The Vengeance of Rome

THIRTY-SEVEN

Gloria Cornish was never more glamorous. With the customers’ intimate torch-beams playing over her sensuously dressed figure, she stormed on to the little stage of the Flashlite Klub. Radiating joie de vivre, energy personified, she blew a kiss to the band, a kiss to the audience. The cellar was thick with cigar smoke and California poppy. It barely disguised the heavy smell of mould. Yet all was transformed, all shabbiness forgotten, when she emerged from behind the velvet curtain. She was sex. She was joy. A golden promise. The nightclub rented out electric torches and encouraged customers to direct the light wherever they pleased. White beams played on the artistes and on other customers who attracted them. Being mostly Bavarian burghers, they were frequently unsubtle in their play with the beams. Yet nothing could cheapen my goddess! Even Kitty, the eternal cynic, was entranced, though she pretended not to be.

These were the days before every chanteuse was expected to look like Lola-Lola in Der blaue Engel, a costume which became as formal as an Auguste’s face. The real cabaret singers wore stylish gowns, like my Mrs Cornelius.

Clad in clinging apple-green silk with jade trim, her long legs kicking, her arms outstretched, her back bent outwards and her gorgeous figure displayed in all its natural beauty, she danced that sensuous English jazz step in which the whole body swayed in serpentine waves from head to toe. The style derived from the minstrel cake-walks which had a profound effect on British popular entertainment and are running to this day at the New Victoria Theatre.

A four-piece Negro orchestra sat to one side of the stage playing banjo, cornet, tuba and clarinet. Their bowler-hatted silhouettes were flung up against the backdrop by a spotlight. The little orchestra sounded like the wild, beating heart of Africa and Mrs Cornelius’s high, fluting voice, full of ironic gaiety, sang Noel Coward’s latest ‘Twentieth-Century Blues’ against their relentless thrumming. Coward was currently a sensation with the Berlin cognoscenti. Then, of course, he was a famous homosexual. Today he is a famous knight. So it turns. It is a well-known fact that the best way of acquiring a knighthood is to be caught in a public toilet with a guardsman.

When she sang in German, ‘Fräulein Cornish’s’ accent was delicious, and the crowd howled with delight. Flowers and money fell on the stage like wedding tributes, and she received them all with laconic grace. Surabaya Johnny, you have no heart... I had never heard such melancholy sweetness. No wonder she was a sensation in Munich! This was not the first time I had seen her perform. Technically we were actually married, though no intimacy had taken place between us. We had spent many months on tour in America. Naturally, Hollywood gossips had paired us romantically because we featured together in most of the Masked Buckaroo and White Ace pictures.

With the rest of the audience I was entranced as she sang a gloomy French song called ‘Fashionette’ and another about an impotent Pierrot.

Her final number, in which she made sensual play with her cigarette holder and those extraordinary blue eyes under huge lashes, was called ‘Der Entropietango’ and was a typically sardonic piece of Berlin pessimism. The sexual charge in the place was almost asphyxiating. Men and women were equally fascinated by her performance. She had everything the Germans loved, including her English accent. Her show finished with an extraordinary version of a song I knew to be a favourite, but made all the more suggestive by the wailing and throbbing of the little Negro orchestra.

‘Don’cher fink my dress is a little bit, jest a little bit, not too much of it -? / And if you fink my dress is a little bit - well, it’s ther little bit ther boys admire . . .’ Finishing with a rousing chorus or two of Keep yer ‘and on yer ‘a’penny.

She left them on their feet and yelling for more, quite unlike the usual response of the blasé nightclub audiences. As their applause subsided she took her encore. She slunk, she strutted, she strolled and slid from one sinuous step into another. I almost swooned with the pleasure of it. The horns and reeds blared and shrieked, the banjo twanged.

‘Oh, the moonlight, the bitter moonlight, oh, the moonlight ... no heart has the knight . . . Locked in the prison of my dreams, he brings me my release . . . Love is a dish he can’t refuse. He tastes it once and on he moves . . . My blood finds harmony in his, true blood mixed with true love is .. . Must I perish so he can unify our land?’ She sang in English what was evidently a modern setting for an old folk song with more meaning in German. There was something in the words which brought the audience almost to tears, and their emotion filled that tiny cellar, giving her energy for still another chorus. Swaying, they joined in as one.’ We will unite, one day soon, / Some day when, we’ll united be again!

A yearning for conformity was a stronger pull than sex in those decent Bavarian hearts. She appealed to the patriot and man of goodwill, not the pervert. ‘And we know we’ll be together one day soon!’

Vera Ellen would pirate this song for crude propaganda during the War but every German who heard it knew what it really meant.

