The Vengeance of Rome

FORTY-FOUR

Nobody wants to know what happened. They wish to learn how many tanks fought at the Battle of the Bulge but not how many died in Belsen. They want to know the names of every general on the German or British side, but couldn’t tell you one name of a concentration camp commandant. Names which were meaningless to us are full of romance and association for them. Names which were of the greatest importance to us are hard for even the historians to recall. What did it matter to Hitler when he knew that at least the war against the Jews had been won? So he thought. What he could not have borne to contemplate is that, like some mad scientist in a movie who passes more and more energy through a monster he is attempting to kill, he only strengthens the monster. Is Hampstead Garden Village full of greater numbers of folkish maypole dancers than it was in 1930? Even the church isn’t used today. More residents of that idealised English village use the synagogue just down the road. It is the same with Hollywood. The place is filled with mock-Tudor mansions and granite keeps. For years I remained disappointed in Sherwood Forest and all the other sites I had first seen in Douglas Fairbanks films, because of course Sherwood Forest was in northern California and most of the Merry Men were from Maine. England seemed a mean, grey place after the movies. Instead of Fairbanks, Coleman or Flynn I found myself in a world of cold proprietary and semi-apologetic politesse, those early Hitchcock movies where almost all the action is played out on one set. Usually a pub. Usually in a mean backstreet. Usually in the rain. And too few Brighton Rock blondes to help you through the worst of it, though I of course had Mrs Cornelius, at least some of the time. Without that woman, I would not exist.

It was useless for me to protest in that place. He thought all Spaniards were Jews.