The Vengeance of Rome (6 page)

Rose von Bek, admittedly, had prepared me for some of the ideas I now encountered, but it was elixir to my soul to hear all the details of what Mussolini was doing for Italy. The communists were ruining Germany, civil war in France was almost inevitable, republicanism was destroying Spain, the union-bankrupted British were effectively a spent force, American neutralism was fuelled by their vast domestic problems, and Stalin threatened the very foundations of Christendom. The old political structures were proving useless in the modern world; party divisions were defeating the very democracy they were supposed to defend, creating only misery and uncertainty. The majority of people were not anyway natural democrats. Careless liberalism was the enemy of everyone, even those it pretended to represent.

I began to spend much of my time with a charming young Spanish officer. Lieutenant Jaime Pujol shared many of my frustrations and much of my idealism. He was a gentle soul forever concerned about the pain of the world. How could we eradicate it? ‘It is not right that people live in uncertainty and terror. Society has failed them. Even the Church is failing them. The left offered them justice and failed to provide it. The right offers stability but at too high a price. Where can they turn? Fear is becoming a way of life in far too many parts of the world, especially in Europe. The
power has been torn from the hands of the men of conscience. Gangsters rule everywhere—in Russia, in Germany, in America, and increasingly in Spain. Their “revolutions” are meaningless, self-serving and cruel. They have no religion or morality. But we cannot merely replace one tyranny with another. What's the answer, my dear Señor Gallibasta? Not all strong leaders are gangsters, surely?'

He mourned both the fall of the old politicians and the fashion among Europe's crowned heads for abdication. ‘They are seized with some kind of collective guilt. They are frightened by what happened to their Tsar. They believe the process towards republicanism is inevitable. Mussolini has proven that idea a lie, yet still they continue as if they are responding to the will of the people rather than the will of a tiny minority of leftist zealots. Believe me, Señor Gallibasta, I have every sympathy with their anger and share their understanding of the world's injustices, but these imbalances must be addressed by men of conscience, not by the politics of envy. How has such a frightful situation come about?'

I was no better equipped than my friend to answer this increasingly familiar question and, like him, could only point to Mussolini. ‘The will of a single individual,' I said, ‘is what it takes—if his will represents also the will of the nation. Really, it's all fascism offers—security through unity. But it takes a great man to combine the best ideas from a collection of isms, shape them into a coherent whole and create unity. Unity must be more important than our differences. Unity must be desired by the common will. Unity cannot be imposed from above. Only a very great man can express the public will in a broad, far-ranging programme of dramatic, even revolutionary ideas. Mussolini offers our antidote to the lure of Bolshevism. But believe me, Mussolini is modern Italy as Hindenburg can never be modern Germany. Old Hindenburg lacks the common touch. Rhetoric is simply not enough. We need action. Even the best-intentioned professional politicians and soldiers are divorced from those they represent. Today's leaders have to be men of the people who can reach across divisions and shake hands with an experienced ruling class, headed by a modern, socially concerned monarch, and arrive at a compromise which satisfies and benefits all. Italy unites her people in a common purpose to establish the rule of law and appeal to the selfless sense of community which lies within us. And the Church must help.'

Pujol's passionate idealism might seem strange to the contemporary listener, but in those days we were desperately looking for certainties in a dangerously uncertain world. Fascism offered those certainties. The pure form was a response to the soul's yearning and to honest, human needs.

‘To fight Stalin,' I suggested, ‘we need a champion of the same metal. And with one exception we have only pygmies. The planet is crying out for a paladin, for some new Charlemagne, to drag Christendom from the Dark Ages. Or are we too far degenerated into chaos to be rescued?'

Lieutenant Pujol passionately hoped that this was not the case. It was the duty of men of conscience to discover such leaders and give them the power they needed to restore a new world order.

We talked often of such matters. Many of the Italians in Majorca seemed reluctant to discuss the ideas and ideals of Fascism, except in a very general way. These were the individuals burdened with the task of making the national dream a continuing reality. They were sober about the practicalities of their task. They admitted, however, that Mussolini was a singular force, the driving inspiration behind their movement. Most of the men we met were regional
ras
, or governors, without much direct contact with Rome and unrepresentative of the intellectual wing of their party. They were on vacation from their considerable responsibilities, so we did not press them. For a while they were here to enjoy the simple beauties of the island and escape their cares.

