In spite of the little house being only a short distance from the reception, it took us over an hour to get there. So obsessed had Mussolini become with outrunning his own guards that he was thoroughly lost. He did not have a native’s knowledge of Rome and her maze of streets. Eventually, he told me, most of the old, medieval mess would be torn down. He was tired of these fusty labyrinths. He would show me a model of the city that had been built a year or two before. Because of problems with land ownership, some of the building plans had been put back. The new understanding with the Vatican City was going to help that situation. He would leave behind him a Rome that would make the ancient capital seem only a sketch for the glories to come.
He laughed at his own audacity. Sometimes, as now, it seemed there were at least two Mussolinis — one was the boyish, self-mocking idealist who had come out of poverty in the poorest region of Italy to save his people. The other was the sophisticated, modern politician, forced through historical realities to take hard, painful decisions. Few visionaries make good politicians. Few good politicians have much in the way of original vision. That is the inextinguishable irony of the world. When visionaries are allowed to dominate daily politics, their talents are wasted, their decisions are a disaster. Yet occasionally there springs a man of vision who has the intelligence and will to overcome any discrepancy. Mussolini, of course, was just such a man. Nothing that happened between us subsequently has ever given me cause to change my view.
Unfortunately, such giants also attract pygmies who elevate themselves by association. These pygmies, scarcely noticed by anyone, almost always drag the giants down. Only Franco took the example of his colleagues and, like a good army officer, selected the best men for the work he had to do in Spain, bringing a stability his nation had not known for centuries. Though he lacked Mussolini’s towering greatness, he had a much better background. Mussolini and Hitler had both served in the trenches with distinction, but they had never been considered officer material. Blood will out, as they say.
My Chief tugged suddenly on the wheel of the huge car, making the tyres squeal and judder. Arnaldo the chauffeur uttered a kind of gulping scream. The whole vast chassis swung in an arc as Mussolini applied the brake.
With the engine still running he grinned, panting, at me. I was still recovering from the shock. Until the Chief pointed it out, I did not notice that we had arrived at my house. I asked Il Duce if he would care to come in and rest, but he refused. No doubt he had memories he did not wish to revive. He said he would wait in the car and smoke a cigarette. He asked me if I had a match.
The evening had been a confusing one for me. While in the cottage I planned to help myself to a quick sniff of cocaine (of which Il Duce rather prudishly disapproved) and thus be able to continue in better mood. As I walked up the little crazy-paving path past the fountain, I thought I saw two figures through the window. Opening the door I went in quietly. A man stood with his back to me. Slowly he was turning one of the pictures I had placed facing the wall. He adjusted it and stepped away from it. I saw that several other pictures had been turned, all of a similar style. I did not demand to know what he was doing because I recognised the set of his shoulders.
When, however, I coughed and he looked back rather wanly to see who it was, I did not immediately recognise his face. One of his eyes was closed shut, badly bruised. His nose had been broken. His mouth was split and scabbed, and most of his front teeth were missing. I felt sick. The single large brown eye regarded me with the expression of a dying horse. It was Fiorello da Bazzanno.
‘The pictures,’ he said. ‘They’re mine. Don’t you like them?’
I would not have hurt his feelings for worlds. This was the man who had done most to help me reach my present eminence. ‘I love them,’ I said, ’I was afraid the sun would get to them. I know nothing of oils. My God, Fiorello, were you in a crash?’
‘You might say that.’ With a sigh he flung himself into an armchair, wincing. ‘A fall from grace, maybe. I’m not the golden boy I was a few short weeks ago, Max, as you probably know.’
All I knew was that his plane had been found. He had been missing. I told him how worried we had been.
I was rather distracted, aware that Il Duce himself was waiting impatiently in the car. I could not find my office keys. As I went towards the bedroom to look for them, Maddy came out. She seemed surprised to see me. ‘Oh, Max,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure you want to get involved in this.’
‘Involved?’ I was under my original momentum, still searching for my keys. ‘I’m delighted that Fiorello is safe. I have something to do. It will take less than an hour. Then I will be back.’
‘Fiorello isn’t safe,’ she said. ‘At least, not that safe.’
‘I can’t find my keys,’ I said. ‘Have you seen them?’
She suggested I look in the box on my dressing table. Sometimes I put them there.
‘What do you mean?’ I asked. There they were, in the box! I snatched them up. ‘Not safe? He’s here, with us!’
‘I wasn’t sure how you’d take it,’ she said.
‘Take what? Listen, my darling, I have a car waiting. It is very important that I leave immediately. Take what?’
‘Fiorello’s on the run,’ she said. ‘He was caught coming back from Switzerland. He never made it to his plane. They kidnapped him. Beat him up. One of them was de Vecchi, the Education Minister!’
I agreed it was terrible but was glad he was safe now. When I turned to leave, Fiorello was standing in the doorway, his lopsided, hideous face looking like something you would find in a charnel house, scarcely human at all. ‘I don’t expect you to help,’ he said. ‘I was trying to get Laura clear of the country. She’s all right now. She’s in Austria, I’m sure.’ He shrugged and glanced away. ‘Bloody commy.’
