The Vengeance of Rome

‘Because it improves the piquancy, I suppose. You know how easily bored I get with the stale plot of life. Anything to put a new twist on it, eh?’

I found it hard to believe she was still so young and had become so cynical. But the world was a very hard place, as Kitty knew. It could be as cruel to jazz babies as to war veterans. The whole idea of death and destruction had become almost modish among certain young Berliners. She told me Prince Freddy had been asking after me. He missed my entertaining company, he said. He had to be content like everyone else with watching me on his screen. Did he have personal copies of my movies? I was flattered. Were they perhaps the films Mr Mix and I had saved in Morocco?

‘One or two. Well, did you? She was getting afraid of you, you know. Someone had threatened her. She was sure the threats came from you. That’s one of the reasons she went to London. She left a box of papers with me in case something happened.’

‘My only concern is for the child,’ I told her. ‘For the little boy. Is he safe?’

‘Oh, yes. Freddie was very kind. Alfred has relatives in Palestine who took him in. Some of those papers mentioned you . . .’

This, of course, alarmed me. I asked casually what she had done with the box. She shrugged her narrow little shoulders. She hadn’t had time to look through it much. Just the usual papers. Mementoes. Memories of former lovers. She had never been that interested in her mother’s private life.

I thought this disingenuous. Since she had shown considerable curiosity when we first spent time together in Corneliusstrasse! I reassured her. My opinion was that her mother had become hysterical, perhaps a little paranoid, and had fixed her attention on me, who intended her no harm at all. If I had wanted her dead, I could have killed her myself when I was in Berlin or have had one of my friends hire somebody. I knew it was still a lot easier to find an assassin in Germany than in England!

Kitty had grown bored with the subject. ‘Let’s go back to this new flat of yours,’ she said. ’It sounds as if you’ve found somewhere comfortable at last.’

We said goodnight to poor Hanfstaengl and the others and collected our coats. In the taxi Kitty agreed that her mother’s hatred of me was probably simply because I had severed my relationship with her, a familiar but nonetheless terrible form of thwarted passion or insane jealousy. I would not have put it past her to have killed herself and then to have let people think I had murdered her!

When we reached my Wurzerstrasse apartment, I opened the heavy oaken door with the odd feeling someone had just left the place. Once again my sixth sense came into play. Had Brodmann found me? Had someone been searching the apartment? Was it Hitler’s people? Mussolini’s?! Was I growing paranoid, inventing enemies for myself? Probably. After all, I was an internationally celebrated film star. In Berlin they might be common currency, but in Munich people would notice if I came to any harm. I saw no real evidence of intrusion and was quickly distracted by Kitty She had grown suddenly passionate.

Almost as soon as we had closed my front door, Kitty was unbuttoning her blue silk wisp of a dress and stepping out of it. She wore a matching camisole and pantolettes with flesh-coloured silk stockings and little blue shoes that matched her dress. With a turquoise torque in her hair, she was irresistible as she trotted swiftly with her purse to the kitchen and prepared herself a syringe. Morphine, she said with a slightly apologetic shrug. Her nerves had been bad lately She thought it was to do with her mother. ‘You know,’ she said, as she inserted the silver needle into her thigh, ‘you always wonder if there was something you could have done. I’m over it now, though. I won’t need this much longer.’

I had always loathed narcotics and feared their habit-forming effect. Unlike the benign stimulant, the narcotics are deadly. Opium, morphine and heroin are all of such high toxicity they immediately alter the nature of the body and make it dependent upon what Prince Freddy called ‘the bloom of paradise’. Of course, anything she told me about ending her use of morphine was self-deception at best. I have known few to stop the habit voluntarily. To say anything to her would have been useless. She might have agreed with me, might have sworn never to stick another needle into her veins, but within a few hours those promises would have been forgotten.

Once I had thought her Prince Freddy’s mistress, then his camouflage. Now I saw that she was his slave. Morphine was never free. All I could do was suggest that she try a little of my ‘cocoa’. She was happy to comply, but clearly the cocaine was merely a side dish. The expression and manner which had puzzled me in the hotel bar were the effects of her morphine use.