I asked if it was impolitic to know the reason for her interest. She offered me that sudden, charming grin. ‘A little!’ She was in far better spirits than I had ever seen her.
Before she left, Signora Sarfatti paused at the door. ‘You could really build those huge tanks, could you, Mr Peters?’
I told her that I was first and foremost a practical engineer.
‘And you’d build them for Italy?’
I assured her it was my one ambition. My whole purpose in being here was to join in the great social experiment revivifying Italy and bringing hope to the world.
She seemed amused, her eyes slitting a little. Maddy moved uneasily, her silk agitated, almost angry.
‘If Il Duce called you to work for him could you, as an American, do so with all your being?’
‘I am a Fascist first,’ I said, ‘and an American second.’
* * * *
ELEVEN
My first meeting with Il Duce was on 25 December 1930, Christmas Day. Maddy and I had been invited by the Grishams to join them for ‘a real American Christmas’. We arrived on Christmas Eve at their huge apartment off the Via Puccini where they had installed a good-sized fir tree and decorated it in a style I had not seen for years. I was almost in tears as I stared at the copper and silver decorations, the flickering candles, the red and green tinsel.
Ethel Grisham patted my arm in sympathy. ‘We miss Christmas most, don’t we? Billy got us the decorations in Nuremberg when he was there last month. And,’ she dropped her voice, ‘you should see what he found for the kids. He says it’s like Fort Santa, that town. The capital of Christmas.’ A short, pretty woman with strawberry-blonde hair and a matronly manner which made her popular with almost everyone in Rome, Ethel had little interest in her husband’s sphere. She worked for the Red Cross and other international charities as a fund-raiser. One of those domesticated women I have often dreamed of marrying. In the end, they do not seem to be my type, though admirable and attractive in every way.
She spoke enthusiastically of Signora Sarfatti as an indefatigable holder of what she called ‘The Women’s Banner’ and never deaf to any American in need. Billy admitted that she was one of the few interesting Italian women in Rome and extremely well educated. Her pleasure in modern art, for instance, was absolutely genuine and extremely sophisticated. She knew every living painter of any importance.
Over drinks the Grishams asked how we had met. We told them. I said how much I had admired da Bazzanno’s aeroplane. ‘Isn’t it a shame about that,’ said Ethel Grisham.
I was mystified. Billy explained how the plane had made a forced landing on Lake Lucerne. It still had fuel, needed only minor repairs, but its pilot, da Bazzanno, had disappeared. So that was why we had not seen our friend recently. I said I was surprised I had read nothing about it in the newspapers or heard anything on the radio. Billy pursed his lips at this. He reminded me that not everything which went on in Italy was reported.
I gathered that da Bazzanno had been involved in some business of state and that was the reason for the silence. Maddy Butter was shocked. She continued to ask questions which poor Billy struggled to answer. The massive American was as baffled as anyone. In a characteristic gesture of embarrassment, he pushed his fair hair from his face and fiddled with his sandy moustache. I had learned to read him. When these gestures became frequent, as now, he had something on his mind he would rather not discuss. I did not entirely believe him when he promised to let us know anything he heard. Now I had two missing aviators to consider. Perhaps all of us who have grown up in the age of flight have had such experiences. They no doubt become increasingly commonplace as aviators are replaced by ‘flight crew’. But in those days such occurrences were rare. To lose two friends to flight in peacetime was something of a tragedy. My hosts had no particular interest in pursuing the subject. In order not to spoil the occasion I did my best to put da Bazzanno’s fate from my mind.
A gourmet cook who had trained in Paris and Boston, Grisham was determined to prepare for us a traditional American meal, and although their cook helped him, he was in complete charge of the kitchen. As our host wielded his spoons and pans, we played games with the boys, admiring their new sets of soldiers, their wooden stallions and glittering tin swords, all of the finest workmanship and impossible to find in Italy. Then at last the Christmas bird was brought out by Grisham wearing a huge red cap and a cotton wool beard, singing some appropriate ditty. The huge, glistening golden turkey, surrounded by chipolatas (as a nod to the Italians) and smelling of heaven, came floating into the room like the fatted calf itself.
