The Vengeance of Rome

SIX

There are patterns to our universe. Patterns so vast and at the same time so minuscule that we rarely detect them. They present a problem of unimaginable scale. If we could detect them they could explain the mysterious movement of all creatures across the face of the planet. I am convinced that physically or spiritually, though quite unconsciously, men and women of a particular disposition travel broadly similar routes. Those of us who move about the world and are active in its business know how coincidences occur in life far more than in fiction. Cautious, incurious people after all rarely travel. As in Malory, when one bumps into a fellow knight errant, another Seeker of the Grail, one might well greet him with joy, but with only a modicum of astonishment.

Thus on that little cobbled street in a Majorcan fishing village I found myself embracing as a brother a friend I had not seen for ten years. ‘Fiorello!’ — laughing and shaking his hand as heartily as he shook mine. He was older, of course, but retained the long, comical face of a pantomime horse, his enormous lips drawn back from massive yellow teeth, his huge brown eyes sparkling with the flames of his generous, eternally ebullient soul. He still wore the wide-brimmed white hat, the lilac cape and gloves, the patent-leather shoes with their lavender spats, the perfect linen suit, a cream silk shirt and canary cravat. Flourishing his ivory-headed cane, he indicated his companions. Glancing at us with some curiosity, they remained seated demurely outside the bakery.

‘My dear fellow! I heard you became an actor and made a name for yourself in American politics? You must tell me everything!’

Remembering his manners, he turned, a graceful grotesque, to introduce us. ’Sweet ladies! My apologies! Bazzanno is an oaf! Ladies, may I introduce my dear friend, my mentor, my inspiration, His Excellency Prince Maxim Arturovitch Pyatnitski, late of the Imperial Russian Court, a philosopher and engineer of genius — one of the greatest Russians of modern times!’

The two beautiful women were Signora Margherita Sarfatti and Miss Miranda Butter. The first was his mistress. La Sarfatti was a brunette in her mid-forties, of aristocratic felinity and an arrogant, comradely disposition, whom I took to at once. The second woman was a young American redhead with a rather prim nose and lips who had travelled from Paris to see the new Italy with which, she said, she was in love. She loved Spain, too, she added, or at least this island. She was a journalist on the staff of the Houston Chronicle; she smiled a little uncertainly at me.

No stranger to genius, as I would discover, Signora Sarfatti had an air of easy power as she lazed across two rattan chairs. Keeping her cool, slitted Atlantic-green gaze on me, she listened with an amused air to the younger woman’s gushing praise of the country she thought was my own. Mrs Sarfatti was delighted to make my acquaintance, she said. I removed my hat and bowed. I kissed their hands.

My old friend from Rome, Fiorello da Bazzanno, was now the editor of Il Gruppo art magazine, distinguished member of the Italian Academy and a leading figure in Mussolini’s court. He and his friends had set off from Naples. On their way to Algiers they had developed engine trouble and put in to Majorca to make repairs. They were enjoying the pleasures of Andratx but had been gone too long already and by the following week must return to Venice where Sarfatti and da Bazzanno were to open an exhibition of new Fascist art.

‘That function is the only justification for my enormous salary, dear comrade.’ He winked. ‘I am rich. But I am no longer my own man!’

‘Surely you haven’t given up your painting?’ I asked him.

He was, he admitted, not painting much these days.

‘I always argued how politics was the century’s only valid art form and here I am proving it. It’s our millennium, dear Max, the triumph of the human imagination over the mundane world! At last the illusion becomes reality! What keeps you up so late?’ He assumed that I, like himself and his companions, had not yet gone to bed. When I told him the truth he was enormously amused. As we sat down, he continued to sing my praises to the ladies, telling them how I had been a hero of the Russian Civil War, a daring cavalry officer, a flyer and an inventor whose genius, had it not been for Bolshevik treachery, would have turned the tide in the Whites’ favour. ‘The perfect hero of the new Renaissance!’

I enjoyed all this, of course, and blossomed under the admiring attentions of the women. It made a pleasant change from Shura’s amiable disrespect. I had forgotten how much I relished recognition when it was properly earned. Da Bazzanno asked me what I was doing in Majorca.

