The Vengeance of Rome

TWELVE

I could only hope that Signora Sarfatti’s passion would fade with her act of conquest. I was in a state of silent exhaustion when she returned me to my friends’ flat at around two in the morning. To my dismay, they were all waiting up for me. The Christmas tree candles had gone out, but the fire was high. Billy, in a dressing gown which could have swaddled Africa, made me a hot toddy. Ethel carried off my street clothes, commenting sympathetically on their condition, while Maddy murmured comfort and enquiry.

My silence was taken for weighty thought. Ethel told her husband to be quiet and suggested we all needed sleep. We could talk, if necessary, in the morning. Billy, with his journalist’s nose for news, was, of course, the most eager. But he was a gentleman through and through, the best kind of old-fashioned American, so his courtesy triumphed over his curiosity.

Grateful for this, I allowed Maddy to lead me to bed. Insistently, since Margherita’s conflicting scents filled my own nostrils, I stumbled into a bath. From there I remember almost nothing. I awoke in the pink haze of a perfect afternoon with a few soft clouds in the pastel sky and two slender poplars framed in the window whose curtains a smiling Maddy drew back for me. I smelled coffee and croissants. I was filled with an emotion I can only describe as untranquil well-being. My elation at meeting my hero and discovering his respect — indeed his need — for me was almost overwhelming, as was the knowledge of the price I had to pay La Sarfatti for my good fortune.

Bluntly, I felt as if I had been fucked by a demon. None of this can be said, of course. She is still alive, still spending the fortune she has made from selling the degenerate paintings she spirited away when she fled into exile. After she fell out of favour and was revealed as a Jewess, she ran off to America. She now lives, I understand, in Trieste, where all our histories began. D’Annunzio’s noble act of individualism, after all, provided the inspiration for the March on Rome. They now claim the march never took place, that every aspect of Mussolini’s career was a circus, an illusion, a further step into grotesque fantasy, but you only have to look at the buildings to know who was fantasising and who was not. Mussolini demanded an architecture which was powerful, brutal and stark — a tough, Fascist architecture. If it did not exist, why is it still being copied around the world, especially in London?

Maddy Butter was grave as she settled her warm little body beside me. Pushing back her pretty curls, she did her best not to seem eager. While I ate from my breakfast tray, she read from the newspaper. She had looked, she said, for some hint of my activities last night, but unless I had been called to help a dog which had somehow climbed a tree in the Via delle Sette Chiese on Christmas Eve and had been stuck for twenty-four hours, howling the whole time until shot by a local squadristi, there was no clue. Of course she was quivering with curiosity and, because of my circumstances, I was able to be deliberate, cautious and cryptic in my replies. The philanderer’s perfect situation! Unfortunately I was not the perfect philanderer and had no enthusiasm for the role. I swore Maddy to secrecy before telling her that Signora Sarfatti had been the intermediary between me and a very important figure indeed.

‘Mussolini!’ cried Maddy, eyes shining. I neither confirmed nor denied this. I went on to say how I’d been offered a job doing what I could do best as an engineer. A job which satisfied my ideal for practical altruism. At last my talents were to be put to the public service. I had longed all my life for just such a chance. My eyes filled with sudden tears as I thought of my mother, of Esmé and my loved ones in Kiev. I wished they were with me now to share in my glorious fulfilment. Maddy Butter interpreted my tears as tears of joy. This allowed her to echo the supposed emotion, weeping for my success as I wept for my lost loved ones whom she, no matter how sweet, could never replace.

When I had finished my breakfast, Maddy cut us some lines of cocaine. ‘There have been phone calls for you from Tom Morgan of United Press, Signora Sarfatti, who sent her best regards, and Signor Merletti who, I believe, is a tailor. Clearly, things are hopping.’ And she paused.