I was reminded of a scene from one of those magnificent Italian films set in the Renaissance, a mixture of masque and feast then delighting the public. Behind Billy came the cook and the maid with bowls of squash and casseroles and potatoes and beans. Assembling eagerly at the table, we applauded the traditional placing of the bird on the waiting trivet. The whole room was alive with dancing candlelight, rich, exotic smells of the food, the happy sound of children, glittering decorations and the excited talk of adults.
‘Merry Christmas!’ cries Pa Grisham, his huge hands plucking up the silver carving set with all the delicacy of a matador. ‘Merry Christmas! Ho, ho, ho!’And then the first, magnificent slice is carved and laid with easy ceremony upon the waiting plate. Intense, wide-eyed, wide-mouthed, the boys bend eagerly to study the distribution of the meat. Vegetables are passed with a sense of joyous urgency over which Ma Grisham, content in her sense of the rightness of things, presides, directing a little here, helping a little there, so that eventually all plates are heaped and now we are to bow our heads in a simple grace before pouring the gravy and spooning the cranberries, picking up the hot rolls with wincing fingertips and at last addressing the feast with knife and fork in hand.
It was a scene from one of the happiest Hollywood films, when directors were not ashamed to show human beings enjoying themselves in wholesome, simple ways. I only regretted that Esmé was not here with me, and perhaps my mother. How Esmé would have loved it all. True, my mother might have disapproved a little. Our own Christmas fare had rarely been so plentiful or rich. Easter, of course, was our big feast. I still remembered my mother’s face looking after me as I took the train to Odessa, never to return. She had died, I was told, in the famines which followed the Civil War. At least she was spared the Bolshevik conquest. As for the Auschwitz story, it was obviously nothing but lies meant to drag me into the Red net. My mother was everything to me. My only reality. Why would I turn my back on her?
Afterwards, when we had all pulled crackers and donned fancy hats and paper masks, we were served with our choice of plum puddings or hot coddlings, mince pies or pumpkin tart. The boys went outside into the courtyard, busy with their new bicycles, their airguns and their Elastolin infantry. Billy wound up the gramophone and played us carols, traditional songs and the latest numbers from Broadway and the talkies. He bought his records at enormous expense, he said, in a shop off the Via Napoleon III. All the Americans and English people went there. One of the new numbers was ‘The Singing Buckaroo’, from the film of the same name. ’You have your imitators now, Max,’ said Ethel. ‘You should be flattered.’ In a way I was, but it is depressing to see one’s best work badly imitated and the imitation come to represent the original. One is subjected to ignorant condescension by the young who know only those who stole from you. We live in a world where thieves are rewarded as a matter of course and honest men are degraded and mocked.
At about eight o’clock, as we danced to the rhythms of the latest orchestras, the telephone rang. Ethel Grisham cried, ‘Oh, no! Not the paper!’ and Billy went grimly to the hall where he answered the instrument. We heard only a few words, which offered no clue to the conversation, and then Billy was back, grinning in a rather mysterious way and frowning at the same time. ‘It’s for you, Max,’ he said. ‘A woman. She preferred not to give me her name. She said it was very urgent. Would you mind speaking to her?’ And
he led me back to the telephone, leaving directly I had picked it up.
I thought it would be da Bazzanno’s mistress. I had been reminded of her by my friend’s disappearance and for some reason had expected her to contact me. But it was not Laura. The woman was Margherita Sarfatti. I was sure Billy had recognised her distinctive English. Rapidly and apologetically she asked me if I could be ready to see her in about two hours. I hesitated. She was insistent. ‘This is a matter of considerable importance,’ she said, ‘and I suspect you will find it in your interest.’ Enraptured by the glow of this American Christmas, I remained reluctant. ‘Mr Peters,’ she said at last, ‘I have to tell you that I speak on a matter of state. I am permitted to say no more.’
