The Vengeance of Rome

Certainly at that moment I was more nervous of meeting Frau Röhm than I was of being the victim of Hitler’s vengeance. A servant girl shuffled in wearing a somewhat ill-fitting uniform, as if she had only recently taken the job and inherited the previous incumbent’s clothes. With a peasant’s heavy-handedness she brought in a coffee tray and a cake stand while an older, rather stooped woman followed her, carefully carrying some plates. Like the maid, the woman was dressed in black, but hers were familiar widow’s weeds of the kind worn by so many women in those days. Behind this matron came a woman only a little older than Röhm himself, I guessed. She, too, wore a simple black dress with a black jacket. Her expression was amiable, on a broad, glowing Bavarian face. I detected no close family resemblance. Röhm’s features were altogether finer than his relatives’ and suggested that his father’s had been the dominant genes. Neither woman wore much make-up. Frau Röhm had a healthy, rather scrubbed appearance. These plain women somehow looked out of place in that austere, masculine room. They needed the comforts of their class, their floral prints and chintz and china, to give them any colour at all.

They arrived like strangers and arranged stiff-backed Empire chairs around the coffee and the cakes, smiling and nodding at me vaguely, as if they were not sure I could speak. I clicked my heels and bowed in the Prussian fashion. They seemed impressed by this. We exchanged greetings. As we did so, Röhm came hurrying back into the room. He kissed his mother’s hand, patted his sister on the arm, asked after his brother, who was not at home, and announced me as Herr Max Peters, the American film actor. Then I suddenly guessed he was fulfilling a promise to them. His mother and sister already knew who I was and had probably seen some of my films. Like most women, they were curious about celebrity. A hint of Hollywood engaged even the least imaginative Hausfrau.

While the clumsy servant handed us our plates and offered elaborate cream pastries, I made conversation in my rather old-fashioned German. I had learned more Yiddish than German when I had worked for the Jew in Odessa, but I think I succeeded in answering their enquiry I was not planning to go back to Hollywood immediately. I had fallen in love with Bavaria. But, of course, I was still an employee of Il Duce. This was another personality who interested them, so we chatted a little about Mussolini whom, naturally, I was not particularly well disposed towards just then. I told them what a wonderful woman Signora Rachele Mussolini was and what lovely children she had, how Signor Mussolini took a personal interest in his sons and, no matter how busy with affairs of state, was still able to give them the attention and discipline they needed from a father. I mentioned that Signora Mussolini had personally asked me to teach her son Bruno to fly. Like their father they already rode very well. The boys would grow up as true Italian gentlemen.

This news was greeted with considerable approval by the women and caused Röhm to murmur some remark into his coffee cup which had both of us smiling. But I recovered myself. I had no intention of letting Röhm down. He clearly had considerable affection for his mother yet addressed her in that familiar, faintly mocking, slightly hectoring way his generation had with older people. I think that, too, had something to do with the War. You became impatient with their sentimentality. You could not tell them of the horrors you had seen.

Frau Röhm asked me what I thought of the Vatican. Had I been received by the Pope? I told her that the Vatican did something to my soul. I would soon be granted an audience with the Pope. She said that she hoped the Pope would now be able to do something about the political situation. Mussolini had kept his word and restored the Vatican’s power. She was a woman of sharp intelligence. She spoke of the crisis in the Reichstag, the threat to Brüning’s chancellorship. Rather than correct her misunderstanding of the situation, Röhm chuckled and said there seemed little hope of the Chancellery now, but perhaps next time. We were trying to run before we could walk. ‘Alf’s temporarily lost his powers. All we can do for the moment is keep him up there in general view. It would be fatal if he lost his position with the public now.’

Frau Röhm had listened without hearing him. When he had finished she turned to me with a pleasant smile. ‘You are a famous American cowboy star, I understand, Herr Peters. But all Americans are from somewhere else, I know!’

I told her that my parents were from Madrid. Until recently my great-uncle had been Archbishop of Sta Maria. I did not really lie so much as use a code, letting her know how I was ‘one of us’. This stopped any barrier forming between us. She was, as a Catholic, clearly reassured by my response. That I held to the true Eastern Church was unimportant. That we both worshipped Jesus Christ was what bound us. I was telling her that I accepted her value system. It is often a mistake to accuse someone of telling a lie. Often they are telling the truth disguised by a lie.