Though he sometimes thought of going back to Turin—he had left important things undone, back in Italy—he could not abandon the many fine things that he and Frau Piffer had achieved together.
Understanding this situation, Secondari resolved to renounce his Italian citizenship. He arranged to meet Frau Piffer in her dazzling new office at the Flying Radio Torpedo Factory. He told her that he, too, wanted to become a citizen of the Regency of Carnaro, like herself. He told her that he, too, wanted to become a model of Futurism, as it was properly lived.
He asked her to arrange the paperwork, for she excelled at such things, and she agreed. He and Frau Piffer would become two ideal Carnarians. When all was said and done, he was an engineer, while she was a manufacturer. A man and woman occupying those two roles had a proper need for an intimate understanding.
The Ace of Hearts sent Secondari a confidential memo by the inter-office mail. This covert message alerted Secondari to the long-expected arrival of the American Secret Service.
It had taken the Americans eight long months to overcome their grave diplomatic embarrassment, and approach the Carnaro regime. The Americans were new to the burdens of a Great Power, but they were trying. An American spy group was arriving within deep cover, to quietly discuss American national interests.
The leader of this American spy delegation was a superhuman Jew. This fantastic figure was known worldwide as the “Man Without Fear.”
The Man Without Fear was a black magician. Although he was clearly a supernatural entity, he was also a naturalized American citizen. The magician spy was bringing two spy associates: they posed as his bodyguard and his public-relations expert.
The American spy-magician was arriving in the city of Fiume—not secretly at all—but in the distracting glare of a giant blaze of publicity. The magical entertainment of the Man Without Fear would be held within the biggest venue in Fiume. This was the Prophet’s own palatial City Hall, which had been placed entirely at the spy’s disposal.
The Man Without Fear was the greatest magician in the modern world. He was a conjurer on a vast, American, continental scale. Magicians said that the Man Without Fear was the greatest magician in the history of magic.
Unfortunately, the American magician spoke no Italian. So Secondari, who spoke and wrote English well, was much-needed to assist with the intrigue.
Although Secondari was deaf, his handicap had slowly diminished with time. His right ear had grown sensitive to bass vibration, and he’d learned to patch together every scrap of sound from his good left ear. Frau Piffer’s patient help in this regard had been of great use to him. He’d even learned homely scraps of Croatian and German from little Maria Piffer.
To confront the American spies, Secondari would need the sturdy aid of Frau Piffer. He knew that he could trust her. So he sent her a telegram, requesting her presence at his secret police office in the Hotel Europa.
To his surprise, for the first time ever, Frau Piffer did not answer him.
Alarmed, he sought Frau Piffer at her mother’s house. Frau Piffer’s mother, whose full name he had never learned, was a weird Fiuman crone. This ancient Adriatic creature, still in her time-worn native costume of apron, shawl, and crimped head-cloth, had long gray wisps of hair, no remaining teeth, and fishy, flounder-like eyes set a full hands-width apart. Frau Piffer’s mother looked quite like Frau Piffer, though in a state of advanced decay.
This crone often served as Maria’s babysitter while her mother was busy manufacturing. The three of them, the grandmother, mother, and daughter, occupied a homey medieval nook within the Fiume Old Town. They lived within a damp, stony cell about the size of a Turinese automobile garage.
Secondari arrived at the medieval slum in his violently glittering Futurist uniform. Secondari’s attempt to dress for diplomacy with the Americans had been, at best, a mixed success. He hated his elaborate, garish new uniform, and his new haircut disgusted him. The frightened barber had hidden Secondari’s damaged right ear by giving him a long forelock, which swooped across his forehead. Worse yet, his unkempt, bristling, piratical beard had been reduced to a neat, oddly tiny mustache.
Secondari knocked, entered, and found Frau Piffer as a shattered wreckage of nerves. She was beside herself with misery.
Secondari sat at her narrow bedside as Frau Piffer choked out her tale of woe.
Frau Piffer’s erring husband had come to grief. Herr Piffer, a career Communist agitator, had fled from Fiume to Red Vienna. In Vienna, he’d made the streets too hot for himself. Fool that he was, he’d run off straight to Berlin. In Berlin, the radical street-brawls were deadly.
