The Laughter of Carthage: The Second Volume of the Colonel Pyat Quartet (Colonel Pyat Quartet Series Book 2)

by Michael Moorcock

  When the gangling doctor arrived, seeming far too young for the fringe of beard around his face, I was relieved to discover he spoke French. Dr Castaggagli informed me Esmé had nothing more worrying than neurotic tension which would almost certainly disappear with rest. ‘Have you been travelling for long?’ He was aquiline and prematurely bald. He reminded me of a Jesuit eagle. I told him she had never left home before. Our trip had been rather tiring. He nodded. ‘She needs to be somewhere peaceful,’ he said. If possible I should engage a professional nurse. He frowned to himself, adding, ‘But not here.’

  I was delighted she had nothing seriously wrong. I offered Castaggagli one of my remaining sovereigns. He refused the coin with some amusement. He was a country doctor, not used to large fees. If I had no small sums, he would take payment in kind. So, since he was about the same across the shoulders as me, I gave him one of my overcoats. It had a good fur trim and was rather too warm for the climate, moreover it would have to be lengthened in the arms, but he was delighted. He offered to let me have a hat and scarf as ‘change’. I said that I would rather have a timetable of the trains from Otranto. He smiled. He would do what he could. It would probably be best if I went to the station myself. He asked where I would go. I told him.

  He shook his head at this. He thought Venice might be an unhealthy place for a sick child, even though there was nothing seriously wrong. It was smelly in Venice and extremely noisy at this time of year. However, he would make some enquiries about the best connections. Probably it would mean a change in Foggia, at least.

  To forestall his curiosity (and possibly his reporting us to the local carabinieri) I told him I was English. My sister and I were on our way to Corfu by steamer from Genoa when Esmé became ill. At my insistence the captain had put us off here. Perhaps there was a large city closer to Otranto than Venice?

  Doctor Castaggagli said it would be far easier to head for Rome or Naples, particularly with all our luggage, and presuming us to be returning to London. He did not think Esmé should travel for several days or for very far. She must be installed in a good hotel room where she could have tranquillity and rest. Then she would soon recover. If I needed a specialist opinion (which he admitted was unlikely) I should certainly make for Rome where it was ‘very modern’.

  Although regretting I should not see the beauties of that famous old city, I was already thinking it would be better to travel to Rome and thence to Paris. From Paris I could obtain legitimate papers and then proceed to London. I still had enough to pay our fares and a few more weeks at moderately priced hotels. Even if our money ran out we were in a law-abiding country. I could earn what we needed.

  In Paris, if he had not yet gone to America I would find Kolya. He would help me. And there would be other friends: St Petersburg alive again on the banks of the Seine! In a mounting mood of optimism I made my decision. In spite of the doctor’s advice, I was certain that familiar comforts, streets, traffic, crowded cafés, would revive Esmé more thoroughly than any rural retreat. However, I thanked Doctor Castaggagli warmly; I knew that he meant well. He asked if he could be of further help. I needed to change money and buy tickets. He took me in his pony and trap to the town’s bank and there my sovereigns became lira: huge, magnificent, flamboyant notes. Next we went to his house. He insisted I wait in the trap while he dashed inside to return with the promised hat and scarf. They were both of good quality and, in spite of having several suits, coats and other accessories (though the bulk of our luggage was Esmé’s) I was grateful to him. At the little station, which looked as if it had been in Otranto since the time of Christ, I bought two first-class tickets for Rome.

  The doctor insisted upon purchasing a bottle of wine, to enjoy a farewell drink. Reassuring myself that Esmé still rested and was content, I joined him in the courtyard of the little inn. We sat down together. The old marble bench might have come originally from a Roman villa. In the little garden beyond the courtyard the landlord’s wife clipped her evening roses. Doctor Castaggagli stretched his long legs out before him, his heels describing cryptograms in the dusty earth whenever he shifted position, and spoke of his love for this little town, his birthplace. In some ways I was envious of him. Over the years I have longed so for simplicity: the one gift God refused to grant me. However I enjoyed a certain contentment that evening, looking up at the crenellated Moorish castle and its monument to slaughtered victims of the Turks. The Osmanlis had raided Otranto in 1480, killing everyone they could find. I was reassured. No longer need I fear immediate threat from Islam, Israel or, indeed, Bolshevism. I was securely on Western European soil, and everywhere saw confirmation of progress; a civilisation I had always yearned to know. Here, such things were taken as casually as the weather, as the ubiquitous old monuments to an enduring history.

  My own past thoroughly behind me, I felt I had entered the future. I was, amongst these ancient hills and vineyards, truly about to take part in the twentieth-century adventure. For this civilisation was not decadent as was Turkey’s. It had continued to grow; it marched confidently on, paying decent respect to the past but never yearning for its return. I felt a distinct contrast between this world and the crumbling monuments of Islam, the noisy, stinking, degenerate streets of Pera, whose denizens clung desperately to scraps of wreckage so rotten they turned to dust almost at once. Italy herself was reviving, as she always revived! She was a new, flourishing nation, ecstatically welcoming, as perhaps nowhere else, the Age of the Machine! Her greatest hero was her finest symbol: the poet/aviator d’Annunzio! Here was a figure one could unconditionally admire. Magnificent in his manly dignity he showed the Bolshevik demagogues up for the petty, unwholesome creatures they were. D’Annunzio had taken up the sword in his nation’s cause. He had refused to allow the Mapmakers and financiers their shallow compromises. Personally, he had marched at the head of his soldiers into Fiume, claiming the city in the name of Italy. The city was Italy’s by every honourable right; it had been promised her, as Constantinople had been promised to the Tsar. Oh, for another ten d’Annunzios to take the conquered cities, the betrayed cities, the noble, forgotten cities of the world and give them back to Christ!

