The Vengeance of Rome

THIRTY-FOUR

At eight the next morning I was again awakened by Frau Socking, but this time her manner was far less severe. She seemed her old self. I smiled at her pleasantly. Perhaps someone had spoken to the manager and I was to be reinstated?

She expressed only relief at my leaving. ‘Some boys are in the lobby to help you move,’ she announced. ‘Grüss Gott, Herr Peters.’ She was already making off.

I called after her that I would be down shortly. A porter could collect my luggage in an hour. Having so little with me, it did not take long to pack. Plans, pistols and my dwindling supply of ’cocoa’ were the most important items and these went into my locked case, which I took with me. I left the bones in my room. As soon as my bags were ready, I strolled down to the lobby to meet the emissary Röhm had sent in his place.

I knew both the Stabschef and Hitler thought highly of this young man. In his pictures Baldur von Schirach had seemed the very model of the modern, clean-cut German lad. In the flesh he gave the same impression, though his movements were somewhat awkward. Round-headed, blond, slightly plump, with almost a rosebud mouth, pink-and-white skin, smiling pale blue eyes and an eager, friendly manner, he was a typical Teuton. He offered me that increasingly common Ben-Hur salute, a Heil Hitler followed by his enthusiastic-pumping of my hand. He was dressed in expensive lederhosen, picturesquely decorated with full Bavarian floral flourishes. Over this he had thrown a large leather military coat. I was a little amused. He gave me the impression of a large chorus girl who had left the theatre in too much of a hurry to change.

Von Schirach spoke in the softly articulated educated accent associated with the old North German upper classes. The modern Nazi style was rough and coarse, whether you had started life with it or not. Röhm was a perfect example of this. His motto among his men, who worshipped him, was ‘the lewder the better’. He had been well educated and was, of course, from a good Munich family. I have described the Stabschef at home. When he wished, he could revert to his old, civilised way of speaking as he had during that visit.

As I have said, the experience of the trenches was determining the tone of the language. The new style was considered more authoritative, tougher, down-to-earth, practical, showing mocking impatience with the old institutions. It reached its dubious zenith in Berlin, where it became the only language you heard in the theatre, unless you attended an operetta. Newspaper journalists adapted the style for their pages. Novelists copied it. Films by Pabst and Lang employed it with relish. It appeared in poetry and fiction by Brecht and operas by Berg. Elsewhere, Schoenberg and Stravinsky were adding their cacophony to the general din. I found it impossible to enjoy a concert without one of these gentlemen introducing the wails and clatters of the synagogue and mosque into the event. If one wished to see a modernist film, the chances were that members of the audience would be hurt in clashes between Commies and Nazis objecting to what they perceived as political bias. Gangster writers spread their harsh, Yiddish-enriched rhetoric among office boys and students. Thus, by aping Berlin street language, the Jews helped proliferate a vocabulary ultimately employed in their own destruction. Everything I had been made to say to Hitler that night was available in some form to those who sought it out. Berlin was awash with aggressive filth.

Röhm argued that the Nazis had brought the language of the NCO to the Reichstag, which was why Hindenburg had been so uncomfortable with it. Röhm added that when people weren’t listening, you had to shout to be heard. The Nazis had been shouting for ten years; it had become a habit.

Von Schirach adopted that peculiar half-apologetic stance of his class towards admired members of the lower orders. He spoke with a slight lisp, like Röhm, which I think was considered elegantly Viennese.

Von Schirach introduced himself and his smart boy helpers, Ulrich and Siegfried, who wore the brown shirts and black trousers of the Hitlerjugend. As soon as these formalities were over, he switched to perfect English. He apologised for not having a car for me. All available transport was needed because of the situation in Berlin. In a few more days we might discover if justice would out and the Führer was to become the new Chancellor. These were exciting times. As we spoke, the Führer was sitting in his mountain fastness at Tegernsee brooding on the future and coming to a monumental decision.

Adding to all his other troubles, said von Schirach, was Hitler’s enormous weight of grief at the death of his poor little niece. Geli had shown signs of instability for some time. Her uncle had done all he could, trying to get her to take a positive interest in the world. He had supported her in every way. Typically, the Führer had cancelled political meetings just to be available to her. He took that sort of interest in all who were close to him. Angela was to have fulfilled her first engagements as a singer, but evidently the anxiety had been too much for her,

I asked him if he had liked the girl. Oh, yes, he said. He and she had got on very well, though she was a little boisterous with him in her country way. She had been a happy little thing. But sometimes she would sink into dark, black moods. He had seen the Führer at his wits’ end with her. This was the first time I had heard someone close to Hitler use the Führer title without irony. It meant ‘guide’ as well as ‘leader’. It fell naturally from the young man’s lips. I admired his commitment to his Chief, even if my own recent impression of Hitler was somewhat different.

How was he so familiar with Geli’s state of mind? Well, of course, it was in all the papers. Even those not vehemently anti-Nazi. She and he had been great pals. A jolly, outgoing person fresh as a mountain flower, she had never lived in a big city before which no doubt put an extra strain on her. She could hardly have known what she was doing. But if you read some of the papers, you’d think Hitler had taken a gun and shot her himself. Wasn’t it disgusting what a cynical press did with tragedy! These days no limits were put on the indecencies and uncollaborated scandal they published.