I laughed. ‘Maddy, my dear, if I were not discreet I would not have been asked to go where I went last night and last night I would not have been asked what I was asked. Be assured, I have been called to a noble task. One for which God has trained and tempered me over the past decade. All that has happened to me has prepared me for my destiny. I shall be able to rise to the occasion.’ I promised that all would soon be revealed.

‘Quite,’ she said, in an affected English way. ‘I’m really not being boring, darling. Do you want me to phone anyone back for you? Billy and Ethel have had to go out - taking their kids to see her aunt, who’s French but living in Tivoli. What do you want to do? Go home?’

At that moment I could take no further reminders of Margherita Sarfatti’s exotic and bizarre tastes. I elected to remain where I was. ‘What did Tom Morgan want?’

‘He said to say, “Welcome aboard.” Does that mean anything to you?’

I remembered Il Duce speaking of the Fascist Inner Council and its international membership. The gathering of the great and the good dedicated to the task of bringing to reality the Fascist dream. I had already heard it rumoured that Morgan, a great womaniser and spendthrift with a string of mistresses as well as a family to maintain, not to mention a drinking problem and a lifestyle spent with the Italian haut monde, earned a good salary advising Il Duce on American and press matters. His critics said he found it expedient to become a card-carrying Fascist. Only then could he, as a foreigner, be completely trusted. A cynical view. Even when it was discovered to be true and his office fired him, nothing was ever made of it. He continues to work in the US, a successful correspondent, to the present day. I saw him a couple of years ago, when he was covering the coronation, and he had no doubts. ‘Mussolini was the best thing that ever happened to Italy,’ he said, ‘and Hitler was the worst.’ His argument was that Mussolini was a great man responding to his nation’s needs but that Hitler was a fanatic, responsive only to his own appetites and mindless lust for power. We have argued this case many times. ‘Mussolini created Hitler,’ claims Morgan, ‘and Hitler destroyed him.’ It is a persuasive point of view.

By late afternoon I was dressed. I called Morgan first. He was not available, so I left a message with his desk. Then I called the tailor, who told me that he understood I needed an urgent appointment. Mystified, I agreed. I was expected tomorrow at 11 a.m. The tailor gave me a fashionable address near the Ponte Palatina. Not for the first time I began to sense that I was in a carriage being winched rapidly up to the top of a very high roller-coaster. I knew that at any moment I might find myself hurtling forward at a momentum I could not control. Like all men, I am moved by the tides of history. My curse is that I am aware of it. I know what is happening, but I have no means of controlling it. As Margherita Sarfatti herself later said, my curse is to be eternally conscious. She was a ghoul but she was not a fool.

She was, it emerged, a possessive ghoul. When I arrived at the tailor the next morning I was greeted with as much servile enthusiasm as if I had been the Pope himself. A horde of little boys and girls began helping me off with my clothes, measuring me in every conceivable place. And as I stood before the mirror wearing only my undershirt and boxer shorts, feeling secure, I suppose, in what was after all a traditional male preserve, I caught a sound behind me, a fulsome drone of greeting and a vast wave of odours struck me almost physically, announcing the entrance of the woman who was in more ways than one my mistress.

‘My darling,’ she said in her husky English, ‘you are so beautiful in your underwear. Those legs! Ah! Perfection.’ And she sat herself down in a chair, attended by almost as many little tailors as I, to light a Turkish cigarette which she inserted in an iron holder, the latest Fascist fashion. I felt like a whore as she watched, in amused relish, the process. Now cloth was brought — a fine, black wool — and laid upon my person in various places. Chalk marks, further measurements, and Margherita Sarfatti, my patroness, smoked and chatted. ‘I saw Tom Morgan this morning. He said he telephoned you, my darling. But you weren’t up. You cannot be so lazy from now on. Fascists are expected to set a good example. I looked through your cuttings. They were fascinating.’

‘Cuttings?’ I became a little alarmed.

‘Tom got them from the Service. We needed to check up on your credentials and make sure you are who you say you are. After all, sweetheart, you now have responsibilities and we have to know if we can trust you.’