She left them happy again, with ‘A Little of What You Fancy Does You Good’ and ‘Please Take Care of My Pussy’, then just as she was giving her final bow, the stage awash with petals and notes, she saw me and screamed.

‘Ivan! Yer little barstard, where yer bin?’

Then she was engulfed.

Eventually she made her way to our table and sat down radiantly, still acknowledging their homage. She offered Kitty a distant nod. They were already acquainted, she said. Then she turned her beaming face on me. ‘Ivan. Th’ bad penny wot always turns up, eh? I bin tryin’ ter find yer since I saw yer in ther street wiv all yer parcels. That was ther day I got ‘ere with ‘Uggy. Did yer get married?’ She cast suspicious eyes on Kitty, who ‘frosted’ and turned away to smile at an old brewer leering at her knees. ‘I’ve got a job fer yer. Real work. We’d almost decided on Jack Trevor, but ‘e’s landed a contract anyway. ‘E’s goin’ ter live in Oberammergau, ‘e says, where they ‘ave ther play. It would probably suit ‘im to play Jesus.’ Then she calmed down, realising how much attention was still on us. She leaned forward and left a red kiss on my cheek. ‘Come rahnd ter the “Exit Only” door in five minutes and Reinhardt’ll let yer in. But I’d rather yer come on yer own.’

Kitty was more than a trifle disconcerted when I popped her in a taxi and sent her to spend the night at Prince Freddy’s. I had important business, I said, to be discussed in private. Kitty’s laughter, when I told her this, was crisply disbelieving. At that point I had no concern for her good opinion. I hurried back to Mrs Cornelius.

I waited a couple of minutes until the bar of the ‘Exit Only’ door was pushed back, and I was greeted by what appeared to be an elaborately dressed ape. A tiny hermaphroditic creature in a perfect linen suit of pale lilac, calling himself’Mr Reinhardt’, ushered me through the badly ventilated passage behind the toilets and into a scarcely more pleasant dressing room. Poorly lit, save for the glaring mirror, this tiny space was festooned with exotic underwear and coloured silks. Her figure as firm as ever, Mrs C leaned into the mirror, removing her exaggerated stage make-up. I was relieved to see the same vital youth underneath. Roughly my own age, she shared the tendency to unwrinkled skin that had little to do with care and a great deal to do with heritage. Save for facial hair I have remained smooth all my life. Most of my lovers have been fascinated by that quality.

Little Reinhardt scuttled away like an apologetic rat, and I was left to sit in the gold-painted wicker chair she offered me. Some of the paint immediately attached itself to my sleeve, and my attempts to clean it smeared it further. I did my best to relax in the chair’s creaking discomfort. What was worse, I was forced to endure the most exquisite pangs of lust while she removed her face, as she put it, and ‘slapped the old one back on’. Then she went behind her screen to finish dressing while I relieved myself as best I could in the time permitted.

I was disconcerted by a rapid knock on the door which opened immediately to reveal another familiar face. His knowing smirk was the last thing I wished to experience. I greeted him wearily with a wave of the offending hand. ‘Good evening, Seryozha.’ Mrs Cornelius was always soft-hearted. How many more of the walking wounded had she adopted? ‘When did you slip down to Munich? Where’s your uniform?’

‘I’m in mufti.’ A monstrous wink. ‘Special assignment.’ His lugubrious eyes leered into mine as those massive lips planted warm kisses on my cheeks. ‘Dimka, dearest. I’m a BODY guard!’ His giggle was unbecoming in an SS officer. ‘On loan from Himmler, who owes a favour to our Gloria’s special gent, and my association with the theatre is well known. The Bolshies will go to any lengths to attack us. They hate her because she happens to be friends with a very nice old gentleman who doesn’t share their particular views and whom Captain Himmler wants to keep sweet. I was the ideal officer to protect our star. But you have another acquaintance, dear —’

‘Keep it darn, Sershi,’ called Mrs Cornelius from behind the screen. ‘And don’t talk so fuckin’ much or I won’t ‘ave nuffink ter tell ‘im meself. An’ I’m tryin’ ter get a free dinner art o’ im.’

Seryozha draped his boneless body over two chairs and snorted. Sharing an even more exaggerated wink with me, he leaned forward and hissed, ’It’s her favourite darkie, dear. You know! Really sweet — and so intelligent!’

The only darkie of her acquaintance I ever knew was, of course, Mr Mix. I remember how disconsolate she had been after my ‘Sancho Panza’ disappeared off the ship in Casablanca.

‘It could not, of course, be Mr Mix —’

‘Oh, is it Mix?’ He tutted with self-disgust. ‘I thought it was Dix. The actor, dear, not the cowboy. English is hideous, isn’t it, Dimka? Everything sounds the same, like Chinese. All inflection and inference. It’s a slippery language, dear. You can’t trust it, can you? Not like Russian. You know where you are with Russian.’ He took out a snuffbox and cut us all a line of cocaine.

