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:
‘A dead ringer for our little canary,’ said Röhm.
Mrs Cornelius’s red lips curve in a smile of pure delight. She dreams of her happiest moments. Her great bosom lifts and falls; her hands are now as gnarled with arthritis as Röhm’s. They lie in her lap like the claws of a venerable bird of prey. We were never really predators, Mrs Cornelius and I. I am remembering my youth. I look down at my threadbare plaid shirt, my old cardigan, my grey flannel trousers, my dirty shoes. How is it that we so rarely see ourselves through our younger eyes? What would I have made of an old man like me? Would I have shown him respect, acknowledged his pride and his history? Or would I have mocked him as the young mock me now? They believe I am like them. That all I have to back my opinions is prejudice and ignorance. Yet I have stood shoulder to shoulder with great men in the face of unvanquishable evil - and have vanquished that evil. How many of these ‘bother boys’ can say the same?
I do not claim the experience left me unchanged.
Röhm went to get Father Stempfle out of the toilet. The priest had done all he could, he said. He was a hermit and needed privacy. He began to whine something about his fee. For a priest who had taken the vows of poverty and spent every waking hour talking of Jewish greed and rapacity, he had a very clear idea of his own financial worth. At the Bratwurstglockl they all said he was buying children from some slum dealer over in Cologne, but what he did with them, if anything, nobody really knew. Our normally tolerant, easygoing Stabschef had a genuine contempt for the man. Röhm said he’d had enough of Stempfle’s ‘finer feelings’. Stempfle’s future and everyone else’s depended upon kicking Hitler into some semblance of rational humanity for when they went to see the Reichspräsident on 10 October. It was up to party members to support any measure which would get the leader back at the helm. Anyone who didn’t use their fullest efforts was a traitor and would be treated like a traitor. He made a flicking motion with his thumb, as if to start a cigarette lighter. Stempfle had been at the Brown House often enough to know what that meant. Röhm told Stempfle to stop spluttering and run me through a couple of points again. The old lizard was shaking worse than I was by the time Strasser led us upstairs to the loft bedroom where Hitler slept.
He knocked on the door. A wet, enquiring noise came from the other side. Strasser seemed to think this was a good sign. ‘Ernst’s brought someone to see you, Alf.’
Strasser opened the door.
Röhm took me through. The place reeked of staleness and oriental perfumes. Joss sticks and scented candles were burning everywhere. In the far shadows was a small double bed with an old-fashioned canopy. Books and papers had been discarded one on top of the other. Ornaments and other objects lay in corners. Some of them were smashed, as if they had been flung against the wall.
‘Alf,’ says Röhm. ‘How’s tricks?’
‘Cup of tea, Ivan?’ Mrs Cornelius has woken up. She yawns and gusts. ‘Cor! Wot old age will do ter yer. Wot’s ther time? Me watch ‘as stopped.’
She rises from her chair to make the tea. I watch her moving like an old steamer, still graceful, still sturdy. She is well over seventy now.
I collect the dirty cups and follow her into the kitchen.
‘Look, Ivan.’
She is craning to peer through the basement window above the sink. At eye level it faces the tangle of weeds and overgrown shrubs she calls her garden. She strains until she can see the sky.
‘It’s brightenin’ up.’
Röhm went in first. He made a kind of crooning noise, as if to soothe a troubled dog. The sound was clearly familiar to the creature in the hidden depths of the bed. I heard a muffled response.
Röhm moved swiftly and lightly, like a soldier expertly making his way through no man’s land, until he was over there in the semi-darkness with his old friend, stroking his head, rocking it against his lap. The queer pathos of the scene aroused the most profound and unexpected feelings in me. I understood Röhm’s instinct to comfort and nurture the drooling, unlovely thing on the bed and was actually disgusted by my own tenderness.
The eyes turned towards me. I saw no change in them, no pain or warmth or desire which might inspire my feelings. Instead, something in the set of the head, the movement of the mouth, the turn of the wrist, a kind of mimicry of real emotions, were as successful at involving me as if they had been real. Instinctively, like a great screen actor, Hitler was able to arouse in me real concern and pity. I do not believe he was at all conscious of what he did. I think I understood him. It scarcely mattered to his artist’s soul if the feelings he inspired were inappropriate or even false. To inspire the feelings was sufficient. (An artist with the soul of a gangster, Major Nye thought.) Only incidentally did this bedridden creature exploit its own condition. Of course I had been completely unprepared for this. I felt faint in that airless room. I marshalled my emotions. I had relied on my panic and my terror getting me through the ordeal, but I could see how these unexpected responses might also help. In some amazement I found myself entering into the mood. Röhm looked up and nodded to me. Tentatively and a little unsteadily I moved slowly towards them.
‘Here she is, Alfy,’ whispered Röhm. ‘Here she is.’
Hitler’s pale, bloodshot eyes shifted from my mask to my legs to my panties, my crotch. His skin was a mottled silvery white illuminated with the deliquescence of a corpse. The familiar face, so stern and confident in his pictures, was puffed and lined with exhaustion. I noticed gelatinous moisture on his head and arms. The eyes remained a yearning vacuum, the eyes of an unfed incubus. I recoiled and then recovered. I made a sympathetic feminine sound. Once this was over, I reminded myself, I would be free. I was sick of fantasy. I would go to England, collect the money waiting for me, and resume my life.
Hitler spoke. His voice was a reedy vibrato, the voice of a sick child. ‘Wer ist es?’
‘Your friend,’ murmured Röhm. ’Deine Freundin.’
I held the dog whip like a sword as I drew a deep breath of the hellish atmosphere.
‘Dein Engel.’
I composed a smile.
‘Your angel.’
TWENTY-EIGHT
I lift my left leg and bring the red spike heel down between Hitler’s naked shoulder blades. I push him flat to the dirty carpet. The spike depresses his white flesh and leaves an almost bloodless mark. I press again with the right foot. Another deep impression. The black leather of the dog whip caresses the back of his head. He is blubbering some sentimental nonsense into the pile.
—Shut up, you bad, filthy little louse. Filthy little louse-boy. Naughty louse-boy filth. Shit-eating, piss-drinking disgusting little Yid. Bad, bad, bad doggy. What are you?
—Bad doggy.
I balance myself and grind the red heel down into the left shoulder.
—Bad, dirty little Alfy. Bad, stupid little Yid bitch.
Another babble of wet grizzling.
—Mummy. Mummy.
—Dirty, filthy worthless Yid louse. What are you?
— Worthless. Yid louse.
I grind again. —What are you?
—Worthless Yid louse, mistress.
—Dirty Yid louse eat shit.
There are now a dozen circles branded into his back. They look like the marks of the plague.
He grovels. His spittle makes my shoes glisten. I draw the whip across his head through his matted hair.
—Bad boy, I say softly. His tongue tastes my ankle. I am surprised at my own tone. -—Dirty little Alfy. Dirty little shit. I am almost affectionate.