“Oh, this must be all my own fault,” Frau Piffer wailed. “Herr Piffer seemed so noble and good, and I let him have his way with me. So then we had Maria, and off he ran to smash the state, the wretch! Not one day’s honest work out of him at the factory line, and now he’s in jail! Whatever will I do?”
“Well, first, calm down, my dear,” Secondari counselled, patting her plump hand. “He’s in jail again, is he? That means he’s not dead. So there must be hope.”
Frau Piffer proffered a tear-soaked letter. The letter was useless to Secondari, being written entirely in German. “He threw in his lot with some crowd of German ex-soldiers. Those Freikorps people, they’re real street thugs. My Hans is just a factory worker! Oh my God, he’s my husband, my child’s father! I loved him so, Lorenzo! I lived for those few sweet days when Hans came back to me! Now I’m abandoned! I’m even worse than a widow.”
Maria was also weeping bitterly, stunned by her mother’s distress. The withered grandmother, seeing Frau Piffer grasping Secondari’s hand and sobbing pitifully on his uniform sleeve, tactfully rose. She tottered from the meager apartment.
“I know that you’re upset just now,” said Secondari, “but let’s take counsel together. Be strong, Blanka Piffer. Think of the child here. Herr Piffer’s in prison, is he? He’s facing a trial? What are the charges? Be specific.”
“It’s the worst,” said Frau Piffer, sitting up and plumping her embroidered pillow. “Some German faction in a beer cellar… Their own men, the ‘Brown Shirts’… They burst in there with guns and big knives, a massacre! His best friend—Adolf from Linz, such a brave soldier—he jumped in front of a bullet, to save my husband. Adolf gave his own life for my Hans.”
The thought made Frau Piffer weep piteously. “I met Adolf once. He came here on a summer vacation with Hans. He was the best of them all, Adolf was. What a talker that man was, and what eyes he had!”
“The Austrians should never have anything to do with Germans, ever,” Secondari said. “Whenever you mess with the Germans, you always end up in debt to them, shining their shoes.”
“Well, Adolf was from Linz. Adolf was Austrian, himself.”
“Let’s get to the point now,” said Secondari. “Frau Piffer, we are both professional revolutionaries. We’re not children, so let Maria do the crying. We are in power, and your husband is in prison. Fine. Now, we act.”
Secondari raised one gloved finger, white kid gloves being de rigueur for evening wear at Regency of Carnaro social events. “Listen. We raise funds, Frau Piffer. We set up solidarity committees. We agitate in the world press. As government officials, we can put on diplomatic pressure. We will embarrass the German government in Berlin—until they realize it’s not worth their while to hold Herr Piffer. They will exile him here: they’ll send him here, to us, to the Regency of Carnaro. This town is full of political exiles. One more exile, your husband, will be just fine here!”
Frau Piffer wiped at her eyes with her quilt. “You really think we can do that?”
“Of course! Look at yourself, woman! You’re a Corporate Syndicalist! And I’m a government minister; look at my fancy uniform! I chase my regime’s enemies into exile every day! We both know how that’s done. Of course we can do it. We can, and we will. Have faith in tomorrow.”
Frau Piffer, gathering her strength, looked at her German letter again. “Mayb
e we really can do that. My husband’s friend, who wrote me this nice letter from the jail… He’s so eloquent! He’s a novelist, you see. Herr Goebbels.”
“Good, fine, now you’re talking some sense. This German political novelist, no doubt he’s in hot water, too. So, bring him down here to Fiume. We’ll find this political correspondent a post somewhere. Let’s put him to work. We can always use more spies inside Germany.”
Frau Piffer’s lips were trembling. “You are such a good man, Lorenzo. I was so lucky to meet you. I’m an atheist and a Communist, but you are the answer to a woman’s prayers. Saint Vitus of Fiume must love me after all.”
Secondari smiled, then shrugged. “Everything I’m telling you now is simple and obvious. If you weren’t so upset, you would know that better than I do.”