Von Schirach was innocently sincere. I could not help being charmed by one so young for his age but full of zeal and idealism. I saw no mystery in Hitler’s liking for him, why Hitler had put him in charge of the movement’s idealistic boys. Von Schirach said he would be leaving for the capital fairly soon. Meanwhile, a stiff, old-fashioned Prussian bow and a heel click, given a somewhat burlesque quality by his clothes, and he was at my service. As his boys hefted my luggage, he passed an aristocratic word with the porter and led the way from the hotel. In French I complimented him on his English. He laughed easily. His mother was American, he said. She had been in the theatrical profession and had never bothered to learn German, so he had spoken English until he went to his primary school. His father, though a member of the Prussian Officer Corps, was a great cosmopolitan and famous in Weimar as a theatre director. He had run the Court Theatre, which I presumably knew. ‘We have a great deal in common, Herr Peters. I have a background already in show business, you see!’

His laughter was open and refreshing. His attempts to create a bond, assuming acting to be my main occupation, were kindness itself. He became more serious. ‘And my family was always very open-minded. They didn’t complain much at all when I joined the Nazis. Of course, it wasn’t the first patriotic organisation I had been in. Now they and Herr Hitler are great pals. He was so sympathetic over Uncle Karl. And that perhaps is why my heart goes out to him now. My uncle killed himself from shame after the sell-out at Versailles. I hate those bastards who stabbed the German fighting man in the back. I’m determined to devote my life to Germany. My family supported me absolutely. I could have joined the Nationalists or one of the more conventional parties, but they did not object. They have always had bohemian friends even before they knew our Führer.’

He told me all this as we walked rapidly towards the tram stop, his greatcoat flapping around his bare legs, trailed by the Brownshirt boys lugging my bags. The pavements were crowded with busy shoppers and workers beginning to wrap up against the mid-autumn air. The shops were stuffed already with seasonal delights. You would never know the country stood on the brink of economic collapse. I understood the importance of creating a mood of optimism. Every grocery was a riot of red, gold, silver, green and blue. Every carpet shop and furniture store displayed the latest geometric ‘jazz’ patterns. Every third doorway offered the delights of coffee, chocolate and vanilla strudel, their scents mingling with the sour-sweet smell of beer and sausages. The city was warmed by the acrid stink of cigar smoke and burning oil in the sharpening air. The cafes were full. Music from the latest films poured out of them. Everywhere they were playing Lilian Harvey’s wonderful ‘Das gibt’s nur einrnal, das kommt nicht wieder’ — ‘This Happens Once and Never Again’ — which had been the big moment in Der Kongress tanzt. Hinting at a return to the old German values, the song made such a change from the wild, unmusical rhythms of the jungle and the American ghetto which Berliners, at least, had taken to in their millions. I thought about Mr Mix. He would have done well to go to Berlin where to be black was to find instant employment!

In Munich smart uniforms were still in evidence. Policemen, postmen, civil servants, students, Storm Troopers, Stahlhelm, regular soldiers, Salvation Army and others were everywhere, but the War had taken the best of us. An ambulance sang by, scattering horses and cars. Little boys ran in its wake. I watched them until my view was blocked by a great bakers dray full of hot bread, drawn by a team of massive shire horses. With a police constable’s help, it turned against the traffic like a great ship taking the wind.

Overhead was a lattice of wires for telephones and electricity. Other cables powered the blue-and-white trams jingling and banging with festive clatter along the broad thoroughfare between tall trees whose golden leaves already clogged the gutters. Horses and motor vehicles jostled, clinked and hooted at pedestrians who dodged in and out of the traffic, much to the disgust of matrons and chauffeurs. Everywhere, in banners and placards, Oktoberfest was anticipated. Already the Bavarian peasant farmers with their equally stolid sons could be seen on the streets. Many of them wore their traditional best. The praises of films were shouted in banner print. Voruntersuchung!! (Storms of Passion), Der Mann, der seinen Mötder sucht. That last was a strange title which struck a chord. How could a man go in search of his own murderer? I never saw the film and so never discovered the answer.

Willy Fritsch and Charlie Chaplin smiled out at us. Betty Annan lifted her skirts to dance. Emil Jannings was sober and stern. Familiar faces. Marlene Dietrich. Joan Crawford. The big success was Monte Carlo Madness with the debonair Hans Albers, whom some thought I rather resembled. Louise Brooks. Lilian Harvey. Lon Chaney. Advertisements for beer and political parties added more vivid colour to kiosks, cable standards, postboxes and walls, wherever they would stick. Hindenburg was presented as a vital old knight, his stern eyes staring over his proud Prussian moustachios towards his hinted-at retirement. Many showed pictures of Hitler striking heroic poses as saviour of the Fatherland. Nazi banners boldly confronted the Marxist invaders. The threat from the East was a reality to these people who had lived close to the marches where Christianity came face to face with Islam and her allies. But for a miracle, and the courage of a few fighters, Bavaria would be Communist to this day.