During that season, we made the social rounds of the various yachts. Gradually I became part of a set whose relish for politics was as considerable as its pursuit of pleasure. The nightmares of my life in the Middle East and North Africa were put behind me. My scars might never disappear, but at least my wounds were healing. The atrocities and humiliations I had suffered had tempered me in the fires of experience, given me a subtler understanding of the world and those who suffered in it. Perhaps this is how God chooses to educate those He favours?

My trials had invested me with a kind of clear-sighted innocence which some of my new friends chose to take as simple-mindedness. They did not always treat my contributions to the conversation very seriously, but I was content to be their Simplicissimus while it suited me. The ease of Majorcan life was hugely rejuvenating for one subjected to such horrors and hardships in the past couple of years. I had been forced to live an almost feral existence. Now I had rediscovered the European way of life I had lost and almost forgotten. It was a joy to experience again, although I still felt the occasional pang, missing my Esmé who, in the old days, had shared so much of my social round. To have had a sophisticated woman like Rosie von Bek at my side would have done much to make those occasions perfect.

Of course, we knew who had made money out of the War and who was still making money. We knew that the real villain was international
finance which was bent on centralising its operations in New York (or New Jerusalem as we called it), controlling a secret empire more powerful even than Stalin's, with which it had well-defined links. Alone, Mussolini was not strong enough to challenge Stalin, but if Il Duce were to gather some strong European allies to him, we knew that a pre-emptive strike on Moscow would be possible. We needed to pull society's disparate forces together and turn them into one mighty modern social machine which benefited all, not just a few rich businessmen who drained our nations of their wealth and hid it in Swiss banks. We believed education would raise the consciousness of the masses, but we had been wrong. Now people must be disciplined into putting the common interest before their own shortsighted greed.

I was to appreciate later how thoroughly Majorca helped in my restoration. I still revisit my old haunts occasionally. Mrs Cornelius takes the OAP specials to Palma Nova and sometimes I go with her. I would stay in Port d'Andratx if I could, but it is so expensive now. I am forced to rub shoulders with lager-swilling ‘tomatoes' as the locals call the English. I, of course, do everything to maintain my standards. I always wear a good linen suit and a panama. When Mrs Cornelius prefers to spend time on the beach or in the pubs, I take cultural bus trips. I called on Graves, last time I was there. I only had about an hour before the bus left Deya, which is nothing but Germans now. Apparently Graves wasn't in. I hear these days he's a slave to marijuana. This has happened to several of the intellectuals who remained. Others left for Ibiza or Formentera. But before its vulgarisation the island was to prove a benign friend to European gentle people.

During the time I was with Lieutenant Pujol, Shura came and went from the harbour. Very infrequently Shura asked me to join him on
Les Bon' Temps
and remain aboard to check periodically with the radio operator while my cousin made a visit ashore. Stavisky kept a permanent hotel suite at the Bristol and while we were in port we used it, transferring from our cabins on the yacht to the suite. We lived like kings. Because of his old wound, Shura was fond of morphine and marijuana as well as cocaine, and he was a great drinker, but I lacked his capacity. Meanwhile, and I do not remember how, I again became known by my Odessa nickname, translated into French as ‘the Colonel' or ‘the Cossack', and because this gave me a frisson of secure familiarity I did not object, even though it did not go especially well with my new
nom de guerre
. Of course, there were few who believed me a native-born son of Spain. Many accepted me for what I actually was—a Russian aristocrat preferring not to use his title and so reveal
his true ancestry. I had many reasons for keeping quiet about such things in those days. I had become used to a certain kind of anonymity.

Imagine, therefore, the considerable shock to me one morning when, having rowed myself from the yacht to the quayside, still a little bleary, I walked up the cobbled lane to the baker's for my usual cup of coffee and croissant and heard, as if from nowhere, someone shout: ‘Max! Max Pyatnitski! Still in the airship business?' I detected mockery in the tone.

