The Vengeance of Rome

FIVE

Days passed. We drank what water we could collect but rarely dared emerge from our truck while the train was standing, in case we should fail to get back on or attract the eye of some zealot in blue and red serge who would make it his mission to place us under arrest. I could not afford to be investigated by the French, especially since their diplomacy at that time favoured my ex-master, El Glaoui. If any description of us had been published I would be instantly recognised. Few Europeans travelled about Morocco wearing native costume, accompanied by a huge American Negro servant. For this reason, even when at night we ventured a few feet from our truck as it rested in a siding, we kept our heads covered with our djellaba hoods.

We had expected to arrive in Casablanca in less than a day. Of course our train, fuelled more by red tape than coal, went everywhere but Casablanca. The military bureaucrats in Paris sent it first to Meknes, then to Rabat, then to Fez, then back to Meknes and from there to Tangier, loading and unloading nothing, but in Rabat adding two private horseboxes, presumably at the request of the Sultan. Our three central cattle cars remained unused at every stage, but the smell of horse manure was added to that of cow dung and the boiled-egg smell of steam. Though tempted by glimpses of towns, we were reluctant to disembark at an inland station, especially since Mr Mix had left Meknes under a cloud and was well known in the area, but early one morning we at last glimpsed the familiar blue waters of the Mediterranean, the green palms, white tenements and pink towers of a seaport which could only be Tangier.

No sooner had we realised our destination than we understood our danger. Our only choice was to disembark. Already the train was shunting along the military quay to the waiting ships. The docks were thick with French soldiers, with Negro Zouaves. Our only hope was that they lacked the sense to recognise us. Mr Mix and I took familiar positions on both sides of the doors, slid them back and prepared to jump. As we had guessed, the soldiers assumed us to be workers. They paid us no attention. I was to go first. The quay moved slowly past. A gap appeared in the Zouave ranks. I threw my carpet bag and sack of films on to a pile of mail and with triumphant elation made to leap after them, but my celebration was short-lived, as at the very moment I began to jump, I found myself staring directly down into the seedy features of that treacherous little turncoat Bolsover, late of the Hope Dempsey. By providence or bribery the snivelling cockney hophead had escaped Egyptian justice, weaselled his way into a job with the French as a civilian clerk, and arrived at the free port just in time to recognise me! The worst possible luck!

I had no time to shout a warning to Mr Mix. Like me he was already jumping. Bolsover meanwhile became a maniac, tugging at the sleeves of every uniformed Negro nearby, screaming in English that a dangerous criminal was among us. As Mr Mix began to run, his hood blew back from his head revealing those magnificent, unmistakable features. We had no chance of making a discreet exit or of talking ourselves out of danger. The black had given us away! I saw his huge head snap up as he vaulted a barrier then ran through the yards towards the passenger station, a pair of baffled Zouaves in pursuit. He would have made a magnificent athlete.

Bolsover, a mass of excited duff, had poor success in attracting any further help. All attention was now on the boxes where a French officer, concerned that the animals should not injure themselves, struggled to command his unruly men and calm the horses.

My emotional resources were already very low. Rather than waste time remonstrating, I shouted for Mr Mix to keep running while my own strategy was to point to his fleeing back, crying in Arabic: ‘There he goes!’ and, with my hood over my head, my sack over my back and my bag in my hand, mingle with the gathering crowd of dock workers attracted by the double commotion. I heard Bolsover’s grating French: ’He’s a famous Parisian crook! He’s wanted for fraud and manslaughter!’The man had developed some bizarre grudge against me. He was obsessed. Who else would give credence to that Parisian airship business? Forced to leave for New York before I could prove my case to the Sûreté, which with its usual lazy prejudice had fixed on me as an easy scapegoat, I had been unable to defend myself.

By the time it was safe to trudge slowly up to the passenger station I saw that they had caught poor Mr Mix. I think he was wounded, as he shouted at them furiously in Arabic. I could do nothing for him, but I did not believe he was in serious danger. At worst he would be repatriated to his native USA. This could be the making of him, for he had a wonderful career awaiting him in the lucrative field of Race Kinema. If they were to catch me I would be lucky not to be sent to Devil’s Island. Nonetheless, I knew a pang of sadness. I was sure it was the last I would ever see of meyn hertrescher sidekick but meanwhile I was still at liberty.

