The Vengeance of Rome

FORTY-NINE

Surrounded by heretics, I did not become a Mussulman. I know their object was to make me one: to reduce me from so much to so little would have been their ultimate triumph. In their hearts they understood they had sterilised themselves. To ensure a predictable present, they betrayed their future. Because they were incapable of creativity, they hated any true visionary. To order a world too complex for them, they imposed their simplified pattern and then demanded that the rest of us conform to it. We had to substantiate their infantile certainties. If we refused, we died. Died in the Soviet Union. Died in the Third German Reich. Died in Italy and Spain and Hungary. They died because they refused to deny their experience. They died for justice and the truth. The very men and women who elected to record the complex variety of the world, whose very subjectivity provided us with crucial information, were punished until they conformed or, if they refused, were silenced. I had thought the powers wanted information. I was misguided. They wanted only silence. That which refused to confirm and conform to their views was destroyed. But the evidence for the evidence they could not destroy.

I do not have my own cell, but I do have the violet armband. This means that I do not suffer what some suffer, but many of my fellow prisoners are suspicious of me. They think I might betray them, I know. The truly privileged live in the Ehrenbunker. They are German politicians, businessmen, aristocrats and high-ranking clergymen. You would not be happy in their part of the camp, my anti-Virgil explains to me. Alles in Ordnung, he reassures me. After a while I become a Lagerschreiber, because my German is not so bad. I report directly to the Rapportführer, who is distant but not especially cruel. What I see others suffering makes me thankful, even though I have no business being in this camp. When I came in the new Zugang I was taken to the Gestapo in the Politische Abteilung, the political department. Their offices were near the main gate (Arbeit macht Frei in wrought iron). I was not tortured much, but the screams of the others encouraged me to good behaviour, as one of the Gestapo men, who appeared to be a friend of Kolya’s, joked. I explained that I was a personal friend of Göring’s and they remarked on how many friends he had in Dachau. You should form a club, they said. But, of course, there can only be two of you in the club at any one time. Three or more and you will be severely whipped. I became used to their mysterious laughter. Now I know to fear it.

1935. Halfway through my alloted span. I pray for——. I search for ——. How can I communicate with ——? Is —— still with us? Or has —— become senile, still clinging to —— power, refusing —— son his true birthright. The Old Testament is a record of vengeance and cruelty, of unearned authority and unchecked ferocity. Here is the singular God, the only God, the reduced God of Zion. He is not the God I worship. I worship the Trinity. God the Father, Christ the Son and the Holy Ghost. Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Michael, Gabriel and Lucifer. I worship the Trinity. Here, too, there is no complexity. There is only one truth, one answer.

My sinister anti-Virgil instructs me in this singularity, guides me from a dark forest through an inferno into purgatory. Abandoned in my exile, like Dante, punished though I commit no crime, I am alone, longing for my sweet little Beatrice who has been taken from me not once but three times.

For some reason I am put into the émigré hut. There are five huts for ‘politicals’, two for ‘anti-socials’ and one, isolated by barbed wire, which is for a Strafkompanie, those enduring punishment, usually permanent. Invalids, such as there are, are in the Revier, the hospital hut. There are five guard towers, each with a machine gun. The cookhouse is outside our compound, together with the Revier and, of course, the SS quarters. Our food is brought in every day in large containers, handled by privileged prisoners like myself. We assemble regularly in the Appellplatz, for roll-calls and punishment parades. Fifty thousand of us can be in the Appellplatz at one time. From this leads the Lagerstrasse, about three hundred metres long, which is lined by poplars planted by the prisoners. On either side of this wide road are the blocks, the huts, and between these runs a Blockstrasse, about ten metres wide. There are thirty-four blocks, either lettered B to C and D to E or given odd numbers from 1 to 29, if on the right, 2 to 30, if on the left. All are of wood, originally painted white, standing on cement slabs about ninety metres long and ten metres wide. Then there are the quarantine blocks to which all new arrivals are brought, to be assigned a hut or a work party, or possibly sent on to a subsidiary camp, perhaps to be transported elsewhere. Special treatment is reserved for men in these separate blocks. Every ordinary Wohnblock has two sections, of more or less equal size, each with its own entrance. Each part consists of two dormitories, which we call Schlafräume, and two day rooms, which we call Tagesräume. There is also a latrine and a washroom. We call each dormitory and day room a Stube. Each Stube contains room for fifty-two prisoners but this will change as more and more are brought in. When I arrived we each had a little cupboard for our personal effects, and even had a stool each in the Tagesräum, where we could sit at the table and read or write, if we wished. We had a big stove in the centre of this room and even racks for our shoes. We look back on those days with a kind of nostalgia. Now even some day rooms have bunks in them and new inmates are not given cupboards or stools. These inmates are taken to the north end of the camp to the disinfection buildings, near the angora-rabbit farm which is one of the SS businesses, intended to make us self-funding. Mostly red triangles, the politicals, work there.

