The Vengeance of Rome

FIFTY-THREE

Sturmbannführer Schnauben is promoted rapidly while at Dachau. Therefore I, too, am promoted. He is impressed by my relationship with Kolya. When he refers to Kolya I can hear a note of sardonic respect. Schnauben calls Kolya ‘your aristocratic pal from Berlin’. He will not tell me any more about my friend or the outside world. Schnauben only rarely discusses the news of the day, but through him I learn of the Nationalist overthrow of the Red government in Spain. He speaks happily of my suffering country and what Germany avoided through Hitler’s vision.

‘It could have been so much worse for us. That is why the public loves the Führer.’

The predicted Civil War has come. Heavy fighting around Madrid. Will it spread across Europe? Or will Hitler form an axis with Franco, Mussolini and other like-minded men to throw up a steel firewall against Red incursion?

Yuzmekligim yazim mu? Dicono che quell’uomo, Messer Zid, sia sceso all’Inferno e sia anche tomato indietro. Poco ci manco che morisse. Il hamdu lilla! Je voyage indépendamment à cavernes imaginaires découvertes près de la Seine. Méditations et Révélations. Zna arciblaz en Kartago? Eine zid? Israel zerstört in einem Tag. Karthago zerstört in einem Tag. Peru zerstört in einem Tag. Die Reiche der Sioux und der Zulu zerstört in einem Tag. Mandschurisches Reich zerstört in einem Tag. Russland zerstort in einem Tag. Was bleibt übrig ausser Stolz? Stolz vernichtete sie . . .

‘This place has been a rest cure for you,’ my master jokes. ‘In America you would pay thousands of dollars to be here. You must thank a benevolent state. Public health has improved considerably in Germany. Why, when I first knew you, you were a cocaine addict.’

I nod my agreement. To disagree would be to die. I was never addicted. I have not lost my love of ‘snow’, but I have ceased to regard it as part of my life. In many ways I am less reliant on human pleasures. Even sex no longer plays a central part in my thoughts. The last film I made with Prince Freddy also destroyed the chains of desire. I was relieved to learn that in the Third Reich all such material was automatically incinerated. However, the record of my shame might exist elsewhere.

‘The Führer is a great man,’ says Schnauben. ‘He has scoured Germany from top to bottom. These days even his old detractors admire him. The Americans send experts to study his methods.’

In the night, when everyone else sleeps, those triumphant eyes still mock me.

Therefore you are nothing.

‘For this,’ says Schnauben, ’everyone is willing to forgive us. You, Peters, are a small sacrifice.’

I am a small sacrifice. I understand.

‘Thank you.’

Poor Röhm. He gave up everything in the end for his Führer. Can I do less?

Sometimes I think of Röhm in Stadelheim, stripped to the waist in that cell, the gun with its single bullet upon the table. He refused to take his own life, knowing ‘Alf lacked the hardness of heart to kill him.

Schnauben is playing Brahms’s Ein Deutsches Requiem on his new gramophone. Does the music inspire me? he asks. ‘It must be a consolation to you. It is to me.’

I say it is a great consolation. I thank him for letting me hear it. I return to my barracks.

The music meant nothing. I wonder, abstractedly, if Sturmbannfiihrer Schnauben will be able to harden his heart to kill me when the time comes.

Trauriger und alter Gott, sollte ins Altersheim. Sollte ins Altersheim mit alien anderen schmutzigen alten Göttern.