My loyal companion had found his patroness again. Mrs Cornelius had been more than kind to him, willingly devoting hours of her time to helping him. ‘Does Mr Mix know I’m here?’ I asked.

‘I’ll tell him, dear.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Sexy, mm?’ He took the first snuff. ‘Built like a rhino . . . ?’

‘My dear Seryozha, Mr Mix was my loyal servant on my travels across America and Africa. Our relationship was always formal. I never expected to see him again.’ I accepted his little Lalique mirror, a silver tube.

‘Oh, the man’s full of fun. So talented and entertaining. You and I, of course, prefer the more slender, East African type -’

‘I told yer ter shut it, Sersh.’ Mrs Cornelius’s voice became a guillotine. ‘We’ll orl be art o’ work if you don’t put a clip on them big flapping lips. Wot a marf, wot a marf, wot a norf an’ satf. . .’

I began to laugh both at his childish disappointment and at her glaring eyes as she stepped from behind the screen dressed for the street in a pretty black-and-white outfit. She wore a little matching hat on her platinum locks, a red rose in her lapel. With a tiny handbag under her arm, she trotted on slender high heels. I was able to stand up a little shakily and salute her. She said that as usual it looked as if I was rocking the cradle at both ends.

‘Yer orl pasty, Ivan.’ I was going to need a bit of self-discipline what with the work I had coming to me. ‘Yer’ve got yer big break at last, matey. I’ve ‘ad private detectives looking fer yer, an’ everyfing!’ She refused to say more until after the fish course.

I took her to dinner at the Restaurant Steiner in Rosenstrasse, an expensive place, all plush and crystal, serving dinner in the old High South German style. The meal would cost me most of my remaining money but would be worth it to celebrate our reunion. She was recognised by several customers who stood up to bow, and she very prettily bowed back. ’Keep in wiv ther sods while yer a’ead, Ivan, eh?’

I agreed enthusiastically.

We finished our fish, but she only really came down to business at the meal’s end. Stroking the glass which had taken the last of my month’s budget, she offered a huge comradely grin. ‘We’re quids in, Ivan. I can’t see ‘ow it can fail. But it was touch an’ go until I saw yer tonight. My ‘Uggy’s got this idea of doing a series o’ cowboy pictures, ‘ere in Germany, and selling ‘em ter America!’

She clearly thought the idea mad.

‘Which means ‘e’s got ter ‘ave stars known in America. Which is where you an’ me come in, ‘cause them bloody Masked Buckaroo serials are orl over ther bloody place ‘ere! They get ‘em cheap in job lots. Ya know ther sorta fing. Yer can ‘ave two Tom Mixes and a ‘Oot Gibson but yer got ter take twelve episodes of Masked Buckaroo at Devil’s Jump. I ain’t complainin’. The Krauts fink we’re the biggest fing in ‘Ollywood! Anyway, we don’t ‘ave ter go orl the way back ter Arizona. ‘Uggy says we can find the right scenery in the East. I fink ‘e means Austria. ‘E reckons we can crack ther English an’ American market wiv somefink closer to its tastes. And there’s nuffink the world likes better than a good cowboy picture. I don’t know if ‘e’s right or wrong, Ivan, but there’s a bit of money in it for you an’ me. Worf a try, eh? Fer as long as it larsts? ‘E’s gettin’ ‘is white bloke lined up an’ I’m playing the beautiful mysterious princess, o’ course, but he needs you for the coloured chap.’

I suppose my inclination was to rise at that point, but politeness made me hear her out. She grinned at my expression. ‘It’s cowboys and Indians, Ive. Yer play this noble defender of ‘is wild domain. Child o’ nature. Like in Ther Vanishin’ American, remember? Or Ther Sheikh. Very romantic. All big brown eyes an’ brooding menace, eh? If only Red Indians did ther tango! A clarsy darkie, Ive. Yer’ll ‘ave orl ther girlies after ya! An Indian prince, Winnie the Pooh or somefink.’

‘Winnetou?’ I asked quietly. It began to dawn on me that this was no ordinary blackface role. ‘Of Karl May’s immortal tales?’

‘That’s ther bloke. May. I keep getting’ ‘im mixed up wiv Karl Marx. Both ‘ad bushy whiskers.’ She was delighted at my knowledge. ‘I’d never ‘eard of ‘im. But ‘e’s big news over ‘ere, right?’