Of course I could only agree to her request. She informed me that a car would call for me at ten o’clock. It might be wise to wear a topcoat and some gloves, since it was cool tonight. She would be obliged if I said as little as I could to my host and hostess. I told her I had no problems with discretion.
In truth I had little to report. My eager friends awaited an announcement. I shrugged as I returned to them. ‘I am supposed to wear an overcoat,’ I told them. ‘It is a cool night. A car’s coming at ten. I can tell you nothing else.’
They were all solicitude. I was prepared against the winter night. Outer clothing was made ready for me. The children were sent to bed but we found it rather hard to get back into the Christmas swing. Maddy contented herself with a whispered ‘Be careful’, and it was clear Billy had already told her the caller’s identity. Our small talk was strained and it was a relief when the time came for me to leave. We watched through the curtains. Eventually a midnight-blue Mercedes pulled up in our courtyard below and waited, its engine thumping. I kissed Maddy goodbye, shook hands with my friends and ran downstairs. My borrowed overcoat, too small for Grisham, caught at my heels as I went downstairs. He called it his ‘Bavarian Raglan’, bought in a fit of enthusiasm without trying it on in Munich, in dark green wool with matching Tyrolean hat. The gloves, too, were a little large but I think I looked dignified enough for whatever it was I was supposed to do, in spite of Maddy’s observation. She said the gloves made me look like Mickey Mouse disguised as a human.
When I arrived in the chilly courtyard I knew I had been well advised. Though clear, the night was very cold. His breath boiling, the chauffeur sprang from his cab and opened the door for me, offering me the Fascist salute, to which I replied in kind. A very comforting sensation attends this type of acceptance and respect. I have known it several times in my career. I miss it so much these days.
Major Nye agrees with me that standards are down everywhere. He believes it began when he was a young officer and ladies started smoking in public. He could be right. Small things reflect the larger issues, after all. I found Mrs Cornelius’s smoking increasingly distressing, but Major Nye says that most human beings prefer familiarity to anything else. If a custom becomes familiar enough, no matter how disgusting it was once found, people will defend it and preserve it as if it were a cause. I agree. A habit is not a principle, I say. You will not hear that distinction from these fools. They believe that parroting a popular prejudice makes them philosophers.
People vote for the man who offers them what is most familiar. That’s why they voted for Hitler. Not for his policies but for his promise to make everything the same as before. Major Nye says: ‘This is something we all conspired in. We must all bear a degree of shame.’
‘Shame?’ I ask. ‘Why should I feel ashamed?’ I was one of those trying to do something about the situation. Say what you will of Benito Mussolini’s later excesses, he saw the world’s problems and he came up with a solution. He was not corrupt. He was careless of money. I can vouch for that. He never had any use for it. He understood the responsibilities of power and was able to bear them more stoically and capably than anyone alive!
I had taken the trouble to fortify myself with some of Billy Grisham’s fine brandy, some excellent wine and a sniff or two of the first-rate cocaine I had obtained from Margherita Sarfatti.
The car took me through the better class suburbs, through silent, tree-lined prospects and well-lit avenues, concourses deserted save for the ever-vigilant police and the occasional car like our own doubtless speeding on special business in a capital which only appeared to sleep. I knew from the newspaper articles how Il Duce managed to keep an eye on every detail of the state’s maintenance. Floodlights picked out ancient monuments and statues, huge billboards of Il Duce looking stern and decisive and bearing the simple slogan ‘Mussolini Is Always Right’. Whoever it was designed the sets for that multimillion-pound essay into communist propaganda 1984 stole every one of their ideas for Big Brother from Mussolini, without acknowledgement, of course, as they so frequently steal from me. All the best ideas were decades old! Mrs Cornelius says I should be flattered.