Naively I had not realised that such checks would be made. Not all my press had been positive. I asked, casually, what she had learned from my ‘Press Kit’. She smiled, a teasing travesty of coquetry, and said that what they had learned must have been good, because here I was.

She had not understood I had played such an important part in politics. I had been far too circumspect. A Klansman! She and Mussolini had seen The Birth of a Nation three times when it first came to Milan. So romantic, so daring. Just the kind of hero for the New Italy.

I decided that the faint note of mockery in her voice was permanent and not especially directed at me. With it she protected herself in a world which, in the intensity of its vendettas and cruelty of its judgements, was far worse than any political world. The world of the international art scene. The budgets of small nations were spent on art, especially by Americans like Hearst and J. P. Morgan, and the power struggle was intense.

She had read some of my speeches. And I had told Mussolini he had no American equivalent! The course of United States history might have taken a very different turn if I had been in power. But she could tell I was a dreamer, a poet-engineer, who had no interest in ordinary political power. There was only one D’Annunzio. My combination of experience and innocence was very touching. She came over to where I stood, draped in black cloth, and made a few murmured suggestions to the tailor, touching my figure with a kind of casual, abstracted intimacy I might have found degrading if I did not have so much inner pride.

By the time the tailoring ordeal was at an end, she took me to lunch in the vast Rolls-Royce which called for us. At least the restaurant was small and there was no one there I knew. She asked why I had given up my political career. I told her that it was chiefly because the Klan had become corrupt. It had lost all its original ideals in its effort to reach accommodation with ordinary bourgeois politics. She was sympathetic. That was the early history of Fascism, she said. But the Klan still survived. I said that I doubted now if it would ever gain real power.

I was first and foremost, I explained, an engineer. In America, because of my connections with well-known producers and directors, I had been induced to act and design film sets. As soon as I had the chance, however, I returned to my first love, my engineering projects.

‘Your airships and your steam-cars,’ she said. ‘Not to mention all your other ideas. I have read the articles.’

Clearly Tom Morgan had not turned up the more accusatory pieces. This was very comforting to me. At last I was with people prepared to believe the best of their fellow men rather than the worst. She asked me what was happening with my projects. I explained how the independent inventor and entrepreneur was being squeezed out of America by big corporations and a tax structure which favoured Big Business but did nothing for the small man. I told her how my projects had been bought by these powerful interests and then ‘mothballed’ or scrapped. The commercial failure of my steam-car, for instance, was a case in point. The car was a victim of the vastly powerful oil companies like British Petroleum and S&O. In offering certain inventions to the US government, I said, I had again been sabotaged. Washington was so thoroughly corrupt you could no longer trust her institutions, even the Patent Office. Besides, I no longer felt that I wished to give the US any more of my inventions, my political wisdom or my theatrical gifts. I was now exclusively at the service of Il Duce.

‘Well,’ she said, playing with my thigh under the table, ‘he is delighted. I have not seen him so happy for a long while. Your war machines, independent of oil, are exactly what we need. Il Duce is concerned in the event of war that any military action should be swift and decisive, over within days or weeks. Any other kind of war is uneconomical and far too wasteful for one’s own side. All current strategic thinking says this. Tanks and planes and bombs are what win modern wars. The bigger the plane or the tank or the bomb, the more chance one has of winning. You and Mussolini think on the same scale. That is why you will control the future.’

I was, as ever, surprised at her grasp of the principles. Such understanding was highly unusual in a woman, especially an Italian woman.

I could see why, in her youth, she had been so attractive to Mussolini, so helpful to him. She had been married to a businessman, some socialist from her early years. Mussolini, too, had been a socialist, but, for obvious reasons, no mention was made of that these days.

Il Duce’s journey to political maturity had been swifter than most, but it had been a journey nonetheless.

