Between Two Worlds
Page 43
They had so used Mussolini and his blackshirts in Italy—that was one of the points on which Robbie Budd and his Red near brother-in-law were in their curious state of agreement. Fascism was capitalism’s answer to the threat of Communism! But why make the threat, if you couldn’t get any farther with it than that? A complicated world that Lanny Budd had been born into, and one must not blame him too much if he took a long time to decide by what road he wished to get out of it!
VIII
Zoltan Kertezsi came to Paris. He had sold more of the Berlin and Munich paintings, also he had been to Vienna and inspected those which Lanny had found, and had done some business with them. He presented an accounting and a large check, and said there would be more. If what he wanted was social life with Lanny and his friends, he had taken the right way to get it, for Marie invited him out to the chateau, and she and the boys listened for hours while he and Lanny played music and while they talked about art. Marie approved of “old masters” in the same way that Beauty Budd approved of Bach and Beethoven and Brahms; not knowing very much about them, but observing that they kept her ami out of mischief. Day after day she went with the two men to the salon in Paris, and to the Vente Drouot, and the various exhibitions of the dealers; she listened to their highly technical conversation, and when it dealt with prices, she considered it not a profanation but something very much to the point.
Zoltan was going to London to attend some of the sales. Why not come along? Marie had heard about London sales, and they sounded interesting. So Lanny put his two friends into his comfortable car—Zoltan in the back seat, leaning forward and talking away the whole time. He never got tired of telling stories about pictures and their painters and their prices. Lanny listened, and Marie never interrupted; it was education, as good as going to college—two kinds, in fact, an art school, and one of commerce and finance. When they stopped to eat, or to buy essence, Lanny would make note of things he wanted to remember. In this school one never knew at what moment the examinations might be held. Zoltan would say: “What do you think I should have got for an especially beautiful Ingres?”
London was always delightful in the spring; everybody and everything happy to come out of the fog and cold, and to discover that the sun still existed. It was the first time Marie had been there since love had awakened her heart; they walked on air together, and did those delightful things which people can do when they have money, and a bit of culture to help them enjoy it. They went through the Tate Gallery, reveling in the Turners, and Lanny explained what his stepfather had taught him about “atmosphere.” Zoltan told stories about various famous works. If one had been retouched, he knew it, and showed exactly how he knew it. He was bitter against leading dealers such as “Joe” Duveen, who would buy some old master that had become dim and proceed to “freshen it up”; this would double the price for the American trade, but the result was no longer an old master, and the fact that “Joe” had become “Sir Joseph” for his services to art didn’t decrease the disapprobation of a Hungarian commoner.
Rick had brought his family back to The Reaches, and invited all three of the visitors for a week-end. Marie was shy about going to the home of a respectable English family in company with her lover, but Lanny assured her that these were “mod’n” people and proud of it; this liaison was now four years old, and surely that was enough for respectability. All three of them had an enjoyable time, and Sir Alfred told them about paintings in the neighborhood that might be bought. But Marie had to listen to plain talk on the subject of the French election results, for that was the English custom; you said what you thought, and if the other person didn’t agree, he said what he thought. Strange how people could hold such opposite opinions; to Marie and her husband the victory of the left coalition threatened the end of France, while to everyone at The Reaches it was the beginning of a new and better era.
After the middle of May Zoltan had to return to Germany for more business; and just then he received a letter from one of his American clients who had taken up the notion that he must have cinquecento Italians for his collection. It happened that Sophie Timmons, ex-baroness, had just been visiting in Rome, and Lanny said she knew everybody, and he would get her to introduce Zoltan to some of the old Roman families. The dealer said it would be wise to act quickly, because there was talk of a tariff on art-works imported into the United States. There was already a law in Italy forbidding the exportation of art-works, but one got around this by the payment of what was called a regalo, a polite word for a bribe.
The upshot was that Zoltan asked Lanny if he would like to take a run into Italy when he got home, and if he could find anything worth while, Zoltan would come and look at it, and Lanny would get half of whatever he helped to earn. The prices would doubtless be high, and the reward according. Lanny asked Marie, and she said she would enjoy such a trip—but on one essential condition, that her escort wouldn’t get himself mixed up in any more political affairs. Lanny had no hesitation in promising that, for he was in one of those moods which seized him whenever he had been listening to his reactionary father and his revolutionary uncle, and having his mind pulled and hauled between them. Away from all that!
IX
They went back to Paris and stayed for a day, because Marie wanted to leave some of her clothes and get others. Lanny went into the city, and in the Café de la Rotonde he ran into an American journalist whom he had come to know at some of the various conferences—there had been so many of them by now that they made rather a blur in one’s mind. Lanny mentioned that he was going to Rome, and why, and the other suggested the names of persons who might know where old masters were hidden. Lanny in return passed on some of the funny stories his father had told him about “Cautious Cal,” also some inside stuff about how the French Nationalists were taking their defeat at the polls.