When Mrs Cornelius became ill I tried to get her to the hospital, but she would not go. She said anyone who went into St Charles never came out alive. I found a doctor for her and made her as comfortable as I could, then I telephoned her son. I had the shop to run. He was very good and went round right away. He was with her, at least, when she died. He brought me some papers, some photographs, but I suspect he kept certain things for himself. I know his brother, the antique dealer, has his eye on my pistols but I intend to be buried with those guns rather than let him have them. Should Mrs Cornelius have kept them in trust for so long? They were given to me by a fellow Cossack, and they are my birthright. They are all I have left.
After taking what seemed a circuitous route, the car at last turned into a long, white avenue, lined with carefully groomed poplars and cedars standing dark against the cold, sharp sky. Most of the houses had guards. They seemed to be deserted. Their occupants had gone away for the holidays, but one house, standing back from the road in its own considerable grounds, had a few lights shining. The car entered a driveway. It paused at a pair of elaborately ornamental iron gates. Passing through a cordon of dogs and armed guards we reached another almost identical set of gates. We endured a similar procedure. Hard eyes looked me over carefully before allowing us to go through. I was mystified and not a little nervous. Did this have something to do with da Bazzanno? Was it an elaborate joke? Had Signora Sarfatti tricked me for some horrible purpose of her own? Or had she struck a deal with the Cheka? Was Brodmann involved? Were they deceiving me as El Glaoui had deceived me by making me walk into my own prison?
I had been a fool to go so trustingly into the car. Too late now to reconsider. I looked back at the guards and the gates. It began to dawn on me that this was to be no ordinary meeting with Signora Sarfatti. Perhaps she had not lied. Could I be on a genuine errand of state?
The drive curved, flanked by tall hedges, and for a second, in the yellow lights of the car, I had the impression of water, of mist and of shadowy figures. Then the headlamps were turned off. The chauffeur got down from his wheel and opened the door for me. I stepped out. A moment later, behind me, the car drove away. I was alone, walking down an avenue of poplars. I was walking, though I did not know it then, towards my destiny.
Once or twice, in my overlong coat, I tripped a little. I admit I was flustered. My heart began to pound. My hands sweated. Where was Signora Sarfatti? Who were the figures I could just make out ahead of me? They were obscured by the heavy mist rising from the waters of what I took to be an ornamental lake. There were three of them, perhaps four, their bodies swathed in scarves and heavy coats, their lapels turned up so that it was impossible to distinguish faces. My next thought was that maybe through his mistress da Bazzanno had arranged a secret meeting. Neither outline reminded me of my friend. Another fear: I had offended the Mafia. But the Mafia in Italy was no longer a power. Mussolini had seen to that. Besides, I had no reason to distrust Signora Sarfatti. Wasn’t she a supporter of mine?
My feet left the gravel and sank into soft grass. I walked with some difficulty towards the waiting figures. Increasingly, the scene fe
lt dreamlike. Then I realised that some of the figures I saw were not human at all. They were statues, pale ghosts in the pale mist. Though they scarcely moved as I approached, the living figures were darker. One of them was a woman. The other was a burly man a little below average height. Without knowing why I began to tremble.
Now I had almost reached the marble bench beside the lake where they stood waiting. Both were smoking cigarettes. The smell of their Turkish tobacco swamped my senses. I felt nausea. Their faces could not be seen. Of course I already knew who they were. I heard Margherita murmur something to her companion, throw down her cigarette and stamp it out with her high heel. He, too, dropped and extinguished his cigarette, coughing slightly and raising his scarf against the cold air. I think Margherita introduced me. I do not remember. Bile rose in my throat. I heard her utter the name of Italy’s dictator. I heard his familiar voice answer. Yet I was close to vomiting. As if I faced an enemy rather than my greatest hero. My legs shook. My mouth was dry. I knew all the symptoms of a familiar terror. But then his warm, strong hand was in mine, and I was safe.