfully complex plot, featuring Metternich’s various machinations with wonderful romantic performances from Lilian Harvey, Conrad Veidt and Willy Fritsch. We even saw our great Russian Emperor Tsar Alexander represented. Waltzes were danced and balls were given, peasants sang and the world was merry, full of promise, for together we had defeated the threat from Napoleon. A high moment for Europe.

Both Röhm and I were enraptured by the film. I fell in love with Lilian Harvey. I could almost smell her. She was gorgeous and naturally graceful, a girl of the people very much of the Mrs Cornelius type, with the same helmet of white-blonde hair. The vital young Englishwoman, singing beautifully in German, was a great star here. The scene where she sings on her way to visit Willy Fritsch (as Tsar Alexander) and all the peasants join in with her has been copied a million times since. The background of the charming romance was the founding of the Holy Alliance between Prussia, Austria and Russia after Napoleon had been exiled to Elba. A serious political theme, telling us something of current political attitudes, which also engaged Röhm’s attention.

The Germans, of course, had always led the field in kinematography, and there was no faulting this extraordinary operetta, the form in which they were also the unrivalled masters. The extravaganza was produced with so much more flair and taste than those more famous American musicals which came to imitate Der Kongress tanzt and its successors.

No wonder the Hollywood studios were all over Berlin, especially at UfA’s great Neubabelsberg headquarters where American scouts were courting all the top directors and stars. Germany, as the German papers never stopped telling us, was second only to America in film production and exports. UfA owned film, distributor and the cinema we sat in.

We left just before the lights went up. Röhm said he hadn’t seen a more delightful film in years. We were both humming the melodies as he led me into the street and hailed a cab, shoving me through the door and giving an address in the respectable southern suburb. Once in the cab he pulled down the blinds and relaxed. ‘Nobody on our tail,’ he said.

I began to think he was disturbed. Or did he know more than I did?

I asked him where we were going, and he smiled tenderly, kissing me briefly on the cheek. ‘Home,’ he said. ‘You’ll love it. They’ll love you. You’ll behave yourself. You always do.’

Sure enough, to my enormous astonishment, Röhm was taking me to meet his family!

Röhm’s mother and sister lived in a very pleasant house in a tree-lined avenue. The main parlour, where I sat while Röhm had a private word with his sister, was dominated by a mirror-polished ebony grand piano. Otherwise the room was rather sparsely furnished and seemed hardly used. It looked out through long French windows to a balcony and the wide street beyond the trees. Prints of Ney and Wellington hung on the walls, pictures of Cromwell’s victories, military engravings of Prussian cavalry on parade. A bust of Beethoven in black marble looked over the piano. Pale green wallpaper. A pretty Meissen urn on the piano’s dark reflection. Clearly Röhm, rather than his mother and sister, had furnished this parlour. It had an austere, masculine air to it, was not ‘lived in’, but more likely ‘mused’ in. Röhm played the piano less and less because his long, sensitive fingers had begun to feel, he said, as if they were full of shrapnel. I knew the sensation. Sometimes I have it in my stomach.

I could not help being mystified. First Röhm warned that our intimacy must no longer be public. Then he took me to visit his mother! I think, looking back, that he was in emotional turmoil and I must say I cannot blame him. Perhaps he wanted me to see this other side of him because some instinct warned him that he would be ferociously libelled by his enemies within the party and, through them, by the world. Did he understand that somehow I would survive the coming deluge? Is that why he wanted me to know what I already knew, that he was a sophisticated and sensitive human being? Behind that military swagger, that Bavarian bonhomie, that fixed conservatism of his class and calling, there was, I believe, an artist, an intellectual. He could be cruel. At times he could certainly advocate and order brutality, even if he did not take part in it. But these were brutal times. Like the soldier-priests of old, a man had to cultivate the sword as well as the pen to survive in post-war Germany. I was not nervous of him. He loved me. In a way I also loved him. Germany might fear him, but I did not.