Rather than disappoint him, I told him that I had come on Stavisky’s yacht and hinted that I was here on special business. He received this with another of his enormous knowing winks. He informed the women that I was in the confidence of more than one national government and we must therefore be discreet. I waved such a suggestion aside. ‘It’s simply not conversation for the public square.’ Recalling his duty to his companions, Fiorello suggested that I dine aboard their vessel that evening. I saw no new boats in the harbour. He explained that they had had to anchor on the other side of the headland.

‘She’s called La Farfalla Nera.’ He would send his launch for me to Les Bon’ Temps. I told him that I was not certain of my movements. I had companions, a cousin. Then naturally I must bring him too, said da Bazzanno. ‘But you must warn him that we shall monopolise the conversation. We have years to catch up on, you and I, old comrade!’

He spoke of the dozens of mutual acquaintances from the old Rome days. How was Laura, for instance? I asked. I did not mention that she had been his fiancée. His face clouded and he shrugged. ‘Oh, we’re no longer in touch. She’s so hard-headed. You know what these unregenerate communists are like.’ He was clearly unwilling to say more. I accepted this and left with a promise to see him shortly after sunset.

I returned to Les Bon’ Temps with my good news. Yet even as I rowed the short distance from shore to boat, I began to wonder if my two worlds were wholly compatible. Shura and Stavisky saw me as one of their own, a kind of poor relation of high-class criminals, whereas da Bazzanno, generous as always, had painted me in quite a different light, considerably closer to the truth.

As it happened, Shura had no interest in the artistic small talk he expected to hear at such a gathering, so he declined, energetically encouraging me to go. ‘Exactly what you need, dear Dimka,’ he assured me. ‘You will be able to relax with your own kind. Let your hair down, say what you like without causing offence. Holding back can be a strain no matter how good the company.’

I told him I knew exactly what he meant. That evening I donned my dinner jacket with a clear conscience and a light heart.

I had forgotten how thoroughly happy I had been in Rome. With Esmé at my side I was secure in the company of good friends. I had enjoyed the pleasure of talk for its own sake, the wild eloquence which seemed to come over us all. The best that was ever said in those days was never recorded. In comparison, Mr ‘Greene’, Mr Hemingway, or Prince Nabokov-Serin and their kind produce gibberish. But these were the years before tape recorders made us all cautious.

Fiorello’s launch called for me at seven. With a little too much rouge on lips and cheeks and too much powder on her fresh, oval face, Miranda Butter, her bobbed hair covered by one of her host’s lilac scarves, wore a wonderfully fashionable evening dress in green and pink silk. Standing unsteadily beside the seaman at the wheel, she waved to me with an empty martini glass as the other sailor helped me aboard. I had already noted her evident interest in me and hoped she had left behind that irritating habit Americans share with Moslems, of drinking for the illicit thrill of it.

I joined her under the launch’s awning. ‘I needed a few minutes with you alone,’ she said in that direct American manner. To my relief, she seemed perfectly sober. ‘Your story sounds so wonderful! I know that a lot of what you do is secret, but I’d guess there’s more than enough for an article. Or even a series.’

Assuming she sought a useful rationale for a liaison, I paid little attention to this at first. Since Americans were so ignorant of the realities of Europe and the Middle East, I hinted it might be possible for me to say a few words and illustrate them with an anecdote or two, but I must first consider the wisdom of such a decision.

She interpreted this as cautious acquiescence to her approaches and we were both for the moment satisfied.

The launch rounded the point. Even though I had been prepared for something reflecting Fiorello’s demanding modernist taste, I had not expected to see a magnificent long-distance flying boat built on the very latest lines, large enough to accommodate a substantial number of passengers and crew. I was impressed. We drew alongside La Farfalla Nera. She was a breathing mass of dark glowing paint and red brass straining at her anchor like a captured bird. She represented the aggressive, arrogant, triumphant spirit of what even the provincial ras referred to as mussolinismo. Some of these ras grumbled that the cult of Il Duce conspired to diminish Fascism, but for most of us Mussolini was Fascism, was Italy, was the living embodiment of our faith in a glorious future. He was the voice, the strength, the will of all those millions of us who had been disinherited in the Great War.

