by Anna Vaught
12
Time to see bad bird Benito (as Violet calls him; oh, he’s in horrid, rampant contrast to us, her pretty passerines), Geneva and thereabouts, 1902. Violet tells us that she needs us to bear witness to the lakes and mountains where she tried to find peace and health, but most of all to the growth of one murderous man. Near here, where Violet made her summer camp, he’s sleeping on a bench to save money; later, in power and speech making, practising his personality cult, he’ll make like a hysteric, one of those poor women immortalised in Charcot’s photographs at the Salpêtrière. He’ll act like Blanche! As Violet has said, she was given the gift of travel and Switzerland was a place she stayed some time, just one of her shifting homes, but nearby slouched a rough beast.
Violet leads us, her friends and begins:
Shuffle up again, girls. You need to be quiet, though. It is 1902, we just swerved by the Southwark slums and the Pas de Calais, but now to a place which became, for a while, my proper address. As much as I had one, apart from Nuthouse, Cliftonville Road, Northampton, of course. I was there, at that address, longer than poor old countryside poet John Clare—and he thought that, when he wasn’t himself, he’d been Shakespeare or Byron. I know Lucia says she doesn’t mind that at all, but I rather think one should always know who one is. I must say that he wrote some fine poems in Northampton General Lunatic Asylum. They’ve trimmed up its name now, removed the word ‘lunatic’ and the pain of Clare has become a claim to fame, but even so...
Violet, Switzerland! Do not drift. This, Blanche.
Oh yes. At this stage, I was living on Lake Geneva. It was Coppet, not such an exciting place, true, but that is not why we are here. You might care, if you had visited me then, to look at the Château de Coppet and that was the home of Madame de Stael, woman of letters, opponent of Napoleon; a spirited lady, as we are. Can you see it? Do I begin to describe it well?
On the soft grass by the lake there, do you see a woman hanging around the neck of her man? It is Tom and Viv: T.S. Eliot, the famous poet, and Vivien, his wife.
Yes, I think, and twenty years from now, my father and this poet will meet, in Paris; my brother Giorgio will be there (I am kept away, away, and there will be an awkward encounter as Daddy unwraps some old brown shoes, a present sent from Ezra Pound). I heard him talking to the barnacle about the meeting and about Pound’s joke on Daddy’s lack of sartorial grace. But this can wait for a later day, when I have time to voyage around my brilliant father; now Violet must describe these days, so:
You can see, says Violet, that they are twitchy, Eliot and his wife. People come here for their nerves; expensive sojourns at lakeside resorts. Up in the mountains, there will be all sorts; the rich and famous taking waters and rest cures. Things for their maladies, the ailments that make them too tired to do anything other than lie, hands folded, on a couch. Neurotics, like those in Mother’s coteries, or like Lady Astor—but freer than I was. And thus is the terrible, hilarious irony!
You did aim to kill a man, Violet. It could hardly go unmarked. I’d say you should not be a hypocrite.
If you are not careful, Bertha, I shall pull rank and make you call me Lady Gibson! Now. I want you to look at someone, not so far away, in a park in Geneva. Shift your gaze.
Do you note the thrust of his chin and those eyes? Under those deep lids, dark green marbles, it’s uncanny. Stygian pools, they will be. He is objectionable, even in sleep...
Do you scrutinise him, there? He’s sleeping on a bench to save money and while he’s incubating his ideas of greatness. He’s going to be a whizz with the hand grenades: make his boys hold them for longer, longer than they feel they should because, if they do that before they throw, then the opposition won’t have time to throw them back. He’s going to tell high stories of that. My poor little soldiers, shaking, teeth chattering. Not I, oh no no no. His war diaries will tell how he does not quiver. In the summer of 1916, we will see him leading his reconnaissance unit right up to the Austrian lines and let me tell you my children, when war was tremendous, he was not flabbergasted and still ate a hearty meal and mounted a woman wherever he could. One day, his dugout will take a direct hit and he will emerge victorious into the sunlight; he will claw his way out. His clothes are shreds and he’s been buried alive but of course. His story is like the passion of Christ and he will come back from the dead, through lime and shit, covered in the war wounds of which he will make useful currency.
