The Vengeance of Rome

TEN

Between wakefulness and sleeping we have most of us had the illusion of hearing voices, scraps of conversation, phrases spoken in unfamiliar tones. Sometimes we attempt to attune our minds to hear more, but we are rarely successful. We call these ‘hypnagogic hallucinations’ — the beginning of the dreams we shall later experience as we sleep.

At first they were no more than nightmares dispersing when I opened my eyes. By the time of my second visit to Rome, I was receiving the most intense and terrible visions. I took them to be a warning.

At first there was just the one dream every night: against the black morning poplars a small woman walks her poodle up the avenue. We seem to be in France. Mist rises from the river, rippling silver, reflected in her eyes and skin. She turns to me. Her hair is white, touched with the dawn’s gold. A halo. My mother? Or Esmé? I am not sure. Sometimes they are the same. With agonised sadness in her eyes she murmurs the news. ‘Beware,’ she says. ‘Your good works betray you, for Satan is already triumphant.’

That dream was merely the disturbing prologue.

Later I came to witness all she meant.

They say that I deceive myself. I would suggest we all deceive ourselves. But some fundamental truths cannot be denied. Is a vision any less authentic because it is commonplace?

Those of you who recall D. W. Griffith’s magnificent epic Intolerance, with its profoundly subtle message, will remember how the gigantic ivory elephants come to life, threatening to crush the tiny figures of the people gathered before them. My second sight of Rome awed me just as those elephants awed the Babylonians. I half expected to be crushed by all that magnificence. As in a Griffith film, one wonderful reality overlaid another, ancient and modern, giving profound meaning to everything I saw. The arrogance and cruelty of the past were contrasted with the positive aspects of the present, assuring us that progress was possible and that the noblest human aspirations would ultimately prevail.

The film tells us that we have come far but have far to go and that, it seemed to me, was the message of the new Roman architecture rising among the magnificence of the old. A contradictory message, perhaps. A complex one, certainly, which required the highest type of mind to read it. Mussolini, in those years of his greatness, had that mind. He could see the broad picture. His genius inspired others to complete the details. Of course, his compromise with the Roman Catholic Church, his passion for women and his fascination with Jews brought him to a humiliating end as Hitlers puppet. He, who had inspired the movement of world fascism, was caught cowering in a borrowed German greatcoat, slaughtered and hung upside down like meat in the Milan marketplace. Yet when I knew Il Duce, he was worshipped with an intensity most Italians reserved only for the Pope.

Like Hitler in his first years, Mussolini made women ecstatic. He would have his aides select from the letters he received and deliver a fresh female to his office every weekday afternoon. The Italian people loved him for it. His virility reflected the virility of their race. This much I already knew from common talk and ordinary observation. Certain individuals carry a kind of magnetism which makes them irresistible to the masses and which Virginia Woolf called ‘It’. She, admittedly, was referring to the pornographer and arabiste whose films are so fashionable these days.

As far as I am concerned Lady Chatterton, Odysseus, Hank Janson and The Well of Loneliness are all the same. Janson himself agreed with me. He was the only one of that crowd I knew well. I helped him with the details he needed of the Spanish Civil War. He was not present, of course, but had been forced to live in Spain when the courts found him guilty. He had nothing but contempt for the others. They had all done considerably better out of their stuff, he said, than he had from his. He had made the mistake of selling the copyrights of both the books and his identity! Others were now writing new novels using his name!

Janson was a bitter man in his last years, as were Gerhardie and Priestley. Both were deeply jealous of Kingsley Amis and his angry young Turks and hated their crudeness. I met Amis several times. The first time was in the West End when he was posing for a suit commercial (he supplemented his income with endorsements of various products, especially wines and spirits). I knew the photographer. I remember Amis made fun of my accent and would not even listen when I offered him my manuscript and a chance to collaborate. At the time his words hurt me worse than the Cossack Grishenko’s whip. From the booze on his breath, the lighting man said they were amazed that he could still stand up. That filth he wrote already weighed on his conscience. There is Welsh blood there. I was unmoved by his insult. After all, I have rubbed shoulders with some of the finest artists in the world and have been on first-name terms with the most powerful men in history. But I was depressed that a national figure should so lower himself. I have since learned that rudeness and self-involvement is characteristic of all but a few writers. They are jealous, petty, envious creatures. Their sense of their own importance is astonishing! I have known dictators with more humility.

