The Vengeance of Rome (80 page)

Sensing my despair, Count Pottendorf reassured me. Even LeBrun was clearly not a Red. If we were suspected of such affiliations we would be with the other musicians and entertainers in Stadelheim and Dachau. I
was a victim of bureaucratic thinking, nothing else. Rather than distinguish between us, the Nazis had decided to arrest all foreign artists and writers on the suspicion that they were communists. Slowly, as they investigated us, they would discover who was and who was not guilty and I would be released. My confidence temporarily restored, I determined to make the best of things. I would soon be back in my flat. I prayed that the carefully hidden documents and personal possessions in Corneliusstrasse had not meanwhile been discovered and stolen.

I next began to worry what would happen if, just as I was on the point of being released, LeBrun might bear false witness against me. He was spiteful enough to do so. Did he really remember me from Paris? Certainly I did not remember him from Lipp's. At that time, Mrs Cornelius and myself had moved in different circles. If she had been in Paris at all, she would have been with Trotsky or her mysterious Persian playboy who had brought her to Constantinople. That was before I had driven from Rome to begin my career in Paris. She had been in London. I had received a letter from her, posted from Whitechapel. From there, inspired by my letters, she had gone with an English touring company to the USA. I did not remember the details, but certainly I had not met her again until we were both in the United States where, to our mutual benefit, Mucker Hever had fallen in love with her. We could never have been together in Paris.

So detached from reality had I become that I even thought of killing LeBrun while he slept. He could ruin me. Of course my instincts would not permit it. I value human life. I would not willingly spill his blood, even though he was loathed by all. Moreover, if he was stifled in his sleep, I was sure to be subject to an inquiry.

My fears were groundless, as it happened. Within a day LeBrun had lost his flashy suit and was wearing only a striped prison shirt which went down to his knees. The guards were amused by this. They said he looked better in a dress. They even took his shoes. We found a spare pair in Bach's suitcase that were too big for him, but better than nothing. The guards said he would be issued with some sturdier clothes when he got to Dachau. There he would learn what it was to work like a man.

Happily, LeBrun soon gave up his accusatory mode and spoke to us less and less, snivelling himself to sleep every night. I came close to pitying him. He had bruises all over him where he had been kicked and punched by passing SA. If he had not accused my angel, I would have done more to try to help him. Even when he began to bleed from the nose, I sensed something disgusting about him. Helander, like me, avoided him, but the little
pervert became pathetically grateful when Count Pottendorf, a Christian gentleman to the marrow, bathed his face, wiping the dried blood off his nose and lips. Pottendorf spoke in a low tone about Paris, which he had loved, her boulevards, her parks, her quays, calming LeBrun to silence so that we could all sleep.

They say that in monetary terms a barrel of good human gore is worth infinitely more than a barrel of crude oil. Tens of thousands of pounds are needed to buy a few gallons of blood. Plasma is, of course, worth even more. I heard this on the BBC the other day. Not that I believe everything the BBC tells us. Buggers Broadcasting Communism, as Miss Brunner, the schoolteacher I see at the pub, would have it. Blood is literally the most valuable liquid on the planet. Is it because we spill it so liberally, I wonder? The Americans used albumin first at Pearl Harbor. It had astonishing properties. Yet it is also the most easily contaminated substance. Oil, the most contaminating of liquids, kills anything it touches. Our oceans and beaches are forever ruined by it, yet we value oil far higher than blood.

The oil had dried on LeBrun's head and his hair was a spiked mess, giving him an insane, inhuman appearance. Struwwelpeter, indeed! How quickly he had lost his veneer. The rest of us used whatever means we could to keep up our standards, but in a matter of hours the Alsatian went from posturing dandy to slovenly wretch.

The SA began to call for LeBrun regularly. He was gone for hours. He said they were questioning him about French communists he knew. He did not know any communists, he said, whether French or otherwise. He had never had anything to do with politics. He had been beaten up but he would not tell us details. While he was away, we wondered if he was being persuaded to act as a witness against us. Every time he returned he had a fresh bruise and was weeping. Pottendorf said he thought it unlikely they were asking LeBrun about us. Horrible though it was to contemplate, the SA men were beating him for their own pleasure, out of disgust for his kind. He had encouraged them in their prejudice, almost advertised himself.