Sometimes visitors are brought to the camp. Himmler himself often attends. The huts, both residential and service, have pictures on their walls. They remind us of what we are missing. They are predominantly landscapes and scenes of Bavarian life or framed homilies such as ‘Self-conquest is the finest victory’. Some prisoners are cynical about such slogans, but I take them seriously, as I must do if I am ever to be freed. I will not become a Mussulman. I have seen the camp museum. Here, too, visitors are brought. It is an elaborate affair. There are plaster models supposed to represent all types of prisoners. There are also photos. The models and photos show typical communists, Social Democrats, various German statesmen, now in disgrace. They are ‘before’ and ‘after’ photographs, especially of former dignitaries who are shown first in their public uniforms, when they were in authority, and then in their striped convict clothes. In the criminal section you see all types, many with hideous tattoos or scars. But of course the largest space is given over to the Jews. Photographs and dioramas show them stealing from their own kind, as well as their German neighbours, bargaining with decent Bavarian housewives, giving false measure and so on. Often visitors are shown live prisoners, especially those of a grotesque physical disposition. Himmler is anxious to convince foreigners or churchmen that the camp isolates only the worst elements of society. The atmosphere of the camp, they are told, is firm but fair. Many of the prisoners are grateful for the improved food and shelter they receive as inmates of Dachau. If a prisoner dies, he is decently cremated and his ashes returned in an urn to his family. This privilege, of course, is reserved for German nationals, even though many are black-marketeers or communists.

There are about ninety guards. I must never be frech. However disciplined I am some of them will still spit at me and refer to me as a Drecksjude, even though I wear my violet armband. They are mistaken. No Jew is given such an armband. Brillenschlange, they say, in reference to my mutilated manhood, I suppose, or sometimes Brillenträger. I am no snake. My eyesight is as good as anyone’s. Yet I must not contradict anyone. Ja, ja, Herr Lagerälteste Kapp, I say. Ja, ja, Herr Rottenführer Rogler. I must know every rank, as many names as possible. I must take off my cap and stand at respectful attention when addressed. Any lapse can be punished. Most of the prisoners never see our Oberführer Deubel, the camp Commandant, except from a distance. Occasionally, during a special visit from outside, I stand at attention, watching him smiling and joking with his guests. We know which SS men are fair, which are crooks, which are sadists. Oberscharführer Franz Hoffmann, for instance, is a crook. He makes private profits from his job. He is by no means the only one.

(Someone told me that the camp became even more overcrowded. They said that by the end the whole of Dachau was being run at a profit for the SS men, but in my day this was not, I think, the general rule. Perhaps I was naive, but I still believed I would eventually be freed, that there had been a mistake. I soon learned, however, not to voice these expectations to anyone.)

There is also a chapel in the camp, but prisoners are usually too tired or too cynical to attend services, given by a well-meaning Lutheran who comes in from the town. There are already some churchmen in Dachau when I arrive, but even these do not visit the chapel and eventually services are cancelled ‘for lack of demand’. Some of the priests are treated almost as badly as the Jews. Most of them are Baptists or worse. Himmelhund is a favourite insult.