Years earlier I had fallen in love with Rome. Now all the pleasure returned, though tinged with a little sadness as I thought of Esmé, who had betrayed me in the end. I found it hard to blame her. She had been a child. She hardly knew what she was doing. For a little while, at least, I had rescued her from the squalid life she had now, doubtless, returned to.

Signora Sarfatti had, we discovered, been wonderfully generous. She had loaned us a magical little half-timbered house in its own walled garden, off the Via Pencioni, bordering the gardens of the Villa Borghese and near the zoo. Reminiscent of the Normandy Apartments in which I’d stayed while in Hollywood, the three-roomed cottage stood in its own tiny courtyard adorned with old masonry and an erratic fountain. Twice a day the dryads and sylphs who adorned it moved into dramatic action, spouting, pouring, gushing, gurgling from almost every orifice. The cottage was decorated in a mixture of rustic and modern taste, which I found pleasing, save for some of the paintings, which were in the latest neurotic styles. The worst of them I turned to the wall before collapsing on the bed.

I had been so eager to leave that I had not given myself enough time to recover in Venice. For the first few days, I lay in the massive bed, which Maddy turned towards the balcony so that I could see into the lovely garden with its fig trees, its orange and white bougainvillea, its profusion of golds and browns in the tawny sunlight. I stared, hour after hour, into a living tapestry. From the nearby zoo came the shriek of a large bird of prey or the yawning roar of a lion. Occasionally the scene would change and become the long, dark avenue of poplars, the winter river, the woman walking her dog turning to warn me. Then began my vision of the ministry of Satan upon Earth and in Heaven and Hell. Clad in the wealth of the Fall, Satan sat upon the throne of all three Spheres. God was overthrown. The arch-fiend triumphed. The Good and the Just were singled out for special punishment. What was our crime?

What was our crime? Perhaps we indulged ourselves in too many sentimental lies. We should have been better prepared. We should have understood our predicament. Now I stand humiliated before our grinning conqueror while the cruellest, the strongest, the greediest, the most wicked are rewarded, elevated to the highest command. The rest of us, who tried to make some positive use of our lives, are forced to bow before the will of the Great Lord and are used in any way that pleases him.

I understand such tyranny. I have been its victim more than once. I live in the shadow of eternal fear. Shall I become its victim again? My vision would not leave me, night or day. My vision still comes unexpectedly without warning. I am assured that eternity would be no better. I am doomed to perpetual torment. Such is my reward, for choosing the conquered side. My mistake was to believe in Jesus Christ. The price of idealism is disappointment. The price of idealism is despair.

Unquestionably someone had attempted to poison me in Venice. But I was recovering. The doctors Maddy brought were all baffled. If I had murmured the word ‘Cheka’, no doubt they would have understood too well and never returned! My old friend Brodmann was rarely far away in those days, gloating over what he had seen in the Cossack camp. No doubt he took particular pleasure in his recollections. At times like these the pain of the whip always returned.

I had not remembered Rome as so Mediterranean a city. Gradually I grew stronger. I took short drives with the fashionably dressed Maddy in the car she had rented. American girls are always resourceful. Their culture demands they be both men and women. I relaxed as she took charge. I delighted in white terraces spilling foliage and bright blossoms down into gardens filled with trees and shrubs. I was comforted by the orderly parks and squares. Mussolini was transforming the city architecturally, and making her the hub of the new Roman Empire. He had filled her with a fresh, inner light. Even the remaining poorer quarters, with their twisting medieval streets, the churches, shops, decaying villas, apartment blocks and public buildings all crowded together, exuded an atmosphere as lively as my own Moldavanka in Odessa.