For young people grubbing among the dresses and shawls I sell in Portobello Road, the twenties was a Golden Age of flappers and jazz, but for those of us who lived through them they were an Age of Assassination and Chaos in which year in and year out we heard of the death of this nationalist intellectual or that left-wing premier almost always by pistol, sometimes by bomb, by one rival political group or another. It is fashionable, these days, to blame the fascists for everything. But before them the German parliamentarians were murdering one another willy-nilly and the same was true in France, Greece, Italy and Spain. The Great War had familiarised them with the smell of death. Even in England Winston Churchill called out the troops to fire upon revolutionists. In mainland Europe, our future was non-existent until Mussolini and Hitler came along.

At dinner that evening, surrounded by the elegant appointments of the marvellous flying boat, all ivory and mother-of-pearl inlays and polished chrome, I was the centre of attention. Everyone wanted to know about my experiences in Egypt and North Africa and while I had to dress the facts in a less alarming and even less dramatic way in order to make them convincing, I regaled them with tales of the Dar-al-Habashiya, the Thieves’ Road across the Sahara, of the powerful Berber kingdoms no outsider had ever penetrated, of the lost oases and the bizarre mirages, the character and disposition of native chieftains, and so on. Their own interest, of course, was in Libya where Italy, some thought, was spending far too much money. ’Those natives live like pampered house pets while Italians at home are having to tighten their belts,’ declared Margherita Sarfatti suddenly and then laughed. ‘But Il Duce knows best. The investment will benefit us eventually. You said you met some rebel Senussi, Prince Max? They’re good-looking savages, I hear.’

That was her description of the great Saharan lawmakers. The Senussi were revered by Arab and Berber alike. While following the caravan to Khufra I had heard them spoken of with hatred, with admiration, but always with respect. I said as much to the other guests. The Senussi leader Omar was known as a scholar and a statesman of impeccable probity. One fellow, a bucolic ras from Tuscany with some pretensions as a folk poet, violently objected to my description, insisting the Senussi were ignorant zealots sworn to destroy all Christians and drive our Faith out of Africa, restoring the old Moorish Empire and extending it as far as the Baltic. He had a brother, he said, who was a personal friend of Cesare de Vecchi, Governor of Somalia. De Vecchi had earned the Moslems’ respect by riding his horse into their mosques and pissing on their shrines. It was only ‘What they would do to us if they could. Raw power is what they respect. The Senussi were a spent force the moment we hanged that monster Omar.’

With my usual social graces, I was able to turn the conversation to less controversial subjects, such as the success of the Nazi Party and its chances of bringing Germany under the fascist umbrella. Could fascism create the united Europe of which Mussolini would be both the chief architect and first premier? Ultimately it would take more than one member of a select company to shoulder the responsibilities of leadership. I told my fellow guests of my dream — to see a company of Carolingian knights — a court, attracting the paladins of the Christian nations — ruling Europe and perhaps America. A great wall of Western chivalry against the Eastern barbarian, ensuring that Constantinople would never fall again. But in those days it was unfashionable to speak positively of Christianity. Many of the best fascists felt the role of the Church to be over in modern life. Consequently, I clothed my remarks in the most general language.

‘I’d agree we need good men for the job.’ Margherita Sarfatti held a long cigarette holder of polished marble and smoked foul-smelling Turkish ovals. As she drank, she seemed to become a little more angry, a little more cutting, a little more bored. She found most of the company irritating and it was clear she did not much care for da Bazzanno’s diplomatic invitation to the gentleman from Tuscany who was now repeating some gossip he swore he had from the lips of Il Duce himself, to the effect that the German National Socialists were ‘a bunch of limp-wristed interior decorators and ballet-masters to a creature!’ which, presumably, was how he would also have dismissed the Spartan Hundred. This bumpkin asserted with hearty prurience that the would-be German Duce actually wore rouge in public. The only gentleman among them, the only heterosexual with any kind of war record, was the ex-flyer Hermann Göring, who was a great fan of Mussolini’s and who got on famously with him.

