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:
Later we took dinner together in the restaurant car. Outside it grew dark. We passed through summer mountains. Some of the trees were already turning gold. Settled among them, little picturesque towns and villages raced past. The steady progress of the train, the wine with the meal and the brandy afterwards, relaxed us both. We became more free in our conversation and had begun to exchange jokes by the time we got back to the compartment where Herr Stross offered me an excellent cigar. As southern Germany went by, a blur of velvet and diamonds, he told me of his family, his married sister who now lived in Wisconsin, his parents who themselves had so longed to emigrate, but were now too old. I spoke of my own childhood, transferring my past to Chicago and Wilmington, describing how I had been schooled privately, by friends of my mother, and had then been fortunate enough to get a scholarship to Johns Hopkins, where I received my masters in science at an early age. Then I volunteered to fight in the War as a flyer, but not through any dislike of Germany. I had known an enthusiasm for airships and planes from youth. I had chiefly joined because I had lost my childhood sweetheart, my greatest support, encouraging me in everything. My inventions had been originally for her, Esmé. I had flown my first makeshift plane only a few years after the Wrights had flown theirs! The machine had been ahead of its time. One used one’s body as the airframe. I had another similar design I was currently working on. I told him a little about my one-man airship, describing some of my other inventions to him until, looking at his watch, he remarked we would soon be at the border.
When Herr Stross excused himself and went down the corridor to the WC, I took advantage of his absence to pull down the blinds and sniff a little ‘coca’. It had been some time since I had felt so happy in the company of a fellow spirit.
In a while Herr Stross returned and removed his passport from his bag. He had seen the customs and immigration people a few compartments away, he said. I readied my own passport.
A few minutes later the door opened. Two smartly uniformed officials, wearing swastika armbands, appeared at our door and saluted.
I told myself that I was imagining that they were looking suspiciously at me. With a display of confidence, I smiled up at them, presenting my papers.
FORTY-EIGHT
The German officials were not particularly friendly as they gave my papers close inspection, but they were polite enough before passing on up the train, leaving the customs men to check Herr Stross’s bag as carefully as they checked mine. As the train moved slowly across the border into Austria, I saw little but a few street lamps, the occasional pulse of a distant headlight; then we had stopped again. The Austrian immigration and customs people were as efficient as the German, and when they saw I was going on to Rome asked fewer questions of me than they asked of Herr Stross.
The train under steam again, I settled back into my seat to sleep. For the first time in many months, my anxiety was melting. As dawn became a golden pink, we reached Innsbruck. Shaking hands, Herr Stross departed to find a taxi while I hurried between platforms to catch the Milan express. We were away shortly after sunrise, and this time I sat in an Italian train. A cheerful, upper-class Italian family made me welcome, offering me newspapers, food and general hospitality, as if I were visiting them in their home. I took a plate of sausage, settled into a seat and read the Popolo d’ltalia. It was a pleasure to enjoy uncensored news.
For the second time in my life I passed through Austria. This part of the country reminded me of Switzerland, when Esmé and I had hurtled through the mountains, driven by Annibale Santucci in his wonderful Lancia. Lying cheerfully in the busy bosom of the Bertolli family, rarely able to see out of the window, I read every newspaper and magazine they possessed. Oblivious of excited children, complaining well-dressed gentlemen, and elegant, apologetic women, I read about a dynamic, optimistic Italy and her vital, masculine leader and rediscovered my future.
At the Austrian border customs routines went very casually. We were soon on our way into Italy. The sunlight shone on rivers and streams, and the whole landscape was somehow richer and warmer. Cheerfully, I welcomed the Italian officials when they boarded the train. I returned their salutes with a smile and a raised arm. The Italians were far more easygoing than the Germans or Austrians. One officer even returned my salute as he glanced through my Spanish identity papers and was almost apologetic when he asked if I had obtained my entry visa. He could not find it in the passport. I told him I was returning to Italy. I was not aware I needed a visa. I had not needed any special documents for Germany, when I had come in. I had not realised that since Hitler’s coming to power the Italians had grown wary. They were taking large numbers of refugees. Dissident Nazis, socialists and communists had flooded into Italy since 1933. Anyone entering the country from Germany was under special scrutiny.
The immigration men were regretful. I would have to disembark while they found out if there was any reason why a Spanish citizen could not at least pass through Italy. They warned me I might not be allowed to stay, but rather be asked to go home via France on the Florence train. In Florence I could catch the Barcelona express along the French coast. Even here, however, they were not entirely sure if the French authorities would allow me passage. These were troubled times. Someone really should have warned me about the visa situation. Had I checked with the Spanish consulate in Munich? Possibly I could apply for a temporary visa while a more permanent one was arranged. I had better come with them to their office. They would help me with my luggage. Someone would make a phone call. Sadly they could not delay the train on behalf of one passenger.
I heard all this with considerable dismay. I had no wish to go through France, where I had unresolved problems with the law. Barcelona was one of the key communist cities of Spain. If Brodmann caught up with me there the Red Spaniards would certainly turn me over to the Russian authorities. I begged the officials to let me go on to Rome, where I had many Italian friends and contacts in the government and where I could easily sort out my papers. They had their rules. They would help me in any way they could, but they had few choices. It was obviously inconvenient for me to go all the way back to Munich. Perhaps someone there could be telephoned.
In another desperate nightmare I was escorted into a police car and driven through shabby streets to the unprepossessing police offices. At least I was not placed in a cell. They were, indeed, very kind to me, bringing cups of coffee, sending out a call for their chief in Brennero asking him to come to the office as soon as possible, looking up the telephone number of the Spanish consulate in Milan. They did everything they could to put a call through to someone from whom we could take advice and perhaps get the number of the Spanish consulate in Munich. Keen supporters of Il Duce, they were flattered by my reiterated enthusiasm for their country but were not very great admirers of the new German government, describing the Nazis as thugs and homosexuals. They knew Hitler had been directly responsible for murdering Röhm and his men. They were the first people I heard calling that savage butchery ‘the night of the long knives’. Hitler was a neurotic heading a court of grotesques. An evident feminine homosexual and hysteric, he had turned on his own kind and made an enemy of the Catholic Church, persecuting priests of every persuasion. Hitler had perverted Fascism, produced a travesty of Mussolini’s philosophy and politics. One of the Italians, the genial, red-faced, middle-aged Captain Cavori, also mourned what was happening in Spain. Primo de Rivera lacked the character of Mussolini. Now my poor country was likely to become little more than a satellite of the Soviet Union. At least Hitler had averted Bolshevism and civil war. He was not sure that was possible in Spain. Only Italy was truly stable.