As a violet armband I am allowed to go to the West Row and visit the library, next to the canteen. The books are all in German. Kolya has arranged for credit, from my own bank account, so I can also go to the food shop and buy extras, at horribly inflated prices, some of which I distribute among my comrades. This means I am not as unpopular as I might be.

The food shop is housed in the Wirtschaftsgebäude, the largest single building in the camp, which contains all our main service departments including the cookhouse and the showers. It is about two hundred metres long. At each end are two wings, each of about sixty metres long. Here, too, is the Effektenkammer, the depository for the prisoners’ personal effects, also a clothing shop, stores for linen and shoes and the cobbler’s and tailor’s workshops, which not all prisoners are allowed to use. In fact, most of the customers are the SS and Gestapo. The administrative building is called the Jourhaus and there live the Rapportführer and the Blockführer. On its first floor are the offices of the Schutzhaftlagerführer, where I am usually questioned by Sturmführer Schnauben, and the Vertiehmungsführer. Usually in the morning, I am sometimes pulled from my bunk and brought to the SS offices. Sturmführer Schnauben asks me such stupid questions. At first I wonder where Kolya is. I ask after him. Schnauben seems to have been up all night. His spectacles are a poor fit. As usual, he pinches his nose.

‘Captain Petroff is about his business. He has done his job He is not SS. Why should he be interested in you now? Would you rather be with the Gestapo? It will be nothing for me to contact their office.’ He reaches for the telephone. He thinks I fear the police more than I do him.

‘I don’t understand why the SS is interested in me.’

‘You should be flattered.’

Schnauben is younger than me. His grey eyes are grubby stones. His mouth is a thin line. His cheeks are bright, hard spots of red. He is convinced of his own intelligence. He is a philosopher. He is obsessed with me. I am not sure of his instructions. Is his mission to make me into one of the unhumanische? Is that why he chooses never to leave me alone?

Perhaps he simply prefers my company to that of the others he interrogates. Countless times he asks the same questions. He sits me on the chair in his little office. The atmosphere is informal. He lets me cross my legs if I want to. He does not demand I stand to attention or respond in a military manner. ‘I am not of the old school,’ he says. I am suspicious of this. Outside I can hear the camp stirring.

These boys, he says, they were brutalised in the army and even more brutalised in the trenches. Many of them never stopped fighting. Not the best of us, these boys. But maybe the second best. Yes, I fear they couldn’t stop fighting. After the War, it was the only way they knew to defend their freedom. You mustn’t blame them too much. The main problem of our KZ system now is overcrowding. I cannot tell you how many of us have complained.

He lifts an eyebrow. ‘Do you know anything about eugenics? Exterminating a few failures is easy, but how would you kill a million? Electricity? Come along now, Herr Peters. This is a problem for the scientific mind. I shall be reporting on your willingness to cooperate.’

I do my best to engage with the problem. He has called me ‘Herr’. I need his approval. ‘You would doubtless have to gas them.’

‘What kind of gas?’

I find this conversation disquieting. ‘Some sort of cyanide. Whatever gas worked best in the trenches. Whatever is most easily mass-produced. This is not my area of speciality I work for peace. I work for humanity. Why do you ask me such questions?’

‘Perhaps you would be good enough to write all this down for me. I will have some materials brought in. And then there are the bodies. How would you dispose of them? There is a hygiene problem, of course. We learned that in 1917.’

‘You would have to burn them, as already happens in our crematorium. It would be the only sensible solution. You couldn’t plough them under. It wouldn’t be decent. Or healthy. Are you discussing some sort of plague?’

‘I’ll have more paper, pen and ink brought in for you.’ He returns to another subject.

