‘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.
FIFTY
Originally thirty-two of us occupied the long block. The majority were red or green triangles or violets, like myself. We were regarded as the aristocrats among the prisoners. Social misfits, such as Jews, gypsies and homosexuals, were the least favoured. Jehovah’s Witnesses were also hated, for some reason. They had their own triangle, which was purple. From our ranks were drawn the capos and camp servants. Having, on my arrival, been mislabelled a Jew, some of that mud still stuck to me, so I could not hope for promotion to capo. But by and large my hut-mates were no more prejudiced than I was, and we got along reasonably well. They were almost all red triangles, Sozis, commies or dissident Nazis, like Röhm’s SA rounded up in the putsch. Some were genuine criminals. The hut’s senior man, an ex-burglar and anarchist called Hoch, was not overly strict.
For the most part I was able to avoid the daily brutalities of the camp. While I continued to amuse him, Sturmführer Schnauben offered me a certain protection from the worst excesses of the guards. They laughed at me. Their nickname for me was ‘the ex-Jew’. I was lucky. I was in a wretched position, but I was actually leading a charmed life. They respected my armband. Luckily, nobody associated me with the SA.
I trembled often, convinced that Röhm had died because of what he knew. Strasser had died for the same reason. Almost everyone associated with the Raubal affair was either dead or in danger. Only Hanfstaengl and Hess were still alive, as far as I knew.
By some miracle I had so far not been closely connected with Röhm. Such a large dossier on me existed from other sources; no one had thought to compile one on my association with the party. Physically, too, I had changed. When Baldur von Schirach visited Dachau, he did not recognise me. I saw him sharing a joke with Himmler but it would have been death to have raised my voice. I knew if any one of those high-ranking Nazis should ever recall having been introduced to me in Röhm’s company and put two and two together, or if Himmler took a special interest in my file and its details, my end would be certain.
I had no way of identifying my ‘protector’ in Berlin. Schnauben had mentioned a ‘guardian angel’ more than once, though never by name. I owed my violet armband to Kolya, I knew. But who else saw to my safety? I was baffled. Suppose Göring, planning to claim my inventions as his own, did not understand them enough to have me done away with but could not afford to release me? I devoted considerable time to the problem. Certainly it could not be Hitler himself. Nor was it likely to be Himmler. Goebbels, too, was not an obvious candidate. It could only be Göring, possibly interceding on behalf of Mrs Cornelius.
With Himmler’s help, Hitler had killed everyone who knew even the smallest details of his sexual history. Poor Father Stempfle had been finished off in this very camp. Shot, one of the politicals told me, in the usual spot behind the Kommandanturarrest, where he, too, had at first been a privileged prisoner. Dozens of known members of the Black Front had been killed there, behind the Bunker. The politicals often spoke of them. Many were left-wing Nazis themselves. Hitler had lost thousands of supporters because of his so-called purge.
Thanks to the circumstances of my second arrest, I was not even regarded by the SS as a political prisoner now, and this, with my violet armband, offered certain privileges. I had greater freedom to move about the camp. I could keep my eyes and ears open. Guards trusted me to run errands for them, rewarding me with extra food and occasional luxuries, such as a piece of soap. As well as the ex-Jew, I was der Spanier or sometimes Spanner. A pun I never quite understood.
While the communist propaganda machine has been blamed for its exaggerations, it is true that in Dachau the Jews were not well treated. They were given the dirtiest and most humiliating jobs, and frequently beaten, even killed, before our eyes for the smallest infringements of camp discipline. Reds and others, many of them pure-bred Aryans, suffered the same fate. I agree with those scholars who say the figure of six million is exaggerated, but nobody can deny the suffering of individuals I saw daily, especially after an old, but unwelcome, acquaintance came to share my quarters. I had hoped never to see him again, that extremely lucky man. I needed no more of the type of luck he brought with him.