Margherita was eager for any Hollywood gossip. I explained to her that I had been in Africa on my own particular expedition into the heart of darkness. I had eschewed most things Western and had lost touch with many old friends. I had seen the latest films, of course. Indeed, one of my main preoccupations while forced to stay so long in Tangier, was visiting the cinemas. But I had not seen a talkie until I came to Italy and I must admit I had not been overly impressed. They were full of stilted dialogue uttered by men in spats and women in evening dresses before a static camera. They were all about darkies or people who dressed up as darkies. The Jazz Singer was a combination of both. My own preference, so far, was for Steamboat Willie. There would come a time when the talking film approached the artistic perfection of its silent predecessor. I had seen no proof as yet.

She was inclined to agree. She was watching an art form turn itself into a sensational novelty to please an increasingly crass public. Was I never depressed that this progress towards tosh seemed endemic in the American arts? She spoke of certain painters and composers I did not know. We were, I told her, dependent on the tastes of the petite bourgeoisie for our livings. We moved towards the common denominator as if it were a cause. I was sure there could be a combination of popular and fine art to meet all the criteria.

‘That’s what we’re producing in Italy,’ she said, ‘especially in architecture.’ She was helping commission some important public buildings but was meeting resistance among certain Fascist ministers. She claimed they hated her simply because she was a woman. ‘If a man had done what I have done for Italian prestige around the world,’ she said, waving her arm in a panoramic arc, ‘he would be weighed down with honours and rewards. Meanwhile I have to make a living as best I can. I have no one but myself.’

A melodramatic statement from someone who had as her protector the greatest man in the history of modern Italy, the natural successor to Garibaldi! I had no clear idea, then, how insecure she felt. Mussolini’s wife was no illiterate. Rachele Mussolini became deeply unhappy if she saw Margherita’s name in the press. Margherita depended upon the newspapers for her living and her fame. Without them, much of her power was threatened.

Of course, I did not understand this then. I was beginning to slip into that extraordinary sense of security and comfort that comes from finding one’s natural place among the powerful. I had never been so thoroughly accepted as I was by Il Duce and his people. I had never felt so safe. Yet that feeling of acceptance and well-being was not complete. I was still keenly aware that Margherita Sarfatti was my chief’s long-time paramour. I had a horror of being caught between the two of them. I was still wondering, for instance, what had happened to my friend da Bazzanno, Sarfatti’s earlier lover.

In the private dining room, as the uncrowned Queen of Italy took her singular pleasures with me, I guessed it would be some time before she tired of me. I had no choice but to comply. I let my mind drift towards other things. I was astonished that Il Duce could ever have found this rutting harpy attractive. I did not know then, of course, why she should be so repellent to me.

Back at the Grishams’ my hosts had returned and were laughing heartily over drinks. Handing my coat to the maid, I asked the reason for their amusement. Billy said they had had at least ten different telephone engineers round that day. ‘It shows you’re much more important than me, Max!’ and he lifted his glass in a toast as Ethel handed me my champagne cocktail. I did not follow his reasoning. Then he told me that a visit from a telephone engineer was considered to be identical to a visit from the secret police. His phone, he said, was thoroughly tapped. He didn’t mind, since the office’s phone wasn’t tapped and he could always use that. This seemed childish stuff to me and I ignored it. It pleased people to pretend they were constantly under Il Duce’s personal surveillance. It gave their escapades an added thrill, I suppose. The whole rather cynical tenor of the conversation depressed me. I had had an exhausting day and needed to relax. Billy and Ethel did not ‘coke’ and I felt a need for some more of the nourishing powder. Politely I wondered if they would mind if Maddy and I returned to the Villa Borghese. Of course they understood. Billy drove us back in his own car. He was in a merry mood and kept beginning sentences which he did not finish. I thanked him warmly for his hospitality and help. I regarded him as my best journalist friend in Rome. I would let him know the story as soon as I could, even if it were the middle of the night. He was grateful for that.