Certainly at that moment I was more nervous of meeting Frau Röhm than I was of being the victim of Hitler’s vengeance. A servant girl shuffled in wearing a somewhat ill-fitting uniform, as if she had only recently taken the job and inherited the previous incumbent’s clothes. With a peasant’s heavy-handedness she brought in a coffee tray and a cake stand while an older, rather stooped woman followed her, carefully carrying some plates. Like the maid, the woman was dressed in black, but hers were familiar widow’s weeds of the kind worn by so many women in those days. Behind this matron came a woman only a little older than Röhm himself, I guessed. She, too, wore a simple black dress with a black jacket. Her expression was amiable, on a broad, glowing Bavarian face. I detected no close family resemblance. Röhm’s features were altogether finer than his relatives’ and suggested that his father’s had been the dominant genes. Neither woman wore much make-up. Frau Röhm had a healthy, rather scrubbed appearance. These plain women somehow looked out of place in that austere, masculine room. They needed the comforts of their class, their floral prints and chintz and china, to give them any colour at all.

They arrived like strangers and arranged stiff-backed Empire chairs around the coffee and the cakes, smiling and nodding at me vaguely, as if they were not sure I could speak. I clicked my heels and bowed in the Prussian fashion. They seemed impressed by this. We exchanged greetings. As we did so, Röhm came hurrying back into the room. He kissed his mother’s hand, patted his sister on the arm, asked after his brother, who was not at home, and announced me as Herr Max Peters, the American film actor. Then I suddenly guessed he was fulfilling a promise to them. His mother and sister already knew who I was and had probably seen some of my films. Like most women, they were curious about celebrity. A hint of Hollywood engaged even the least imaginative Hausfrau.

While the clumsy servant handed us our plates and offered elaborate cream pastries, I made conversation in my rather old-fashioned German. I had learned more Yiddish than German when I had worked for the Jew in Odessa, but I think I succeeded in answering their enquiry I was not planning to go back to Hollywood immediately. I had fallen in love with Bavaria. But, of course, I was still an employee of Il Duce. This was another personality who interested them, so we chatted a little about Mussolini whom, naturally, I was not particularly well disposed towards just then. I told them what a wonderful woman Signora Rachele Mussolini was and what lovely children she had, how Signor Mussolini took a personal interest in his sons and, no matter how busy with affairs of state, was still able to give them the attention and discipline they needed from a father. I mentioned that Signora Mussolini had personally asked me to teach her son Bruno to fly. Like their father they already rode very well. The boys would grow up as true Italian gentlemen.

This news was greeted with considerable approval by the women and caused Röhm to murmur some remark into his coffee cup which had both of us smiling. But I recovered myself. I had no intention of letting Röhm down. He clearly had considerable affection for his mother yet addressed her in that familiar, faintly mocking, slightly hectoring way his generation had with older people. I think that, too, had something to do with the War. You became impatient with their sentimentality. You could not tell them of the horrors you had seen.

Frau Röhm asked me what I thought of the Vatican. Had I been received by the Pope? I told her that the Vatican did something to my soul. I would soon be granted an audience with the Pope. She said that she hoped the Pope would now be able to do something about the political situation. Mussolini had kept his word and restored the Vatican’s power. She was a woman of sharp intelligence. She spoke of the crisis in the Reichstag, the threat to Brüning’s chancellorship. Rather than correct her misunderstanding of the situation, Röhm chuckled and said there seemed little hope of the Chancellery now, but perhaps next time. We were trying to run before we could walk. ‘Alf’s temporarily lost his powers. All we can do for the moment is keep him up there in general view. It would be fatal if he lost his position with the public now.’

Frau Röhm had listened without hearing him. When he had finished she turned to me with a pleasant smile. ‘You are a famous American cowboy star, I understand, Herr Peters. But all Americans are from somewhere else, I know!’

I told her that my parents were from Madrid. Until recently my great-uncle had been Archbishop of Sta Maria. I did not really lie so much as use a code, letting her know how I was ‘one of us’. This stopped any barrier forming between us. She was, as a Catholic, clearly reassured by my response. That I held to the true Eastern Church was unimportant. That we both worshipped Jesus Christ was what bound us. I was telling her that I accepted her value system. It is often a mistake to accuse someone of telling a lie. Often they are telling the truth disguised by a lie.

I brought up the Jewish Question in relation to their domination of Hollywood. Contrary to later distortions, Röhm and his family were not rabidly anti-Semitic.

‘I’ve nothing against an honest Jew making a living,’ said Röhm. ‘Though usury’s the bane of modern economics. My complaint is that he then has to give his fifteen brothers and brothers-in-law a living — which means equally honest Germans are in the soup queues because Jews give jobs to Jews. You can’t blame them. We shall have a quota system so that Jewish businesses can only employ so many non-Aryans. At least it will give us a level battlefield.’ (A far cry, I think you will agree, from Treblinka!)