Mysteriously, although we left messages for them, our two greatest friends were not in Rome to see us. We understood that both Fiorello and Margherita were involved in important affairs of state. At such times Il Duce commanded every moment of their waking lives. As soon as I was well enough, I took Maddy to some of the wonderful haunts I had first discovered with my darling Esmé. The increasingly delicious young American was learning what she called ‘Continental ways’ with eager alacrity.

We visited the Ristorante Mendoza, where I had spent so many happy hours. Had they seen Laura Faschetti or any of the old gang? They were nervously discreet, though friendly enough. These days it was no longer fashionable to have a left-wing clientele. I did bump into a couple of my old acquaintances but was deeply disappointed. Their only interest was in mocking me or describing with some bitterness how this or that person had ‘sold out’. The failure’s whine the world over. At least Mendoza’s fried artichoke was as wonderful as always. Maddy was amazed at the variety and richness of the food. She had believed until then, she said, that all Jewish food was lox, blintzes and latkes.

What Americans call ‘Jewish’ food is actually East European. Most of it is familiar to me. But the Jews had to pretend they had invented it, just as the Greeks cannot bear the idea that their entire cuisine is Turkish. They have a saying in Albania: How do you tell the difference between Turkish cuisine and Greek? Answer: One has pork.

Believe me, this is not a palatable notion, but it is the truth. Aggressive Moslemism (and it is by nature aggressive) is something I shall resist to my dying day. My quarrel with that fool across the street is not with his choice of religion. Anyone should have a right to follow his conscience; I have never said anything else. But I hate that grinning fool’s cynical wickedness as he passes off his kebabs and shleftikos as authentic. Not only does the public think he’s Greek, they think his hideous muck is typical. Maybe I should not blame him. After all, his customers are scarcely gourmets.

Rome in those days was also full of archaeologists. Il Duce had ordered a huge programme of public works designed to resurrect the best of the past and build new monuments which would be their equal. Everywhere you went you found some pit full of babbling foreigners chipping and dusting and studying for all they were worth. Myself, I had little time for them. Their unhealthy obsession with the past showed no respect for the future.

They are all the same, these people. They are suspiciously unwholesome. They grub around in antique filth as if this will give them some insight into the aspirations and inspiration of their ancestors. Is there some profit motive I do not understand? I saw this boy, he could not have been ten. He was selling a stained-glass window in the Blenheim Arms. Only I was outraged. Mrs Cornelius said it would look nice in her front room. Where would you keep it? I asked. What would you tell the vicar? He has no doubt robbed a church. Don’t be silly, she said, that’s out of one of them big villas up Talbot Road. Drink up and be happy, Ivan. She has a tolerance for thieves. Perhaps she is right. Most of her friends and relatives are rogues of some description. Until these middle-class novelists and TV producers started moving into the area everyone else in Notting Hill lived by and from crime. Fit company, I suppose. I am a fool to notice. Every shopkeeper in Portobello Road says I should ‘allow’ for some pilfering. They expect even their staff to rob them. It’s human nature, they say, pretend you don’t notice. I suppose it is cheaper than paying higher wages or having someone keep an eye on the stock every minute of the day. Live and let live? Where would we be today if Mussolini and Hitler had taken that attitude?