‘His are the kind who should lead the new Germany,’ said the ras’s cow-faced wife, continuing the speech for him while he took a breath, ‘people of the old stock but with new ideas. Hitler and the others are illiterate, mannerless dullards. Not one knows a fork from a dinner knife or a dinner knife from a dagger. They are typical lower-class Huns. They have no style. The Germans could never take such people seriously. They worship the Old Prussian order. They want the Kaiser back. They certainly don’t want to be represented by the worst examples of their own kind!’

‘Which is why Prince August, the Kaiser’s son, is now a Nazi, perhaps,’ I said. ‘Who better to lead them?’

Whereupon the folk poet, revived by wine and a puff on his cigar, ignored my pointed remark and continued his lecture on the fundamental discipline of the Germans and how they loved a leader, on the arrogant insouciance of the British and how they believed themselves and their nation unquestionably superior to all others, merely because of the voracious greed and cunning cupidity of those who had almost accidentally acquired their empire. This was, he supposed, the source of their strength and why they had no nationalist party and why they were so decadent. On almost every issue I found myself in irritable disagreement with that provincial bigwig. Most Italians were pro-British and dismissive of the Germans, who they feared would threaten Italy from Austria if they had the chance. They did not wish to fight another war.

The ras seemed utterly unworthy of his leader’s trust or of the honour bestowed upon him. His manners and opinions would have shocked a Chicago gangster. I began to make this comparison when da Bazzanno, perhaps conscious of his duties towards the rest of us, gracefully changed the subject and suggested that we all go to the observation deck on the roof of the aircraft. A full moon had risen over the bay and would be worth seeing. Miranda Butter took my arm as we went up. On three sides were steep wooded limestone terraces sharply defined by the light of a large yellow moon which made a silvery causeway across the lapping water to the dark, glinting metal of our little observation deck, bathing us all in its cold light.

Though I had grown used to women again, Miranda Butter’s healthy young American body stirred a certain memory in my blood. I was reminded a little of Rosie von Bek. Even her perfume lacked ambiguity. She radiated energy and enthusiasm, frequently absent in modern European women. Most women I had met in those days preferred the languid life of a pampered poule du chambre to any active engagement in the world’s affairs.

Ideally one should have two women: a comrade to stand side by side with you in the struggle against Chaos and a compliant sexual partner, always eager to serve your needs. My inability to choose between these equally attractive types has left me the companion-less old man I am today, though Mrs Cornelius was of course a considerable comfort. When she died, there was no one.

Miranda Butter had the same frank sexuality. Like Mrs Cornelius she was largely unconscious of it. Though she was only twenty-two years old, her naivety and directness had evidently opened doors for her in Europe, giving unusual access to the famous people she interviewed for her paper. Another advantage was the sheer romanticism of her origins. Everyone had heard of Texas. Everyone felt a certain romantic yearning for the land of Zane Grey and Karl May whose worlds had been brought to life in thousands of picture-plays, even before the drawling accents of their cowboy heroes were heard and imitated anywhere that a projector could be linked to sound. By addressing Texans through her pages, Europeans knew they were reaching the ‘true’ Americans — the great, open-hearted, idealistic frontiers-men and -women who typified all that was bravest and best in the old race, yet was untainted by Yankee-dollar madness or Albany politics. I often yearned for that American vivacity during my years abroad. The chance to experience it again was a marvellous treat.

I remember my magical evening aboard La Farfalla Nera with great nostalgia. I did not return to Les Bon’ Temps but, at her request, accompanied Miranda Butter to her cabin to discuss a series of interviews in which I would give Houston’s readers the benefit of my predictions about the Future of Europe.

This first act of our charade opened on the settee of her little cabin. We would begin, she said, with some background. She opened her reporter’s notebook and brandished a pencil. Her readers would want to know if I was married.