They couldn’t stop fighting. Like two dogs you try to separate. One turns and digs its teeth into the nearest flesh. That flesh as likely as not belongs to its beloved master. We raise fierce dogs to protect us from the wild. Then, one day, those dogs go mad. The British thought Hitler and Mussolini were the mad dogs who would save them from the Soviet Union. All our attempts to simplify the world result in further complications. Oy, meyn Foter, meyn Foter! Frugnecht! Do not ask me these things. I am an engineer, a visionary. Euthanasia is a mystery to me. It would be unjust to mark my papers Rückkehr nicht erwünscht. I am not useless. I am not one of those unwertes Leben, not Uneingeteilte. My cities are planets. They invest with their gravity everything that is beautiful and sane. My cities are free. Leaving all misery behind we can make a new home among the stars. For Jesus was a Greek. He offered a choice between Israel and Greece. They chose Greece. They were Jews but their neighbours called them Greeks as fortunate Palestinians are called Americans. Quand tu tiens un enfant par la main et que tu lui dis, ‘Regarde la cite!’ Leave the lands of the Philistines to those who still covet them.

Schnauben has an unhealthy interest in my penis.

‘Because everyone thought it more sanitary. All the British do it.’

‘All Britons are Jews?’

‘Of course not, Herr Sturmführer. It is an old custom in many civilised countries.’

‘This circumcision? It was forced on you in Abyssinia, was it?’

‘Perhaps. I don’t know. How could I? I have never been to Abyssinia. I am an American citizen. I am well known as a film actor. I am Max Peters. I played Winnetou. Baron Hugenberg will vouch for me.’

‘You are certainly very like Mr Peters. I have watched him myself. The Masked Buckaroo. Very clever. No doubt you found this likeness useful to you. But Baron Hugenberg claims not to know you. He is a little under suspicion himself, these days. His religion, of course, as well as his politics. We have interviewed him. He never met most of his actors, he says. You must have powerful friends in the USA, Mr Peters. Who would you like us to write to? The President, perhaps? Some great producer? An industrialist? You cannot give me one name?’

‘My disappearance was of interest to the film magazines.’

‘Not in Germany. Those films have no audience. Max Peters has vanished from our screens. He has vanished from the memories of all his friends.’ This causes him amusement.

I will not become a Mussulman. I must keep my Brotzeit.

Sturmführer Schnauben enjoys my mind, he says. Perhaps he desires it for himself. He has an interest in preserving it, he says.

I look at the violet banner on my sleeve. ‘What crime have I actually committed? I have never been told. Why would they put me in Dachau?’

His eyes catch the glare from the match as he lights another cigarette. As if he burns from within. He leans towards me. He is suddenly inspired.

‘I think of Dachau as the palace of truth, Herr Pyatnitski. This is the home of illumination. Here, we are free from secrets. There is no room for lies in Dachau, the very citadel of freedom where all masks are banished. Here, the human soul knows unquestioning rest.’ He grins and smoke curls from his lips. ‘Not so, the human body. Strange. It is nearly a year since the blood purge.’ He relaxes. He turns away.

I am free from fear. Full of calm, I speak directly. ‘Why do you torture me?’

He is dismissive. ‘You know this is not torture. You know what goes on in the Politische Abteilung.’

‘Why do you question me?’

Turning, he frowns. ‘Because circumstances permit it. Our roles are chosen for us. Our only responsibility is to play them out.’

‘You do this for pleasure?’

‘I suppose I do. Could it be that I like you, Herr Pyatnitski? Could I have a “soft spot” for you? For hours I take you away from that hut where you are exposed to every kind of wretchedness and horror. I remove you from the company of criminals and lunatic zealots, the bellowing blows of the guards with their dog whips and rifles. I provide you with relative peace. Do you prefer to shuffle along in the work-gangs? Or kneel before the capos? Do you prefer burial duties? Or work at the Plantage? Would you like to help the experiments in the medical wing?’ He knows the answer. ‘Perhaps I feel a kinship with you? Temperamentally we are the same, are we not? Is that how I know you so well? Like you, I am a visionary. Like you, I am a gambler. Like you, I am disposed towards shadows. I take advantage of accidents. Twilight and dawn, the hours of risk, are my favourite times of day.’

Twilight and dawn are when the interrogations always begin. The hours of risk.

‘There are no accidents here?’