‘He is Albert Schweitzer’s favourite author and what every German-speaking child has in common. I read and reread those books as a boy! I could probably quote Winnetou verbatim! They are what made me the idealist I am today. Professor Lustgarten, my tutor, had a full set. “Professor Vitzliputzli” inspired my interest in science, and of course I can vouch personally for May’s profound knowledge of the Sahara Winnetou, even more than Chingachgook, was a standard for all natural male virtue. May is a great writer, whose philosophy and metaphysics are as powerful as his storytelling gifts.’

‘Well, you and ‘Uggy’ll agree on that anyway. It’s ther same sorta drift. I told ‘im you were the exact chap. ‘E knows yer name ‘o course, and ‘e’s seen some of yer pictures. ‘E fought you wos worf puttin’ down some money for a private ‘tec. But Sexton Blake ‘imself couldn’t’a found yer! We’d almost given up on yer. Where yer bin? We fought ya wos wiv that Ernst Röhm, but ‘e tol’ ‘Uggy ‘e ‘adn’t seen yer fer monfs. Lon Creighton’s over in Berlin, and ‘e’s up for playin’ ther trapper geezer. Thass our Lonny’s son. Chip off th’ ol’ block. Like old ‘ome week, eh?’

‘Chaney’s son, if he has his father’s talent, will be perfect for the role of Sam Hawkens.’ I was growing enthusiastic as I visualised the kind of film we could make. Creighton was a friend from our Hollywood days. We had met him with his father. He refused to exploit his father’s name in those days, but it was well known to all filmgoers who he really was. “E’s getting’ a contract wiv RKO, but ‘e’s doing this till ‘is first US movie comes up.’

‘An all-star picture! Who’s playing Old Shatterhand himself?’

Old Shatterhand, a German greenhorn, was May’s Texan version of Natty Bumppo. Every German schoolboy had a clear idea of what he looked like.

“Uggy really wanted someone local. A German. It’s talkin’ English, see. They asked Jack Trevor,’ she said, ‘but ‘e’s booked with everyone at the mo’, like I said. ‘Ugg’s not sure about a real Yank. John Bentley’d do it, but after that bloody last fiasco in Egypt I wouldn’t trust ‘im, frankly. ‘Uggy likes ther look o’ Cary Cooper but ‘e’s under contract and anyway I ‘eard wot Clara Bow said about ‘im — biggest cock in Hollywood an’ no arse ter push it wiv!’ My earth-spirit exploded with mirth. ‘There’s some English feller in ther runnin’, too, does ‘tec films in Blighty. ‘Ugg’s goin’ over ter see ‘im. They got Lonny’s son ‘cause ‘e wos over ‘ere anyway. They’re finking o’ some Austrian bloke, Anton Wallbanger or somefink, who can talk English. You gotta at least be able to fake it in a lot o’ diff’rent languages. That’s why ‘e wants an English or American actor. That’s ther idea, see? Sell ‘em back to America and England and the rest o’ ther empire. Dollars an’ pahnds, Ive. Wot they all want ter get their ‘ands on. ‘Ard money. Biggest single market, English. Then German. Then French. Then Spanish. So it’ll be plain sailin’ fer us, eh?’

She explained how modern pictures shot each scene over again in a number of languages. Only later would studios discover the less expensive method of dubbing. I had just seen Rex Ingram’s most recent film, which was made in Morocco with an international cast, none of whom could be understood in any of the languages they spoke! I had known Ingram in Hollywood. The Irishman had studios in Nice and refused to return to the United States. He said sound had been the death knell of artistic pictures. He had announced that henceforth he would paint or write but would never make pictures again.

The Germans led the world in the production of multiple-language films. The Blue Angel had just been made at UfA’s Neubabelsberg studios, each scene shot first in English, then in German, then in French. Hollywood, of course, could not make such films, because it did not have the wealth of actors able casually to speak several languages. It was almost impossible for the modern European cosmopolitan not to be familiar at least with English and French if he was German. Italians were often fluent in all three languages, as well as their own. The only problem German producers faced was the American and British public’s failures to appreciate the boulevard comedies and military farces, the staple of the Berlin and Munich cinemas, produced in their dozens. Even the operettas, though widely imitated, did not pull in the natives of Bradford and Boston. Horror films and science fiction did reasonably well, largely because they depended on visual effects, and Germans were recognised as the masters of modern illusion. Metropolis had been a minor success in the UK. Die Drei von der Tankstelle, with its wonderful contemporary settings and many of the top UfA stars, had done no serious business overseas. Even Der Kongress tanzt, immediately imitated by the Americans, did not hit the million-dollar jackpot.