Other posters warned of Jewish power. Still others exhorted us to vote Communist, Nationalist, Christian Socialist, Social Democrat, Anarcho-Syndicalist and for Flag and Country. A dozen millennial visions were pasted across the posts and kiosks and walls of that busy modern town. Perhaps it was too late for us to turn again to the New?

In my view the Nazis were wrong to stop publication of the Bible. They should have let the Old Testament fade into history, remembered only by obscure denominations, revered by a few marginalised sects, like the Apocrypha. The Old Testament and our continued reference to it to this day maintain the Jewish influences all decry but none ever properly address. I cannot understand why such organisations as the White Defence League warn all who will listen about the Bolshevik Jewish threat, yet every Sunday happily tucks its propaganda under their arms and sets off for church! L’histoire est un perpetuel recommencement.

Germany was witnessing so much electioneering she had become heartily sick of democracy. Democracy got her no further forward. Ruling chiefly by emergency decree, torn between extremes of left and right, the Reichstag had become a laughing stock. Only the NSDAP offered a genuine alternative to all this uncertainty. Only the NSDAP offered a clear advance. And it was obvious from every poster one saw that the NSDAP was Hitler.

Again, as I passed a particularly dramatic poster of Der Führer, I experienced a slight shock as those same eyes which had stared at me in Tegernsee seemed to bore into me again. A disturbing illusion. Later I wondered if Hitler’s eyes were not mirrors in which we saw everything we desired or feared. Were such shadows entirely creatures of our imagination, fashioned out of mud and entrails and made reality by a triumph of the will? Strange thoughts for a busy Tuesday in the centre of so much banal human activity.

Munich was vibrant with the sense of coming change. Indeed, she anticipated an apotheosis. A resolution to every dream Germany had nursed from the beginning of the century, when stability and growth would be reflected in the Reichstag’s domination by a Bavarian party, nurtured in Bavarian soil, putting an end to the dominance of ‘Red’ Prussia whose election of so many Socialist deputies in 1914 had precipitated this war. Until now Prussia had been the determining power in Germany’s history. But Munich would always remember the first blows of the Nazi revolution struck during 1923, the year of a noble, if unsuccessful, putsch. Now again there was hope, a spring in every citizen’s step, an optimism which put smiles on faces and displayed an inner radiance. The soul of Germany was returning to life.

Röhm had the rights of it. Stories of German poverty were dreamed up by the Jewish press, whose owners were only interested in buying cheap stocks in German-owned firms. In spite of all efforts to suppress her, the German economic giant had restored herself to power in less than a decade. We know now how certain alien influences in Germany conspired to produce conditions where only the decent German working people and ex-soldiers, poor mothers and children suffered the results of inflation. Even the Völkischer Beobachter had noticed a preponderance of Jews in the shops, stocking up for a season they enjoyed but did not celebrate. Many were not difficult to spot. Others, of course, were better disguised, with Aryan names and looks which could pass a casual glance.

We reached the tram stop. Baldur still talked enthusiastically about Hitler and Röhm. He admired both. He knew that Röhm’s bluff foul-mouthed manner hid a sensitive and generous heart. That’s what his men sensed, why they loved him so fiercely.. Schirach spoke of the people who had benefited from Röhm’s open-handedness. He was not a rich man, but was always generous with what he had. A Bavarian of the old, best sort, he knew how to talk to people at all levels. Just as the Führer did. Germany would know true equality under the National Socialist Party. Irrespective of social background, strong men and women would marry and produce the healthiest children in the world, a proud, self-reliant race with room to breathe and grow. Count and carpenter would work side by side to build a finer, cleaner country, whose broad new roads would be laid like wedding ribbons across the nation.

In response to his enthusiasm I asked a little sardonically if the wedding ribbons would be white.

‘Oh, white! Of course!’ He laughed heartily. ’White, white, white. I love white. So much easier to clean. Ha, ha! White for a virgin Germania, white for her Austrian husband! I wrote a poem on the subject for the Führer. He keeps it in his wallet.’ He shook his head as if I had made a great, insightful joke. ‘Poetry is another talent which runs in my family. White for the new Germany, black for our swastika, sign of rebirth, red for our blood, our pure German blood. Our Nazi colours are the true German colours. Do you see?’

He was only to a degree describing an idealised self. I said I was not the best person to be asked to evaluate a poetic work. I preferred novels and engineering books. ‘Of course you would, of course you would,’ he said rather mysteriously, more or less to himself. ‘Naturally, we are keeping our eye on the Hamburg elections. That will give us a gauge of our power.’ His discussion of strategy and politics was so narrow as to be all but meaningless to me. I was, however, well aware of the urgency of the situation. People scarcely realise these days how the fate of the Nazi Party hung on a knife edge in 1931 and 1932, why Röhm had needed my help so urgently.