“No, that’s not true. You are such a marvel. I was lying here in my blackest despair, you are my angel, Lorenzo…I don’t know how to tell you this, but really, truly, you are my hero.”
She kissed his hand. Maria rose to her feet and hugged his waist.
He patted the child’s braided blonde head. Maria had quickly stopped her sobs and sniffles. Although Maria would never be a great beauty, she was a sturdy, workaday, patchwork-and-polyglot little creature. He doted on Maria. She was the light of his life.
“Lorenzo, isn’t there something I can do to reward you?” Frau Piffer moaned. “I know that I’m a married woman, while you are so chaste and honorable. But I would do anything for you, my knight, my man of destiny! There is a statue of you in my heart!”
This abject fit of eloquence was the most Italian moment he had ever seen from Frau Piffer. Secondari was touched.
“Well,” he said at last, “there is something that I have never told you about, Frau Piffer. I don’t know how to say it in front of this innocent child, though.”
“So, is there something?” said Frau Piffer, blinking. “I knew there must be something! Maria, run out and go play.”
The child obediently left her mother, although she was scowling. Secondari glimpsed her tear-streaked little pirate face, spying through the wooden shutters of the stone window.
“This was an entirely private matter,” he told her. “It happened in Turin, years ago. I’ve never gotten over the shame.”
“I always knew that there must be something wrong about you. I’m a Fiume girl, all right? We live by the docks! We Fiume girls don’t shock easily. Just tell me what it is.”
“My whole family should be ashamed of what happened. I’m ashamed that they don’t have more shame! Turin is full of dark and awful secrets. That’s the kind of town it is, not like this one.”
“Don’t make me guess!” Frau Piffer cried. “Whatever awful sin it is, just tell me now.”
“My brother in Turin has a bastard child. He seduced a factory girl. Then he abandoned her.”
Secondari gritted his teeth. “Everyone in Turin adores my brother. Because he’s rich, he’s influential, and he’s in high society. He is the Great and the Good—and yet, he’s the picture of evil, that man. My brother got away with his crime. He escaped all retribution. No one cares. And in Turin, there’s a little boy—he’s younger than Maria, even—and he’s of my own blood. He’s the child of a bitter injustice.”
“Oh, well, I see,” said Frau Piffer. “Well, that’s quite a common story. I thought you would tell me something awful.”
“I never breathed one word of this scandal to anybody. How can any man be so wicked? He’s my own brother! I hope you can see that I’m entirely decent, unlike him. I would never do such a thing. I would die first.”
“Lorenzo, I understand. What is it you want me to do?”
“Well, maybe we can go to Turin, you and I. We can bring back that boy, to live here, in Fiume. We might bring his mother, too, if she wants to come here. I know I can’t raise a son. I don’t know how to do it. But you can raise children. You’re kind and good. Maria is a wonderful child. We’ll adopt that little boy. We’ll pirate him. We’ll syndicate him. He’ll become ours.”
“But we’re not married, Lorenzo. How can we adopt a boy? We can’t just march into the city of Turin with our strange uniforms, and say we’re from the Regency of Carnaro, and we’re here to take the future away with us.”
“Oh yes, we can. We must do exactly that. Because we have to live by our convictions, Frau Piffer! You, and me, and Maria, and my bastard nephew. We will never be any bourgeois, legal family. But we can become a free syndicate of liberated people who unite in defiance of the Church and the State!”
Secondari drew a deep breath. “Some day, in the Twentieth Century ahead of us, most families—maybe all the families!—will be like us. I want you at my side as we lead the way to that better way of life!”
“Well, of course I must say ‘yes’ to you,” said Frau Piffer. “So, yes, of course I will do it. Another strange boy in my life, some boy who is just like you…well, I will bear up somehow! But Lorenzo, please leave me alone now. That noble speech you just gave me—it was too much! My heart is bursting! You’re like the Prophet, almost.”
“Oh, come now. I’m an engineer. I am nothing like the Prophet.”
“No, really, you are very like a great poet. Maybe something about the Prophet has touched you, and changed you forever, and now… Well, my poor heart is in my mouth. My head is spinning. I’m so torn by my feelings now, I don’t know what to say.”