Up up up he comes through the bad earth and from the Austrian shell and he will make this into a book for you! He will serialise it for his horrid rag, Il Popolo:
I taught my troops!
My tooth-chattering boys.
I will always be there.
And I believe, oh completely.
In what, you nasty boy? Do fascists believe in anything or do you lot posture and believe in that, in your series of gestures, unbroken and rehearsed?’ (And I think, well some fascists believe in jokes about old brown shoes…) You’d do well with your stagecraft at the Salpêtrière. Until they killed you. Or it killed you because you didn’t have imagination to stay alive and unconfined. It’s not true (who said this? Who said this?) that every woman loves a fascist or a boot in a face from a brute like you. Oh no. And you didn’t even think of the name, Fascist: just appropriated it. Does history know that?
Somewhere out there, very soon, the child Clara Petacci, the future mistress, praises him and consecrates him, little knowing that she, too, will be mounted before too long and that she will be strung up on the scaffold at the Esso station, next to her, you, lover with your dropping head and the bulging eye, stamped on by the baying crowd. (And did some of these feet stamp on me, too, the day on Campidoglio, when my glasses were splintered and my hands swelled out to there?) And her head will have rested on his breast as they are shot by the lake. She followed him to the point of sacrifice, didn’t she? And that bastard always bragged he’d die in bed! Shot by a beautiful lady, not a crone, or killed by passion and sensual virility. Instead, at the Villa on Lake Como she, Clara, stumbled on the wet afternoon grass, spring day, high heeled shoes and eating truffles in bed all morning while he read his language books and... and... ended. And on one day, after a circuit of frightenings, Ida Dalser, his first wife and his son, Benito, by her, will be left to rot. When she contests against him, says she was his first wife, he will have her carted off and she will die, certified as a mad woman, in a lunatic asylum in Venice; their son, his loss breaking her heart, farmed out to Father’s cronies and Fascist party friends and then, himself, incarcerated; in the end, kept asleep until he could not wake up. They drenched that boy in opiates.
He did that? To his own wife. To silence her. To his own boy? Höllenhund.
Oh yes, he did, Bertha. And what of Mussolini’s Jewish mistress, Margherita Sarfatti? So glamorous, so elegant. It is said that under her tutelage and in aping Gabriele d’Annunzio, dandy-poet, soldier-poet, all things as required, and for a while the world’s most famous Italian—born to be Duce, a baby man, beautiful, stunted and dangerous—then Benito the elder became prettier, more groomed and learned how to recognise the weight of a suit for summer and winter. But what of her, the fine Jewess? Escaped to Switzerland, rubbed out in the press, never happened though everyone saw it and knew it did: it was not I, it was not I, it was the creature with one red eye... not I. Did no-one see? Another woman immured unjustly; another woman erased.
But worse and so much more. Yes, Bertha: the höllenhund. Churchill hailed him as The Greatest Lawgiver among Men while he swept off seven and a half thousand Jews into the Nazi camps. I am sorry, Bertha. I see you cry. You did not live to see what would happen, with the camps, with Hitler, but I know from reading of you, dreaming of you, that much you understood. Be strong, for we will come to this and you will not be alone in its telling.
But Mussolini and the fop, the dandy he aped?
The dandy poet fell out of a window while p
reening and getting off with a girl; never recovered. She did, mind. And I bet, elsewhere, Mussolini’s whores were laughing at him too.
Elsewhere, a time of terror, while we are held, here. All of this, you will hear of, surely, Lucia; Blanche, it was after your time.
Anna O, oh Bertha, this is so difficult for me to tell with you here. It is of yours. No-one knew who you were for so very long. Bertha Pappenheim, the first social worker, a powerful worker for the rights of Jewish women and caring for children and young mothers. And all this you did while, back and forth, over the years, you fell ill, took time at the sanatorium—you had to: had to, sweet lady—needed to rebuild your mind with reading, careful thought and rest. I am not sure I can bring myself to tell you all that happened, when the rough beast came slouching forth; to your work, to your loves, but it may be that it will reveal itself as we twist and turn and try to do and undo some things that should not have come to pass. I will ask Lucia to speak to you in more detail of what passed at Neu-Isenburg, the safe house you made for others. Hold her hand, huddle up, girls. I will say this: you built, they came, they took, and you lost her.