At last the number 47 to Viktualienmarkt came along, and we struggled aboard while the driver complained and other passengers suggested we should have hailed a taxi. The thought had also occurred to me, but I did not have money for a taxi and received the impression young von Schirach, for all his expensive clothes, was not rolling in hard marks either. As it was, the two boys bought their own tickets, and von Schirach paid for me. Siegfried was blushing bright red, an unsuitable colour. The boys were far more embarrassed than von Schirach whose insouciance to social nuance was a characteristic of his class. Clinging to the overhead rail as I sat precariously on the edge of the only available wooden seat, with the boys swaying behind him, he spoke enthusiastically about the Jewish Question. The vehicle was a haze of human breath and smoke. The windows were steamed up, making it difficult to see where we were going.

Pausing only to assure me we were almost at our stop, Baldur continued with his cheerful babble. I was in agreement with many of his ideas but was also aware, as he was not, that a member of the tribe was sitting behind him glaring her disapproval. Von Schirach was one of those abstract anti-Semites who had nothing against individuals. He could not really tell the difference between a Jew and a Greek. All Mediterranean types looked the same to him. He spoke with the fire of the convert he was, having been inspired as a teenager by Hitler’s oratory. There was definitely something infectious about Baldur’s enthusiasm, his sense that something had to be done and done soon.

He was soon to be promoted to Youth Leader of the NSDAP, answering directly to Röhm, and he was very proud. The news would shortly be made public. Hitler and Röhm, he thought, were a perfect partnership - the dreaming philosopher and the realistic man of action. A combination of the German virtues. He laughed loudly again. ‘The Führer is a person of rare goodness and sanity, but he needs someone to organise things for him. Like many geniuses, he’s both highly strung and sensitive, though he hides it behind a mask of good humour. These Austrians, you know, are naturally easygoing, like most theatre folk. It’s their charm, isn’t it?’

Naturally I was a little confused and somewhat circumspect. Less than forty-eight hours had passed since the incident at Tegernsee and while it had faded, as all such things fade with the daylight, I found it still difficult to recall that von Schirach’s heroic saviour of Germany was the same creature I had left covered with excrement in its darkened lair. Von Schirach was an intimate. Had he any notion of the truth? It seemed not. Some people are so innocent they impose their own purity of vision on everything around them. No doubt young Baldur knew nothing of the darker Hitler. Whatever hints he received he interpreted as the Führer’s richness of reference and wisdom.

I was not particularly surprised by this, nor even by Hitler’s somewhat extreme means of finding release. Many had discovered such methods, as Röhm had said, in the heightened conditions of the trenches. Hitler was not the first idealistic hero to pursue a private devil. One recalls the great Gilles de Rais, defender of Joan of Arc, remembered by history as Bluebeard, rapist, murderer and torturer of some two hundred children. Possibly the aberrations occurred in direct contrast to altruistic heroism, as if one could not exist without the other. We have all read the Robert Louis Stevenson tale which he originally wrote as Rabbi Sheckel and Doctor Hide (altered by the Hollywood sons of Shem to a more innocuous title) in which by day the narrator is an upstanding Aryan doctor, but by night becomes a blood-drinking Jewish monster. The film was very popular in Germany in my day. Perhaps, suggests our story, sides of the same soul are completely unsunderable. If one dies, so does the other. Sometimes I think both forces are needed in balance to make a fully functional human being.

Such people frequently refuse self-analysis, fearing it would only threaten or weaken them, like actors who change parts, from being ‘themselves’ in the dressing room to being ‘themselves’ onstage. Like an actor, Hitler needed only to work in short, hard bursts. Between his parts he rested. Perhaps the more important the role, the more he retreated into himself?

The tram stopped suddenly. Most of the passengers began to disembark. The boys waited impatiently to take my luggage off. Evidently they knew where we were going. While showing no insubordination, they clearly thought this job beneath them and were constantly under von Schirach’s disapproving glare until suddenly, they darted down a narrow, cobbled side street. For a second I thought they had decided to steal my bags and shouted in alarm. They were carrying everything of importance to my life. We ran to follow them as they disappeared through the gloomy entrance of a low building. Like a tunnel from one world to another, we were all at once in Wonderland, and childhood images came crowding into my head. My soul knew unexpected joy, a kind of memory. In that earlier time the writing had been in Cyrillic. Now it was in Gothic German.

Lit by dancing gas jets throwing fluttering shadows on to the ceiling was a vast covered market. Stalls and cubicles stretched almost endlessly into the half-light. The floor of the great roofed concourse was crowded with brilliantly coloured counters crammed with all kinds of country comestibles. Von Schirach told me this was Munich’s famous covered food market, one of the largest in the region. Specialising in delicacies from all over the South, as well as fruit, vegetables, meat and sausages, the place was full of people, in spite of there being so little money about. Folk from the surrounding towns came to buy their annual luxuries and to take advantage of the various beer concessions. Red-faced farmers and their sons strolled around the pitches buying little. Clumps of them exclaimed at the outrageous prices, comparing quality with their own home produce. City dwellers and stallholders regarded them with amiable contempt in the main, but the peasants were by no means unwelcome in this lean year of 1931.