One afternoon Helander proposed that LeBrun was being used by the brutal homosexual element of the SA. After all, Röhm was notorious.

Naturally I defended my patron. Röhm's enemies had employed his sensitive letters against him. That Spartan love was a very different thing from LeBrun's limp-wristed mincing. Helander and Pottendorf seemed surprised by the intensity of my defence, which made me realise it was unwise of me to continue. I could do no good for Röhm or help my own cause.

Nursing his bruises, LeBrun confined himself to his miserable bunk. The rest of us tried to make conversation. The other two prisoners were interested in my scientific ideas, and it took my mind off my situation to talk about such things. In America I had invented a very successful steam-car, but my interest remained mostly in aeronautics. I described my oneman observation airship and asked if they had ever heard of the giant airship the Americans planned to build. I was about to tell them a little of my involvement with such a ship, which, as far as I knew, was still in its shed outside Akron, when Pottendorf gave a bitter laugh. ‘Don't tell me about airships. Poor LeBrun has already reminded me too much! I lost half my fortune to that miserable confidence trick that was all over the papers a few years ago. I was living in Paris at the time. I invested heavily. I was an idiot. I thought it was the coming thing. Do you remember that scandal? Some ten years or so ago? They used a Russian nobleman to front it. He was a convincing rogue. What was his name? Count something. He married a Parisian banker's daughter, I think, then ran off with some little whore from Constantinople. The scheme itself was cooked up by a bunch of Jewish fraudsters. I haven't a prejudiced bone in my body, but I should have known better than to trust them. They made millions from it, of course, but left the rest of us high and dry. Some Russian charlatan claimed to be the inventor. Another Jew. If you're involved in aeronautics, you might remember him, Mr Peters. Did that news ever reach America? I heard the chief villains fled there, but America is a large country. It is full of defaulting financiers and fleeing criminals. You must have encountered plenty.'

I was shocked to hear this version of my wholly idealistic Parisian experiment. I longed to enlighten him but, in the circumstances, could not.

‘I would not have had to resort to journalism,' Pottendorf continued, ‘if it had not been for those rogues. And if I had not become a journalist, I would no doubt not be here at all!'

I was relieved that I had shown forbearance and denied any association with Paris. It seemed impolitic to mention my involvement with the airship company or to try to defend my friend Kolya, for Count Nikolai Feodorovitch Petroff was the man Pottendorf referred to. In reality, of course, I, too, had been a victim of the scheme. Indeed, I had been made the chief scapegoat. My name had not then been Peters, but Pyatnitski. If my friend Kolya had not warned me in time I would even now, no doubt, be in a worse prison on Devil's Island. Yet the real villains remained at large, still free and respected. Only by a whisker had I had been able to get to America, forced
to leave my little Esmé behind in Kolya's safekeeping. Doubtless she was the ‘little whore from Constantinople' Pottendorf mentioned.

Not times I liked to remember. I found it unbearable to think of the vast consequences arising from French Jewry's betrayal of my best ideals. I, too, had lost much. I wish that I could have told Pottendorf the truth but found myself reminding him I had never been to Paris. I agreed that we lived in terrible times, when Russian charlatans were able to deceive even those of us with considerable common sense. Avoiding the subject of large airships, I spoke instead of my other American ventures, of my great Land Cruiser, my fleet of experimental aircraft built for the Sultan of Marrakech, the various projects I had begun with Signor Mussolini. I had rather expected, I said, to interest the New Germany in my scientific ideas. I had much to offer the Third Reich. But this business had soured me. The sooner I could get back to Italy, the better.

Helander was surprised I had never visited the City of Light. ‘Such a sophisticated world traveller,' he said, ‘and yet—'

Sadly circumstances had never taken me to the French capital. As a race, the French were unattractive, too volatile and unserious. Bismarck had rightly described France as a feminine nation, as compared to masculine Germany. The whole nation had sunk into decadence. One only had to look at M. LeBrun.