‘A few heads might have to roll in the present government.’ He laughed. He was using conventional phrases. These were the years of strong language, of newspaper hyperbole, where the vocabulary of war had infected all aspects of everyday life, just as military language translated through sport infects modern English. He never meant literally that people’s heads should be chopped off. He simply meant that Sozis and Nationalists would have to be replaced with National Socialists so that they had a large enough majority to pass such laws. He did not anticipate the punitive so-called Nuremberg Laws which Röhm had absolutely nothing to do with, of course, and which Hitler borrowed from America.

Fräulein Röhm seemed to wish to change the subject. As Röhm’s mother talked to him about a relative who had recently fallen ill, his sister moved to sit comfortably beside me on the lumpy couch and asked if I understood that cats had a religion.

‘Do you keep cats, Herr Peters?’ she asked rather diffidently.

‘No, madam. I fear I am away from home too often. You have cats of your own?’

‘Not at present, Herr Peters. Do you know what cats’ religion is? They believe that when they die they become humans. They live for seven or ten or fifteen years, as some cats do, and then they die and turn into humans. That is a sweet idea, don’t you think?’

‘Very, Fräulein. Extremely. Touching. And who are these people who were once cats? Can we recognise them or do they move secretly among us?’

‘Babies,’ she said. ‘They go from kitten, to cat, to baby and eventually to human maturity.’

‘What then?’

‘They become kittens again, I suppose.’ She smiled playfully. It was odd to see such imagination sparkling from such unremarkable features. ‘It is not a very complicated religion!’ She laughed again with unexpected, girlish spontaneity. She loved cats, she said, but it was impossible at the moment. The significance of her expression escaped me even as I nodded in sympathy.

Röhm had the soldier’s ability to relax in any circumstances. He seemed the only one actually comfortable on those chairs. Looking at his short military haircut and the way he held his coffee cup, I was suddenly reminded of a tonsured priest, and for a moment saw my friend, the leader of a great military force, as a monk on a visit home from the monastery. Many of the Nazis had the same puritanical rhetoric which had driven the Normans and helped them hold a conquered England, so I took it sometimes with a pinch of salt. The rhetoric was useful stuff, a kind of sustaining fuel, but it was not realistic. I am always pleasantly surprised by originality in the apparently unexceptional and warmed rather strongly to Fräulein Röhm. I could see that we might have a good, platonic friendship if I stayed longer in Munich. I think I had made a friend I would be able to see again. It occurred to me that while I waited for my opportunity to visit England, I could return temporarily to Vienna, which seemed a good place to be to test the waters, but once again I had no employer, no money and no certainty of being able to keep myself in the necessities of life. At some stage I would have to prevail upon Röhm for funds.

As Fräulein Röhm chatted to me, I must admit these anxieties went through my mind. She asked me if I planned to take any acting roles here in Munich. I told her that I was first and foremost an engineer. It seemed that the sooner I was in contact with some German manufacturer, who would buy my patents and offer me a royalty, the better. I was, I said, at present obliged to her brother, but that situation was, of course, untenable. She seemed disappointed when I remarked that, should I stay in Germany, I might find myself a flat in Berlin. I had privately formed the opinion that Bavaria was something of a backwater, its predominantly peasant culture both narrowly religious and prudent, glad to welcome tourists who, even in the darkest days, supplied many towns with their main trade. Munich, while delightful to look at, and full of the old, good-hearted spirit of those poets and painters attracted by the largesse of the Wittelbachs, themselves great patrons of the arts, was not at the heart of things, only at the heart of the NSDAP, which had started there. Even the party’s centre of gravity was shifting to Berlin.

I said nothing of this to Röhm’s sister. I had no wish to end my relationship with him. However, as the duties of party and army consumed him, he would be spending more and more time in Berlin. I merely told his sister that Berlin was where one had to be if one wished to get things done. She understood this. She said how hard all the travelling was for Ernst, with his arthritis being so painful. She darted him a sympathetic smile. Laughing, he assured her that these days he travelled first class on the best trains and in the finest cars. He had come quite a way from when he was reduced to selling encyclopaedias door to door like so many ex-servicemen. His mother pooh-poohed this as something he should not talk about, and I was reminded of Röhm’s respectable background. This was the man who had called himself a wicked, brutal creature. Yet, of course, that was far from being the whole individual, as he proved when, at his mother’s request, he played some Schubert songs for her on the piano.