“Uggy’s not that ‘appy with foreigners comin ‘ere an’ makin’ their pictures,’ Mrs Cornelius confided. ‘They bring a few dollars in, but that’s it. Orl ther real profit goes back ter “Jew York” as ‘Uggy calls it. ‘E says Germans should be makin’ ther movies and exportin’ them ter America, not the ower way abart. So that’s wot we’re gonna do. Quotas on Yank pictures. Cowboy pictures fer cowboys ter watch in Wyomin’ an’ Texas.’ She threw back her head and roared, startling a waiter behind her. ‘An’ ‘is big enfusiasm’s Karl wotsit’s books. It’s like a bloody religion wiv ‘im. ‘E finks ‘e’ll convert ther Yanks ter bring back ther poor ol’ Kaiser. Yer really reckon ‘em, do yer? Them books?’

I told her how May’s tales of Turk and Texan were totally engrossing, instilling the love of nature, freedom and individuality which mark the best type of modern man. May compared the Apache to the Turk and said they both represented great races who had fallen on hard times, unable to resist more aggressive enemies. He pointed to Indian architecture to show how the Red Man could attain any level of civilisation he wished.

I began to speak of this. ‘Yeah,’ she said, yawning. “Uggy’s explained orl that more’n once.’

‘Exemplifying the finest German virtues while showing due respect for the Red Man’s innate nobility and purity of soul.’

‘Dead right, Ive. So?’

‘This is extraordinary.’ I could think of no finer part to play. Yet I had become so used to movies presenting the lowest common denominator. ‘You are certain, Mrs Cornelius, that your Baron wants to make a film series based on Karl May’s famous philosophical adventure tales? The “Winnetou” books?’

‘On the money, Ive.’

‘I am honoured.’

I added that I heard the May company was wary of vulgarising the Master’s work on film. She assured me Hugenberg had secured rights by demonstrating to the family his sincere reverence, patriotism and belief in promoting Karl May’s serious ideas concerning brotherly love and the right of all races to live on their own traditional land, unthreatened by invaders of any kind, whether with guns or with an alien culture. This matched what I had already heard of Alfred Hugenberg. He was a Cabinet minister, leader of a major German political party and German through and through. I had read one of his election addresses while waiting for Kitty to come out of the toilet at the Kino. Mutual respect was the secret of civil discourse between nations. While he understood the benefits of democracy, he still supported a monarch on the German throne. A monarch represented the state in a way a president could not. He admired Hindenburg, felt that the old Field Marshal really wished to see a Kaiser restored, and was also obsessed with der alte Fritz, Frederick the Great. Germany would only hold her head up in the world once more when she had an emperor. Mrs Cornelius said it was well known in film circles that if you wanted to get a start with UfA, you should suggest an ‘Old Fritz’ theme to Huggy Bear.

Doctor Hugenberg had been granted the May rights because he was leader of the Nationalist Monarchists and an influential director of Krupp. Since the War he had built up a publishing empire to spread his ideas and had saved the German film industry from extinction or absorption by the Americans. During the hard, hungry years he had turned a bankrupt concern into one of the most powerful and profitable in the world. He could offer the public conscientious and respectable versions of the May books and thus introduce him to Britain and America.

Nowadays, as with everything else, such great men find their names dragged in the mud, and every detail of their past dug up and dissected by the Daily Mail, so it is no surprise Der Spiegel and its kind, forever attacking their own country and its leaders, published scurrilous tales of Karl May’s early life which they claimed had been led as a con man! They also said he had spent some seven years in prison as punishment for his crimes. His ‘crime’ in fact seemed to be possession of a rich and wide imagination! Sufficient crime in a Prussian Germany to have him jailed.

How hard it is for the unimaginative man to imagine the imaginative man. How hard for the intelligent man to enjoy the simple terrors of the dullard. Does the stationmaster waving his green flag to signal that the train is safe to leave the station ever anticipate the twisted rail, the broken signal up ahead? No, he is satisfied that he has accomplished everything possible. The train arrives safely. The train leaves safely. Whatever takes place on the train or outside the limits of his responsibility is nothing to do with him. He never connects. He never understands the nature of collective responsibility. But I see the whole rail system. I am part of the problem. I take some of the responsibility. I know that it is always my fault when something goes wrong, but it is not very much my fault. Any man’s death, says the poet, makes me smaller, because I am everyman. I am everyman. My dreams are what made me exemplary. My experience is what makes me extraordinary. But I am otherwise no different to you. Believe me, Karl May was not the only one to suffer because he was different and above the herd. Today I would be living in luxury on an island in Scotland, tranquil and unassailable, were it not for several bitter twists of fate, any one of which might have sent another mad. But I have my creed . . .

They cry out for justice. History mourns. God Himself is chastened before their outrage. I take my hope from the best minds of Europe . . .