Persons who possessed such information were very useful, so presently this journalist remarked: “By the way, I’m giving a dinner party for some of the French leftists this evening. I thought it would be a good thing to get them together informally, and let them iron out their differences while their stomachs are full and they feel good. Wouldn’t you like to join us?” Lanny understood what would be the position of a young man of fashion at such a gathering; he would put on his glad rags and provide a couple of receptive ears into which each person of importance might pour whatever he pleased. Lanny had served acceptably at such affairs, and said he would be happy to come to this one.
In the far-off days before the war Lanny had met at one of Mrs. Emily’s lawn parties a tall and slender middle-aged Jew who was then the dramatic critic of one of the Paris dailies; an art lover and friend of poets, a lawyer who didn’t practice very much, a rich man’s son who could afford to play, and did so in refined and delicate ways like Lanny himself. The American had forgotten him, and if anyone had asked him if he had ever met Léon Blum he would have said no. But here he was; impossible not to recognize the rather full brown mustache, the high-pitched voice and manner of an aesthete. Blum had traveled far in the past ten years; after the assassination of Jaurès he had become editor of the Socialist party’s newspaper and leader of its group in the Chamber of Deputies. Lanny had been reading his scholarly and vigorous editorials, and being convinced by them—up to the moment when he heard the other side presented with equal cogency. Now Blum gave an eloquent talk, referring to the tragic years through which Europe had passed and the hope that the new regimes of France and Britain would get together pour changer tout cela.
Next to Lanny sat another lawyer-editor, a younger man, kind and gracious. He had delicate, sharp features, a thin nose with pince-nez, a light brown mustache, and rather unruly hair. This was Jean Longuet, a grandson of Karl Marx; during the war he had had the same kind of trouble as Ramsay MacDonald, for he was one of those who stood by the program of the Socialist International. Lanny, who had lived through all this in his mind, would have liked to talk it out with this man, but a dinner party was hardly the place.
After which he went back to the Château de Bruyne, and didn’t say much about the matter, knowing that, when it came to distinguishing among the various shades of Reds, Marie’s eyesight was not very keen. Driving to Juan, they talked about pictures and the business in Rome; about the play Rick was writing and the music Kurt was publishing; about Marie’s two boys and what they were doing and thinking; about their own love—in short, about anything in the world except the fact that Lanny liked to meet Socialist agitators and let them persuade him that the business system of France was all wrong, and that Marie’s father and brothers and husband and their relatives and friends were collectively responsible for the drop of the franc and the piling up of debts and dangers for la patrie!
20
Roma Beata
I
Lanny and Marie stayed at Bienvenu for a couple of days, to rest and tell Beauty the gossip and hear what she had collected. Lanny had letters to read and to write; he had become quite a businessman, and would summon a secretary and say: “Take a letter,” just as if he were the European representative of Budd Gunmakers. Sophie gave him letters to friends in Rome, and so did Emily Chattersworth and M. Rochambeau. These preparations made, they set out on the four- or five-hundred-mile journey to the Eternal City; taking it in leisurely fashion and looking at both nature and art on the way.
The last time Lanny had made that journey had been ten years earlier, in company with old Mr. Hackabury, creator and proprietor of Bluebird Soap. So now this highly original character traveled along with them, and his amusing remarks were repeated to Marie. At San Remo they stopped off for a call on Lincoln Steffens, who now had a young wife and a baby, and was very proud of both. Stef had retired from politics for a while, in somewhat the same mood as Lanny. He had tried to change the world, and couldn’t, so let’s wait and see what the stubborn critter was going to do for itself!
When they came to the valley of the river Arno, they traveled up it to Florence and paid another call—this time on George D. Herron. He had moved to Italy because he couldn’t endure to meet all the people who came to see him in Geneva—especially Germans—to ask how he had come to be so cruelly deceived about Woodrow Wilson! The father of the League of Nations had just died, broken in both body and spirit, and poor Herron was in much the same state; the two visitors agreed that he couldn’t last much longer. A saddening thing to see what the world did to those idealistic souls who tried to improve it. A warning to Lanny, which his companion hinted at tactfully.
In Rome the “season” was just coming to its end, and hotels were still crowded; but there was always a “royal suite” or an “ambassador’s suite” or something like that, which you could have if you were willing to pay; and of course it would pay to pay when you were there to make an impression upon the aristocracy. In such exclusive homes you didn’t talk about money, but you had a secret code of a thousand small details whereby you made plain that you had if, and had always had it. Marie understood this code, but she didn’t know how the old families of Rome would receive a French amie; since this was a business trip, she was quite willing to go and look at churches and tombs and paintings while her companion groped cautiously in the mazes of a world which had as many “circles” as it had periods in its architecture.
It wasn’t going to be an easy matter finding four-hundred-year-old paintings and persuading their owners to sell at anything like reasonable prices. Lanny ought to have presented his various letters at once, before people went away to the seashore or the mountain lakes. But he had been deeply impressed by his talk with Longuet and the article he had read about the Italian Socialists; he knew that the new Parliament had just opened, and he could read enough Italian to learn from the newspapers that the country was in a political fever at the moment. Ever since the days of the Paris Peace Conference, Lanny had had a hankering to observe history from the inside, and he bethought himself who there was in Rome that might take him behind the scenes of this political show. The first thing he did after getting himself and his friend settled comfortably was to telephone to a newspaperman; taking the precaution to do this from the lobby of the hotel, so as not to worry his amie—so he told himself. She wanted to rest after the trip, and would wait until the cool of the evening before going out.