The sun was setting as we let ourselves back in to our little cottage. Orange rays touched the firs and cedars, turning our terracotta to comforting fire. In spite of all the mementoes of Margherita, I was glad to be there. I was sure she would not bother us. Her natural preference for conspiracy would not allow her, I suspected, to bring things out into the open, not when there was an ounce of drama or advantage to be squeezed from the situation.

Maddy was unsurprised that I went to sleep early. She contented herself with writing in her diary. I read most of it later. It was concerned with banal speculation about my new job and a schoolgirlish enthusiasm for my talents and place in history. Clearly Miss Butter planned to marry me and perhaps even take me back to Texas for a while. I would be the living version of the European trophies with which Hearst filled his overblown palace. I knew she would not be happy if thwarted in her intentions. I therefore decided upon the wisest path: caution. I hoped to divert her from her ambitions. I prayed that Margherita Sarfatti would soon be sent off on one of her cultural missions to some faraway country. My only prayer was that she did not take me with her.

Next morning there was a knock on the door. Maddy and I were eating breakfast, discussing the best way to get to Ponte Palatina, whether to walk or take the tram. She answered the door while I stepped into some clothes. Tom Morgan entered, his face a map of all the pleasures a pressman was ever tempted to taste, the little blue, red and yellow veins describing his various routes to hell via paradise. His bluff manner edged with the morning’s miseries, he handed me an envelope. He looked forward to seeing me at ten o’clock that evening. The address was on the envelope. He tipped his hat to an enquiring, bright-eyed Maddy, complimented her on her hair and morning robe, and returned to his waiting taxi.

Miranda frowned when he had gone. She clearly did not like the man. Perhaps she already sensed a rival and thought it might be Tom. In some small agitation, she went off to change. To reassure her, I tossed the message unopened on to the table. By the time we were walking together, her arm in mine, she seemed to have forgotten all about Tom Morgan. When we got back, as if suddenly remembering Tom’s visit, I picked up the envelope he had given me.

The address was a villa off the Via Aurelia not far from the Vatican City. A salubrious area, where it did not abut the railway lines. The envelope contained two silver buttons, each one the symbol of a bundle of rods surrounding a double-bladed axe — the fascisti upon which Mussolini’s name and power was based. They were extremely elegant. I had seen something similar worn by the highest members of the Fascist Grand Council, that group of men, largely drawn from the professions of journalism and public relations, who now helped their chief run the country. But I was still not entirely sure of their significance. I did not show them to Maddy, who was almost weeping with curiosity. Smiling, I assured her that as soon as I was relieved of my oath of secrecy, I would explain all.

That night I stumbled somewhat wearily up the long drive of a run-down villa whose back garden went directly down to the railway tracks. Clearly the place had been picked for its position rather than its visual aspects. I even smelled urine near the gates, as they were opened for me by two smartly uniformed members of the Fascist Militia, now an official arm of the Italian Armed Services.

More of the blackshirted militia, with their kepis and brightly polished jackboots, were present in the grounds, some controlling eager dogs spoiling for trouble. On the top steps to the entrance portico, Tom Morgan himself was waiting for me. He was in full uniform. I noted that he wore the same studs he had given me that morning. It was clearly the badge of a high-ranking fascisti. I saluted him. He was pleased by my response. ‘Oh, you and I are not the only Americans capable of thinking beyond our domestic boundaries, Max. Our brotherhood embraces the world, wherever the white race is dominant.’ He shook me busily by the hand. ‘I’ve read about your work in America and I don’t blame you for leaving. But you’re among good friends here, Max.’

As always, the alcohol on Tom’s breath remained my predominant impression of the man. His was not a type I naturally took to, though I have no doubt of his sincerity. He led me through corridors and halls smelling strongly of mould. Although the place had not been lived in for years, there were many signs of activity.