How we long for truth and justice to rule, for black and white to regard each other with mutual dignity and cultivate their own cultures, their own proud traditions. Believe me, I am not one of those who say that Karl May laid the sentimental groundwork for German imperial expansion. This is arrant nonsense. Germany had an almost impeccable colonial record. It is the Belgians, with whom she waged war, who committed the atrocities, and Germany punished her for it, yet Germany was depicted as the aggressor in the French and British press.

The Belgian rape of Africa became the German rape of Belgian nuns! Is it any surprise that when the Jews began in the thirties to make their hysterical charges against Germany they were not believed? The air was filled with tales of horror. The screens showed their pessimistic view of the sacrifices we had made with such monuments of misery as All Quiet on the Western Front, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and Drei Tage Mittelarrest.

Next day Mr Mix told me that his dream had come true when he ran into Ingram’s crew shooting in Morocco and was able to secure not only a bit part but a passport to Europe. Ingram, though disgruntled and unhappy with his film, had been a sympathetic employer, Mix said. But Ingram had returned to Nice, and Mr Mix found no more film work. He eventually joined a travelling minstrel show in Lyons, and learned to play the banjo and the guitar.

‘I guess I’m just destined to be in show business all my life, Herr Max.’ He had made his way from Lyons, travelling across the country as an entertainer, singing mostly Al Jolson songs, working briefly in Paris with Josephine Baker before coming to Berlin with a show called Black Birds, which was still doing well. There he had gone to an audition and discovered the songstress he would accompany was none other than his old benefactress Mrs Cornelius!

We all had a meal together. “Old ‘ome week,’ said Mrs C. He had been happy to rejoin her when she, too, transferred from Berlin to Munich. He had become quite a sophisticate with a taste for good tailoring. Clearly not all the Munich Fräuleins saw him as a mere darkie entertainer. Even I admitted there was something wonderfully masculine about Mr Mix. You felt as if you were in the presence of a wild leopard, always in some degree of danger when he was near. And sometimes I think he knew his power.

He told me how they had performed their act in Frankfurt, Hamburg and Bonn, and had dates already promised for Paris, Amsterdam and even, perhaps, London. It soon became clear to me that it was in my interest to maintain close contact with my old friends. Now here he was, my compañero of cattle truck and Caliphate!

I had greeted Mr Mix with a genuine sense of warmth, feelings he reciprocated when he learned of all my adventures abroad. He enthusiastically exclaimed: ‘Ich liebe Deutschland!’ That is the kind of emotion Germany inspired at the time, even in those not born there.

So, too, said Adolf Hitler and so said the German people. Goebbels, who had only recently condemned Hitler as the bourgeois puppet of the industrialists Strasser still claimed him to be, stood up in the public squares of all the cities in Germany and reminded the people how the country had been stabbed in the back by alien financiers with German politicians in their power, supporting the machinations of Jewish socialism, the Trojan horse of Bolshevik Russia. He pointed out, with surprising eloquence, how their professed pacifism, exhibited in such films as The Game of Guns, was no more than an effort further to weaken the German soldier and turn him into a creature without character or meaning, who had fought for nothing, died for nothing and come home to nothing. Who was now nothing, with nothing to value, nothing to defend. Who was only useful as a puppet, a slave to the forces of Big Business, which would gobble him up unless they were stopped. The only countering force strong enough and wise enough to stop them was Adolf Hitler and the NSDAP Party.

I saw Goebbels give this speech in Munich in early 1932. He had a way of getting the crowd’s sympathy for his deformity, refusing assistance as he climbed to the podium, his spindly arms akimbo as his skull-face regarded the audience. He could have been a villain in a boys’ story, yet within moments he had the audience on his side by joking, appealing to their reason, their sentiments, their love of country.

He had learned from Hitler how to begin quietly and build up, to establish his commonality with the audience, to share its humour and way of seeing the world. But then with a catch in his voice and a tear in his eye, he would remind us what humiliation the great German nation had suffered. ‘Look,’ he would say, ‘I’m just an ordinary chap trying to do his best in the world, trying to understand what’s going on. We have the same questions in common. The same problems.’ He couldn’t help noticing how Germany had been tricked into war and then tricked into defeat. How aliens of every stripe had taken advantage of German hospitality, German goodwill, German honour and who now bled their host nation dry. How only Adolf Hitler, that brave young leader, who had known the same terrors and deprivations as his fellow Germans, could unite the country and make it great again. It was time for dynamic new ideas, fresh will-power, vigorous, healthy Young Germany rising triumphant from the ashes of the Old. A Third Reich, strong and proud, holding dominion over her own lands, the lands the Allies had stripped in their hideous feeding frenzy, rewarding the alien businessmen who had helped them march into Germany and despoil her monuments, her traditions, even her women! Black troops had entered the Rhineland leaving black babies behind. The evidence was there for all to see!