We passed a monstrous pitch the size of a circus tent selling nothing but a huge variety of cheeses on four sides. Medals and ribbons hung from the striped canvas, advertising the owner and his ancestry. Yellow wheels the size of truck tyres, heavy wedges of blue-veined Cambozola, Stilton and Roquefort, slivers of delicate French Brie and Camembert, and all the good, solid pale pinks and browns of the local varieties, together with the Goudas and Edams and Cheddars. Their combined scent hinted at the ultimate cheese. Beef bones and deer carcasses, hares and rabbits, chickens and geese hung in military ranks from the steel hooks. I smelled blood, fur, feathers, fresh-killed. Glittering candies and rich mounds of chocolate; flowers, toys and slabs of shining fish; wooden booths selling hot dumplings and vanilla custard.

Rising into the gloom, steam streaked the roof’s dirty glass. We pushed through crowds lining up against a pork butcher’s elaborate canvas, decorated with gold medals and shields, proclaiming prizes won as far away as Saxony and the Sudetenland. Electricity and naphtha buzzed. The wealth of smells made you want to stop and begin eating. You felt you could eat the air itself, it was so rich. Massive men and women commanded those stalls, like so many sea captains aboard their ships. Their wiry, darting sons and plump daughters served the customers, shouting responses and exhortations while still others called to us to buy the best of this, the freshest of that. Old men stood arguing at coffee stalls. Old women disdainfully fingered fruit.

And then, from a little cleared space near the far side of the huge, echoing hall, a hurdy-gurdy began to sound. Its cheerful, cheap blasts and whines, amplified by the roof, again reminded me of Odessa and my happiest days. An Italian with a huge Kaiser Wilhelm moustache and a tall felt hat, a tiny, red-jacketed monkey on his shoulder, was operating the handle of his barrel organ while in front of it danced a little ballerina in vivid scarlet and green. Her legs and feet were bare but she moved with extraordinary grace, her dark curls bobbing above her grave, aquiline face as she pirouetted. Her dark eyes met mine, and I was back in Kiev, falling in love with Zoyea, the gypsy girl, all over again . . .

I wanted to pause, to ask her name. To drop a coin in the cup which a boy, by looks her brother, shook at me. But von Schirach was in a hurry, and the youths with my luggage had not stopped. Again I had to trot to catch up. We followed them through another short tunnel before we had left the market and were outside again, marching against the crowd, down a few more streets to a slightly wider thoroughfare with a large carpet store on the corner, selling a rather more conservative selection than in the more fashionable Munich shops.

I was happy to find myself in a lower-class area dominated by a great, Baroque church. St Peter’s was like one of our Kiev churches, though somewhat plainer. The invulnerable old bricks seemed to offer a stable centre. I felt thoroughly comfortable in this district and was again reminded of my childhood. While my father had been connected directly by blood to the most aristocratic family in Russia, therefore making me vulnerable to assassination by Reds, his irresponsible pursuit of socialism had led to all our ruin. So I grew up in a similar area, with children playing noisily in the streets, women gossiping, washing lines hanging across courtyards, with dogs, carts and bicycles everywhere. To me it was like home. Even the stone and brick felt warmer. The smells were more familiar. I began at once to relax. Here I could escape the hustle and bustle of political and sexual life! As I had been burning the candle at both ends, I needed to rest. I began to relish the prospect of peace. With the elections coming in several key areas, I was not likely to have much company among the Nazis, at least for a few weeks. I would spend my time rethinking my situation, considering what I could do to improve my circumstances.

A few more doors down the unremarkable street and we stopped at a shopfront whose windows were protected by an iron grille, securely padlocked. The grilles had received a heavy battering at some time. The red, black and white paint of the outside had flaked and the building hardly seemed used any more. Behind the grilles on the windows were older portraits of Adolf Hitler, ‘the saviour of Germany, the keeper of our national honour’. Swastika symbols and the initials of the NSDAP made it clear we were at a local Nazi HQ. I suspected here we would pick up a key to some nearby apartment, but no sooner had Schirach unlocked the side door than the boys were dragging my bags through the gloom, which smelled strongly of dusty old paper, and up a flight of stairs. Von Schirach closed the door behind us, following me as I climbed in the boys’ wake, my face a little too close to the nearest pair of tight black shorts whose owner was inclined to sweat readily and had that sour, unpleasant smell of most young boys, but I watched with pleasure his healthy little muscles and sinews rippling with the effort of dragging my worldly goods to the top of the building where we stopped at last. Von Schirach was beaming as he unlocked the door, flung it open and ceremoniously handed me the keys. ‘Your flat!’

It was, in fact, a very comfortable little place. I suspected a woman’s touch, a mistress or perhaps simply a mother, for it was almost feminine in its furnishings, with everything one might need neatly placed. Schirach had lived here himself until fairly recently, when his circumstances had improved, he said. His rent had helped the party through some thin times. Now the place was here for me as long as I needed it. The party required no rent these days. He understood I had accomplished important work for the Italian dictator. He was a great fan of Signor Mussolini, who had done wonders for Italy. He had undertaken the Herculean task of bringing masculine fire to that quintessentially feminine Italian soul. If anyone could do it, he could. Meanwhile, his emissaries were always welcome in Germany, especially among the ranks of Nazis. They had much in common with the Fascist cause. He quoted a favourite saying of the great dictators: ‘It is better to spend one day as a lion than to spend a lifetime as a lamb.’

