The Vengeance of Rome (86 page)

I spent all day and all the next night in Brennero. Allowing me to keep myself clean and change clothes, the officials fed me well and worked hard to make my stay comfortable. I resisted drawing on my personal friendship with Mussolini, especially after what I had been told, yet the fact remained that neither the Spanish Embassy nor the Germans could help me get to Rome. I must return to Munich and obtain the appropriate visa or get myself a ticket for Barcelona and try to obtain a visa there. If so, I would have to give them my papers and have them returned to me once I got to Spain. I would not be allowed to disembark from the train en route.

I dared not give up my papers or reveal my US documents. I had little money left. Any further travel must be made in third class. I thought this hardly fair since I had originally purchased a first-class ticket. Once more the officers were courtesy itself. Regulations did not permit me to stay any longer in Italy. They advised me to go back to Vienna where the Spanish Embassy would doubtless accommodate me.

I was in a terrible position. I had good reason for not contacting the Spanish Embassy. I was not even sure how good my documents were, since they had been obtained in North Africa. Gallibasta was by no means a common name. They could easily check on me. My Spanish was imperfect. If I told them I had been living on Majorca, my connection with Stavisky might be revealed. Reluctantly I decided it would be better to take the Vienna train and use my American papers. In Vienna, at least, I would be
safe from the German authorities. But where would I find money? Perhaps Otto Strasser could help if he was still there?

After a short, uncomfortable stay in Italy, I found myself in a third-class carriage crowded with peasants and workers who stared curiously at my suitcase and my smart clothes. I was immediately stereotyped as a Jewish travelling salesman. They had seen the police helping me aboard and decided I was some sort of crook forced to leave Brennero in a hurry and returning to Vienna to rejoin my kind. The Austrians among them showed the most appalling prejudice, far worse than anything I had experienced at the hands of the Germans. I attempted to explain how I was a Spanish citizen, an engineer. Those who could understand me at all merely laughed and told me to shut up. Some even made attempts to open my case until I threatened to call the guard and report them to the police when we arrived at the next station. Not for years had I experienced such wretched humiliation. The journey now became a horror. When we eventually pulled into Vienna, I disembarked quickly, my clothes stinking of working-class sweat and worse.

Unless Fiorello was still there, I knew no one in the Austrian capital, but I found some cheap lodgings not far from the station. In the privacy of a room reeking of cheap sausage and sauerkraut, noisy from the street outside and the business of the other lodgers around me, I tried to take stock of my situation. Without the appropriate papers, I was not going to get into Italy unless I could find someone to smuggle me over the border. I would have to forget Rome as an immediate destination. By living frugally, I could survive in Vienna for a while. I wished now that I had stayed with the Fraus and travelled with them. At least in their company I would have made some sort of modest living. Now it was too dangerous for me to go back to Munich. I had burned my bridges. Every instinct told me I would not be safe until Hitler was certain he had rounded up all his enemies. My association with Röhm was enough to damn me. The likes of Baldur von Schirach would perhaps even put two and two together. I had been released almost by accident, because I was not associated with the old Nazis. If I was picked up again, I was not likely to be so lucky.

I became deeply despondent. I had no friends in Vienna. My only acquaintance, Herr Stross, was in Innsbruck and not likely to be staying long, even if he could have helped me. Budapest would be even worse for me, and the only person I knew who had been living in Prague, but might now be in Vienna, was Otto Strasser, himself even more of an SS target than I. Perhaps if I stayed for a while in Vienna I might be able to pick up some
information or learn a way of getting into Italy which would not involve me obtaining a visa. Could I somehow contact my cousin Shura with his useful connections with Stavisky? Of course, this association was a two-edged sword. The newspapers said Stavisky was in France. Shura would be with him. But I was still unwilling to risk travelling in a country where I could be arrested at any moment. Perhaps it made sense to go back into Spain, as the immigration people had suggested? I could try to contact Signor Frau's relatives or possibly make my way to Majorca, where I still might find acquaintances.