Those troops were the threat the Allies used to control Germany! Whenever they felt like it they could release thousands of Algerians, Somalis, Egyptians and Indians upon the entire country. Germania would then truly know what it was to feel the heel of the black barbarian upon her neck. And, jested Goebbels grimly in a vulgar aside, not only her neck would suffer.

I went to the meeting with Mrs Cornelius, her ‘Baron’ and Seryozha. Mr Mix had also insisted on attending, though the guards controlling the crowd had not allowed him to come in very close. He grinned at me and waved when from the crowd his eyes met mine.

While I now had my friends back, I was still something of a prisoner in Corneliusstrasse. Mrs Cornelius, Mr Mix and Seryozha were not always available to me, and I wondered if the film contract would ever become reality. I was again beginning to resume my earlier plan of getting to Mr Green, my Uncle Semyon’s agent in England, picking up my inheritance and, if possible, settling in the UK for a while.

It crossed my mind that the British Foreign Office would be more than interested in what I had to show them. Von Schirach and Röhm had so far failed to interest anyone in my designs. Röhm said it was because everyone’s attention was focused on getting and keeping power. Hitler had promised him the Reichswehr if he played a good hand. He told me not to approach Göring, whom he loathed increasingly, and I was beginning to wonder if Ernstie had any serious intention of helping me.

If it had not been for Baldur von Schirach, I might have despaired of the NSDAP altogether. I had some substantial conversations with the Youth Leader. Von Schirach shared my enthusiasm for the future. Once he saw my designs, he was ecstatic. Instinct told me he would understand them. He was deeply impressed. ‘But Herr Peters, you are a genius! I had no idea you possessed such sophisticated engineering skills. Surely you have studied at a great university!’ I told him how I had been the youngest Professor of Physics at St Petersburg University.

‘Russia?’ He was startled, frowning, no doubt working out my age.

Of course not, I told him. Florida. Thus I avoided a too complicated explanation. I had forgotten it was unwise to say anything of my Russian education or even of the important aristocrats with whom I mixed in those days. I had friends to protect. My American passport was worth too much to me. There was, too, always a chance that Mussolini would realise how he had been tricked into turning against me and recall me to Rome, even though I now had work, plentiful sources of sneg from the hospitable Prince Freddy, and a pleasant choice of lovers.

Little Zoyea continued to drag me to the cowboy pictures, even as I prepared for my role as the great Lord of the Prairie. I was besotted with her. She, of course, was equally besotted, mostly with my fame, though I think she saw in me some kind of twin spirit. Our ‘romance’ blossomed. Her father, knowing our relationship to be as harmless as Lewis Carroll with his Alices, continued to smile on us especially since I was able to keep his organ and those of his extended family in spanking condition for a fraction of what it would cost them elsewhere. So I remained a popular fellow in Munich’s ‘Little Italy’.

One Saturday night, when I had returned home from the Fraus’ alone, I found a black Mercedes and its driver outside Corneliusstrasse. I recognised both, and sure enough Röhm was waiting for me when I got upstairs. He was a little distracted. While he had made every attempt to protect me, Frau Oberhauser had grown suspicious of his delays and wanted to know when I would be arrested. She now had the ear of Göring, and possibly of Goebbels, and she was threatening to take her case against me to them! Röhm was doing everything he could, but he wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep her away from the others. We would have to make a decision soon. I told my friend and patron he could make whatever decision was necessary, as long as her lies did not become public. I was about to embark on an important new aspect of my career. She could ruin me. She could destroy me. Soon I would have some money. If that would help, he would have my first cheque. He embraced me very tenderly and said that would not be necessary. Indeed, he had brought me an envelope.

There was something profoundly sensitive about his last, almost embarrassed kiss.

In the following weeks my life changed dramatically. In spite of his geniality in Rome, Doctor Hugenberg was at first by no means friendly. He probably saw me as a rival for Mrs Cornelius’s affections. He was mollified to some large extent by my enthusiasm for the great Karl May, my contempt for those who had attempted to blacken his name.

With his impeccably waxed iron-grey moustache, a sparkling grin and a rather boyish enthusiasm for flags and uniforms, Hugenberg was a man of about my height, of stiff, rather than military bearing with old-world charm. He wore high collars, pre-war finery. He had not served at the front but admired men of action and loved the cinema. During the War he had risen high in the ranks of Krupp. He still had connections to the firm but had realised early how control of the media was of utmost importance in a populist democracy. Bit by bit he had gained majority holdings in almost all the important German studios. He also purchased many publications and was now in a position to publicise his own films and promote his own political ideas in a dozen popular forms. Hugenberg was no socialist and rather suspected Hitler’s socialism. He was in fact a convinced monarchist, pointing to British and Scandinavian stability under a constitutional monarch. But he was a realist, prepared to believe what he called ‘the brown rabble’ to be a useful defence against Bolshevism.