Sadly, I told her, I am a widower.

At this she became deliciously sympathetic. A small tear brightened her eye as she told me she understood that I must find the subject too painful to discuss. Of course, I was still technically married to Mrs Cornelius, but I returned to Esmé. Indeed, the circumstances of our parting, the cruelty of her ultimate betrayal, were things I am still reluctant to discuss. Sometimes I am too much of a gentleman for my own good. When it became clear to Miranda that I had lost my wife at the hands of a Bolshevist gang I did not elaborate. After all, I had lost my original Esmé in this way and no doubt by now she was dead in some anarchist trench. ‘Maddy’ asked why I had left Russia. I told her my departure had not been voluntary. The Reds were the reason I had left. They had stolen everything.

Estates? she wanted to know.

‘Property is nothing,’ I told her. ‘They stole my future. I share that view, at least, with the great Tolstoy and with Prince Kropotkin. My patents and prototypes.’

Priceless?

She possessed an uncanny understanding of my situation and my values. Such delicious, eager approval from so voluptuous an acolyte was irresistible. Before I embraced her, she was talking of telegraphing her paper to see if they would run a feature in their Sunday section. I saw this as useful publicity should I ever wish to return to my twin careers as actor and engineer in the US. And while I had never made any reference to my aristocratic blood, it seemed no harm would be done if she chose to refer to me, even in the first hours of our lovemaking, as Prince Max. I told her I preferred to be known as simple Max Peters or, in Spain, as Señor Gallibasta, but as Prince Max I was best recognised thereafter in Italy. She asked me if I knew how much I resembled Rudolph Valentino. I told her delicately that I had never considered the comparison flattering.

She added gracefully that my looks were, of course, a far more refined version of his. And she believed there were better actors than Valentino.

‘You must judge for yourself,’ I said. I promised her that I would take her over to Les Bon’ Temps the next day and show her some of the films I rescued from Morocco.

In the morning she paid me the supreme compliment: only Benito Mussolini had a personality as powerful as mine. Had I ever considered seeking political office? I assured her that my political days were over. All I really desired was a chance to serve the world in practical ways, by solving scientifically problems of population and social hardship. Her face shone with idealism. She was my disciple. ‘And you will, dear Prince! You will!’

With such commitment and support, I knew that my stolen future was about to be restored to me.

When I returned to the port a few hours later I discovered to my astonishment that Les Bon’ Temps had upped anchor. Ashore I asked what had happened to her. The hotel manager told me that apparently there had been some urgent business. ‘The coastguard was involved.’ Shura had been unable to contact me but had left my luggage with the baker. I found a note attached to my carpet bag - ‘Sorry, old fellow. I know you’re among friends. We’ll look you up in Rome!’ At first I was depressed, upset at losing my cousin’s company, but clearly his urgent business was dangerous and I suspect Stavisky had encouraged Shura in what he had done. I knew I was something of a liability to the political broker and was not greatly disappointed. I was now free to enjoy the company of my American admirer! Da Bazzanno had already invited me to come with him to Venice. Fate had determined my path for me. Once before, with Esmé, I had set out for Venice. Now at last I would arrive in reasonable style with a paramour almost as delightful as my little sweetheart but more of an intellectual equal. I seemed, at that time, to be ascending, slowly but surely, a golden staircase with my dreams about to be realised. I had journeyed into the Land of the Dead and I had been face to face with the Beast; I had braved the oceans and the deserts and learned to live among savage nomads. I had flown where none had flown before, and I had discovered secrets previously forbidden to white men. Journeying through a dozen different versions of Hell, I had survived. Now these hardships and spiritual ordeals were about to be over, and I was to be rewarded.