II
The man was Pietro Corsatti, American-born Italian correspondent of one of the New York newspapers; Lanny had met him at San Remo, and again at Genoa, and knew that he was open-minded and free-spoken. Lanny himself had something to offer, for he had just come from London and Paris, where he had talked with persons “in the know.” He mentioned that he had recently dined with Blum and Longuet, and asked the journalist to have lunch with him. Corsatti said: “Sure thing. We’ll have a fine time chewing the rag.”
Corsatti had an olive complexion, sparkling black eyes, and wavy black hair; he was a Neapolitan, but also he was a New York boy. Funny thing, how one culture could be superposed upon another, and the stronger and more recent would prevail. Corsatti spoke English with an East Side accent and the latest slang; he was completely American in his point of view, and looked upon this dead old town with pitying condescension. He revealed this to Lanny, but of course he kept it down in his contacts with the Italians, and mustn’t let it show in his dispatches, because the censorship watched him like a hawk. Just recently they had “raised hell” with him for mentioning that Prime Minister Mussolini had appeared at some public function “in need of a second shave.”
Lanny was a friend of Rick, of Stef, of Bill Bullitt, so he was an insider, a “right guy.” He could be introduced to “the gang,” he could be trusted with “the dope,” and if in the course of his picture-hunting he should stumble upon any political “leads,” he would not forget his friend. Seated over a bottle of good chianti in a little trattoria frequented by the foreign newspapermen, Corsatti proceeded to “spill the beans” about Italy and its upstart political movement. It appeared that the American newspapermen were divided about fifty-fifty on the subject of Mussolini; some thought he was a man of destiny, and others were equally sure that he was a “four-flusher,” a “flat tire.” Discussing him in a public place like this, you didn’t use either his name or title; he was “Mr. Smith”—perhaps because that had been his father’s occupation. Lanny’s companion warned him that in this aged town there were as many spies as there were statues of saints, and one did not speak freely even in bed with one’s mistress.
There had been a general election for members of Parliament in the previous month, and Mr. Smith’s followers had won a majority. They had got it, Corsatti declared, by the most vicious repression; the opposition leaders had been beaten, and many of their followers killed; the police and the Fascist Militia, some of whom called themselves “Savages,” had turned the election campaign into a farce. Mr. Smith had just made his appearance before the new Parliament, clad in a costume which the journalist said was suited to “a Gilbert and Sullivan Admiral of the Queen’s Navee.” In his speech he had remarked: “You of the opposition complain that you were restrained from holding free electoral meetings. What of that? Such meetings are of no avail, anyway.”
&
nbsp; The program was to have the Parliament validate these frauds, three hundred and twenty of them all in one lump. The “Verification Committee on Mandates” had put such a proposal before the Chamber, and it was to be debated that afternoon. “Longuet urged me to hear Matteotti,” said the visitor. “Do you suppose he will speak?”
“He will unless they prevent him,” replied the journalist, and Lanny asked: “Do you suppose I could get in?”
“I’ll see if I can take you into the press gallery with me.” Can you call yourself the correspondent of any paper?”
“I imagine Longuet would be glad if I’d send him a story.”
“That wouldn’t be so good—a Socialist paper. You don’t want to put a label on yourself. But five lire will do a lot in Rome.”
“Whatever you have to pay, it’s on me,” said the son of Budd Gunmakers.
“Too much would be no good,” explained the other. “You’d frighten the attendant and excite suspicion.”
III
They took a taxi to the Palazzo di Montecitorio with the obelisk in front of it, where the Chamber of Deputies meets. At the door the correspondent took his young friend by the arm, and said to the doorman: “Il mio assistente.” At the same time he slipped him five lire, and they went in, as Corsatti phrased it, “on a greased skidway.” Lanny had a front seat to watch the making of history in a scene of bitter and furious strife.
Giacomo Matteotti was the Socialist party secretary and leader of its forces in the Parliament. He was then close to forty, but slender and youthful in appearance, with a sensitive, rather mournful face. Corsatti said that frequently he wore a frank, boyish smile, but he had no chance to show it that day. Lanny agreed with Longuet’s remark that Daniel’s stunt in the lions’ den was easy compared to what this Italian idealist was doing. He didn’t rave, or call names, but spoke in a quiet, firm voice, giving his people the facts as to what had been happening in their country during the past two years. Every promise to labor had been broken, while the inheritance taxes had been abolished at the behest of the rich. The financial statements of the nation had been deliberately falsified; there had been no reduction of expenditures, but on the contrary an orgy of stealing. The intimate associates of the head of the state were smuggling arms into Yugoslavia, they were oil corruptionists, they were terrorists who had stolen an election by vicious cruelty and now presented themselves in the Chamber to have their crimes officially sanctified.