I was a little taken aback by his apparently rehearsed speech, as if von Schirach suddenly recalled he had not spoken what he had prepared, so spoke it anyway, as a specific duty. Doubtless Röhm had offered some instructions on how to address me. Now young Baldur seemed to think he had become carried away in his excitement. Like many polyglots, he said more than he should when speaking a language other than the local one. He had revealed a romantic crush on an older man.

This generous emotion continued to radiate from him as he flitted about the flat showing me how to work the stove, where the china was kept, how a certain flap worked in the desk. I had a fleeting impression of an angelic visitation. Then he looked at his watch, raised his eyebrows and apologised. He had to go. Berlin and duty called!

I accompanied him and the boys back down the stairs while he tried to tell me the best baker, the best grocer and so on, suggesting that I could also shop in the Viktualienmarkt, which, as I had seen, offered a convenient short cut to the tram stop. The market was a bit crowded with tourists at the moment, because of the festival, and the prices had gone up, but I would still find it worth trying. There were several good cheap restaurants in the vicinity, also a wonderful new cinema nearby. The whole area was much improved since he had lived there. Even St Peter’s, the local church, seemed a bit brighter. I assumed it was a Roman church and that therefore I might attend services if I were here for a length of time. At that time, you will recall, I had yet to accept the faith of my ancestors and worship in the Greek tradition.

As I stood in the street doorway bidding my new friend goodbye, the inner door leading into the shop at the side opened suddenly. I had not known the shop was occupied and jumped slightly.

A black beret perched on the side of his head, a sprightly puckish little face regarded us, looking us over with merry, sardonic eyes. Then, stiffening, the dapper newcomer bowed and heel-clicked to von Schirach. Ignoring me, he advanced upon the scowling Hitler Youth leader.

‘Mein lieber Baldur!’ He opened his arms as if to receive a beloved child. But Schirach’s eyes narrowed, and he coloured a little. ‘Good afternoon, Herr Doctor. We thought you still in Vienna. Or was it Prague you went to? I believe you are not supposed to be on these premises. I think you should let me have your key.’

‘Why so?’ A jovial Herr Doctor indeed! He twinkled, he was sly, he was warm, sarcastic. His mobile, clever mouth seemed forever smiling, smirking, sneering or grinning. His audacious brown eyes bore a hint of the Mediterranean, reminding me for an instant of my friend Fiorello. The doctor created the same sense in me that I was forever being watched for my reaction, so that he might respond appropriately, or at least know what to think of me, or how to make me think well of him. Yet his words were sardonic enough and showed no lack of courage. ‘Has your lord and master Hitler banned me from the building I first helped him rent? I’m not surprised, since he’s an habitual turncoat. He’ll turn on you one day, my dear Baldur, and then nothing will save your tight little bum. Not even your convulsive poetry.’

Blurting and blushing, the poor boy pressed a large envelope into my hand and made his escape, warning me that the doctor had no business being on the premises. If he gave me any further trouble the police could be called. The number was in the office near the telephone. He was sorry about the dust. His last words were grimmer, addressed to the newcomer. ‘I believe you have gone too far again, Doctor Strasser. I doubt it will be quite so leniently tolerated this time.’ But because of his lisp, the words had no weight.

The doctor smiled quietly to himself and, with crooked mockery, bowed to von Schirach. Removing his beret, he placed it against his heart and clicked his heels. ’My good Herr Youth Leader! You’ll discover soon enough that Herr Hitler’s men are not quite as loyal to Big Business as their “Führer”. This murder investigation will only help clear their vision . . .’

He lifted his black beret mockingly, a cigarette burning between his fingers, and dropped the hat neatly back on his balding head. ‘My regards to your dear fiancée, Miss Hoffman. And to my brother Gregor, if you see him in Berlin. What a shame about Fräulein Raubal. I heard you were on the scene with Hess and my brother in a matter of hours. Clearing up the evidence, were you? Who did it, eh? Hitler hasn’t the nerve for it. Himmler? Don’t worry, my brother wouldn’t tell me. We haven’t been on the best of terms since he made his choice. He’s almost as happy to lick Uncle Alf’s arse as you are. I have plenty of other friends still in the party. Is Germany’s great white hope mortified? How inconvenient for him . . .’ He laughed without malice after them. The little boys were bewildered, perhaps waiting for Baldur to strike back at the man for uttering so many blasphemies at once, but von Schirach murmured something about the plane for Berlin and herded them ahead of him.

After von Schirach and his lads had rounded the corner, Doctor Strasser turned his cheerful attention on me. Gregor Strasser’s brother was a small man, scarcely taller than myself, but very dapper. His humorous, sardonic manner seemed completely natural to him. He looked at one slightly sideways. Neatly dropping his cigarette butt into the street, he took a small case from his pocket and offered me a smoke but I refused. I told him I had eaten no breakfast or lunch and was beginning to feel peckish.