Elijah raises his staff against black skies. He points, signalling the end of misery. My cities will fly. My sons will survive. Who will lift this burden from me? Did I not try to help them? But their blood is not mine, neither is it upon me. My flesh is clean and I have cleaned my heart. Le’shanah haba’ah bi-Jerushalayim. I know these things. I mourn their dead. Not all are ignorant. I do not lie. Barach dayan emet. You think I can accept this trayf, I say. Lashon ha-ra. They speak nothing but lies. Brit milah, indeed! What do they know?

For the next few months I was forced to enter Tangier’s notorious shadow world, where Spanish officers and the local demi-monde mingled and where, by a variety of undignified means, I was able to sustain myself. My life became almost civilised. I even managed to spend my birthday at the Hotel Cecil in the company of Captain Juan Lopez-Allemany of the Spanish Foreign Legion, the brute who was for a while my friend and patron. I was frequently a guest at the house of Hussein de Fora, one of the best-educated and wealthiest hide-merchants in the city, and I kept a liaison with Madame de Brille, wife of the French concessionaire.

To all these I was known as Gallibasta. In that name, Madame de Brille was kind enough to obtain for me a French diplomatic passport (she had some idea of continuing our liaison when she returned home). I was offered several permanent business opportunities which I was obliged to refuse. My duty I now knew was to get to Rome as soon as possible. Also, the jobs on offer were either unsavoury or liable to place me in peril again. I had had my fill of perils. The secure magnificence of Il Duces Italy so near at hand was much more attractive. Even this caution was not enough, however. Soon I learned that enquiries were being made about me in the Outer Market and shortly afterwards I was arrested. Happily it was on a trumped-up vice charge. Even the police thought it ludicrous. They told me they sensed the hand of a jealous woman but I could not help thinking of my old enemy Brodmann. I had nothing to gain by using the French passport. The authorities accepted my Spanish papers, so I was able to pay my way clear only, needless to say, to find myself the subject of extortion. I was rapidly growing reconciled to accepting a previously rejected prospect when one rainy afternoon in the Inner Market, not far from the British Post Office, I recognised two welcome faces.

Only a Russian, especially a South Russian, will understand the joy of meeting fellow countrymen in a world as alien as Tangier’s. When one of those countrymen is a relative it is no surprise that your Russian will shout out his pleasure and run, arms wide, to embrace him! The faces belonged to none other than my dear cousin Shura and his elegant boss, the Ukrainian turned Parisian, that famous eminence grise of French politics, Monsieur Stavisky, whom I had known when a boy and met later at a party of Mistinguett’s in Paris. I had not seen Shura since he had disembarked from our boat at Tripoli, on some business of Stavisky’s. Now the two sophisticates strolled through the market as if they took the air along the Arcadian corniche. Ignoring the light rain, they were chatting and enjoying the sights and the warm weather. Their stylish suits, in canary yellow and lavender respectively, with matching spats, drew admiring attention from the ever-present touts and beggars of the Tangier streets. Hugging him I noted that Shura’s sleeve, empty since the War, was now filled. I admired his artificial limb. The hand that projected from the crisp linen of his shirt-cuff looked almost real. ’Oh, Shura! Shura!’ Shura laughed heartily as he recognised me. Even the cool Stavisky showed pleasure at the coincidence. ‘It is a small world, this,’ he said. ‘Let’s have some of that terrible fig brandy they sell here.’ He pointed to a cafe and we soon took our seats at a little outside table. ‘What are you calling yourself these days, Dimka? Are you still a film star? Are you on location? Or on the run?’ He laughed and clapped me on the shoulder.

My life was suddenly enriched. These true friends understood the necessity and usefulness of a nom de guerre, and only needed to learn that I was Señor Juan Miguel Gallibasta, an import/export agent, to accept that I was now, to all intents and purposes, a Spanish national.

The two Ukrainians were in Tangier on business, making their way to keep an appointment at the Banque d’État du Maroc to take care of the paperwork. Shura was delighted to meet me alive in Tangier. Rumour had it, he said, that I had died upriver in Egypt. Before he disappeared into the bank, Stavisky amiably suggested I join him and Shura on his yacht Les Bon’ Temps that evening. ‘We’ll have an Odessa reunion,’ he said. He was leaving for Casa in the morning but Shura would remain with the boat.