  Doctor Castaggagli talked a great deal of d’Annunzio, whom he admired, and it was the inspiration I needed at that moment. ‘He epitomises the new Renaissance. He is a man of science, yet a great poet; a nobleman who embraces the future. He is a man of action.’

  Here was someone with whom I could thoroughly identify. I saw much of myself in d’Annunzio. One day I intended to meet him. Together we could do so much. As the simple country doctor said, there was a Renaissance about to dawn all over the West. Greece was flourishing. France was restoring herself. England was extending the Reign of Law. And Germany, too, must soon recover from the trauma of defeat, putting an end to the sickness of socialism which currently infected her wounded body politic. America was resting, yet she would rally, I knew. A great brotherhood of Christian nations would emerge, united in its common purpose, to drive the Bolshevik wolf to its death and send the Islamic jackal scurrying into the desert from whence it had come. A little drunk on the rough young wine, I spoke of these dreams to my Italian friend. He toasted me enthusiastically and spoke of his country’s renewed friendship with mine (which he thought was England). He had a dream: the future would show us a world balanced between two great Empires, the British and the Roman, each mutually admiring, each complementary, each with its own distinct character.

  ‘It will exemplify the Renaissance ideal,’ he told me. ‘The ideal of Harmony and Moderation. Science will flourish in all forms, but it will be humane, tempered by the wisdom of the Church.’

  As if to confirm this statement, there came a high-pitched drone from above. The sun was setting bloody and huge behind Otranto’s castle, and out of it flew the distinctive silhouette of an SVA5 biplane. It lifted its nose above the fortress battlements and then, turning lazily to circle the red tiles of the old town, began to bank down towards a dark green line which
was the sea. It was seemingly swallowed back into a magical realm where the ordinary rules of nature did not apply, flying as easily through water as it had through air. Then it disappeared.

  Drunkenly, the doctor and I applauded it. We toasted d’Annunzio once more. We toasted Otranto. After some debate, we rose to our feet and toasted the Pope.

  Later it occurred to me the plane was probably a Customs spotter, hunting out illegal shipping. I wondered if it had seen Captain Kazakian’s steam launch off the nearby coast and was searching for smugglers or secret immigrants. As soon as we could we should be on our way to Rome. (I learned soon afterwards I had been far luckier than I realised. Italian coastal patrols had been doubled in recent months. There was an influx of stateless refugees desperately fleeing the ruined countries of Eastern Europe and Asia Minor.)

  That night I told Esmé we were going to Rome, to the seat of her religion, to a city older than Byzantium. The wholesome food and the innkeeper’s wife’s loving attention had restored her considerably. My news made her almost gay. She began to apologise for her behaviour. I told her how I understood. It is a terrible thing to be torn up by the roots, even if those roots are buried in poisoned soil.

  Soon afterwards we took the train to Rome. A little group of our Otranto friends saw us on our way. The journey proved extremely comfortable, if mainly dull. It was good, however, to know the luxury of true first-class travel again. The seats and the general appearance of the train impressed Esmé. She grew animated; her wonderful, girlish self; her eyes as bright as ever by the time our final train pulled in to great Central Station.

  It was Sunday, July 4th 1920. Esmé and I had arrived at last in Rome, that city of lush gardens and timeworn stone; that city of the automobile where every second citizen seemed a priest or a policeman and where, consequently, Church and State were neither remote nor frightening institutions but familiar, ordinary and reassuring. A helpful cab driver recommended the Hotel Ambrosiana at 14, Vicolo dei Serpenti. We took a suite there. Warm sunlight poured through the French doors leading to our own little balcony. Esmé danced with pleasure. She was rapidly putting even a hint of her old terrors behind her, becoming ebullient, eager to go onto the streets, to visit the cafés, the shops. ‘And there must be circuses,’ she said, ‘I’ve heard of them. Cabarets, too. And the cinema, of course!’

  It was a wonderful new world. It smelled free in a way Galata never had. Esmé marvelled at the straightness of the streets, their cleanliness, the relative absence of dogs and beggars. This, she said, was very much as she had thought of Heaven, when she was younger. And she had identified Rome, of course, with Heaven.

  I asked her what she wanted to do most urgently. She skipped beside me, her hand in mine, her eyes smiling up at me.

  ‘Oh, the cinema!’ she said. ‘It has to be the cinema!’