If I gave him five minutes, he told me, he would be glad to take me to an excellent and very cheap restaurant. A little worried that back numbers of the party paper would be destroyed during or after the elections, he had come from Vienna to sort out some of the old copies. He had no spares, and everything was stored here at what had been the party HQ until they’d moved to the Brown House. He remembered this place in the old days before the Great Compromise, but now it wasn’t inhabited much. Was I going to live in the flat?

In spite of Baldur von Schirach’s animosity towards him, Gregor Strasser’s brother Otto was exceptionally charming and far more engaging than his taciturn sibling. He had a mobile, vaguely Jewish, face which could not help but twinkle and smile.

It occurred to me momentarily that perhaps he indeed had Jewish blood, the reason for his volatility, but it was extremely unlikely. Given their policies the Nazis could not afford to be too careful on matters of early ancestry. For some time I had heard and ignored the persistent rumours of Hitler’s own Jewish grandparents. The theory was that these part-Jews so hated the blood in their own veins that they strove to tear it from the body of Germany as they would tear it from themselves. A popular theory, but not one I necessarily subscribed to. Ludecke, whom I met later, believed that the most virulent anti-Semites had strong doses of Jewish blood. Rosenberg was certainly Jewish, he argued. He had known several such creatures. All possessed a certain pathos. But even Ludecke, that irredeemable cynic, would agree with me that whatever blood animated the Strasser family it came from the right side of the Mediterranean!

I began to answer but Doctor Strasser silenced me, a finger to his lips. He straightened his beret, put away his case, and began to sink back into the semi-darkness among huge towers of baled newspapers and magazines.

Come to think of it, he said, he was feeling hungry, too. He would be glad to treat me. I in turn must tell him all about England, which he was thinking of visiting soon. I told him I knew little more of England than did he. I had not been born there. I was an American.

‘Oh, you’re the Hollywood actor Röhm’s so taken with? The centre of gossip in Berlin and Vienna. You’re not Jewish, are you?’

‘Of course not!’ I laughed. I could see Strasser was trying to get a rise out of me. ‘But it’s true Röhm and I have become great chums. We have much in common.’

‘He’s a good man. I’ve hardly seen him since he came back from Bolivia to run the SA, but he’s doing wonders already. I wish he was with me and not Hitler. His heart is much more with the Black Front than the Hitlerists. But like my brother he believes Hitler will take them to power. My brother already has more power than he ever thought he could get. He’ll lose it if he trusts Hitler too much. Gregor is considered by everyone to be the “civilised” Nazi, and it is to him Streicher and Co. turn. But unless they move quickly they will find they have delivered all their influence to Hitler. Why does everyone think they can take power from Hitler once he has it? We all watched him climb and admired him. But now he is climbing over us. My brother should know better. And, indeed, so should Röhm, who has been around the “little corporal” longer than anyone.’

I presumed he spoke chiefly of the internal squabbling besetting most political parties and rarely noticed by the world outside. For a few minutes I stood in the doorway watching him rummage about in the room, then I told him I would return to my flat and see him in a little while. He grunted assent.

I rejoined him about quarter of an hour later feeling considerably more my old self. The envelope von Schirach had given me contained a substantial amount of money. The little flat was quiet, secure and I could use it to concentrate on my own work for a change. Meanwhile, I intended to cultivate the charming doctor, whose tongue was even looser than Röhm’s.

Dusting his hands he emerged from behind a pile of newspapers, put down a box he had been filling and apologised. He lit another cigarette. ‘I am only looking for my own work. I can’t afford to have it printed again.’ Glancing around him he shook his head. He patted at a pile of magazines. ‘Not that long ago, my young friend, these dreams were mine. But now it’s all corrupted.’

Then, shrugging his shoulders, he took me by the arm, pointed me back into the street, closed and locked the door behind us with his key, and led us in a graceful stroll towards the Viktualienmarkt.

‘Herr von Schirach didn’t seem to like you.’ Automatically I looked up and down to make sure we were not being followed.

‘Oh, he’s all right. But he has to take Hitler’s side in everything. I enjoy embarrassing him a bit. He’s not a bad lad. Just an idiot. He thinks the sun shines out of Hitler’s bottom!’

We walked slowly towards the market while Strasser explained at length and rather obscurely why he had split with Hitler who, in his view, had made the party into the means of getting personal power at any cost. Hitler had abandoned all their published principles. He would betray everyone who had trusted him, as well as those who had not. He was the reason why Strasser had left and was now based in Prague, where he could publish his refutations of Hitler’s lies. ‘That bastard Göring, the gimpy snake in the grass, set up a rival paper and Hitler backed it. We had no choice but to sell our interests. I got next to nothing. I have still to see the puny sum I eventually settled for. But it’s much worse than that.’ Hitler had sold out all the Nazi principles and spat in the face of his supporters. His obsession with the pursuit of power for its own sake would be the end of us.

I had heard similar opinions from Röhm, by no means a slavish supporter of the Führer. A couple of years earlier there had been some kind of split in the NSDAP ranks. The Strasser brothers had taken the side of the more revolutionary party members, who wished to tear down the entire structure of the state and start afresh. Goebbels had initially been on their side but later shifted over to Hitler’s camp. Money talked and Goebbels clearly had his price. But Hitler’s debt to Big Business, Strasser argued, would mean that the industrialists would continue to control Germany. The situation would be worse than in Italy where Mussolini had sold off all the wealth of the country to the Pope and a few of his cronies. These businessmen, like Thyssen, Krupp and the rest, were the very people, according to Strasser, who had already brought the country down.