My anxiety was returning. Pottendorf's bitter outburst had again reminded me of the materials in Röhm's and Prince Freddy's possession. If someone like Pottendorf saw those cuttings he would turn against me. I might never be released. The Parisian Airship Company scandal was notorious at the time, especially after my name was linked to that of my fellow Ukrainian Stavisky. Yet this uncomfortable reference also came as a revelation! Again I wondered if Kitty von Ruckstühl was actually responsible for my arrest. Did she really still blame me for her mother's death? Did she believe me to be the father of her half-brother? In her morphine fever could she have turned on me, deciding to take up her mother's baton?

I shuddered at how those films might now affect my fate. Masks could not entirely disguise me. There were the distinctive marks on my buttocks. These, in turn, reminded me of Grishenko and my Ukrainian adventures. My thoughts went again to Brodmann, the only witness of my humiliation. Unless the Bolshevist agent had deceived them completely, it was unlikely the Nazis would take his word for anything. Hanfstaengl had no reason to hate me. My association with Otto Strasser could not be known unless someone had been watching him for a long time. Was that possible?
Who else? Göring, perhaps? Out of jealousy of my relationship with Mrs Cornelius? Again unlikely. The Fraus had no reason to take against me. No, the most obvious enemy was Prince Freddy. If I escaped from this trap, I would ask Röhm to have him killed. I was furious with him and what he had done.

I was becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the company, especially, of course, LeBrun. I feared he would remember something more from when I had been in Paris and reveal my association with Kolya and his friends. The next time I had the opportunity, I begged the guard to change my cell. He was especially sympathetic when I said I feared molestation from LeBrun.

Two days later, while LeBrun was as usual absent, Helander and Pottendorf were playing chess and I was sitting reading the
VB
. Suddenly there came a loud shout from outside and the door was flung back. ‘Hurry yourself, Peters. Get your things together. At the double, man. We're leaving.' It was an SA guard I knew called Fischer.

‘Leaving? I'm released?'

‘At the double. Quick now.'

Rapidly I gathered up my few possessions, said a hasty goodbye to my cellmates and stood before Warder Fischer. The massive SA man had never treated me particularly badly.

‘Am I free?'

‘You wanted to be free of your nancy boy, didn't you? Come on. Hurry up.'

I was marched along the corridor to cell 40, which the warder unlocked and opened. Bewildered, I stumbled into it. ‘What's this?'

‘Solitary,' the warder said. Then the door was shut and locked.

The bunk had no mattress, only a straw-filled sack and a pillow. At its foot was a water closet. The cell was freezing. The radiator was not turned on. It allowed me six paces back and forth and was about two paces wide. High above, the window was impossible to reach. Almost immediately I began to feel claustrophobic. By way of self-comfort I lay down on the sack and closed my eyes, determined to enjoy my privacy, if nothing else. Soon, however, the cold made me get to my feet. As rapidly as I could I walked the length of the cell, leaping up and down in order to keep warm. Eventually I wore myself out and stretched out on the pallet again. I had nothing to read, having left the
VB
with the others. I was depressed. My common sense told me I had been foolish to believe I was escaping this place. None of the prisoners had gone out before they had received some sort of hearing. Yet
more than one had been released after being put in solitary. Did this mean I could now expect my hearing?

This hope sustained me for at least another week. Occasionally on my way to the washroom, I caught glimpses of my former cellmates, but had no chance to talk to them. They had another companion now, a bald, emaciated-looking fellow I remembered from my film-star days, which felt extraordinarily remote to me. He had been a cameraman's assistant, I recalled, a Greek or a Turk. The cosmopolitan nature of our cell was being maintained. After a while I saw nothing of LeBrun, the reason for my being put in solitary. He had been replaced by a pallid, squat fellow who seemed to have nothing to wear but a pair of extremely garish pyjamas. I never did discover who he was.

The radiator in my cell remained cold. I became obsessed with keeping warm. I constantly begged the warders to have something done. Shortly after I ran out of
sneg
, whose properties were so useful in protecting against disease, I developed terrible influenza. I began to sweat and tremble badly. Obviously I was catching pneumonia. The guards asked me if I wished to see the doctor. They warned me that anyone taken to the doctor would, these days, usually be passed on to Dachau where they had hospital facilities. I insisted I was not as sick as I seemed.