‘Very few. Very few.’ Back and forth he walks. ‘I wonder if it is not my job to produce more.’ He smokes. ‘Still, Dienst ist Dienst und Schnaps ist Schnaps.’ Sometimes he offers me a cigarette but I refuse. These days they give me headaches. But I accept the coffee. Our own is always ersatz. ‘As in war, here the world simplifies to a remorseless code. It is why our camp was created. To sanitise the national kitchen. Don’t you feel safe here?’

‘Safe?’

‘And happy, Herr Peters? Your mouth affords me so much pleasure.’

‘It is my good fortune, Herr Sturmführer, to have become your duty.’

‘Duty? You misunderstand me. What possible duty is involved with you? I have a duty to myself, perhaps. What you observe is my passion for control. A frustrated passion, I should add. Here, because the overall system is so perfect, I can control very little. Too many people arrive here. Those numbers are beyond our authority. Commandant Eicke does his best. He is a conscientious man. He feels his responsibility. We have national programmes to maintain. We have to deal with the numbers. But they are only numbers. I would rather talk to you than talk to my colleagues about numbers. Numbers obsess most of them.’

He drops his head in reflection. The silver skull on his cap grins at me. The runes of his insignia glare. What is it that reminds me of Wagner? Of Parsifal in particular? He believes himself to be part of a holy order.

‘We are also a training facility. I am a lecturer here. So I work with what I am given. And I have been given you, Herr Pyatnitski, Herr Peters, Herr Gallibasta. Three in one, eh? A bonus. And if occasionally you reveal something of use to the Reich, then everything is justified, at every level. But will that happen? What do we need to know? You are here for your masquerading. For your deceptions. For your folly. For being a Jew. Thanks to you, I have a busy schedule. I am here to instruct and to learn. You must hope I do not become bored with you. All your life you have had value only as an entertainer. Once I do become bored with you, you will join the living dead. You know that Jews don’t have a very long life expectancy here? Shorter than ever. One way or another, whether you continue to walk or not, you will join the ranks of the dead.’

He suggests that I am worthless. But I will not become a Mussulman. I will triumph over my captors. I do not believe they exist except in my imagination. I created them, and so they have no power over me.

‘I am not a Jew. I am an engineer. An inventor. An actor. I have played many races.’

‘You are mixed up, Herr Peters. Mixed-up blood, mind, reality.’ He seems almost sympathetic. ‘You say you are an American. Then you say you are a Spaniard. Yet Captain Petroff knows you to be Russian. We have such a good dossier, so many witnesses. No secrets here, Herr Peters.’

‘You have the word of Reds or Red fellow-travellers. Why can’t you hear me? You have only Count Petroff’s word? And Brodmann’s?’ Mentioning this last is a risk. I have already compromised myself too often.

‘Brodmann the Jew? The Soviet agent? What can you tell me about him? This would help me in Berlin. And that would let me help you. Where did you last see him?’

‘I saw him in Paris. In New York. Perhaps Cairo. Tangier. Rome. He followed me here. I might have seen him in Berlin. In Munich. He is my nemesis. He hates me. He is implacable.’

‘He is Cheka?’

‘He reports directly to Stalin.’

‘About you?’

‘No doubt.’

It is clear to me he thinks Brodmann is my invention. But Schnauben is himself my invention. Through him I survive. He is the phantasm I create to facilitate my journey into the future.

‘And he followed you to Tangier?’

‘He is a bloodhound. I told you.’

Holding a small, leather-bound notebook, Sturmführer Schnauben jots a memorandum with a slender silver pencil. I disguise my triumph. My trick is to make my file so huge it will become impossible to organise.

‘Brodmann tells me you are a cocaine addict. Is that how you came by these delusions?’

He frequently makes this suggestion. Before Brodmann, he credited Prince Freddy with the calumny. Then it was Kitty. Then Kolya. Even Mrs Cornelius has been summoned to support his tricks. I reply as I have always replied.

‘I am addicted to nothing but the truth. To science.’

‘You were naturally suspicious, eh? Naturally given to sweating day and night, raving in your sleep?’