Once again Odessa, the location of my transfiguration, was proving central to my fate. In that city of Odysseus my adventures had begun and my destiny had been determined. There Shura had been my mentor, my alter ego, my hero. There I had discovered all the world’s pleasures and not a little of its pain, and there I had met Mrs Cornelius. I have always known that the turning point of my life was in Odessa, but I have never properly been able to understand why. It does me no good to recall those days. Perhaps it was the Jew in Arcadia. But what did he do?

There is a piece of metal in my womb. The Nazi doctor found it. Oh, yes, he said. It is certainly there. It was on the X-ray. In the shape of a Star of David, as you say. He had no reason to humour me.

That is how they did it, I explained. That is how they transformed me. You must tell your superiors immediately. I must be released. I am the victim of a disgusting plot. The Reds are behind it. My father was German. I served the Reich in 1919. I am an engineer. The Führer is a personal friend. I have used my skills in the service of the Fatherland. This is a matter of historical fact.

—My dear chap!

—Those Jews in the shtetl. They put it there. They poisoned me.

—My dear chap! Do not cry, he said. —There, there, there. We will soon have you well. But first you must be clean. You must get rid of all this dirty clothing. You must have a shower and a shave and be deloused. The Fatherland has great work for you.

When later I joined him aboard his magnificent yacht and explained my rather difficult position, Stavisky gave me a name and an address where I could obtain an exit visa in my Spanish passport. Within a day my means of escape was accomplished. When the yacht left port Shura insisted that I go with him. He was heading for Europe, he said, to a particularly nice little spot in the Balearics where their organisation did quite a bit of business. The customs boys knew them well and the system was amiable, as in Tangier.

The luxury and security of the boat, the polished brass and gleaming oak, the wealth of exquisite cocaine and cognac aboard, the sheer relief of not being hunted or suspected, filled me with a sense of well-being I had not experienced for years and soon we were racing away from the African shore into the relatively tranquil waters of Europe. Les Bon’ Temps was a steam-yacht. Under another name she had once served the Russian imperial family. She had been seized by the Reds during the Civil War then changed hands several times to be sold eventually by her mutinying crew in Albania, whereupon she came into Stavisky’s hands. As a tribute, he told me, to our beloved Tsar he had restored her to her full magnificence. It was a privilege to be permitted to sail in her, I replied. He dismissed my thanks. We ‘Moldavians’ should stick together. He referred, of course, to the Moldavanka in Odessa where I had lived for so many happy months under the protection of Shura’s father, who had been killed by anarchists during one of several occupations of the city.

Early one morning, just as Tangier’s cypresses and palms grew black against a powder pink sky and she began to yell her cacophonic dawn chorus, a pale blue Duesenberg tourer pulled up on the quayside. Stavisky stepped elegantly down the gangplank, entered the car and waved farewell to us even as our crew bustled to catch the first tide. Then almost before the Duesenberg was out of sight, swallowed in the surging mass of white cotton and red fezes which swept down to the docks as soon as the prayers were over, we, too, were leaving Morocco. From Spain, Shura assured me, it would be an easy step to Italy. They had no intention of returning to Marseilles or to Cassis for a while. We were bound for the pleasant, unspoiled island of Majorca where many of Spain’s wealthiest nobility summered and where, Shura confided with a happy wink, the customs regulations were extremely relaxed. In 1930 Stavisky had many reasons to prefer the less public coves of the Balearics!

In my cabin I was able to check my films and take some sort of inventory of the reels we had rescued from El Glaoui. They had a projector and screen aboard the yacht, and Shura insisted I use all the facilities. Stavisky, he said, was famous for his generosity, especially towards old friends and countrypeople. I asked if he would care to watch the films with me. He declined. Perhaps later. He had a great deal of paperwork to catch up on. After looking into the little theatre to admire the riding of a Masked Buckaroo who, as it happened, was a stand-in, he left with an apology.

Thus, in solitude, I communed with my former self.

The experience was a mixed one. As I recalled my salad days in Hollywood, watching, sometimes for the first time, the scratched and jerking evidence of my cinema stardom, I had not expected to be filled with quite such a sense of loss and disappointment.

I had rescued a complete serial, Buckaroo’s Secret, both reels of White Aces, several reels of Buckaroo Justice, Ace Among Aces, The Masked Buckaroo and the Devil’s Tramway and The War Hawks. I relabelled and rewound them until they were in the finest possible condition. These and the scientific plans I carried in my bag were the best credentials to present to Signor Mussolini when I was finally granted an audience with him.