Once a week for many years I would meet my old friend Major Nye in the Lyons Corner House across from Victoria Station. He had retired from the army after the war. He ran a market garden somewhere near the Kent coast. He supplemented his pension, he said, by working as a bookkeeper for a firm of solicitors in Palace Street. But he kept in touch with his army chums. Sometimes I met them. They were rather pale, scrawny old men with white moustaches and neatly cut white hair. Embarrassed to be wearing civilian suits like ill-fitting uniforms, they were forever fingering their ties and asking after one another’s well-being. Colonels and majors and occasionally captains. All in Civvy Street during the 1950s. All spluttering at the speed with which, under Attlee’s Red hit squads, the empire was disintegrating. All their lives they had served an ideal. Now they no longer had a cause. Later, Major Nye worked in Lincoln’s Inn Fields at the Sir John Soane Museum. I spent much of my time there after I first came to London. Mrs Cornelius was not yet back from the Continent. Spain was finished. That was in 1939. Major Nye joined the museum in 1959 or 1960. He was growing a little frail. He had some tummy trouble. An ulcer, he said. I sometimes think stomach ulcers were the bane of that age. Everyone had them. Americans made entire films about those who suffered them. What was it making entire nations clutch their stomachs? I understand the feeling, all too well. In my case it was not an ulcer that caused my pain. Ulcers determined the history of the entire first half of the twentieth century. Drugs will determine the second half. Capital expands all possible markets.

Lincoln’s Inn Fields, between Kingsway and Fleet Street, is one of those zones of tranquillity found everywhere in London. Such places were harder to find in Rome in the thirties. Our cottage near the Villa Borghese was a tiny paradise. That December was cool and sunny. We congratulated ourselves on our good fortune. We became reluctant to leave the confines of the little garden. Our planned expeditions were never conducted. Meanwhile our overworked hostess, Sarfatti, sent us hurried, apologetic notes. Fiorello telephoned once, sounding very weary, and said he would arrange dinner as soon as he could. We told him we were not offended.

Eventually, the round of Christmas parties began at the various embassies and press clubs. We were surprised by our popularity. When Maddy was invited she took me as her escort. I recall with nostalgic pleasure the sharp smell of the December air. Yellow light flowed from great houses. Their glowing ballrooms were filled with film stars, politicians and international personalities of all kinds. Sometimes a rumour would go round that Il Duce was planning to attend.

I never saw Il Duce at these gatherings. I got on well with the American Press Corps. They were loud and enthusiastic in their support of Mussolini and the mighty things he was doing. Mussolini had his greatest admirers in the United States and Germany. Negative remarks about him in their press were rare during the 1930s. When he despaired, when he was alone, fighting traitors in his own camp and invaders at his gates, then they turned on him. The American newspapers had celebrated his achievements in 1940. Now they gloried in publishing pictures of his dangling corpse, suspended by its ankles from a beam. They treat their movie stars and sports heroes the same. In my day Thomas P. Morgan, Alice O’Hare McCormick, Murray Butler, Billy Grisham and Alex Kirk were all ‘fans’ of Il Duce — ‘Musso’, as they called him behind his back. The Hearst press paid Margherita Sarfatti enormous prices for her articles. Hearst commissioned Mussolini himself to write for them. These newspapers often supported ‘FDR’ as the American ‘Mussolini’. They would be sorely disappointed by Roosevelt when he made his deadly pact with Red Jewry. His agents still leech the lifeblood from America.

A high point of that Christmas came when I was at last able to have a long, intelligent conversation with Mr Douglas Fairbanks and his talented wife Mary Poppins, who was grace itself, contrary to rumours. He seemed grateful for my enthusiasm. He knew my own work and was generous about it.

Billy C. Grisham, the gigantic dishevelled correspondent of the Los Angeles Times, famous for his vivid ties, a close friend of Sarfatti’s, told me the secret of her power. The good-natured American knocked back his Scotch and ice, grinning at some naive remark of mine. He mentioned casually that Sarfatti was Mussolini’s mistress, and she had been his mistress since before the March on Rome. A Jewess, she was a dedicated Fascist, the uncrowned Queen of Italy, as well as a close friend of the Italian royal family. Her power in the art world was enormous. Now I understand much more.

