The Vengeance of Rome
- Автор: Муркок Майкл
- Серия: Between The Wars #4
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «The Vengeance of Rome». Краткое содержание книги:
They were good children, he said, and a great support to him. They were his consolation. He had never remarried. To be honest there was less strain. He didn’t think he could marry another German woman. They were kind-hearted and treated you like a king but were a bit too neat and tidy for his taste. Heckie was a proper little woman. She ran the household and a good deal of the business. I can smell her warm skin, her soft brown neck, her curls, her strong little body straining and squirming under the first intimations of her sexuality.
That mixture of fresh vegetables, herbs and spices was for me the smell of wealth and comfort, of certainty. Of romance. And also the smell of dawning lust. I can hear the cheerful staccato of the barrel organ, snatches of song, excited chitter of the monkey jumping on the singer’s shoulder, a sour-faced boy moving through the crowd with his box, her delicate brown limbs flashing in shafts of sunlight falling through the dusty glass above. The cheap lace of her costume flaps and bounces on her perfect little body. Those flounces are a vulgar and unnecessary augmentation to her grace and natural elegance. Her lips curve again in a sweet red smile. She promises me so much. She promises me a return to my past, to a time when I was happy.
How she twirled and skipped as her surly older brother moved among the crowd, while her father, his grin apparently as spontaneous as ever, stroked his happy little monkey, turning the handle of the barrel organ, singing along with the machine in a rich baritone. ‘Fa la la la! Fa la la la! ’ In his tall-crowned felt hat, short green jacket trimmed with gold, brown corduroy knickerbockers, green stockings and bright red shoes, his broad, flashing grin, his earrings, which could be removed at night, he was everything he was supposed to be. The costume was scarcely any different to that worn by peasants in most of this region, from northern Italy through Austria to southern Germany, yet the Italian still found himself called a gypsy when he went out into the smaller provincial towns. Heckie would get touched for luck. She hated it. When not performing, she was a grave child who took her domestic responsibilities as seriously as her professional ones. Her only abiding enthusiasm she kept to herself.
Soon I took to arriving at the market towards the end of the afternoon, so that I could watch Zoyea/Heckie dance, pop a coin into the boy’s aggressive box and chat to Signor Frau as he drew the canvas cover over his barrel organ, rewarded his monkey and prepared to push the instrument back through the side streets to the mews where all the organs were stored in common.
By the first week of November Röhm had been almost entirely in Berlin. I remained at a loose end. A few SA men came and went from the Corneliusstrasse premises. They were not sure what I was doing there, and were frankly unfriendly. It was becoming obvious I must discover a new patron or take some sort of job. Common sense said I should have left for Berlin by now, except I felt safer for the moment in Munich. I was definitely safer than I would have been in Rome, unless Il Duce’s mood had changed. My enemies probably still had his ear. If I returned I was sure to find myself under arrest, with another false list of crimes added to my name. Yet in Munich I was, to some degree, Röhm’s prisoner. He remained very kind and sentimental, but during most of his visits his mind was chiefly on the political struggle. He found it impossible to relax completely. He would ‘lend’ me whatever money he had in his pocket, yet if I was to become my own man again I must find employment. Naturally my first thought was of my patents. I needed to get the ear of a German industrialist, and the only way to do that was through Mrs Cornelius, who more than likely was not even in the country any longer!
Meanwhile, I was in love and the world was coming alive for me again. Zoyea and I had discovered a common interest.
THIRTY-SIX
And so began what would in retrospect be my epiphany when one dream would begin to be realised and another dashed for ever. Here I again discovered the peaks of joy and an abyss of despair, my ‘Alpine’ period, a wonderful time of self-expression, personal peril and vocational satisfaction. Ultimately, as always, disappointment would bring not only emotional exhaustion but also physical danger.
For thirty months I came at last to anticipate fulfilment of my original Life Plan. During 1932-34, I found love, artistic expression, serious interest in my political philosophy, respect as a scientist and as an artist. Was the misery that followed the years of my European wanderings worth the pleasures of that time when the world blossomed with glorious hope, before the final betrayals which, I fear, continue to characterise this century? I lay the blame squarely at the door of Herr Adolf Hitler. Once the lie was only common currency in diplomacy and politics. Now it is a familiar instrument of public discourse.
I grew up in a world with firms whose names you could trust. Now those names are turned into manipulative illusions, false promises.
‘Alas!’ Hitler said at the end.’ My Germans have failed me!’ Hitler’s interests were neither national nor socialist; they were personal. He was prepared to kill an entire people to fulfil his dream.
The Germans survived and rejoined the family of civilised nations, but now it is too late. Heinz and Nestle own all the food. These firms are secretly controlled by alien interests. At any time they can decide to kill vast numbers of people. All they have to do is pick up a telephone and give an order. Cyanide will be injected into enough tins of baked beans to kill every British schoolboy overnight.
They already introduce narcotics into our food to make us more easily manipulated by their subliminal advertising, their aggressive attacks on all our old values. I do not totally dismiss the theory that Adolf Hitler, after the death of Angela Raubal, was secretly poisoned, causing all his subsequent decisions. So in the end he fell into the hands of his enemies. He had made enemies of the Jews, when he could have enlisted some at least as willing helpers in his dream to build a new Germany. I speak from experience. There are altruistic Jews. It is a fact. I met one in Odessa. In Germany Strasser had already sketched a perfectly workable plan, which would take no one’s dignity or livelihood from them. Typically, too much talk and not enough cash was given to the problem, and so it worsened rather than improved. Julius Streicher must accept much of the responsibility, but overall I do blame Hitler.
The secret little Zoyea and I shared was a mutual enthusiasm which I discovered by chance after she came to accept me. Initially, there was scant intercourse between us. Indeed, she avoided me. The boy was more communicative, but I had no special liking for him. I would occasionally pass on to him an adventure paper and discuss the stories with him, but he had a dull mind, though more amiable than he seemed.
The magazines, some pre-war, were from a huge collection I had found under my bed, together with a whole shelf of Edgar Wallace in French and German. They had belonged to Baldur von Schirach and were fascinating. Most were in English, containing graphic depictions of airships, of rocket-driven space liners, of gigantic vehicles capable of travelling across the American plains without use of rails or roads. My first thought was that the authors had stolen my ideas, but some were clearly unworkable. In the Aldine Library of Invention, Travel & Adventure, I found, for instance a tale called ‘Across the Frozen Sea’, published some time before the world conflict, which proposed a preposterous schooner for sailing on giant skis across the Arctic ice! The power—weight ratio alone would not permit such nonsense! And the presumption that the Arctic plain is as smooth as Streatham Ice Rink is equally unscientific!