In common with many other serious people I saw Mussolini as an effective antidote to Stalin. Until his coming, Christendom’s leading intellectuals feared we must soon descend into a series of bloody tribal wars, which would mark the end of Western civilisation. The Balkans were to be the powder keg and Mussolini the fireman, forever playing his hose upon that volatile zone and periodically stepping in to stamp out the beginnings of an unmanageable conflagration. I think this view did him insufficient credit as the dreamer and sometimes impractical idealist he really was. The Mussolini I knew was a poet. Since the Second World War it has become fashionable to denigrate the Italian dictator, but in my day men of conscience, who saw the whole of Europe slipping into chaos, admired him.

Entering the Straits I enjoyed the distant view of the Rif Mountains and below them, among cypresses and palms, the little white boxes, tall towers and red clay domes of villages, while on the other side lay the blue outline of the Spanish coast which for a while grew more distinctive and then, too, vanished as in open sea I put Africa behind me for ever. A day later our destination, that much disputed island paradise, rose up over a pale grey horizon, her lower slopes shrouded in bright, silvery mist and white, transparent clouds upon her peaks. Sunlight glinted on her limestone terraces, cast deep shadows into her evergreens and butter-coloured settlements, but for me the next sight was even more inspiring!

If you, too, are a believer you will understand the joy and relief I felt at seeing the cross of Christ lifted everywhere, on steeples, walls and banners. Majorca had defended her Christian honour against the Saracen for a thousand years or more. She had fallen long after the whole of Spain had fallen. Better than most, she knew the meaning and the value of Christ’s cross.

Only then did I realise how much I had longed for the security which that cross represented to me. In Majorca I arrived as a respectable Spanish citizen, a Christian gentleman. In Morocco I had been suspected of being a Jew or a French spy, of being all the treacherous, nefarious things a Nazarene can be in the Arab’s mind. For years, since setting foot in Egypt, my life had been under constant threat. No surprise, I thought, that the Jews elected to leave their native Palestine for the enlightened and humane Christian lands across the Mediterranean whose laws protected and even facilitated their natural proclivities. Offering a gentle transition from ancient Carthage, the dark heart of Oriental Africa, to modern Rome, the blazing light of European civilisation and justice, Majorca lay on the border between the two spheres.

Our yacht sailed slowly along the island’s rocky coast. Very occasionally we sighted a small beach or a cove, but nothing good enough for landing until the boat turned a headland, entering the mouth of a long, narrow bay flanked by carob trees, pines and wild olives clinging to tall cliffs of pink stone. In the wooded hills high above were the roofs and walls of large white houses, their balconies engulfed by bougainvillea and hibiscus, oleanders and geraniums, looking exactly as they might have done in Roman times.

Ahead of us was a little fishing harbour, with brightly painted hulls bobbing at the quayside, their red and yellow sails reefed, their prehistoric eyes winking in the sunlight. I would not have been surprised to see patricians in togas and sandals leaning out to look at the new arrival. Shura came to stand beside me and sniff, as if at the ozone. ‘Good, eh, Dimka? That’s the smell of money, my dear! We are entering the Port of Andratx. Only the most exclusive people spend their summers here.’ The harbour was indeed a mixture of disparate vessels, though workaday fishing ketches predominated, with magnificent private schooners taking second place in the magical tranquillity of the tiny bay.

Shura was pleased with my delight. ‘It’s like Cassis, only better. Hardly anyone knows about it.’