Frau Röhm made me eat more cake but did not press her son. She said that Ernst had to watch his figure now that he was a great public man. He had always loved stories of the American wilderness, she said. Was I familiar with the work of Karl May? I told her that Old Shatterhand and Winnetou the Apache Prince were my constant companions as a boy. I almost made reference to old Professor Lustgarten, who had lent me the stories in Kiev, before I realised it would contradict her impression of my having been born in America. I found myself hesitating, at a loss for words. Röhm, believing me to be in trouble, made an excuse for us. He sprang up. We had a meeting, he said. Suddenly we were putting on our coats.

In the hall the women asked me to sign their friendship books and with simpering grace hoped that I would stay in Germany to make some films for them. They were both delightful. As we left, Frau Röhm gave my friend a large, awkward-looking parcel tied up in newspaper. ‘For the dog,’ she whispered.

I kissed hands. I hoped I would see the ladies again. Röhm was now in a hurry and bustled me and the parcel down the drive to the ordered taxi which would take us back to central Munich. He was a little embarrassed by the package of bones. ‘She loves my Griselda.’ He often left his Alsatian bitch with them when he went away. He felt better when she was there to protect them. Griselda was currently guarding Röhmannsvilla. I had rarely seen the animal.

He put the bones on the floor of the cab and instructed the driver to take us to the Königshof. I reminded him that I was being thrown out of that hotel. He nodded at this, but his attention was on our surroundings. He looked right and left, craning his head to peer through the small back window. ‘Just a precaution,’ he said. ‘If the cops are checking on us, they won’t get much, and if it’s one of Himmler’s new overzealous Boy Scouts, they’ll tell him I took you home to Mother.’

‘Won’t that add to his suspicions?’ I asked, but he laughed happily at this suggestion.

‘Not a bit! That’s the beauty of it. Alf knows I never even let my special friends meet her. You’re very privileged, Mashi.’

‘I appreciate that,’ I said. I again reminded him that privileged as I was, I needed a roof over my head.

He nodded, frowning, something else on his mind. He looked at his watch several more times. ‘It’ll be all right. I’ll speak to the manager. No, no. That would be stupid. We’ll find you somewhere to hide out for a while, don’t worry. Be a good idea for you to move. But I might have to get someone else to help you. I can’t even spare an adjutant. I’ve got to fly up to Berlin tonight. God in heaven, Mashi, have you been whoring up in that room?’

I was offended, and he apologised. I knew of no reason why the management was taking its attitude unless certain enemies I had made in Soviet Russia had succeeded in exerting their influence. He agreed it was a strong possibility. If there was another file, like the one he had received from Frau Oberhauser, it could put me in an awkward position. ‘You always think you’ve covered your angles and then comes the one you haven’t anticipated,’ he said. ‘All the more reason for you to move out of the limelight. Anyone’s limelight.’ Deep in thought, he began to hum to himself, tapping his fingers on the seat rest.

We were rounding the corner, running into the busy evening traffic of Prinzregentenplatz, when he slapped me on the arm. He had a solution. ‘That loony von Schirach’s in town, and he’s bound to know somewhere. He looks after all the students, the Hitler Youth. He’s your man. Great favourite of the Führer’s.’

‘Then is it wise —?’

‘Of course. That’s the whole point. The closer to the danger you are, the safer you are. Another thing you learn in the trenches!’

He seemed delighted with himself. He had solved my problem. Unfortunately it did not seem solved to me. Again, I had reason to doubt my friend’s grasp on reality. Whenever I tried to raise practical matters he simply shook his head and asked me questions. Had I liked his mother? Did I find his sister attractive?

The taxi drew up outside the hotel. A quick squeeze of my hand, a word of reassurance and he pressed something upon me. Then, rather bewildered, I was in the street watching Röhm speeding away towards his destiny. Thoughtfully I turned and slipped through the revolving doors. I wondered if I would ever see Fräulein Röhm again. In the lobby I looked down at what Röhm had presented me with before I left the cab. Grease was beginning to seep through on to my hands. He had given me the parcel of bones his mother had offered him for his bitch Griselda.