There could be no more perfect a candidate for Mussolini’s service. I had been tempered in the fires of the most extreme experience not once but many times. I had died and been reborn in the birthplace of civilisation. I had first-hand knowledge of politics in many countries. I was thoroughly conversant in American and European literature, music and painting, while sharing an aversion to the neurotic obscenities of certain French and Norwegian ‘artists’. Inevitably I would add to Il Duce’s greatness as he would add to mine. His was a mighty soul ready to embrace the future and all its brilliant uncertainties, its monumental rewards. I saw myself in a Griffith film, marching up the Appian Way to the Gates of Rome, striding through the wide streets to the Palace of Il Duce, up the steps and through corridors to that vast hall where at last Mussolini himself stepped away from his desk, from which he directed all affairs of state, and came forward to embrace me.

‘Il ragazzo è arrivato!’

I will admit I came close to weeping as I visualised the scene.

That night, my pleasure was complete. At around eleven, after we had dined at the hotel, Fiorello da Bazzanno made us get into a huge Mercedes he had hired and drove us down the curving, rocky road to Palma where he had arranged for the local cinema to be available, together with a projectionist. We sat in the comfort of the first-class seats, da Bazzanno, Margherita Sarfatti, Miranda Butter and myself, while before us, larger than life as he should be, the Masked Buckaroo rode again! Before a background of prairies and buttes he performed his acts of daring and skill, defending justice wherever it was threatened. We watched as the White Ace’s twin Lewis guns raked the skies clear of Hun battle-birds or I embraced Gloria Cornish, the loveliest lady of the screen, with a passion which was electrically conveyed to the fascinated audience. Da Bazzanno flung himself into the adventures, hissing and applauding, clapping me on the back whenever my screen persona performed a particularly spectacular piece of heroism. Even Signora Sarfatti drew amused relish from the proceedings and her manner to me was even warmer when the lights went up. Miranda Butter was ecstatic. She clapped her little pink hands together and cried that I had revived all her most wonderful memories. She had seen several of my movies before as a girl, and had been entranced by them. ‘That must be why I was reminded of Valentino!’ Later she would apologise and repeat that my looks were far more refined than the ex-gigolo’s, that I was so clearly an aristocrat and Valentino merely a coarse peasant of the type who appealed to the commoner sort of girl. Encouraged by her remarks I introduced her to some refined aristocratic pleasures that very night and at last the ghost of Esmé was laid to rest.

Next morning, in the flying boat’s miniature saloon, Fiorello spread out my blueprints and sketches, the photographs and news cuttings I had managed to save from a hundred different disasters. My Desert Liner especially impressed him. He became almost exaggeratedly enthusiastic. ‘But my dear Max, with just a few of these ideas you could transform the world! Why has no other government put them into production?’

The financial collapses of the past years were not conducive to investment, I said. And, what was more, I had chosen to show my designs only to a few select people. It concerned me that they might fall into the wrong hands. Imagine the Reds equipped with such inventions! Fiorello agreed that the notion was terrifying. ‘You carry a terrible secret, my friend. Now it is clear to me why these days you lead such a discreet life. And yet here you have been the most public of figures! You have nerve, Max. I don’t think I could stand to be the guardian of such earth-shattering secrets. Or to live such an exhausting double life. How have you been able to sustain it for so long?’

‘I have been waiting,’ I spoke gravely, ’for the right man to emerge, the kind of man who will mount his own horse and brandish his own sword and lead his own troops into the field to drive back Red Jewry even as she now masses against the West. I have come to the conclusion that Mussolini is that man.’

‘A wise conclusion, indeed!’ Fiorello promised he would secure me an interview with Il Duce as soon as we arrived in Rome. ‘In two years whole fleets of your desert vessels will be crossing Italy’s North African Empire from the Atlantic to the Red Sea! And your flying cities will establish our Dominion of the Air. The New Rome will continue her great march towards Destiny, recovering her ancient heritage and establishing the benefits of Roman law across the whole planet. That is our historic destiny. Rome’s was the greatest empire, the greatest system of universal justice the world has known. She established civilisation wherever she marched. As we civilised Libya, so we shall civilise the whole of Africa. Then Asia, too, will welcome us. Bolshevism will inevitably fall. What’s more, our New Rome shall be cleansed of the corrupting influence of the Pope and all his minions. Her new gods will be her living emperors, as they were in the days of her greatest glory. Mussolini, who bears the blood that founded our patrician dynasties, will be our first Caesar, taking his rightful place at the helm of the world-ship. But in place of Caesar’s legions will be Caesar’s gigantic bombing aeroplanes, Caesar’s mammoth tanks, Caesar’s radio-controlled flying centurions. And you shall be Caesar’s armourer, the practical interpreter of his great dream. The chief engineer of our new Roman Empire!’