We anchored offshore at the far western end of the harbour and rowed one of our boats up to the quay, whose cobbles smelled strongly of fish. I slipped in blood and innards as I stepped ashore and was caught from falling by a grinning ape with lively brown eyes who might have been a minor Tuscan deity. He shouted some amiable observation at me in what seemed a barbaric mixture of French, Italian, Spanish, Arabic and Portuguese and laughed enormously when I tried to thank him in Spanish. Shura took my arm and led me over the cobbles to the little road that led up into the town. ’Come and meet some pals of mine. They’ll love you. I know you’ll take to them.’ He nudged me in the ribs. His grin was full of its old charm. I remembered those wonderful first months in Odessa, when he had dragged me all over the Moldava Quarter, introducing me to the best circle of friends I have ever known. Through him I had gained my first sexual experiences, discovering the harsh realities of this world as well as her pleasures. If I had an opportunity to return to an almost perfect point in my past it would be to Odessa before the folly of World War engulfed us in the stink of fear and a taste for gunpowder. With her warm and welcoming streets Odessa was a breathing, brilliant entity. Jews, Moslems and Christians lived in wonderful harmony. Only rarely did the roar of Cossack cavalry echo through the streets. The stories have been much exaggerated. Odessa respected all faiths and all men of faith. She had no fear of the alien. She welcomed him. She had her mighty cathedral, her tolling bells, her confidence in the strength of Christ. She could afford to tolerate and even encourage a diversity of people. She was everything that was best in the Russian heart. The joyous writers came from Odessa. Only when they went to live in Moscow did they grow gloomy. They tell you such lies about places. Odessa was, in comparison to most modern cities, a paradise of peace and cosmopolitanism. They make you think Belfast is nothing but bombs and gunplay, but everyone says it’s the boredom that’s the worst of it. I am always amused when Americans, who are used to living with thousands upon thousands of murders every year in their own country, become nervous of visiting a place where one or two minor outrages have been reported. If I could relive at this little Balearic port just a fraction of the happiness I had known in Odessa, I would be enduringly grateful both to friends and to God.

And so it was.

Shura’s ‘pals’ included many famous stars of literature and the entertainment business who chose what the natives called Port d’Andratx as the perfect location for their luxury hideaways. The little town built up above the quay was dominated by an eighteenth-century church of local stone, topped by a clock and a conventional angel, doubtless their domestic saint. The perfect whiteness of the houses was broken by oddly fashioned chimney pots and slates, their soft curving lines in gentle contrast to the ultra-modern vivid yellow and blue Egyptianate Hotel Bristol which was patronised chiefly by the yachting crowd. They had colonised the fishing port in recent years, bringing with them a glamorous lifestyle and easy habits of spending and were revered by all but the most committed socialist. On warm nights the Bristol’s were usually the only lights still burning at dawn.

Andratx was the haunt of Continental film stars like Rose Blanche and Corinne Sweet, Pola Negri and Elfrieda Juergen, of politicians like Primo de Rivera and magnates like Vickers and Zaharoff, of international writers such as Felix Faust, E. Phillips Oppenheim, Lester Dent, G. H. Teed, W. Somerset Maugham, Dornford Yates, Romain Rolland, Anatole France, Erich Maria Remarque, Howard Marion Crawford and Charles Hamilton, most of whom had their own yachts. In those days the world valued its tale-spinners and rewarded them accordingly. Now, by virtue of a beneficent state rather than any honest work or public acclaim, only fawning lapdogs of the establishment can afford such pleasures. The predictable result of the so-called National Health Service.

We dined every evening in the harbour restaurant next to the Bristol. Shura, the debonair man of affairs, always knew at least half the people at the other tables. He was forever up and shaking hands with some fantastic prima donna, some painfully shy écrivain or distinguished member of the Fascist Legion who bore Mussolini’s greatest honour on a discreet lapel. Spanish officers, mostly of the aristocratic class, were as happy as anyone else to pass the time of day with Shura, introducing him as a close confidant of Stavisky, that ‘master rogue’ as the papers would call him as soon as he was safely assassinated. They would enquire after Stavisky’s business exploits and adventures as if they were following a popular serial.

Clearly Stavisky’s power extended further than I had ever guessed. Shura’s claims of watertight political connections (which he guaranteed he would employ to correct my record in France as soon as possible) were entirely authenticated. Through Shura I was privileged to join the inner entourage of a post-war prince, who comprised all the traditional virtues of a great Russian seigneur, an outlaw lord, a man of substance and influence. Stavisky’s empire stretched from the Black Sea to the English Channel and beyond. His decisions determined the fate of small nations and large governments.