‘You know nothing of this. Given my conditions, Sturmführer Schnauben, it is not surprising. I have been here for — for how long?’

‘You have been here for almost five months. I would guess that you have a powerful patron, Herr Peters. Oh, yes. Some old fan of yours in Berlin is looking after you. Someone with the Führer’s ear, I’d say.’

Mrs Cornelius! ‘I’ll be released?’

‘No, but you will not be shot. I have had no instructions. Not yet, at any rate. Who is it? Some old lover? We are a sentimental people. You should be grateful. Such a thing would not save you in Russia.’

It occurs to me that Brodmann and Schnauben are negotiating an exchange. Am I to be sent back to Moscow? In return for a captured German spy? I have no means of escaping such a fate. Yet what can be worse than this? When I first arrived the stink gagged me. Only I appeared to notice it. I am too refined for this life. The striped prison uniform and cap were not clean. I had to stand before the SS, holding my cap before me, at attention. Yes, sir. I understand, sir. I had to march at a run. Into the barracks. The straw of the palliasse was becoming rancid, even then. There was a brute with a badge on his uniform. He was the hut capo. To prove himself, he behaved worse than the SS. For the first few days I had a blue and yellow star on my sleeve. It was supposed to be violet. I was shocked. This branded me a Jew. When I was taken in to Schnauben, I begged to have this removed. He made a joke. ’Blue and yellow make violet, don’t they?’ But he saw the justice of this. The yellow star was replaced with a blue triangle, which meant ‘emigrant’. My crimes were still numinous, but my status was improved. Only weeks later, after I had suffered the most vicious and humiliating treatment, did I eventually get my violet armband.

‘White Aces? Is that what you told me one of your films was called.’ He looks back through his notebook. ‘I understood that was Prince Badehoff-Krasnya’s favourite. You told us you were an officer in the White Army.’

‘The Germans were our allies.’

‘An American in the Russian Imperial Army?’

‘A volunteer flyer. I joined in 1916.’

‘At the age of sixteen?’

‘Exactly. My father was a dentist. He married a Russian woman. Then we all went home to America in 1910. My father took us to Odessa in 1914. By 1924 we were back in New York. Driven out by the Reds.’

‘Yes. And then you went to Hollywood. Your films speak for themselves, of course. Would you be prepared to fly for the Reich?’

‘Of course. I sent my plans to Reichspräsident Göring. I am an expert pilot, especially of my own craft. Mussolini himself asked me to teach his son Bruno to fly.’

One moment he pretends to disbelieve me. The next, he will accept everything. ‘And when you went into film-making with Prince “Mongol”, what were your arrangements? A percentage of the profits, perhaps?’

‘We had no arrangements. He was blackmailing me. I hardly knew the man. He threatened me with exposure. Originally I didn’t know he made pornography. But he concocted a story.’

‘Fiction upon fiction.’ Schnauben walks to the window. He smokes another cigarette. ‘What about these financial dealings of yours in Paris?’

‘I had nothing to do with the financial side of that scheme. I merely designed the airship. I had innovative ideas. I wanted to see them made concrete.’

‘Oh, yes, you are an inventor.’

‘I have invented everything.’ My secret. I have invented him.

‘Stavisky? He is your cousin?’

‘We were never related.’

‘You heard he had shot himself?’

‘Inevitable, I suspect, in such an introspective man. A private man. No doubt a manic-depressive.’

And Shura? Was he, too, dead? Really dead, this time? My past is reinvented for me by liars. I met a Jew in Odessa. He put a piece of metal in my stomach. I can feel it there to this day. It is in the shape of a star. The points prick at my innards.

‘You are a man of many identities. The doctors will be interested in you.’

Taking a deep pull on his cigarette, he strolls to the window and tugs a cord at the bottom of the blind. The blind shoots up with a bang, silhouetting his unreadable face. The grey eyes stare from hollow darkness. The smoke pours from his mouth and nostrils. The sun is up. A voice shrieks an order. Bodies begin to convulse. The Dachau day has begun.