‘You helped a communist?’ I asked disbelievingly. Suddenly the enormity of my situation struck me. My legs lost their power to hold me. I sat down on the couch. Outside with his motor running was the supreme Fascist. Inside, a supreme traitor to Fascism. Should they meet, I would be irredeemably compromised. But there was nothing I could do save dash back out to the car with the plans and hope Maddy had solved the problem by the time I returned. I began to give up any idea of going on to the private party.
‘He’ll be gone when you get back,’ Maddy promised.
I willed strength into my legs, staggered to the door and reached for the handle. As I did so a key turned in the lock and it began to open. My legs threatened to fold at the knees again and I fell back, expecting to see my Duce himself.
Margherita Sarfatti stood there, an affectionate Fury in yellow and black silk. ‘Darling, I couldn’t wait to see you! I’ve been longing for you. You must tell me everything that happened tonight.’
I tried to speak, but no words came. I attempted to shove my way past her, but she pushed me back into the room, pausing with a look of almost comic outrage when she saw that we were not alone.
Slowly she absorbed the scene. She looked from me to Maddy to Fiorello. Her breathing seemed to grow more rapid, as if a dragon fired up its venom. And then she screamed.
‘There’s nothing between us, honestly,’ said Maddy. ’I think maybe we all need a drink and a sit-down.’
I, too, was close to screaming. Had Il Duce seen Margherita come in? If so, would he draw any particular conclusions? After all, we were in her house. Mussolini would come to investigate and find me harbouring a traitor while keeping a liaison with his mistress.
‘I really do have to leave,’ I said.
‘How long has all this been going on?’ Margherita wished to know. ‘Now I realise the depths of treachery you’ve plumbed! I helped you all! I gave you everything! My own blood I would have given you! And this is my repayment? I am nothing, eh? I don’t even get an invitation to the little boys’ parties any more. This insult will not be forgotten. Both of you I nurtured as a mother — as a lioness her cubs. I taught you everything. I even made you characters in my boo
k. I protected you. Both of you would be in prison if it were not for me. Yet behind my back, you plot and scheme. Well, Il Duce shall know of this!’
As I tried to frame a reply that would buy me the time I needed, I heard a tap on the door. This was certain to be Mussolini.
Not one of the million explanations which entered my head had the slightest ring of truth. I sighed and prepared myself for the inevitable enquiry. I had perfectly ordinary explanations, though Fiorello’s presence would take a little imagination.
I drew back the door, ready to face my Chief in all his rage.
But it was not Mussolini. A jolly gust of laughter announced the arrival of the not insubstantial Hermann Göring, Mrs Cornelius, Baron Huggy Bear (looking a little dazed) and an extremely drunken Seryozha who was scarcely able to stand but staggered between the other two with a look of depraved sentimentality on his face worthy of Kominski or one of the other great clowns of the old Kiev circus. ‘Why!’ exclaimed the smiling German. ‘You’re already ahead of us! The taxi driver was right after all. I hope you haven’t sniffed up all the “snow”, ha, ha, ha!’
I stood there open-mouthed. The vast captain waved my own card under my nose. A taxi driver had read the wrong side.
‘Ain’t yer goin’ ter let us in, Ive?’ suggested Mrs Cornelius a little peevishly. ‘It’s bleedin’ freezin’ art ‘ere.’
I stepped back.
Mrs Cornelius led the way into the house. “Ow sweet!’
Fiorello’s ruined face expressed the dumb comic distress of a commedia horse. Disapprovingly, Maddy folded her arms.
Göring flung himself into one of our comfortable armchairs. ‘Is all the fun over? Who has the happy-powder?’ His thickly accented English was indecipherable to everyone but me. They ignored him. Mrs Cornelius handed her coat to Fiorello, looking over her shoulder for her dapper little protector. “Ave yer met Pappy?’Assured she had not lost him, she turned. ‘Gawd! What ‘appened ter ya? Somebody beat yer up?’
‘Oh, la vie sportif, you know...’ Gracefully Fiorello took her coat, helped the bewildered Baron off with his and handed the clothes to Maddy Butter who had by now recovered at least a patina of conventional hospitality. ‘Can I get you all a drink?’ she wanted to know. ‘Camparis? Manhattans?’
‘Fuck your Campari Manhattans,’ said Margherita Sarfatti, hurling herself on to the sofa. ‘Hello, Hermann, mein Liebchen. How was the party?’
Maddy grasped at the only fact which had so far been presented to her. She looked steadily at me and said in a small voice as she poured the drinks, ‘Do I understand that you and Margherita have been having an affair?’
‘Not at all,’ I said.
‘Judas,’ said La Sarfatti absently. She was smiling at Göring and helping herself to a bar of chocolate lying on the table. ‘Did you get that Lautrec I recommended?’
