The Vengeance of Rome

FORTY-TWO

She had just been to see Robert Donut in The Adventures of Tartu. Had I seen it? I reminded her of Donut, she said. The film could have been based on my life. Was I ever in the Blitz? Of course, I said, but the film must have come out when I was away from London. What do you remember most? she asked.

The ash in my nostrils, I said. And how it clogged my throat. It made it very hard to see.

I have never been able to get rid of that smell, that sensation of forever being on the brink of taking my last breath. The ash flows over the world. It flows over Dachau and Treblinka and Auschwitz. It flows over Berlin and Dresden. It flows over London and Coventry, over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It fills the streets of Shanghai and Delhi. It will always be that ash. It is impossible to remove from your skin and hair, no matter what soap you wash with. Soap was always in short supply, naturally. Even the soap seemed made of ashes. We are forever breathing in the remains of our ancestors and of our enemies.

‘Tell me, Herr Peters. Are you familiar with the Dachau School?’ asks my master. ‘With Taschner, Spitzweig and so on?’

‘This was a school? I heard it was a munitions factory.’

‘No, no.’ He is amused. ‘They were artists. Very good ones. Your friend Doctor Hanfstaengls father used to sell the prints in his gallery.’

‘Painting is not one of my areas of expertise. I am a scientist.’

‘Of course. Just as am I.’

They called it Vernichtung durch Arbeit. They wanted to make me Uneingeteilt. But there was always too much of me. I was not one of those with unwertes Leben. For me there was always Sonderbehandlung. A disheartening, a disembowelling. They loot me. They take out my organs of creativity. They take out my mind. They brutalise me and in so doing destroy small pieces of me. They sensationalise, making free with my creations. Stealing my images. Stealing my life. Stealing my eyes. Groping my soul. They are greedy for any part of my vitality they can discover. And they call this homage? There are those who pay me back in kind. Who give me stimulus. Who give me respect. Who take a line and tie new knots in it. Who make new stars, new trails, new nations, adding to the seas, refreshing the oceans, making something of themselves, something of myself.

We heard the new Oberführer was Deubel, the Commandant, but we never saw him. Franz Hoffmann was a crook they said. Obersturmführer Ruppert was worse.

What did I do in Tegernsee? What was so wrong?