Shura was genuinely popular in the port. He never discussed his boss’s affairs in front of me. He always took his colleagues aside for any business exchanges. I think he still felt protective and affectionately sheltered me from the sordid world of politics and commerce. For the moment I was content to rest under his brotherly concern and to indulge myself in his circle’s singularly fine cocaine. As the Bedouin tribesmen had done in the desert, Shura treated me as a kind of mascot. He admired me as a dreamer and an artist. I am not even sure he really believed my stories of my life since I had last seen him, yet he was surprisingly familiar with my screen work and boasted to acquaintances how I had been a Hollywood star. He was, however, amiably reluctant to watch the films that were proof of this. He said he had enjoyed them when they first came out. In the end I would talk to him as one would talk to a cat, for relief and comfort and to sound out ideas, while he listened to me with abstracted good humour much as if a favourite pet made comforting, uninterpretable noises. Occasionally he grew mysteriously irritable with me.

As a matter of urgency my name had to be cleared in France. I must get to London to pick up the papers and money awaiting me with Mr Green, my Uncle Semyon’s agent. Most importantly I must find a way to offer my skills to Mussolini, in whom all my idealism was invested. The newspapers confirmed everything I had guessed. Il Duce brought a dash of romance and tough common sense to politics. Steadfastly he refused to let the forces of international finance and communism dictate his policies as they dictated those of other modern governments. Since my arrival in Tangier, I had read all I could about the great dictator. I had seen him on the newsreels. Enthusiastically I had followed his career, noting how he had healed political divisions in Italy, bringing together a confusion of disparate radical faiths. Socialist, Christian Democrat, nationalist, anarchist, communist, republican and monarchist were united under one coherent Fascist system, tempered in the fires of self-discipline and rigorous military training. What was more, he attracted the most original thinkers and artists of the day. Film-makers, engineers, scientists of every persuasion flocked to Il Duce’s court. The Novecenta was famous as the mecca of modern art. Italian design and engineering presented a flair even the French could not match.

Miss von Bek had described this to me, of course, while crossing the Sahara. I wondered if she had succeeded in reaching Italy, piloting my ‘Bee’, taking news of me to her master even before I arrived?

When I spoke of these ambitions and ideals I was humoured by Shura. I began to feel a small frustration, even though I was still content to rest for a while and play the simple soul he wished me to be. Given that I needed to relax and restore myself, there was no better way than in an exclusive Mediterranean resort while Shura’s business was conducted. I had the pick of the best Palma whores and was left to make friends of both sexes, indulging every desire.

For all my vast and varied experience, I was still a young man of thirty. Moreover, I had gained easy access to an inner brotherhood of power and lechery, in which the most refined sexual appetites were developed and satisfied. I found it difficult to resist these distractions. Consequently, I became well acquainted with a number of Spanish officers, two or three leading Italian Fascists, French entrepreneurs, American playboys. Among the female adventuresses inevitably attracted to this company was a Romanian woman whose willingness to experiment in every sexual variation became dangerous to us both. When I attempted to break off the relationship, she grew persistent in her demands, and when at last I refused, threatened to blackmail me. I confided my dilemma to my old friend, who told me to ignore the woman. She was no threat, he said. As it happened, a day or two later Shura needed me to go with him to Barcelona and keep an eye on the yacht there while he was ashore. When we got back to Andratx she had grown bored and left, we were told, for Marseilles. Only three weeks later she was found dead ‘of heart failure’ on the promenade at St Malo, just across from the fortress. She had been attempting to watch the cricket match which the defiant British always played in full view of the French on the Jersey side. They found a telescope in her hand. There was some talk in the press of her being the employee of a foreign power.

What an exciting time in world politics! Shura told me that when people lost faith in their representatives and leaders they turned to the likes of his boss for some sort of certainty. Stavisky could act and not have to produce forty pages of double-talk first. That’s what people liked about him, just as they liked Mussolini. He could get things done quickly without excessive publicity. ‘When governments need mercenaries to do their work it’s clear to me that the world needs new governments,’ said Boris our cafe friend. And Shura had winked at me.

For all his apparent cynicism, Shura was merely realistic. Stavisky was one of those concerned men of power prepared to stand up to the corrupt forces of big business. At the Bristol there was much talk of returning to old values by new, radical methods — of ‘thinking the unthinkable’ as the phrase went in those days, ‘and forgiving the unforgivable’. Everywhere was chaos. Only ruthless, decisive action could restore society and return nations to their former pre-war stability and prosperity.

This heady talk, the intellectual cut and thrust, was a huge treat for me. In recent months, aside from brief meetings with Rosie von Bek, when we had little time for this sort of conversation, I had known only the pronouncements of a pagan prince and the opinions of an intelligent Negro, neither of whom had been exposed to the main streams of European politics.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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