With my money dwindling, I spent two or three fruitless weeks in Vienna, trying to find work and contacts. I found neither. The country was in another economic crisis. They had no work for locals, let alone for a desperate foreigner. Everywhere I went people assumed I was a Jew. This alone was enough to weaken my morale. While Austria had no official policy towards Jews, decent people did not want to employ them. And no matter how often I assured prospective employers that I was Spanish, they were too blinkered by their prejudices to believe me. They disliked the Spanish almost as much as they hated Jews. Only Jews offered me work, but at such disgusting terms I was bound to refuse.

Eventually, having failed in two attempts to cross the border, I had no choice but to work for a Jewish motor mechanic who put me to repairing the cars of his richer co-religionists. I had never in my life sunk so low, but it paid for food and accommodation over the workshop. I stood this humiliation until the winter, when I could not afford fuel for the stove in my lodgings and was having to wear one of my summer suits over the other. I could not buy winter clothing, and the Jew had no cast-offs to offer me. The cold was the final blow. I could take no more. Deciding it was probably safe now to risk returning to Germany, I determined to throw myself on the hospitable mercy of the Frau family while I decided what to do. Anything was better than having to bite my tongue and suffer under the ignominy of the Jewish heel.

Desperation and circumstance made me rationalise the situation. Perhaps I should have stayed in Vienna or tried to get to Prague, but the only friends I had were the Fraus. So one January morning, not long after my thirty-fifth birthday, I took a bus from the working-class Jewish Quarter and began my journey to Munich.

The bus was packed with returning Germans who had been visiting relatives for Christmas, and I felt I would be anonymous among them. Almost with relief I found myself looking forward to seeing Munich again.
Ironically, it proved almost as difficult to get back into Germany as it had been to get into Italy. The authorities were carelessly suspicious and unwelcoming, in spite of my insistence that I was Spanish and not Jewish, that I had a job and a home in Munich. Eventually, I think, they reasoned that no foreign Jew in his right mind would be trying to get into their country and let me in. By early February, no doubt looking considerably older than my years, I arrived back in Munich and went immediately to the little mews where I had left the rest of my belongings. I was anxious to get some winter clothes and the small amount of money I had left there. I arrived late in the evening around the time I knew the Frau family went to bed. No lights were on in the house, and I was hesitant to wake anyone up, but I was too cold to follow my conscience. I rapped loudly on the door, calling out to Signor Frau. Eventually the Fraus' next-door neighbour came out. He told me that they had left a month ago.

I was distraught. Where had they gone?

‘I don't know. They had some trouble with the police. He thought it best to visit his cousin. Could that be in Spain somewhere? His boy was beaten up a couple of times. You know how it is. We're thinking we should leave too if things get any worse. It used to be a good living here, but it's drying up.' The Fraus had not left a forwarding address. They had relatives in Madrid, he knew. They had packed everything in a wagon and planned to make a living on the road. He suspected the whole mews was being watched intermittently by plain-clothes men. All Italians, indeed all foreigners, were under suspicion.

‘Don't ask me why. We've always been law-abiding. Munich's no longer what she was, my friend.' Everyone was willing to turn against you, to brand you a Jew if it suited them.

Horrified, I thought of my property. Had the Fraus left it behind or had they taken it with them? I had left some of my things in their storerooms. Was there any way of getting in? The neighbour suggested I come back in a couple of days, when the landlord would be there. He was bound to let me have a quick look for any possessions I had left behind. The neighbour's impression, however, was that the place had been cleaned out. Anything the Fraus had not been able to pack into their wagon, they had sold or given away. The organ had been carried in a trailer behind the main wagon.

I reflected that I might have crossed paths with my old friends on their way to Italy. How I wished I had accepted their invitation to journey with them, to take my chances with their little travelling show. In Frau's company, at least, I might have persuaded the Italian authorities to admit me.