The house we were staying in, Grisham added, had been left to Signora Sarfatti by a certain Count Raineri Valdeschi. ‘He killed himself, old sport, for mysterious reasons. A matter of honour, they said.’ He laughed sympathetically at my surprise. He could not resist adding: ‘However, the place is much better known as the house where until recently Margherita and the Duce kept their frequent assignations. Now, of course, Mrs Musso is having something to say about that. You know she’s insisted on moving in, complete with kids, nannies, maids and mother, to the Villa Torlonia with her husband? He was happy she wanted to stay in Predappio, their home town. But what can he do? He’s just made a deal with the Church. They’re not priest lovers in Predappio. They had to baptise the First Lady by brute force. Our Duce himself broke in the door of a lavatory to pull her out and hold her down while the priest did the rest. She’s still more of your unrepentant old-fashioned freethinking socialist. No chance of a divorce there, now, and I would imagine La Marge is pretty livid. She’s running around like a headless chicken at the moment, trying to keep her influence.’

I discounted most of this. Journalists are the worst gossips in the world. They love fiction far more than they love truth. But it did explain a little better why we had so easily found entrance into Italian high society. We were receiving such wonderful treatment because everyone knew we were the guests of Italy’s uncrowned consort. I was so much closer to my hero than I had guessed! When I told her, Maddy was deeply impressed. ‘So she moved out when Rachele Mussolini moved in!’

I had no trouble being accepted, of course. Most journalists recognised me from my work in the cinema and considered me a fellow American. I was plain ‘Max Peters’ to them. Everyone knew me by that name again. I felt comfortable with it. Italians were in those days exceptionally pro-American. I benefited from their assumptions. Maddy’s whispered intelligence to those she trusted let it be known that I was ‘by birth a Russian prince’.

I could scarcely have been a more attractive proposition in Rome of the early 1930s! Wherever I went women flirted with me, usually behind Maddy’s back but sometimes openly. I was always a gentlemen where the feelings of women are concerned, but I was frequently tempted. I do not believe there were any more beautiful women in the world at that time than in Rome. The city herself instils some special beauty into those who choose to live there. In turn her inhabitants feed something back to her. A love affair flourishes between flesh and stone. Mysterious spirits come awake. New ones are born. All great cities have such periods, when work of unrepeatable genius is created. They return to sleep. Each time they wake, they resurrect the accumulated wealth of ages. This wealth informs the populace and makes its blood sing. Such is the nature of true cities. They are Man’s greatest, most complex creation.

To resist the city is to resist life, as Shakespeare’s great contemporary put it. We are the city. Those who dwelt here before us, those whose spirits still dwell here, we are the city. For time is not a wave or a line, but a field. The sins and achievements of the past are everywhere with us. Even this city, now, this alien London, which so chills my bones, which so armours herself against my embassy, which mocks me, which calls me names, which rejects my ministry, which is so arrogant she believes God alone defended her during the War, even she does not expel me. She knows how it is as natural for me to live here as it is for her to tolerate me. That is the secret of her strength. She judges nobody. She absorbs us all.

That night I went home with much to think about!

We saw a great deal of Billy Grisham and his own family. We ‘hit it off’, as he liked to say. And from being invisible, we began in the last two weeks leading to Christmas to see our landlady everywhere. Signora Sarfatti attended all the functions to which we were invited and many others besides. Suddenly she appeared in the newspaper talking to foreign dignitaries, communing with soldiers and priests as enthusiastically as she did with painters and writers. Articles by her, chiefly about modern art, appeared in the Popolo d’ Italia, and she was mostly seen in the company of Americans from the diplomatic corps or with newspaper people. One of those young diplomats became a particular chum of ours and, like the Grishams, sought out our company whenever fate brought us together. His name was Alex Kirk and he had an elegant grace that reminded me of Fred Astaire, only then beginning to emerge as America’s greatest ballet maestro. Maddy was enthusiastic about Kirk. She said he looked ‘spiffing’ in evening dress. All those young Americans abroad had taken to using English public school slang. I found it both confusing and irritating. I sometimes longed for the company of my Albanian princess, the beautiful adventuress Rose von Bek. But she was almost certainly dead. Clearly she had not managed to reach Rome in her aeroplane.