When Doctor Hugenberg learned from Mrs Cornelius that I had fought against the Reds and was an officer in the White Cossack cavalry, his manner warmed all the more. He wanted to know how a young American flyer had wound up in such strange circumstances. I said that I had wanted to take a crack at the Bolshevists. In normal times, of course, I would not have risen to the rank of Colonel. He understood, he said. He knew how rapidly they had wiped out White officers wherever they could. A relative of his was a great friend of Hetman Skorapadsky. He had heard some wonderful tales of Cossack courage. I had a poorer opinion of the Hetman. He had fled back to Berlin leaving us at the mercy of Petlyura, for whom I had been forced to build my Violet Ray and who failed to save Kiev because he lacked the sense to defend the electric power lines feeding my invention.

Petlyura was assassinated in Paris by an angry Jew furious at his alleged pogroms, but his lieutenants were ingratiating themselves with the German authorities as White exiles. The only thing Greens had in common with Whites was that both had been defeated by the Blacks and the Reds in alliance. That the Reds had betrayed the Blacks was almost inevitable, so now we even had Blacks, as well as disaffected Reds and Greens, pretending to be White. Enough, Mrs Cornelius remarked, to turn anyone Blue. Meanwhile, Hitler’s Browns made strategic alliances with men offering the bright, multicoloured banners of monarchy! He was convinced, said Doctor Hugenberg at dinner one night, that variety and tolerance were the watchwords of a constitutional monarchy A republic was always too open to corruption. Look at America with her gangsters and crooked judges! Karl May himself made such points in his romances.

I reminded my new employer how, as Russia collapsed into chaos, I consoled myself with the works of Karl May, absorbing the tales of Arab and Apache, which May had collected on his own adventurings in the Middle East and Far West. Baron Huggy Bear smiled when I assured him that no calumnies levelled against that great German novelist by Red cynicism or right revisionism would ever be received by me with anything but the utmost contempt and disgust. I reminded him that Benito Mussolini, also a keen reader as well as a published novelist, supported King Victor Emmanuel. Hugenberg let me know that Hitler, too, was a fan, though, sadly, scarcely a king. A set of May’s books had accompanied Albert Schweitzer into the Congo on his personal mission of honour. A great Christian, said Hugenberg dutifully. He himself was a devout Catholic and was clearly relieved to know of my Spanish connections and my uncle, the cardinal.

Hugenberg had heard good reports of me from the more sophisticated party members such as von Schirach. He knew, of course, that I was a friend of Mussolini’s and was glad I had become a co-religionist.

I now regret that for a while I turned away from the faith of my ancestors and embraced Rome. Sometimes it was not always easy to find others of my faith or a place to pray. I have to satisfy that spiritual dimension. I needed to pray and could not always choose where I prayed. I prayed to my mother. I prayed for Esmé. I prayed even in that synagogue. I prayed in the cathedral. For some years my yearning soul sent its messages up to heaven and received no answer.

In Germany I often felt that God had deserted not only me but the whole country. Was He in those elaborate Baroque churches with their pink cherubs and blue-eyed staring angels, their simpering Jesuses? The Greek Church is solid, its artefacts direct reminders of the early Church. These South German churches are infected with sentimental Lutheranism of the worst sort, their relish for the Baroque making them more like the contents of a confectioner’s window than a place of worship. Believe me, my flirtation with Rome did not last for long, but while it was necessary, I had to accept the best option.

At least during my time in Italy and Southern Europe I learned to understand the Romish Church. In the end it too betrayed me. There is only one foundation and expression of my inner faith, the true core of my belief, the first Church of the Christians ruled over by the benign Greek whose spiritual centre lies in Byzantium. But when in Rome, as the English always say, speak as the Romans. The Serbian Church in Latimer Road has some of that old spirit.

These churches embrace me. They are stern and take their religion seriously. Even there I do not always find sanctuary. I was in the Moscow Road church when I was arrested and charged with those loathsome crimes. Is there no respect any longer for holy sanctuary? Whoever hated me enough to accuse me, to infect innocent ears with such filth, can have no hope at all for their eternal soul.

Nothing was ever proven, of course. Before God, I am innocent. I know that my looks are against me. The English suspect anyone who is not exactly of their pink-and-pale-grey complexion. If your face has not been hacked by razors and exposed to its daily dose of grimy rain, you are at once suspect. Perhaps you bathe too much? Perhaps you have beliefs? Perhaps you are going to disturb the order of things, befriend their open-minded children, put foreign notions into their heads, infect them with broader ideas than the narrow xenophobic snobbery which the British call an education? Sometimes I yearn for Germany in the old days.