But, Bertha, you are on a postage stamp, aren’t you? Your intent and your determination did not fade, I think. They commemorated you on a stamp. As yourself and for your work. So of course you flew across the land. You were saved. Remembered. Commemorated. I suppose all I seek is to know you more, grant you more and have the world see you more fully, Anna O, inside, too. You were—as you Blanche, as you, Lucia—remarkable.
Bertha is too modest to beam. We say nothing. A warmth, though, inside. Then Bertha says: Who is that, there, looking at Mussolini from a distance? Isn’t she a handsome woman, dark hair piled up like that, and what a pretty white lace collar on her dress. I can hear her talking to a friend about the beauty salon she has opened in Milan. Yes, she is saying she moved back home after studying all the arts of beauty in Paris. Here for a little holiday before she settles down to her work. I can see her looking at the man on a bench; seems to be admiring him.
This is Ida Dalser, Violet tells her: I cannot resist. You, Lucia, are still lithe and young enough. (I think, am I? But it is consoling that she sees me this way for it gives me time… years of freedom.) I look wretched and, of course, my toothless upper gums give me the crone look. Go talk to her, Lucia, dear girl.
And I do. Ida is startled, but will hear me out because—God love me I’m going to try this aloud—Lucia Joyce is an arresting presence.
In time, I say (in Italian), you will marry this man, this bad bird you are looking at now and he’ll think he’s cock of the wark, oh yes. (She won’t know what that is, but I took it from Daddy, to keep him here with me.) He’ll be a brute, handy with the whores; he already is: can’t you see, or do you fancy him so much that you won’t? See. And listen to me. In years to come, and not many years, you will marry him and, as he makes his way, he will be your kept man—kept by your potions and nacré brushes and pretty things at your beauty salon—and he will rise like an ugly strutting bird. You will bear his child, his little Benito, and your husband will be unfaithful to you again and again as he snatches your money, then he will marry someone else because he is a dirty bigamist as well as a filthy fascist and then he’ll slough you off. Because you are strong, you will contest that you’re still his wife and little Benito, told you are dead, will say that the bad bird is his father: both of you will die, in straitjacket or on the needle in lunatic asylums. Ida, before it is too late, keep your voice stilled, find your son. Run. I know a place. It’s where I went, over some years, when they let me out of St Andrew’s and into another hospital. Llanfairfechan. It is a small enough place, but a kind place. I know it. All this is absurd, a fantasy. But also, not. Don’t raise your voice. Not now, not then. I cannot wish your baby unborn, but when you have him, go and do not go back.
And Ida Dalser screams at me: Vattene tu cagna pazza! So I say to the others: She’s telling me to go away because I am a mad bitch. All my nonsense about how Benito will cart her off in a straitjacket! Take her baby!
We guessed, they say.
Yes, I continue: She tells me I am a lunatic and to get away. Back to the lock-up I’ve escaped from after I’d scopato mia carceriera—
No need to translate that, Lucia! calls Violet
—in order to get out.
We’ve all had experiences of bad birds. Or rumoured experiences with them, put about by others’ trilling voices.
You know, they said I was Charcot’s lover, just as they said Augustine was; that’s how she got out. Apparently. That’s what they said. This, Blanche.
Well why did she get out and not you? All, and laughing.
Clearly, I wasn’t very good at it, smiles Blanche.
They said that I... I coupled with Dr Breuer, you know. I was his special subject. Bertha winces at the memory of gossip, a narrative formed for her, not by her.
And Lucia and I each had a fiancé: mine died, poor beautiful boy, and I still cannot mouth his name, and Lucia’s found by her parents and all gone, so there we are. But I fear we’re getting mired in talk of menfolk. Lucia, back on track—Violet is firm now—so what is in your thoughts?