I refused to think of my Rose crashed in some sub-Saharan wilderness or arrested by the forces of the Sultan or any of the other dreadful alternatives which presented themselves. Since I could do nothing for her, nor discover from anyone I met what had happened to her, I forced myself, not without considerable pangs, to put her from my thoughts.

My plane was called The Bee, swift in pursuit of sweetness. My love was called The Rose, deliciously scented deadly confirmer of life. My city is called Der Heym. My city is called Der Heym.

I see the silver angels gathering. So few of them. They defend all that is holy. They defend the home. A red tide rises beneath a steel moon. There is no pity in the future. There is no hope in the future. There is no dignity in the future. There is no security in the future. There is nothing to eat in the future. Those liberals promised us a Golden Age and instead took away our future. Mussolini restored that future. For a while, if only in a dream, some vast cinema epic engulfed us and convinced us we had hope. We had something to do. And, for a while, it was true. We did things. We felt better. We wore uniforms. We embraced our neighbours and united in defence against the common foe which none doubted in those days to be Bolshevism. We were good people, doing good work for a more secure future in which the state would provide. We laboured towards the Golden Age. We climbed into cattle trucks still believing we were on our way to paradise. But it is not fair to blame Mussolini for the failures of his shared dream. We were too content to enjoy the euphoria while it was happening. We should have worked harder to make the dream reality. In this we were diverted, of course, by the usual enemies. In the end both Hitler and Mussolini surrounded themselves by time-serving lapdogs who did nothing but parrot their masters’ most banal utterances. I had too much dignity for that. I was diplomatic, but I was never servile.

My only worry in those days was the rate at which we were using up our supply of sneg. I needed to make contact with other connoisseurs of the coca-leaf. Discreet enquiries in my old haunts had yielded nothing so far. Cocaine in Italy was now the preserve of the privileged. But once again providence was to come to my rescue in the person of our patrona.

Having seen us at several parties where she reassured us that her cottage was ours for as long as we needed it, Signora Sarfatti telephoned us one Saturday morning. She did not wish to impose, but might she call on us that afternoon at about four? We agreed cheerfully, speculating on her reasons for visiting us. Then we wondered suddenly if La Sarfatti did not after all want to evict us. Our idyll could be reaching an end in that little house we had come to think of as our own. We spent the morning putting the pictures and sculptures back in place and generally cleaning but by five o’clock Signora Sarfatti had not turned up. By six, she telephoned to say she was on her way. By nine, bringing a vast wave of scents with her, combining the perfumes of a dozen salons, the smoke of countless saloons, the blended alcohol of several large cocktails, in a colour-fully mismatched miscellany of clothing which did nothing to hide her growing corpulence, she entered the living room and sat down at the marble coffee table. Opening her handbag, she drew out a pigskin sack. From this she took a small packet. Brandishing an elegant silver razor, she unfolded the packet and on the edge of the blade removed some white powder. This she spread on the table, chopping it expertly while we looked on in some surprise. ‘God, I need this,’ she said. ‘That’s what delayed me. Sorry. Will you sniff?’

The stuff was first rate. When I commented on the quality she beamed as if I had congratulated her on her cooking. ‘I’ll put you in touch with my little Arab,’ she said. ‘He won’t overcharge you.’

Though we had already sampled the drug together in Majorca, Maddy seemed surprised at Signora Sarfatti’s openness. I took it for granted. Our hostess knew we were worldly people like herself. Besides, she was in her own home, doubtless invulnerable to arrest or any other interference in her private pursuits. La Sarfatti was still, after all, ‘the Queen of Italy’.

My attitude had changed towards her once I knew her position in Il Duce’s court. Now it changed again as I realised she was a regular imbiber. We were all comrades of the beneficent coca-leaf. In those days such ties meant something.

For a while La Sarfatti looked around abstractedly, as if Maddy, myself, even her own sitting room were unfamiliar. Then to recover herself, she settled down comfortably on the sofa with a Campari Orange, suddenly ruler again of her own domain. Soon we were all at ease.