In two rooms I was sure I saw splattered blood on the wall. Blood always makes that pattern when someone has been shot at an angle from below. Again I grew a little nervous. I am not one of those, like so many I knew in the old days, who were excited by the smell of blood and gunpowder. Some even lusted for it. Their disease was caught in the trenches after so many months of warfare when violence became a habit. Women were excited by it, too. Men were taught that violence was good for them, that they flourished and were made hard by it.

Almost every country had such ideas after the World War. Many in the Klan believed a new civil war was coming and that they had to be ready for it. These Kennedys and Humphreys and Carters will be the cause of it. They will drive the Klan to take up their guns, no matter how reluctantly. I was in the Hilton Hotel on Park Lane when the news came of Robert Kennedy’s assassination. There was a TV playing in the lobby which was full of American businessmen. They all wear the same kind of three-piece suit and a tie, which is meant to look like something from an English public school. They have soft, self-indulgent, unformed faces. As soon as they heard the news of the assassination, they put down their briefcases and coffee cups and began to applaud. I was there. I heard it. I was waiting to meet a TV producer who was going to make a film about my life. Nothing came of it. My life has been too incredible. I tell the story to illustrate that it was not only ‘crazies’ and ‘extremists’ who were driven to distraction by the Kennedy clan and its descendants. Decent American politicians and capitalists shared frustrations with the assassin.

The same with Matteotti. Of course, I have every sympathy for the man. He was murdered. But he brought it on himself. He was an unrepentant socialist and a constant critic of all that was positive in modern Italy. Mussolini had absolutely nothing to do with the crime. Margherita Sarfatti told me herself. When the news was brought to him and he was handed Matteotti’s bloodstained documents, Il Duce said nothing until everyone was gone. Then he began vomiting blood. His digestion remained poor from that moment on. That was how strongly he felt about murder. Scarcely the reaction of a man who condoned brutal methods!

We entered a room whose walls and windows had all been lined with black velvet drapes, edged with scarlet and gold. The only decoration in the entire room was above the ornamental fireplace. Over it hung a magnificent portrait of Il Duce holding in his hands the Sword of Islam and the Roman fascisti respectively, ready to bring justice, dignity and honour back to his empire. An inspiring portrait. One I had not seen reproduced before. This showed the inner strength of Il Duce glowing from his determined, aggressive head. Every man gathered there around a huge oak table, wore an identical uniform — black jacket, black jodhpurs, black boots and a black cap. The only decorations were the epaulette buttons, the belt buckles and the silver fascisti at the collar.

The others greeted me in silence, contenting themselves with bringing their heels together and raising their arms in the Roman salute. I replied in kind. This seemed to meet with their approval. Without any further ceremony, the ritual began. I was made to stand upright before them at the table while each of the men there fired questions at me. For the most part these were telling queries concerning my background and my abilities. Clearly they had been briefed by Tom Morgan. Some of my interrogators, their keen eyes boring into mine, were American. Others were French, Spanish, German, Swedish, even English. They were from all walks of life. No doubt between them they represented most of the professions. This was the Fascist answer to the Freemasons and the Jews, the Communists and the Moslem Brotherhood, who swore secret oaths and were the enemies of everything we held dear. In a future world, perhaps, we should have no need for such secret gatherings. But for the moment, with the world on the very brink of the final chaos, they were extremely necessary.

My ordeal over, the uniformed men sat down around the table. I was led away to a small anteroom, also smelling strongly of damp. Here, two batmen helped me out of my ordinary clothes and into my uniform including the black silk shirt worn under the jacket. It had been delivered in anticipation of this visit. I looked at myself in the mirror. In those days I was young and vibrant and cut an extremely handsome figure. I had been hardened by my ordeals. My pain had given my already attractive features extra character. I was at the height of my physical beauty as well as my intellect. I had the good looks of the best type of Italian.