  After a light lunch at a pleasant little café near the Barberini Palace we went to look for a picture-house. We rushed straight in to the first one we found. They were showing Gli ultimi giorni di Pompeii and we were entranced, almost overwhelmed by the film’s epic reality. There could have been no better choice, no better place to watch it. Esmé hugged me and held my hand all the way through. Occasionally, in her delight, she would kiss me. I could not imagine happiness more perfect.

  My rebirth was consolidated at last.

  TEN

  THE ETERNAL CITY had seduced us both. Hand in hand we walked everywhere, entranced. Amidst the casual accumulation of three millennia, the conventional symbols of an antique greatness, her ruins, her churches and her modern monuments, Rome’s citizens conducted a routine life reminiscent of my own salad days in Odessa. Romans struck matches against Caligula’s columns and strung washing from balconies where Michelangelo or Raphael might have leaned to improve their view of St Peter’s. Motorcars, trams, buses and trains buzzed and crashed around the Colosseum and the Circus Maximus, cheerfully unimpressed by this weighty glory. The natives were if anything amused by foreign pilgrims who piously gasped at their pagan and their papal shrines. Rome herself was looking forward, was more consciously a modern city than ever before.

  In the little bars, dance halls and nightclubs around the Via Catalana we would soon find convivial company. Here intellectuals and bohemians gathered; futurists clashed swords with socialists, d’Annunzio was toasted and Giolitti, the Prime Minister, slandered. Plans were made to build a new Empire whose legions would advance by rail and in tanks, pausing to establish factories rather than forts wherever they went. Yellow sandstone and pink marble walls were covered with every persuasion of political poster, indiscriminately mixed with advertisements for sports cars, air races, cinema films; all these equally of consuming interest to the Romans. They were attracted to the romance of technology, by the thrill of the great, simple deed. They were simply entertained or irritated by the petty bickerings of corrupt liberals and apoplectic anarchists. In this tolerant humanity they were again like Odessans. They lived in warm, friendly sunshine, in their cafés; in their restaurants they ate and drank with gusto; in the streets they laughed and danced to the music of little brass bands and accordions; they even dressed with the gay flamboyance of pre-war Odessa. If they expressed admiration for Bolsheviks it was both dismissive and ironic, acknowledging the Reds as successful criminals, not with a pursing of the lips but with a sardonic laugh. Lenin was ‘that noble successor to Ivan the Terrible’ or ‘the greatest Byzantine monarch since Julian the Apostate’, while Trotski was either Joshua or Attila. Artists of Mayakovski’s bent were ‘the glorious children of Marinetti’ whose canvases were whole cities, whose materials were dynamite, gunpowder and ruptured flesh: Poets of a New Apocalypse opposed to all that was old, devoted to everything that was new, born into a world where electricity, the internal combustion engine and powered flight were commonplace, ‘to use, not to examine’.

  We had arrived on the morning of a mass march through central Rome. Traffic crawled. Men in overalls waved mysterious banners and women in red shawls shook their fists and shouted, stepping in time to the music of rough-and-ready bands which played loudly and in conflict. When I came to ring the service bell in our room I found that it was the manager’s wife who answered it. She apologised. The restaurant waiters had gone on strike and the hotel staff had joined them. She said she could bring us sandwiches and mineral water, that she was hoping to prepare a meal of some kind in the evening. She advised us, however, to look for family-owned restaurants which would still, with luck, be open. Strikes were so frequent that people took them for granted. Normally I would have been furious at the inconvenience, but I was deeply glad to be in a Western city. I found myself shrugging and smiling, whereupon she began to cackle and made several jokes in Italian which I could not follow but at which I laughed anyway.

  Thus Esmé and I spent our first day in Rome looking for somewhere to eat. That was how we discovered Via Catalana where many restaurants did, in fact, remain open. We were delighted with the novelty of everything and would probably not have noticed if we were starving. We marvelled at the sights and sounds of that civilised, ancient city; even the political rhetoric, so alarming in Russia, was here merely part of the vibrant air. Esmé breathed it in and became more wonderfully alive than ever. Rome in the summer of her most chaotic year, with workers occupying factories and ultimately d’Annunzio being expelled from Fiume, was a haven of sanity and order compared to what we had put behind us. For this was, if nothing else, the capital of a free nation. The debate was not whether one should live to see the next morning, or how one might escape the brutality of self-appointed militiamen, or what movements had arisen overnight radically to change our fate, but what kind of elected government could best rule. The old artistic and intellectual vitality of St Petersburg, before Kerenski ruined everything, was here reproduced in even more vivid colours. People discussed ideas with an easy gaiety which suggested all politics was fantasy, worthless unless it was outrageous enough to entertain the population for at least one Roman evening.<
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  Esmé, when we went to bed that night, was astonishingly passionate, making sexual demands on me which I found at first surprising, for I had no idea she harboured such secret desires. Nonetheless I flung myself into this new experience with a will and all but exhausted our remaining cocaine in the process. Next morning, aching but utterly relaxed, having slept hardly at all, I told her we would start having to make friends rapidly, if I was to discover fresh supplies of our drug. She pinched my cheeks and told me that I was too prone to ‘stewing’: everything was bound to turn out for the best. She lived for the moment, my Esmé. She was the eternal present and that was possibly the reason I loved her so much.