‘Oh, Margherita! I am still a poor man, you know!’ He asked again after the neige. I had begun to realise Hitler’s ambassador was something of an addict. I felt sympathy for him, of course. I have always said that if the drug begins to use you, that is when you should stop the drug. I was to learn later that he favoured narcotics, like morphine, which have a debilitating effect on the character as well as creating addiction. I have always warned young people off such drugs. Stimulants have a completely different effect, creating dynamism and positive progress in society — unless a narcotics user decides to use them! Then a very strange result occurs. Hermann Göring, whom I last saw at Nuremberg, was a living example of this. Fifteen years earlier, however, he was not the slave to his addiction that he later became. Ultimately, of course, Hitler had to renounce him.
I was still trying to reach the door. I had decided to say nothing further but to make my escape now, while attempting to redeem myself later. From outside came an impatient toot.
Fiorello came up to me. ‘Max, I don’t plan to involve you. But you must realise what’s going on. They beat me up - squadristi thugs. I escaped. They were planning to kill me, take me up in my own plane and dump me out alive. They said so. But nobody could fly. De Vecchi’s their boss. He really hates me. I don’t think Mussolini understands. Remember Matteotti? That wasn’t his fault. Someone has to tell the Chief. You know how much I admire him. If you could put in a word, perhaps, we could clear all this up. He doesn’t mind as long as the communists are gone from the country. I was simply getting rid of another one.’ His attempt to smile was unfortunate.
I murmured that there was little I could do. I had no power and little real influence. I was a scientist, not one of the political people.
I was sure if he threw himself on Mussolini’s mercy everything could be sorted out.
The horn sounded for the second time. Impatient to begin with,
Il Duce would be furious by now.
I thought of suggesting to Fiorello that he go personally and ask Il Duce for clemency. It seemed a convenient moment. By now Maddy had poured the drinks and was placing tall red glasses into uncomprehending hands. ’Do you mean to say,’ she continued firmly, settling herself on the couch between Göring and La Sarfatti, ‘that you and Max have been doing something behind my back?’
‘And who is Max?’ asked Göring agreeably.
Seryozha had found the gramophone and was winding it up. ‘What marvellous records,’ he said. ‘You can’t find these in Berlin.’ He put on ‘The Last Round-up’. I think it was Gene Autry’s earliest recording. As the first bars began to play, Seryozha threw up discreetly behind a chair. Göring smiled apologetically to his hostess. ‘He is not German,’ he explained. He leaned forward and whispered something to her. Maddy got up and went into the bedroom.
The horn sounded for the third time. The beating of my heart suggested I could probably not live much longer.
Maddy came back in to the room with our cocaine and the apparatus for taking it.
It occurred to me to ask Fiorello if he knew the best way of getting into Switzerland. The Baron was moving admiringly around the room gazing up at the paintings and murmuring his praise. He seemed under the impression that he was at an opening.
Maddy, stone-faced, began to chop out lines of coke for everyone. As Seryozha fell to the floor, his face striking the carpet with a peculiar soft crunch, she incorporated his line into her own.
Fiorello was still beside me. I had begun to tell him that our leader was outside in the car and might be growing impatient when I felt pressure on the door handle. My first thought was to hang on to it, hold it tight and resist any further intrusions. My second was to begin weeping.
My third, as the door opened to admit a glowering Benito Mussolini, was to fall against the wall with a groan.
‘That’s awfully good of you,’ said Captain Göring, in his best English. ‘I can’t tell you how much I’ve been in need.’ Bending forward over the marble table, he put the little silver tube to his nose and inhaled his lines in a single bovine snort. He seemed to expand to twice his size, threatening to burst the walls of the room. He sat back on the couch. ‘I love my wife,’ he said. ‘I love her with all my soul. But a man is a man.’
Mussolini regarded the scene in disgusted silence. His smouldering eyes glared from face to face.
‘Caro!’ cried Margherita Sarfatti, rising like a blustering pheasant from cover. ‘Caro mio! Thank God you are here!’
I looked for Fiorello. He had disappeared.
Where Fiorello had been standing a moment ago, there was Mussolini. Hands on hips, a look of irritable disapproval on his features, he turned his back pointedly to the others. He spoke quietly. ‘Are you ready?’
I saw my keys on the table next to the line of coke Maddy had cut for me.
‘Sorry if I’m breaking anything up,’ I said casually. ‘I was looking for my keys. Ah, there they are! Sorry I have to go. It was nice to meet your friends, Maddy.’
Save for Göring and the Baron, the others were all staring at Il Duce. Ignoring the uncrowned Queen of Italy, Mussolini turned once to stare thou
ghtfully at an obliviously happy Captain Göring before leading the way back to the car in silence. I heard Margherita’s wounded shriek behind us, but she did not come out.
We got into the car. Il Duce shook his head. ‘What’s Margherita doing with that Hun? I’ve been trying to keep them apart all week. Did you invite them?’
‘Certainly not,’ I said, reflecting privately that Maddy would not take a sanguine, European view of my arrangement. ‘Thinking I would be away, she no doubt arranged to see him there. But who knows? She’s a strange one. Maybe she can seduce him? To be fair, he seems besotted with his wife. Surely Signora Sarfatti wouldn’t attempt —?’
The Vengeance of Rome - [Between The Wars 04] Page 20