Now in the flickering light of great flambeaux which burned on either side of Il Duce’s portrait, I was inducted into the Fascist Inner Council. I swore to abjure all other loyalties and oaths and serve only Il Duce, His Excellency the Dictator Benito Mussolini. I would lay down my life, if necessary, in his service. That oath rang around the rafters of the ancient villa, bringing vibrant new energy to the old stones. The very firelight seemed to tremble to its rhythms. Then, to a man, we lifted our arms in that noble salute, which a Roman legionnaire reserved for his peers or his superiors, and roared, ‘Hail, Mussolini! Hail, Il Duce!’We were a single, powerful unit. Nothing could hurt us. Nothing could disturb our security. Nothing could stand in our way. We had control of the future. We were going to make it unrecognisable!

The rest of the meeting was highly congenial. I was truly among friends.

I returned home to my Miranda. She did not fail to be impressed by my new uniform, the insignia glittering in place. She fell into my arms, hungry for sexual satisfaction. And in my newly energised state, I pleasured her again and again. She admitted she had been jealous. Now she realised she was foolish. How could she be jealous, she said, of a monument, an inspiration.

A few days later, on 1 January 1931, my thirty-first birthday, I took up my position as Minister of Overseas Development in the Inner Cabinet of Benito Mussolini. My tailor had made me five identical uniforms so that I should have fresh ones at all times. My offices were a vast suite on the second floor of the Villa Valentino, into which light poured, creating long black shadows and pools of blinding whiteness. I was reminded of the best type of movie set.

During the first weeks of my new position I paced in and out of these great shadows, frequently alone. My appointment had been announced in all the newspapers. I had begun to receive invitations from the highest sources. My status was never greater. However, I was without any kind of assistance or practical furniture. The rooms had been empty for years, and the taste of the minister who had occupied it, perhaps when the place was first built, had been fussy and showy and full of ugly little stuffings. I wanted office furniture in keeping with my modern position. Clean Austrian lines. Plenty of light.

I wrote out my suggestions in longhand and gave it to Margherita Sarfatti, my only visitor. She came frequently. I was always glad that I was able to shower at the office and return home to my Maddy in one of my spare uniforms. Apart from that occasion at the Villa Torlonia, I had yet to meet my chief. On one level I was glad, for I was not sure I had enough emotional energy left to cope with Mussolini’s raw vitality. But I have to say I was growing impatient.

The first weeks of 1931 were a round of parties at which I met many of the most important heads of state, film stars, actresses and designers. In common with my colleagues, I wore my uniform a great deal of the time. Only Tom Morgan did not wear his. Instead he sported a silver fascista behind his lapel. He told me that American public opinion was not quite ready for the news of his elevation. .

I grew a little apart from Billy and Ethel Grisham, although Maddy continued to see them. We were so busy with official functions that somehow we were now always announced together as Professor Peters and his fiancée Miss Butter. I had attempted to stop this, but Maddy of course was delighted. I had loved my Esmé. I had loved my Rosie. I loved Mrs Cornelius. But I did not love Maddy with the same profundity. I made it very clear to her that I had no intention of marrying her. She argued with me. I compromised. We should not marry until my work for Mussolini was well under way. She understood completely. I must be sure to get plenty of rest and relaxation, or I would kill myself in Il Duce’s service. That would do nobody any good. I reminded her that our new lifestyle was a result of Il Duce’s favours. We owed him a great deal. Our social life and our status had improved enormously. She had not come to Italy, she said, to improve her social status. She had plenty of that back home in Texas. What she was interested in was politics, engineering advances, social progress - everything Mussolini was achieving in Italy. As her country wallowed in Depression. What was needed there was the same kind of dynamic leader. I understood her viewpoint very well. I shared it. However, I pointed out, things moved at a different pace in modern Italy. She should not make the mistake of confusing American simplification with efficiency.

