The Vengeance of Rome (9 page)

‘But surely,' I insisted, ‘there is an ideological struggle? You can't believe that everything reduces to bestialism?'

She shrugged at this and laughed into the air. She gestured with her cigarette. ‘I would like to think that it didn't, Prince Max, but I suspect that I see only the truth. Not palatable, I suppose, to you dreamers.'

‘Quite right. I am inspired by altruism and idealism. They mean more than meat and drink to me. The brute motives you describe are as far from mine as can possibly be.'

She seemed anxious to change the subject, perhaps because I resisted her cynicism. ‘Which I suppose is why I like dreamers. Da Bazzanno is no more practical than you are, for all his talk of machinery and efficient violence and the rest of it. There must be a difference between the likes of you and the likes of those swaggering gangsters over there. But not quite the large difference you would prefer to believe.' And she showed hearty amusement at my chagrin. ‘Without them, dear Prince, our Duce and his ministers could not survive a day.'

‘They are the salt of the earth,' I said. ‘I have every respect for your old fighters.'

‘Just as well, for they have no respect whatsoever for you. You should be grateful for their tolerance.'

I found her cynicism a little hard to accept. I caught her watching some of the
ras
with a speculative eye and could only conclude that she felt sexually attracted to those tough pioneers of the March on Rome, Mussolini's most loyal administrators. In spite of her physical stillness, her expression was forever restless, forever bored. She seemed perpetually on the point of creating a crisis, though I never knew her to engineer anything of the kind. She was completely loyal to da Bazzanno, at least while attached to him. Her flirtations were almost always intellectual, in the nature of a specialised and abstract game. Da Bazzanno was proud of this quality in her. He would watch her from a table or two away, remarking to me on her beauty, her cool easiness, her clever manipulations.

‘We have not made love in a year,' he told me. ‘We do not need to. And we are so happy, Max. Of course, we still see other people.'

I understood perfectly. I, too, had known the joys of purely spiritual love; the case with myself and Mrs Cornelius. Though married, we had never physically consummated our union. The spiritual compact was far more satisfying. One learned to relish the subtler ecstasies of the desert life, I told him. Eventually they became preferable to all others. In the desert, ‘love' took on a more important meaning, when it truly was possible to love one's camel more than one's wife. In the desert one must frequently choose between life and death. The desert does not tolerate empty words.

Da Bazzanno blew his nose on a silk Liberty handkerchief and remarked approvingly how much harder I had become since he had last seen me in Rome. He repeated that he meant to introduce me to Mussolini as soon as
possible. ‘Italy has always honoured such men as yourself, Prince Max.' His enthusiasm rose. ‘The editor-writers, the soldier-poets and the philosopher-engineers—those who combine the talents of a man of action and a man of creative intellect. You have read Jünger, of course. It's all in
Storm of Steel
. So much better than Remarque's novel. Every great Renaissance artist was also an expert duellist. We cannot turn our backs on our violent natures. But we can control that violence and direct it. Promise me, Max, that you will come with me to Rome—that you will throw in your destiny with ours—that you will become an Italian! A modern Italian!'

I restrained myself, merely smiling and saying that I was seriously considering the idea.

‘We take off for Venice in two days' time.' He refilled my champagne glass for me. ‘You will love Venice. And then—to Rome! What do you say?'

When I hesitated, anxious not to seem too eager now that my great dream was so close to realisation, he became apologetic. ‘My dear fellow! How insensitive of me. You are afraid that this diversion will interrupt your career as an actor. You must have many contracts and obligations!'

I admitted that I had already given a considerable amount of thought to the prospect of serving Il Duce or resuming my Hollywood career. My agents, I assured him, were instructed to accept no further offers for the time being. Fiorello reached across the table and put his huge hand on mine. ‘Your first duty is to yourself, Maxim. To your art. You must not let my enthusiasm, our needs, lead you off your chosen path. But as one artist to another, I must assure you that Mussolini is the true medium of our ambitions!'

This phrase struck an emotional chord in me. I had tried so hard to present a measured manner, but my voice shook a little as I told my friend that my duty was rapidly becoming crystal clear. He had convinced me. I was now prepared to refuse all other temptations, give up previous ambitions and accompany him to Rome, to offer my talents in the service of his master.

‘I believe,' I murmured sincerely, ‘that I am about to come face to face with my destiny.'

I was close to tears. At last I had found my Tsar.

I was going home.