“Let’s try to be content, Frau Piffer. You’ve made me very happy through your act of social justice.”
Three steps were enough to take him from the shabby stone cell. He opened the door, and saw Maria lurking out in the cobbled alley.
He reached down to grip her hand. “Come along now, Maria. Come along with me tonight, we’re going to see magic!”
The City Hall, a veritable palace of urban administration, had always been much too large for the city of Fiume. The City Hall had been built to a regal, theatrical scale, as if little Fiume ranked with Venice, the Queen of the Adriatic.
The City Hall had marble staircases, and carved balustrades, and life-sized, half-naked bronze lantern-girls brandishing lit candelabra. It had parquet flooring, and ceilings with huge, writhing octopus chandeliers of blown Murano glass.
Secondari took the astonished Maria by her small hand. He pretended to give her a tour of the palace. In reality, he was searching the City Hall for the Prophet and his inner circle.Secondari needed to offer his services in the secret meeting with the American spies.
Secondari knew that he was badly needed for that diplomatic effort, but the crowds in City Hall were so thick that he couldn’t find anyone. It seemed that everyone in Fiume had crowded in to see the great American magician.
Secondari entered the capacious chamber where the American magician was shortly to perform. A special magical stage had been built there, designed to the American’s express commands, sent in by telegram.
This naked wooden stage was saturated with magical American contraptions. Strange, elaborate machines designed to vanish volunteers, or perhaps to saw the women of Fiume into quarreling halves.
The seats of the audience radiated from this stage of American gadgetry, with palatial chairs arranged in front, and modest benches set in the back. Workers in angular Futurist uniforms were hauling electrical cables. Others laid out red carpets, and tried the curtain-pulleys.
A ghastly apparition peered from behind a velvet curtain of the stage. She beckoned urgently at Secondari. Secondari instantly recognized her as one of the Prophet’s harem of mistresses. This woman was the Art Witch.
The Art Witch was a Milanese millionairess and ardent occultist. She was a fixture in the European radical art world. The Art Witch was so entirely weird and eldritch that even the Ace of Hearts, a fellow Milanese who was a yogi, a nudist, a vegetarian, and a pirate, could not bear the sight of her.
The Art Witch beckoned again, frantically, and Secondari, wisely averting his gaze, pretended a profound deafness.
The Art Witch, however, was a spoilt and determined woman, ever eager to have her own way. She came teetering from the stage, in her dagger-like high heels, to compel his attention.
The Art Witch was wearing—not a dress, but a strange, provocative curtain of some kind, made from dense strings of shining metal beads. This bizarre garment lacked any visible bustle, or a girdle, or a brassiere, or, quite likely, underwear of any kind.
The Art Witch was very thin and tall, with high-piled, dyed red hair in tumbling snaky locks. Her dilated black eyes were entirely surrounded by huge circles of black kohl. Her skin was powdered whiter than a corpse. Her rings and bracelets had enough jewels to buy an Italian battleship.
The Art Witch stared down at little Maria, who was thunderstruck by the apparition before her. Maria clung tightly to Secondari’s right elbow. Then, in a paroxysm of terrified shyness, she hung from his arm and pivoted back and forth.
“You have a new haircut, Pirate Engineer,” said the Art Witch.
“You look as radiant as always, Marchesa.” Secondari never knew what to say to the Prophet’s doxies. So, he flattered them. The approach always seemed to work.
“Where is the Prophet tonight?” said the Art Witch.
“Did you ask your crystal ball?” said Secondari. “If you can’t find him with your magic powers, no one can.”
The Art Witch turned and beckoned sharply. A second woman arrived from her nook behind the velvet stage-curtain.
This fellow-creature of the art-world was costumed as a Moslem dancing girl, with trailing, diaphanous silk robes, a veil, a hood, and a pearl-inlaid leather holster with a dainty pistol inside.
“What a pretty daughter your friend has here, Luisa,” said the Art Witch’s armed companion. “Do you like dancing, little girl?”
Pirate Utopia Page 7