I think she was suitably chastened by my little lecture. By then things had begun to move at last. Not much later, after some conference which Il Duce attended, I came to my offices one morning to find them fully furnished and thoroughly staffed, with aides, secretaries, office boys, filing clerks and everything, to go with them. Clearly the Supreme Leader of Italy was ready for me to start work.

I had a huge modern desk to sit at and brass fittings to catch the light, deep carpets to pace upon, polished panelling to admire, familiar works of art to ease my soul and great armchairs to lounge in. I found myself nervously awaiting the arrival of Margherita Sarfatti, wondering which piece of furniture she would choose to use first, when suddenly the door opened and Mussolini walked in, his hand outstretched, his eyes full of concern. He was a gravely sympathetic bull. ‘Professore. We have some work to do, eh? I am so sorry you have had this trouble. Everyone involved has been chastised. You must let me know personally if there is anything else you need. Is the furniture to your taste?’

I stammered my approval. I had felt like this only in the presence of Hollywood’s greatest producers. I understood how, with so many functions to supervise, so many things to consider, such men steadfastly refuse to give someone they respect merely half their attention. They wait, as I do, until their full attention can be employed.

Again Mussolini stressed his admiration for my film work, his love of America, his admiration for, in particular, her fine engineers. He was shorter than I remembered him, a little below my own height, but very stocky and radiating masculinity. He shared Margherita Sarfatti’s taste for colognes and sometimes seemed to wear several at the same time, but nothing could disguise that radiant, animal quality which came off him in the way the stink of power comes off a lion’s hide. Il Duce arrived directly at the point. He wanted to see what my Leviathan might look like in action. Italy had some of the greatest modellers in the world. Would it be possible to make a large-scale model, complete perhaps with a desert scene of some kind. As realistic as possible? I said I would be delighted to provide such a model, but I had no idea when it would be completed.

Mussolini was affability itself. He grinned at me in that ugly, comradely way he had and punched me lightly on the arm. In ten days, he said.

I said I was amazed at his powers of prediction. ‘If I say ten days,’ he told me, ‘then it will be ten days. You will see.’

He had inspired and empowered me.

Sure enough, in ten days’ time, the entire main boardroom of my ministry had been given up to a vast table on which we had prepared a complete desert scene, down to the smallest detail. The only thing we had not had made were the railway trains which were the best German type, and the model soldiers, which were also German and very lifelike.

Sitting in the middle of this scene was the massive model of my mobile ziggurat, the greatest war machine ever designed. I showed an excited Mussolini how it could be moved by remote control. I ran the trains and I set off the little gun batteries in the forts and towns. As the guns popped, flashed and smoked, Mussolini’s massive head split in a great grin. It was that attractive grin only his intimates were ever allowed to see. That grin, I think, made Mussolini human. The charming, uncalculated expression of a happy Romagnan peasant, it spoke of a big, generous, boyish heart. It was our Duce’s best-kept secret. His tragedy. He could not afford to let a rapacious world know that he was a man of sensitivity and fun.

We played with our new models the whole day, yelling like children. The massive machine crushed fortresses and towns, its guns fired in all directions, its huge treads turned. I was extremely proud of the realistic effect. Clearly Il Duce could not have been more pleased. He had a photographer and a cinematographer come in to take close-up pictures. ‘This will convince them,’ he said, sticking out his chest and bringing his fists together as our Land Leviathan rolled over trench positions, crushing whole battalions of tiny clay soldiers.

Towards the end of the afternoon Benito Mussolini turned to me, eyes shining. We were both invigorated, united in a bond of fellowship. Our tunics were off, our shirtsleeves rolled up; we drank glasses of fizzing water and contemplated the scene of our miniature triumph. Both of us at that moment could see the grand reality ahead. He shook my hand. ‘Professor,’ he said in his vibrant, musical English, ‘we are in business. I want you to come home and meet the wife.’

My heart sank.

I prayed Mrs Mussolini did not have her rival’s predatory tastes.