I enjoyed his vision but was also amused by it. ‘Old Rome’s strength was in her soldier-engineers. While she commissioned them to solve the problems of the empire, she was strong. When their skills were used to make increasingly magnificent spectacles, then she fell.’

‘She went soft,’ agreed da Bazzanno, his equine face glowing. ‘But we have become hard again and we shall stay hard. It is our duty to impose the Rule of Law upon the whole world! For what other reason were we put here?’

‘By God?’ I asked a little sardonically.

‘Yes, yes! By God, if you like, old comrade. You remember the days when we were in the wilderness. When our ideas were regarded as intolerably outré? Look at us today? We say which ideas are outré and which are not! We are the masters now!’

Such talk was commonplace in those heady times. We were all still stuffed with idealism and ambitions to save the world. The ideals and principles that we stood for seemed on the brink of sweeping the entire planet. But, of course, we reckoned without the manipulative powers of Big Business. We rested too readily on our laurels. That is when the Devil always wins — at the moment when you believe yourself victorious.

Italians in those days were certainly among the few peoples who seemed victorious. All else was doom and chaos, the promise of violence on every street corner, uncertainty about every coming day. Jobs, once considered secure for life, were in jeopardy. The promised future, which had been offered as soon as the War was over, had crumbled like fairy gold. No nation in Europe was free of fear. Most of us fully expected to face the threat of Bolshevism’s all-engulfing hordes which, as was generally agreed, must soon begin to press upon our borders as their Mongol ancestors had done a thousand years before; as if the whole of Europe lay awake at night listening for the jingle of harness, the snort of ponies, the guttural whispers, the pervasive smell of death, which signalled the coming of the Oriental outriders.

True Russians were not the enemy. But true Russians were no longer the rulers of their own land. Communism is the name of Attila’s fifth column. Asia has conquered Russia but Russia will arise. The Church is not dead. The Grand Patriarch is not gone. There must be a final reconciliation when the Pope shall bow to Greek authority. A final great union symbolised by this historical recognition and reconciliation. The spirituality of the Greek and the practicality of the Roman shall again combine to unite the world and make it whole again. And safe again.

Conversations with da Bazzanno helped give intellectual form to my ideas. With dawning joy, I realised that an outlook I had once believed mine alone was shared by a growing multitude. A few thousand understood — but millions instinctively supported us. We knew a glorious moment. The frustrated dreams of a decade must eventually become reality. The midwife for this momentous change in the history of the world would be a simple schoolmaster from a remote mountain region who had led a march on the capital to demand power in the name of his nation! We could soon be living in truly epic times!

We spent a couple more days in Port d’Andratx while the repairs were completed. I introduced my friend, the retiring young Spanish officer Jaime Pujol, to da Bazzanno and the ladies. They took enthusiastically to Pujol and made him welcome. A small group of us usually dined together. Da Bazzanno rarely joined the ras who were on vacation here and privately told me that they represented the necessary end of administrative Fascism but they were not exactly the soul of the movement. His duty was not to upset them or to make them feel that he was condescending to them, and whenever he fell in with one or was forced to pause at a table where several of them sat, he would adopt a slightly vulgar manner and exchange a coarse joke or two.

Margherita Sarfatti hated them, murmuring the opinion that they were all baboons. It didn’t matter if they called themselves Bolshevists or Fascists, they were just a bunch of gibbon apes snapping and snarling and struggling for ascendancy. They wanted power for the basest of reasons. ’To fuck,’ she said in English, ’to feast and to frighten creatures weaker than themselves. The only three things they can actually feel. Those are the three Fs of their fascism.’ Pure fascism, she said, could be understood only by intellectuals and artists.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I was going home.