Had Brodmann found me at last? Feeling sick, I turned, seeking the source of what was surely my nemesis.

There are patterns to our universe. Patterns so vast and at the same time so minuscule that we rarely detect them. They present a problem of unimaginable scale. If we could detect them they could explain the mysterious movement of all creatures across the face of the planet. I am convinced that physically or spiritually, though quite unconsciously, men and women of a particular disposition travel broadly similar routes. Those of us who move about the world and are active in its business know how coincidences occur in life far more than in fiction. Cautious, incurious people after all rarely travel. As in Malory, when one bumps into a fellow knight errant, another Seeker of the Grail, one might well greet him with joy, but with only a modicum of astonishment.

Thus on that little cobbled street in a Majorcan fishing village I found myself embracing as a brother a friend I had not seen for ten years. ‘Fiorello!'—laughing and shaking his hand as heartily as he shook mine. He was older, of course, but retained the long, comical face of a pantomime horse, his enormous lips drawn back from massive yellow teeth, his huge brown eyes sparkling with the flames of his generous, eternally ebullient soul. He still wore the wide-brimmed white hat, the lilac cape and gloves, the patent-leather shoes with their lavender spats, the perfect linen suit, a cream silk shirt and canary cravat. Flourishing his ivory-headed cane, he indicated his companions. Glancing at us with some curiosity, they remained seated demurely outside the bakery.

‘My dear fellow! I heard you became an actor and made a name for yourself in American politics? You must tell me everything!'

Remembering his manners, he turned, a graceful grotesque, to introduce us. ‘Sweet ladies! My apologies! Bazzanno is an oaf! Ladies, may I introduce my dear friend, my mentor, my inspiration, His Excellency Prince
Maxim Arturovitch Pyatnitski, late of the Imperial Russian Court, a philosopher and engineer of genius—one of the greatest Russians of modern times!'

The two beautiful women were Signora Margherita Sarfatti and Miss Miranda Butter. The first was his mistress. La Sarfatti was a brunette in her mid-forties, of aristocratic felinity and an arrogant, comradely disposition, whom I took to at once. The second woman was a young American redhead with a rather prim nose and lips who had travelled from Paris to see the new Italy with which, she said, she was in love. She loved Spain, too, she added, or at least this island. She was a journalist on the staff of the
Houston Chronicle
; she smiled a little uncertainly at me.

No stranger to genius, as I would discover, Signora Sarfatti had an air of easy power as she lazed across two rattan chairs. Keeping her cool, slitted Atlantic-green gaze on me, she listened with an amused air to the younger woman's gushing praise of the country she thought was my own. Mrs Sarfatti was delighted to make my acquaintance, she said. I removed my hat and bowed. I kissed their hands.

My old friend from Rome, Fiorello da Bazzanno, was now the editor of
Il Gruppo
art magazine, distinguished member of the Italian Academy and a leading figure in Mussolini's court. He and his friends had set off from Naples. On their way to Algiers they had developed engine trouble and put in to Majorca to make repairs. They were enjoying the pleasures of Andratx but had been gone too long already and by the following week must return to Venice where Sarfatti and da Bazzanno were to open an exhibition of new Fascist art.

‘That function is the only justification for my enormous salary, dear comrade.' He winked. ‘I am rich. But I am no longer my own man!'

‘Surely you haven't given up your painting?' I asked him.

He was, he admitted, not painting much these days.

‘I always argued how politics was the century's only valid art form and here I am proving it. It's our millennium, dear Max, the triumph of the human imagination over the mundane world! At last the illusion becomes reality! What keeps you up so late?' He assumed that I, like himself and his companions, had not yet gone to bed. When I told him the truth he was enormously amused. As we sat down, he continued to sing my praises to the ladies, telling them how I had been a hero of the Russian Civil War, a daring cavalry officer, a flyer and an inventor whose genius, had it not been for Bolshevik treachery, would have turned the tide in the Whites' favour. ‘The perfect hero of the new Renaissance!'