Tears came to my eyes as I walked away from the door. I no longer had even my old sanctuary. I did not dare stay on the street for long. That night I slept as best I could in the old organ shed, with rats and other vermin for company. The show organ was there but most of my possessions were gone! They had been stolen. My plans. My passport. My pistols. All I found were a few drawings and some bits and pieces of clothing. I folded the plans and put them in my pocket. I had no choice but to take them with me. In the morning I knew I had no alternative. Humiliating though it was, I would go to Prince Freddy Badehoff-Krasnya's apartment, throw myself on his mercy and beg him for help. My hopes, my dignity, my very identity had been stripped from me. What had seemed impossibly dishonourable to me, even as a prisoner in Stadelheim, now became my only alternative. I would take whatever charity I could from that vicious blackmailer and pornographer.

The next morning I roused myself from the dirty straw I had slept on and tried to clean myself off. I had spent my last money and could not afford a cup of coffee. I had expected to pick up my remaining marks from the envelope stowed with my papers and anticipated being fed by the Fraus for a few days. I could not quite remember where Prince Freddy's house was. I was dishevelled and dirty and twice was stopped by the police as I wandered around Munich trying to get my bearings. My Spanish passport reassured them. Not until the afternoon did I find Prince Freddy's tree-lined suburb. I rested on a bench in the park until I was moved on with threats and curses by a policeman who voiced his disgust at my appearance and what he assumed was my race. I knew that soon I must be picked up for vagrancy, now a serious crime in Germany. I had welcomed the new law when it was introduced. Now, as a vagrant, I might be recognised at police headquarters and find myself back in Stadelheim. I was so tired and hungry, the world began to seem phantasmagoric, unreal, at once deeply dangerous and euphorically safe. Nothing which was to happen to me in the next several hours would seem strange.

Nearing twilight, the air grew cold and the light dim as I approached the house. Not very long ago I had accepted such luxury as Prince Freddy's as normal. Now I received suspicious stares from the few people I passed. I was too tired to care what they thought as I trudged up the avenue rehearsing in my mind how I would approach Badehoff-Krasnya. He owed me something. I hoped the sight of me would at least embarrass him and make him take me in. I was obsessed with the thought of warm clothing. I imagined I could get an overcoat from him, a bowl of hot soup, some socks, a bit
of sausage. Some bread. Even more than the food I wanted some kind of recognition, for I was beginning to doubt my own identity.

At last I saw the house and walked up the drive, feeling the sharpness of the gravel under my thin soles. No lights shone anywhere. Had Prince Freddy fled with Kitty, perhaps to Hungary?

Like an automaton I rang the bell. It echoed into silence. I knocked and the house responded with that hollow, dead sound which tells you a building is empty. I knocked again and again, until the last of my strength had gone, and then I sat on the step and wept.

Later, hearing soft footfalls in the drive, I looked up. A tall figure emerged from the twilight. He wore a well-cut leather coat, a heavy fur hat, a scarf. I envied him those clothes. He must be very warm.

Approaching me, the man paused, his voice soft, enquiring, even sympathetic. It took a moment for me to realise he was speaking Russian. My spirits leapt. And then fell. Could it be Brodmann?

‘Dimka, is that you?'

Dimka? Few any longer knew me by that name. I must indeed be hallucinating! The last time I had seen this man was in the deep Sahara. By now he must surely be dead. Logically, if he were dead then I too was dead and a friend of the dead. Not only did I no longer care if this were true, I welcomed it. Shaking, I rose to my feet, my arms outstretched.

‘Kolya! Oh, Kolya. It is so good to hear you again. I can't believe it's you. Are we dead?'

‘Not at all, Dimka dear. Speaking for myself, I am very much alive. Dimka, Dimka. What has become of you?' He was standing over me, his hands reaching out to embrace me, to lift me up. When I saw his smiling face, I began to weep. ‘I suspect I feel a little more alive than you at the moment.'

I clung to him. ‘Oh, Kolya. You are an angel of providence. I can't believe it. Where have you been? How did you find me?'

His laughter was soft. He was a little older, of course, but just as handsome, just as aristocratic in every movement he made. I had never loved any man as much as Count Nikolai Feodorovitch Petroff.

‘Where have you been?' I asked again.

‘Oh, Berlin, most recently. Before that I was in Prague for a while. And, of course, Libya.'