Signora Sarfatti spoke expansively of her work. She had had no time for her usual parties. As soon as her salon began again we should be honoured guests. Did we know the anti-Fascist novelist Moravia? He was a friend of hers, as were so many of Italy’s finest painters and novelists. ‘Some people are calling Mussolini the New Charlemagne,’ she told us, ‘but his court is rather more sophisticated, I think.’

In excellent English she asked if we had heard of D’Annunzio’s friend, the American poet, Pound. She spoke rapidly, leaving little chance for us to reply. She told anecdotes about people of whom we had never heard. Yet Mrs Sarfatti described a world we both longed to experience. She knew that I was already an internationally popular film actor and set designer and greatly respected my work as an artist, she said. Film was the art form of the future. My work would certainly be remembered. Already, she hinted, Il Duce himself was familiar with my acting and was an enthusiast. Hadn’t I originally been trained as an engineer? It is as an engineer, I said, that I would wish the world to see me. Signora Sarfatti recalled I had worked for the French, the Americans and the Moroccans on secret military projects. She assumed I had done work for other governments. Might she look at my designs again? I, of course, was only too happy to oblige her for I knew she had Mussolini’s ear and if she were impressed by my plans she might communicate some of this to her lover.

Doing my best to remain casual, curious as to her sudden interest, I was almost trembling as I described what I had built, including my Moroccan aeroplanes now in the service of the Caïd. Listening with polite impatience, she clearly had something specific on her mind. At last, after a few more lines of her first-rate cocaine, she arrived at her point. Fiorello had shown great enthusiasm for one of my designs. Had I seen Fiorello lately? She meant to ask him to ask me for a copy of the plan, it had impressed her so much. A design for a huge war machine capable of crossing large areas of desert? I had spent a long time in North Africa, had I not? Had anyone else considered putting the machine into action? Could she see those plans?

I suppose a lesser soul would have been suspicious of her motives and refused. My copyrights and patents were my only assets since the crash of my California bank. I should protect them. But I sensed she would not betray me. She was genuinely interested in my ideas.

Given my circumstances, I had little real choice. Who could refuse her and in turn risk refusing Il Duce? In any case I found it impossible to resist her charm. Her persuasive powers had helped put Mussolini where he was. I was charmed by her, and only too pleased to get out my plans and explain my massive desert-liner, now redesigned for battle and armed to the teeth with the latest repeating cannon.

She understood I had some idea of the military strength of Morocco and her neighbours. I agreed. For so long in the service of the Caïd and having helped him build his air force, I had become naturally aware of such details. I mentioned that I had worked on several secret projects in America, chiefly in California where my partner had been the well-known entrepreneur ‘Mucker’ Hever.

With sharp intelligence she asked me about the practicality of building such huge war machines. Would not it be better to build smaller, faster land cruisers which could be more readily manoeuvred? I had the impression she had spoken to an engineer of her acquaintance and was testing me. I knew she was a good friend of the great Marconi.

Still a little puzzled by her interest, I explained how any army using several of my ‘Land Leviathans’ would not need to manoeuvre. The machines would simply go where the generals wanted to go, crushing entire cities beneath their gigantic treads if necessary.

This was apparently what she wanted to hear. ‘Could you make copies of your designs for me by tomorrow?’ she asked. I was not sure. I would have to find someone capable of making such large photographs. I would guess there were places in Rome, probably near the newspaper offices. She knew exactly what I needed and gave me the address of a photographic specialist off the Corso d’ltalia. She rose suddenly, an explosion of multicoloured fabrics and conflicting scents, took a large envelope from her pigskin sack and laid it on the table. Her knowing green eyes winked at me. She was flirtatious and not entirely dignified for a woman of her years. Yet I was absolutely under her spell. I knew how she had taken control of the Italian art world as thoroughly and with the same will as her lover had taken over the nation’s politics. She kissed me on both cheeks. She embraced Maddy. Tapping the envelope with her beringed finger, she said: ‘He’s bringing me some more tomorrow. That’s for you.’

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.’