‘I’m not denying there exist interests forever alien to the German nation, but we weren’t stabbed in the back. We had bad generals and a bunch of businessmen who were doing very well out of selling munitions and supplies to the army. Believe me, I love Ludendorff, but he was an idiot. Wars are won by the side which makes the least mistakes. Ludendorff made mistake after mistake, and every mistake cost a hundred thousand German lives. Those must never be repeated. These powerful people Hitler’s talking to will insist on mistakes being repeated. And they’ll probably make a load of new ones as well! Two kinds of people should never be allowed near the politics of a country. One is businessmen, the other is soldiers. Whenever those interests start to climb into bed with each other, death and destruction follow for the common people. The creeps will be the ruin of us!’All of this Otto Strasser offered in a light-hearted tone which seemed at odds with his words. He continued to laugh as he walked beside me, a dapper figure in his bow tie and loose coat. Some years later John Betjeman, the BBC rhymester, would remind me of him.

While I had not been surprised at von Schirach’s lack of insight into Hitler’s character, I was thoroughly astonished at Strasser’s understanding and hoped I did not show it! Strasser had no illusions. Hitler filled a vacuum. But it was a vacuum within a vacuum!

‘Time was he knew himself better than he does now. He’s started believing the publicity stories. Hitler’s a feminine type, with a destructive mission, not a constructive masculine one. When I met him just after the War, he saw himself as a drummer, a showman. I remember his saying how he felt like a sleepwalker. The crowd determines who he is. He says the crowd is his mistress, but in some ways the crowd is all he is. Nothing is real or genuine about him. Even the title Führer was imposed on him. The Nazis are creating a monster. What the Jews call a golem.’

Suddenly Otto Strasser grabbed my sleeve and dragged me down some basement steps into the dark panelled wood of a restaurant with peeling walls and faded floral pictures just visible through a haze of delicious steam. The narrow room was crammed with heavy stained wooden tables and poorly lit by oil lamps. Two grey-haired women were selling cakes from behind a counter display but abandoned their customers when they saw Otto Strasser, greeting him with glad, maternal cries, sitting us down at the best table, getting us a clean menu, telling us not to have the Rotkraut but that the dumplings were fresh.

A wild barking, and from the back of the kitchen came a little dachshund which somehow reminded me, in its perky manner, of my new friend. He petted the dog. He giggled at its antics. He gave it a lump of sugar. His soft, elegant hands stroked its happy head. Our meal arrived, working-class food, wholesome and filling. Strasser ate with considerable relish, talking between bites and I, also, found the food very much to my taste, similar to Russian food in many ways. My muscles and bones relaxed for the first time in days. The strain of the previous night had left its mark.

I was very glad to have met Otto Strasser, a man with a good idea of Hitler’s duality. He shared the idealism of everyone around the Führer and had no motive for wishing to see the Nazi Party lose the seats it had won. What was more, Strasser was a man of principle, and an eternal optimist!

When we left the restaurant, Strasser wanted to buy some apples. He led me through another doorway into a newer part of the great Viktualienmarkt. The busy bustle of the afternoon had been replaced by an early-evening lull, a sense of waiting. As we walked up to a fruit stall, I heard the barrel organ sounding again. I turned, scarcely aware of my own quickness of movement, and sought the source.

In a dusty ray of late sunshine, the child dancer I had seen earlier stood at rest. Behind her, on his master’s shoulder, the red-coated monkey jumped and gibbered, taking his little fez off and on to the cheap tinkling of the instrument’s mechanical heart.

I gasped at the familiarity of it. I might have been gazing again on my gypsy love, the young beauty I had so long ago been forbidden to see. For a second her eyes met mine, and I was sure she recognised something in me.

Strasser bought his apples and was grinning at me. ‘What is she? A relative? If not, she’s probably for sale.’

I grew a little warm. ‘She reminds me of someone I knew as a child.’

‘They have gypsies in America, too? My God, they’ve spread everywhere!’

But these were not gypsies. Their kind was found in most big German cities. They were Italians, earning their living as street entertainers.

This time it was Strasser who drew me away from my little Zoyea, but I went less reluctantly than before. She and I were soulmates. Those glances had proved it. I knew it was possible to see her again. As soon as I could I would return to the market to watch her dance. What was her name? Whenever I closed my own eyes I saw hers. They were curious eyes, knowing eyes, not entirely innocent eyes. There was no doubt about it. Zoyea was reincarnated. Restored to me. She had recognised me, as I had recognised her.

Sie bewegte sich schlendernd wie ein Junge. Dennoch glaubte ich, dass sie an mir Gefallen gefunden hatte. Vielleicht zogen mich jene Augen an, mit denen sie in sexueller Berechnung jedes Lebewesen zu taxieren schien . . .

But this was natural to my little earth spirit. We were fated, I knew, to become wonderful friends again.