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:
‘We’ve got less than a month to go. Schleicher wanted to introduce Strasser to Hindenburg, but we have to be sure it’s Hitler. Strasser can’t get the votes in the country. He can’t talk the way the Chief can. That meeting will get Hitler the Presidency or at very least show how Hindenburg is taking him seriously. That alone is worth millions of votes. This is the big moment, Mashi. With that bitch out of the picture we’ve a clear run at it. Still, as you know, I never had anything against her.’
He was genuinely shocked by the accident. Murder was not his style and everyone knew it, which was why so few people ever mentioned his name in connection with Geli Raubal’s death. Those who believed Hitler had somehow sneaked back and killed her, those who thought Himmler was the murderer or that her mysterious lover Zeiss had done it, or that it actually was suicide, never even brought up Röhm’s name casually. He was highly respected in the movement. Only later did Hitler have some suspicion.
‘Nobody was a saint in those days,’ I remind Mrs Cornelius. We are happy to be alone together. She has her scrapbooks out. We see our own youthful, painted faces meeting in a faded embrace while behind us Fokkers and Camels clash in a stunning dogfight. I hardly remember making it. We did so many in such a short time. I find an advertisement cut from one of her film magazines. ‘Ace Peters and Gloria Cornish. The Air Knights. A DeLuxe Serial.’ Who cares for romance and glamour any longer? Every print that went around the world has crumbled to brown powder. We are a mere step away from Wolfit and Irving, whose theatrical performances are now only hearsay, whose records are so disappointing. People cannot believe it, but in our golden years Mrs Cornelius and myself were people of some substance and influence. Stabschef Röhm was proud to be seen with me. People asked for my autograph. Schoolboys pointed me out to their parents. Of course, all this gradually went away as the fashions changed, but that is not to say that we did not once have position and respect. For a while we knew fame again, but those films I made in Germany, while I have no reason to be ashamed of them, were not of my personal conception!
Röhm was especially demanding of my time and strength in the next few days. I was a comfort to him, he said. He had never dreamed of knowing such comfort. A boon he scarcely deserved. He was always saying such things about himself. He once described himself as a ‘cruel and wicked man’ no good for civilian life. But that, I know, was his way of simplifying himself. He was far more complex than that. I believe he was uneasy about Geli Raubal’s death for quite a while after the event. He insisted on playing nothing but Strauss and Lehar on the gramophone. He became sentimental in unfamiliar ways. Offenbach produced an almost wolfish glee in him. He all but wore out the grooves of ’The Nuns’ Chorus’ in an orgy that happily did not involve me in very much activity.
Soon, however, Strasser’s car was at the gates. The big deputy, no longer jovial, was hurrying through the villa, averting his eyes from the things he didn’t want to look at and talking urgently to Röhm. Clearly there was an unusual crisis, since Strasser was making only his second visit to the villa. He didn’t want to have to answer his wife’s questions, he said. He was one of the few in the Nazi hierarchy who did not have scandal attached to him.
I heard Röhm. ‘Well, he was cracking up before it happened.’
Strasser was adamant. Hitler was worse than he had ever known him. ‘I’ve seen that bastard go down on his knees beside his desk and start chewing at the carpet, beating on the floor with his fists and squealing that he is going to kill himself unless we do what he wants, and that was normal compared to the way he is now, Ernst. Believe me, I’ve been with him for almost a week. I’m going crazy myself out there in Tegernsee. Angela’s been there for a bit, but she’s had to go back. You know the funeral’s in Vienna, and Alf isn’t allowed to go to Austria. Too dangerous, anyway, to risk a challenge to his German nationality. We can’t trust anyone else. Even his sister’s beginning to wonder, since he keeps wailing that it’s his fault and that he killed her. He didn’t kill her. That’s one thing I am sure about. Göring or Himmler had her killed. They had the most to lose. Some SS goon, no doubt.’
From Röhm’s troubled expression I understood the problem he was facing. He was a man who hated secrets. Even if the secret protected him, he still hated it. But he controlled himself.
‘Well, what does he need to pull him out of it? You know Alf. He’s all self-pity and blithering needs one minute. The next he’s barking orders and throwing his weight around.’
‘It’s the second Alf we’re going to need for Hindenburg,’ said Strasser significantly. ’I don’t think the old boy will be much impressed by the first. We need our Führer at his brilliant best.’
‘We’ll send someone else.’
‘Me? You have to go — you have to reassure him about the army. He’ll respond well to you. Frick or Göring? He’ll see through them immediately. Goebbels? Hindenburg can’t stand the little dwarf. Nobody has Hitler’s authority. We can’t start changing leaders now. It has to be him.’
‘Fine. Then it will be him.’
‘But he’s a gibbering mess.’
‘Then we have to straighten him out.’
They began a long argument, referring to many things meaningless to me, so I went to have a bath.
When I next went by the room, I heard Röhm say, ‘Well, we’ll get him a whore. These girls know what to do.’
‘Not that specific. And he’d guess what she was immediately. If we trained her, we’d have to let her in on too much. The story would travel faster than a dose of clap in a dugout. It would be all over Germany in three days.’
I heard Röhm murmur something.
‘Oh, certainly!’ Strasser was contemptuous. ‘And what do we do then? Take her into the woods and shoot her? The Munich police are already watching us. They would love us to make a slip like that. I don’t think even Hess or Putzi will be able to keep another dead girl out of the picture.’
Again something from Röhm. Strasser’s reply: ‘I agree with the cure, but I don’t agree on the doctor.’
Soon afterwards Strasser left, cursing the situation and begging his old friend to come up with some ideas. Röhm explained a little to me. Hitler had taken the death of his niece far worse than anyone might have expected. He was utterly devastated and saw his politics as the cause of his loss. His only reason for driving himself as hard as he did was so that eventually he would be able to marry Geli. She was his muse and his inspiration. Without her he was incapable of going on. Let someone else lead the Nazi Party.
‘Alf’s like his mother. She always responded the same way to a setback. A lot of melodrama and then a total refusal to face the issue. That’s why we could never promote him in the army. Strasser’s staying with him night and day. He keeps making half-hearted attempts to kill himself. They’re out at Tegernsee now. Amann’s place. It’s remote. Nobody will bother them. Alf always goes there to restore himself.’
‘Did Geli live there, too?’ I asked.
Röhm said it wasn’t far from there. Obersalzberg. It probably wasn’t the best place to forget, but Hitler would not agree to go anywhere else and now he was refusing to leave his room. He would not get out of bed except to find Strasser and run endlessly over the events: what he could have done to stop it, what he should have done, how he loved her, how he would do anything for her, how it was all his fault and so on. Then Hitler would start weeping again, swallow some more pills and return to bed. He had pictures of her, notes she had written him. He stank. The Führer had not bathed since he heard the news. He had scarcely eaten and had taken a good many sleeping powders, but they had not worked. Strasser thought they had made him talk all the more volubly and exhausted him even further. He was thin and haggard. His hands shook. He could hardly keep himself from drooling. He wept constantly. He moved like an old man. He was like a drug addict deprived of his morphine. If Hindenburg saw him in that state it would confirm his every prejudice about this ‘seedy little Bohemian corporal’, as he always called Hitler.