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:
His wounded face shakes with humour. ’I am your Virgil. You are my Dante! The conversations one has at the height of one’s ecstasy! Every so often you remember them, and a taste of the ecstasy comes back. At least a taste of it, eh? I envy the young. I hate them.’ Almost reminiscently he fingers his crotch.
Scarlet, white and gold, the great crucifix swings like a pendulum across my field of vision. How could Christ create Dachau? Scarlet and rich, dark gold through the scented smoke. Kyrie eleison! Kyrie eleison! The crucifix sways in the hazy air. What Jew could know such grief, such joy in Christ?
When he said ‘kill us both’, did he mean himself and Strasser?
Strasser was in front with the driver and heard none of this. He had folded his huge, shaven head down into the collar of his camel-hair coat and appeared to be sleeping.
‘Well, he’d hardly bother with me,’ I said.
The Stabschef looked at me in surprise. His mind had been elsewhere. He seemed to have forgotten his earlier remarks. Then he smiled. ‘Oh, don’t be too sure. Alf and me used to play such games. Such bloodthirsty games.’ Röhm began to laugh. ‘He has a memory for detail, our Alf, even if he’s inclined to forget the broader issues.’
‘Not in that state.’ I had now removed all the make-up. Not at that level of possession. Something else had taken hold of him. I was a symbol. A memory. A substitute. I no longer existed.
‘Especially in that state,’ said Röhm. ‘I know. He can be a mean little pincher and hair-puller, our girlie. Never remembers a favour. Never forgets a slight. Still, I only said he’ll want to kill us. I didn’t say he could. It’s me and Strasser have to worry. You’ll be fine, Mashi, while I look after you.’ Then he chuckled in that pleasant, easy Bavarian way he had and slapped me on the knee. ‘Alfy can be tricky, but not that tricky. I’m his strength and he knows it. I keep his feet on the ground. Without the SA, the parliamentary party’s nothing. We’re the muscle and they’re the brains. I’ve never pretended to be anything else.’
He frowned for a moment and dug hard at a thumbnail, trying to clean it. His hands were not entirely knotted with arthritis and were still one of his best features. A sculptor’s hands, strong and sensitive. No stranger would guess his daily pain. Scarcely a bone in his body had not been broken during and immediately after the War.
‘That’s how I function and how I want to function. As a simple soldier. Once Alfy’s brought the SA into the Reichswehr, all tension will be over. We’ll have a people’s army with people’s officers. Alf’s got to keep the generals sweet, but my men have been promised jobs and are getting impatient. They need proper army discipline. Alf will play the plutocrats at their own game. When the time comes their heads will roll. At heart he’s still one of us. It’s not him I’m worried about.’ And then as if he had said too much, he closed his mouth so tightly that his lips whitened and made the scars over his nose and cheek look like the valleys of the moon. ‘He won’t kill you, Mashi. I’ll see to that.’ That was the end to our conversation. He smoothed his moustache like a grooming cat then, drawing on his gloves, fell into a half-sleeping silence.
Was he speaking the truth? Or had he merely succeeded in binding me further to him? Without his patronage, I was in danger. Or so I must believe until I learned otherwise. I did not have the courage to ask Röhm how he knew the extremes of Hitler’s behaviour.
The morning was still dark when we stopped at Röhm’s favourite roadside cafe for breakfast. Strasser preferred to wait in the car rather than go into that typical steamy Bavarian working-man’s place, stinking of boiled sausages and strong coffee, and full of burly, ruddy fellows in blue overalls and heavy work shirts. I felt a little threatened by their closeness and their curiosity, but Röhm was clearly at home, joking and hand-slapping his way up to the counter to order our food while I sat in the booth nearest the door. I could still smell shit. I had no liking for the place. Its masculine philistinism was tangible. Two or three SA lads sat together at a table, but they had their backs to us. Röhm seemed relieved when they walked out without recognising him.
One of the workers did ask Röhm if he wasn’t Captain Röhm of the Nazis and, when he reluctantly admitted it, thumped him on the back and wished him all the best. I wanted only to leave. Of course, that acceptance was exactly what Röhm enjoyed about the place. In the past he’d joked about what they’d say if they found out the ‘smear’ stories, so vehemently dismissed in the Völkischer Beobachter, were only a fraction of the truth.
He relished the weight of their heavy hands on his back and arms. Their congratulations. Their manly approval. Their balls. He blossomed. Good luck! Good luck! Grüss Colt! Grüss Gott!
Even I picked up some of their approval by association, especially when I explained my bad German. ’Amerikaner!’ they roared happily. They all had relatives in Texas and Wisconsin. Many people forget that the greatest American settlement after the colonial years was by Germans.
I envied Röhm his sense of place and people. I had lost both in Russia. I longed for the comradeship I had known with Shura in Esau’s in Odessa’s Moldavanka. We, too, might have formed a corps and gone off to fight together. Shura and I could have driven the Bolshevik from our homeland and put a beneficent new Tsar upon the throne. A Tsar who acknowledged the universal rule of Christ and the eternal grace of Jesu Kristos, Lord of the Greeks. Raboni!
We took Strasser some coffee and sausages and returned to the car. ‘You’d better get yourself a girlfriend,’ Röhm said thoughtfully, not looking at me. ‘You know — something smart or tarty — whatever you prefer, as long as people notice. It’s just a precaution, like dragging a false trail and turning signposts. Standard practice. For my own part I intend to spend more time with my mother and sister.’ Absently, he again patted at my leg and continued to stare out of the window. He spoke in rapid associative phrases, revealing him as the fine field officer he had been. ’Yes, that’ll be useful. Cover all our backs. And we’ll have to see what we can do with those engineering ideas of yours. The one thing Alf and I are agreed on is that armour’s the secret of winning tomorrow’s wars. Musso’s going to have to give you up. The bigger, better and faster the armour, the quicker the victory.’
Because of our particular histories, I had never been much of a Germanophile, but I had high respect for Germany’s great writers like Goethe and May. And I liked their hard, practical approach to modern problems. The Greeks were their models. That balance of mind and body, that celebration of human ingenuity. These Nazis understood that the future lay in a healthy populace, a rigorous pursuit of excellence and of technological superiority.
My ambition was still to get to England and work for one of her forward-looking engineering firms, to exploit my patents as a recognised inventor. Mussolini had betrayed me. Another mind poisoned against me. I had money waiting for me in Whitechapel. Relatives. Yet I sensed something in the German soul yearning for what I had to offer. Ernst and the others had the courage and the vision to be clear about what they wanted. Nothing less than a renewed Fatherland.
Would it be here, rather than under a Duce whose mind had been poisoned against me, a Duce no longer approachable by the common man, that the revolutionary machines of the future would be embraced? As usual my idealism, my hopes for improving the world, were leading me to become involved in the politics of a race that had never much engaged my attention, while my original plans to reach England were increasingly neglected.