I had been sleeping and came awake suddenly with no notion of the time. I was alone. For some reason I experienced a rush of terror and then opened my eyes to see that a steward had brought me some tea. He seemed amused. My hand trembled badly as I accepted the glass. He told me that Signorina Butter and Doctor da Bazzanno requested urgently that I join them in the observation cabin.

Still conditioned to crisis, I quickly washed and dressed. I hurried from my quarters, along the vibrating metal passage to the cabin where my friends were already seated staring out of the wide window at the approaching horizon.

‘You seemed to need the rest,' said Maddy Butter with a smile. Only then did I realise it was not morning but late evening. We were nearing our destination. That afternoon, while airborne, I had entertained Miss Butter in my quarters and then, evidently, fallen fast asleep.

‘I didn't want you to miss this.' Da Bazzanno was alive with warm, proprietorial pride. ‘It is, after all, the birthplace of my ancestors!'

I took my seat beside him. The plane suddenly banked, levelling out close to the water, and as the horizon came up again I understood why da Bazzanno had wakened me so insistently.

Most of us see pictures of them from childhood and in some sense know what to expect, yet all the wonders of the world, the Pyramids or Niagara Falls or any of the others, have this in common: we are forever prepared for them and yet never quite ready for their actuality. The actuality is always breathtaking, never disappointing, always better than any representation we have seen. The desert in that Lawrence film was a tawdry backdrop in comparison to the original. The Grand Canyon in
Cinerama
is still merely a cheap illusion. The reality is too vivid ever to become truly familiar.

And so it was, of course, with Venice. Her sky was alive with gold and rose. Her olive cupolas were half immersed in a ruby-coloured aura. Smouldering bronze, silver stone, emerald tiles, a thousand shades of terracotta, canals like mercury, woven into one great carpet of colour whose tones faded or deepened with the setting of the sun. With her vast variety of domes and towers, curves and angles, she surely existed in more than a mere four dimensions.

Da Bazzanno chuckled at my astonishment. Venice's confident beauty contradicted any conventional understanding of space, just as she revealed whole varieties of tints and washes which, I could swear, I have never seen since. As her colours darkened, her lights made little pools of shivering copper and warm saffron refracted in water that diffused and enriched her so that the outlines of her buildings merged with sky and water and made it impossible to know where the reality ended and the mirage began. I could easily believe the whole vast scene to be illusion. I understood how she had resisted her would-be conquerors for so many centuries.

Again
La Farfalla Nera
banked steeply, lending that fabulous city a further crazy unreality. We swept towards the vivid tapestry as if to be absorbed by it. We banked again, making a pass at the water as we prepared to put down. I heard a sudden loud bang, felt a series of sharp shudders, then a sense of bouncing gently forward until at last we settled. Da Bazzanno's next remark was lost under a massive roar from the engines steadying the ship as she came about. She prepared to taxi towards the dark outlines of churches, storehouses, palaces, merchants' mansions, banks and museums built with that same enchanting combination of knowing magnificence and unrivalled, artless beauty. Even Odessa in her Golden Age could not begin to match the brutal and subtle glamour of that ethereal Queen of Ports whose influence once stretched across the globe, whose style has so frequently been imitated and never successfully equalled, even by Hollywood. Venice's beauty set the standard by which all watery cities, be they Stockholm, Rovaniemi, Amsterdam or Bangkok, measure themselves.

‘I'll send my orderly to the harbourmaster with a note,' Fiorello told me. ‘They'll come and collect us in a decent boat. We shall be staying at my family home near La Fenice. I apologise in advance for the building's condition. I was only recently able to reclaim it from the people who had occupied it since we lost it in 1797. Their taste was typically bourgeois. I'm having the whole place redecorated.'

I remarked that he had reached quite a height. Ten years ago, as an impoverished artist, he had only dreamed of the world he was now helping to create.

‘It's crazy, isn't it?' My observation seemed to sober him. ‘Yet isn't there an emptiness about it? Doesn't it feel to you, my dear Max, as if it could fade away tomorrow, like fairy gold?
This
is our time, Max. I doubt we'll have another. We must enjoy it to the full. When we wake up, we could be rotting in some prison or, worse, discover our real selves to be nothing but bank clerks and minor civil servants with cheap ambitions!'

I was a little surprised by his change of mood. Only a day or so earlier he had been describing the triumph of a New Rome which would rule the world for millennia. I said that I thought he was being both too self-deprecating and too pessimistic. He received only what he had honestly earned. ‘What you starved for. What you worked for. These are the rewards of the hard, dangerous, hungry years. Your Duce knows what you are worth.'

He leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek. ‘Well, let us hope you are right. Meanwhile, I suggest you take my advice anyway. After all, what can you lose if I'm wrong? Life should always be relished by the moment. Death takes everything
but
that moment from us. Everything.'

Miranda Butter was much impressed by this profoundly Latin attitude which to me seemed to carry a certain cargo of self-pity, so unlike our own Slavic soul-searching. Slavic angst contains an intellectual element lacking in the Italian's fiery despair.

‘But death,' I said, ‘also presents us with that moment.'

My lovely companion gasped and placed her hand on mine. Her eyes were hot with tears. ‘That's so true.'

Da Bazzanno shrugged and called for more cognac. His normally droll face was suffused with emotion. He now resembled a pantomime horse playing Ibsen. In silence he grew absorbed in the scene beyond the window.

‘What does Venice mean to you, Prince Max?' Maddy still habitually used my formal title in public. ‘Do you, too, have family here?'

I shook my head. ‘Venice means betrayal. Had she not withdrawn her fleet in 1453, Constantinople would not have fallen to the Turk. Yet now she redeems herself. Now she remains one of the few unfallen bastions of Christendom.' I looked across the black, jewelled waters to where the lights of gondolas and fishing boats came and went against the misty outlines of the quayside buildings, the queerly angled mooring posts. ‘She is a marriage of Western and Eastern civilisation. I long to know her better.'

Miss Butter spoke softly. ‘We'll explore her together, shall we? But you must remain my spiritual guide and my teacher. I'm so ignorant of European history.'

‘Unfortunately for my family,' I told her, ‘we are almost nothing but
history.' My smile was self-mocking. ‘And we are not known for our lack of spirituality, either. We are Russians.'

Da Bazzanno, pulling himself out of his mood, laughed suddenly, displaying his huge, yellow teeth. ‘We want as little history in Italy as possible. Until now Italy too has been nothing but history. Picturesque ruins, memories of former glory. We have lived off tourism and tagliatelle for centuries. The new Italy has a place only for the future—the history we are making today!'

We drank to the future in champagne. We drank to the city, to the nation, to the leader. We drank to the fulfilment of our dreams. Our faith was in a fascism as yet untarnished by the actions of its less disciplined adherents. Real, idealistic Fascists, like da Bazzanno, loathed everything that their movement became; a party divided by crude rivalries and guided by orthodoxy which Mussolini himself always sought to discourage.

But then, in our happy innocence, we drank to our Golden Age.

A little later a motor launch, carrying a small Blackshirt guard of honour and the deputy mayor, drew alongside. Signora Sarfatti had joined us. She sat across from me. From time to time she offered me a friendly wink. She was completely at ease and exuded authority. We climbed into the launch. I felt uncomfortable, sitting, with my precious luggage, between two stern foot soldiers of the new Italy, but they were eager to oblige us in every way. Within minutes we reached the quay and the Blackshirts helped us disem-bark, carrying our bags to a waiting cart which they proceeded to steer at a trot, with loud whistles of warning, through San Marco's gathering crowds.

To my still befuddled mind we were shadows, insubstantial and colourful, perhaps, but nonetheless still merely actors in some extravagant movie. My sense of unreality was increased by the expressions on various faces around me. The vibrant Venetian air heightened the contrasts. Grotesque, immobile, animated or familiar, every face bore a certain theatrical cast. People's clothes, though frequently of modish design, had the quality of stage costumes. The buildings, canals and alleys continued my impression of an enduring artificiality. Even the voices of organ-grinders, fiddlers, jumping-jack sellers, the hawkers of tin toys, cheap scarves and whole ensembles of masks, felt as if they were orchestrated for the stage. We crossed a couple of small, dramatically arching bridges, passed down a zigzag of twittens, stumbled for a while on a cobbled path running beside a narrow canal over which gaudy washing hung like welcoming flags. At last we entered a small dead-end square smelling strongly of cat urine. Here the cart was brought to an abrupt stop and the
fascisti
saluted. Da Bazzanno returned their salute,
took a ring of rattling metal from his pocket and inserted a large brass key into the lock of a rather scruffy-looking door made from ancient, iron-bound wood. Light spilled suddenly into the little square and a shrill voice cackled in happy surprise from within. ‘
Fiorello! Fiorello! Mio figlio!
'