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:
‘The bitch is a drag anchor on the entire movement,’ Röhm complained. ‘If she loses us the Chancellorship, she goes in the sack and into the river like any other alley cat that becomes a nuisance.’
His words were often blood-curdling but spoken so casually or so softly that they contradicted themselves. His penchant for extravagant language earned him his reputation for braggadocio. I never, of course, saw him speak to the Reichstag.
Several of our visitors that August grumbled about Geli. All loyal Nazis, mostly ‘old fighters’ who had followed Hitler from the beginning, they did not so much blame the girl as what they called ‘the situation’. From the letters and drawings he had seen, Röhm knew what Geli was prepared to give Hitler, and he knew what a powerful effect this had on him.
‘He’s addicted to her,’ said Röhm, not for the first time. ‘And I suspect she’s addicted to him by now. That’s how it works. Folie à deux. You shouldn’t arouse such huge feelings in a woman. They can’t handle it. They either go to pieces or try for their own power. She’s got her teeth around his cock, and she’s dragging him wherever she wants him to go. God knows what she’s telling people. If any of our opponents get through to her and she blabs, it will ruin him. One statement to Hindenburg, show him one picture, and the old fart will turn completely against Hitler. He’s none too flattering about him now! Alf might as well concede defeat before ever trying to run for the Chancellorship.
‘The public will forgive a lot, Mashi. They’ll turn a blind eye to more. But, well, as you know, we’re not talking about honest fun between boys here, or putting the odd little chicky up the stick. We’re talking piss and shit, to be frank. Whips and shackles! And that goes too far. That stuff’s not likely to endear the big industrialists to him, and that’s who he’s going to bed with these days. The bastard’s sucked more Big Business dicks in the past six months than most whores see in a lifetime.’
That was the most he ever told me about Hitler’s private life at that time. I could easily imagine the rest. At the age of thirty-one I think I can safely say I was familiar with most of life’s diversions. Anything I had not learned from al-Habashiya was not worth knowing, according to Röhm. I did not, of course, tell him the whole story. That was impossible for me then, and it remains impossible. There are some things which no sane human being wishes to relive. My time with Röhm during that unsettling period had more to do with refinement than discovery.
‘I am besotted with you,’ Röhm admitted happily one evening when just the two of us lay upon the thin mattress placed upon the wide marble slab which was his bed. ’I can’t tell you what a comfort you are, Mashi, in these difficult days.’
He would speak to me vaguely about Berlin politics, his conversations with General von Schleicher, I. G. Farben and others. They were all courting him and Strasser now. If he wanted to, he could dine out every night of the week at some aristocrat’s or general’s house. ‘Strasser’s always been able to get on with those people. A few months ago they wouldn’t have let the rest of us be waiters in their clubs. Now the army’s coming round. Half the staff are already on our side. Some are open Nazis. They like the idea of a People’s Army.’
Röhm believed that the public’s eyes were at last opening to the dangers facing Germany and the solutions that he and his friends presented. ‘They’re getting nervous, these big boys. Funk, Cuno, Wolf, von Schroeder, Diehn, Thyssen, Bechstein and the rest are falling over themselves to meet Hitler in the Alps, at Berchtesgaden, in railway sidings, abandoned warehouses, old factories. Anywhere the press can’t catch them. They don’t want to be seen with Hitler any more than he wants to be seen with them. The party rank and file wouldn’t understand how we’re exploiting Big Business, and we couldn’t afford to explain. But it makes me uncomfortable. My only consolation is what I’ll do to the bastards when the power’s in my hands. They fear a threat to their comfortable lives. They’re afraid Germany will fall to the Bolsheviks. They can’t see she can as easily fall to us and that we are no better friends of Big Business than the Bolshies. They’re all beginning to shit their pants. That’s why they began courting us, giving us money as a kind of insurance, thinking it will buy them their liberty when the revolution comes! They offer compromises before we even state our terms. It always amazes me, Mashi, how eager most people are to give up an advantage when they have almost nothing to be afraid of. Frequently, fearing no more than some minor social embarrassment, they will kill themselves, rather than face the disapproval of their fellows. Those bastards lust after approval the same way I lust after you! It makes them tame and easy to deal with.’ Such thoughts reassured him. He sipped his champagne and smoked his cigar. He stroked my hair, confiding in me as another man might share his thoughts with a wife. ‘You’d be surprised how many sheep one good dog can herd. No disease travels faster and infects more thoroughly than fear. Fear’s a wonderful instrument which you only have to use for a while. Soon people develop a habit of obedience, which becomes in time self-regulation, if not self-discipline.’ This amused him. ‘That’s when we shall have our German Utopia, Mashi. We’ll do it in less than one generation.’
Only through obedience that is automatic and absolute can one find a centre. I think of it as a core of calmness which is all but inviolate, perhaps the soul. A rare being, a god indeed, can find its way to the soul to torture and even destroy that. The true artists of their kind. The true geniuses. Had I the disposition, I could myself have been such a genius.
A wonderful dream. I was so relieved to be back within it. Life at the villa somehow redeemed my Egyptian captivity with al-Habashiya. Röhm would have given me anything I wanted. He called me by pet names. He called me El Vaquero Enmascarado, and indeed I often wore a mask. He loved the mystery of a mask. He was in love with my eyes. They were reflective pools, he said, in which to drown all his cares. The hardness of his hands, gentle as his touch could often be, made my own skin feel a thousand times softer to me. I became deliriously pliable. I had never willingly succumbed to such a force, even with Kolya, my spiritual partner.
I had been anxious, thinking I could be wasting time with Röhm, but I came to realise this interlude was exactly what we both needed. We were cut off from all modern communication, guarded by the gigantic dark green spears of a Teutonic pine forest, enjoying the gentle music of a broad, mountain river, one warm, glorious day following another. Returning from Munich or Berlin, Röhm brought me gramophone records of all the latest jazz tunes, as well as the French chanteuses he enjoyed. Röhm possessed a large sentimental streak that he never revealed to any but his closest friends. He also brought me books and magazines. These helped me catch up on all the latest topics. He even found me some issues of the Sexton Blake Library dealing with matters of the moment, such as striking miners, Arab slavers, the machinations of Big Business and the mysterious death of a man on a London tram. They were in English, so Röhm could not read them. He did not mind. He also brought films back with him. Berlin, he said, was a positive treasure house of erotica. He enthused endlessly over repetitive scenes in which one comely set of buttocks followed another set of massive genitalia into a perpetually pumping, forever ejaculating, future. I could not enjoy them, fearing that the next film he brought home would be one of those I had been lured into making in Egypt. I was always relieved when the scenes began to run, and I was not presented with moving pictures of my own poor sore organs inserted over and over again between Esmé’s ever-yearning orifices. I summoned little enthusiasm for even the most artistic of films and rather hoped that my apparent boredom would discourage him. The films also reminded me of my worries concerning the Baroness. Was she still in Munich? Did she still intend to turn me in?