I say that I think I have scared her, Ida; disgusted her, we all have, but that she never forgets, for how could she? This man sleeping on a bench, bad bird Benito, will be her husband. And so, maybe in years to come, she would be safe, though forced, painful as that is, not to speak what is true. I want to say to her: Oh Ida, have this man if you like, Ida. Let him lift your petticoats and rip at your fine lace collar. Be wrested from life by his sex and that vicious thrust of his jaw. Have his child, alone, as he sits writing and plotting, elsewhere, then comes home to his kept life where you allow him to cut you out of your clothes and roughly lay you down...
Then fly.
Ida walks on, but she will not forget.
And Violet calls someone to our attention: Do you see me, though, walking by the lake? A younger Violet. I am reading my Bible and it is the year of my conversion. Father is disgusted; mother will not tangle, as she’s still all Christian Scientist. I didn’t want to negate anything of my parents’ values, for I loved them so. But my soul burned and my brother Willie was vital here: how I saw that his faith burned in him. Do you know that he was the heir to the estate and that, for his perversion, which is what they called his conversion to Rome, Father disinherited him? For me, it was just sadness and disgust and another road I could not walk down with them. I wanted a burning truth. But there I am, that year, and I am fingering my rosary and I think I am in exile, surrounded by lake and opal mountain air. It is not a permanent home, this. Not long after, I will try to make myself the society girl I was meant to be, waspish waist and gown, back in London again. I will make trysts with men, meet my fiancé and then I will crack up. I will lose those I love: Victor, Willie, my friend who never left me in my darkest nights, and my centre will not hold. I will get ill, be nervous, a hysteric. I will stay, for a while, in Holloway Sanatorium and I will know the brass on the palate and the ashes of depression. I will go on retreat to Buckfastleigh to find the true God and to talk to Mary and, in London, I will threaten a poor girl with a knife with my Bible upon the story of Abraham fit to sacrifice Isaac and they will call me dangerous and mad. In my years, I will also shoot myself and miss my heart.
I was at sea, distressed, unable to speak. I think, in years to come, that there will be better descriptions for what we all have been, of what we have suffered through illness, should we call it that. Or madness, if that is our word of choice.
Oh, my friends, look at her, Violet. Call her name. There.
Violet. She turns. See? Still fingering her rosary. The years hold much for her and she cannot be what she might have been.
But she was. She is here with us now. And I cry gently as I support Violet and she is thankful to us through her tears, saying: I am so glad you understand. But
girls. Younger Violet turns her head towards you. Do not call her forward; she is puzzled and will frighten. Just smile at her only, with all the warmth you can, as you did with child Violet on Merrion Square, Dublin. Because you know what it is to be a prisoner and to be sad to the depths of your wanting soul.
Then let us go to Rome.
The corners of Violet’s mouth turn up. See? Oh, these fine dark eyes! There is a dancing mischief in them. She is half murderess, half angel. And bad bird Benito sleeps on, on his bench in Geneva, while four magnificent women bite their thumbs at him and he stirs briefly, as if from a bad dream.
13
We go to Rome. We will watch him, Mussolini. Be reminded, in having seen his speeches, in having regarded his gestures, of hysterics’ nightmares, a rigid body and torrid imagination of the mad and imagined mad. Blanche, in particular, will laugh at this. He is not mad or imagined so: he is a monster. It is Wednesday the 7th of April, 1926. Along the way, something extraordinary has happened: complicity of the most powerful, tender sort has come to completion. Accomplices surround Lady Violet Gibson, the Honourable. I am proud to be part of this story. And I remember that Violet said to me, as we spoke of our revulsion at the bad bird, that bad men need not be mad men, but good women can be mad, of course. There’s a lot of conflation, I find—don’t you?—of badness and madness. In everyday reckonings, in what the papers say. I don’t think that’s very helpful.
So, Campidoglio, central Rome.
Mussolini has raised his arms. The fascist salute. He’d come earlier that day from Palazzo Tittoni; from his lovely apartment there. There, Violet had told us, dutiful staff would help him along, make things smooth and comfortable for him and he would have admired himself. Hasn’t he come a long way from sleeping alone on a park bench? Later, he goes on to his offices at Palazzo Chigi. Listening to petitions, news and updates is tiresome for him. Perhaps he had rather been in front of a mirror, practising his moves, sycophants winking approval.