The Vengeance of Rome (11 page)

A city heavy with such unique history is arrogant but far too well bred to show it. She is narcissistic—infinitely reflected in her own waters—and she is vain. Venice is interested only in herself. She possesses the haughty charm of antique tradition and ancient wealth. Her condescending tolerance is based on the sublime understanding that she has no natural enemies and that the rest of the world shares an instinctive desire to serve and to please her. Venice owns an elusive heart, a mysterious soul. Even in her silences or in the gay music of her many masques and concerts, in her theatrical performances, you can sometimes hear the beating of a powerful prehistoric organ, the whisper of ancient arteries, the pulsing of forgotten veins. Sometimes a faint drift of unnameable colour undulates across a square or passes you on one of the narrow canals. Shadows appear which owe nothing to the position of the sun or the moon.

Her past a mixture of glorious nobility and brutal greed, Venice is the crystallisation of the Mediterranean's fears and needs. She offers all the
satisfactions one ever desired and many which one never imagined. With da Bazzanno's own brainchild, the Festival of Fascist Arts, the city had become the Mecca for bohemians, especially Italians who found the new Rome a little too austere for their tastes. Cafés and cabarets had sprung up for their entertainment, attracting performers from Berlin, New York and Athens, from Cairo and Paris.

Despite much of this clientele, I was still attracted to these places. I had spent my youth in them. I received much of my education in them, thanks to Shura and my beloved friend Count Nikolai Feodorovitch Petroff, my Kolya. I was, I admit, addicted to them. Soon Miss Butter was seeing a wholly different side of Italian life from the great public ceremonies of Il Duce and the Vatican. Every kind of sexuality was represented and catered for. Every kind of music, from the sweet, old tunes of Vienna and Prague, to the neurotic modern concoctions of Mahler and his arch-collaborator Schoenberg, from the bitter-sweet accordion to the wailing saxophone, harsh Berlin syncopation and syrupy English vibrato; all of which, I was assured, was untypical of Venice. The city had once been notorious for its lack of public nightlife.

Responding to my curiosity, da Bazzanno informed me with attempted amusement that Venice has attracted another kind of adventurer: the arms trader. All the big people regularly came to the city. No week passed without at least two or three South American governments sending their representatives to shop for guns. The air of the restaurants and cabarets where such transactions took place was very different from the rest of the city and few of the local people welcomed it. The Italian authorities considered Venice a free port and turned a blind eye to these activities.

In the course of a single evening I overheard plans for arming various Balkan factions and part of a negotiation where an Algerian businessman openly bargained for a consignment of Martini rifles to be used against the French.

Miss Butter was writing several stories a day and mailing them back to her paper. She was afraid to wire them. I hinted that secrecy or urgency were not necessary, especially since her editor in Houston was not greatly interested in the intricate corruptions of modern Europe. He wanted more immediate scandals, with personalities and titles he had heard of.

Meanwhile, Maddy continued to interview me and had now decided to write a book about my exploits. ‘You are the model of the modern hero.'

One evening, in a cabaret called the Little Gigolo, where many foreign businessmen met but where the show was amusing and not too raucous, I attempted to dissuade her from this perception, but we were both too drunk
and she refused to have any of it. She even suspected me of protecting other aristocrats, helping them get out of Russia. ‘If only I had the power. I have had no word from my mother in years. I pray for her. It is all I can do.' I changed the subject. I began to speak of my dreams, of my scientific ideas.

She was listening with her usual doting attention when my voice was suddenly drowned by a discordant chorus of some Bavarian folk song shouted vigorously by a group of very drunken Germans who sat together in a corner near the stage. They were ex-military. They had been there all evening, engaged with one of the South Americans, and had been drinking heavily. By their manner and conversation several of them were clearly homosexual. They were openly kissing and cuddling, to the amusement, rather than the disgust, of the other patrons.

I looked up in annoyance as the Germans began the umpteenth verse of their song and saw that a newcomer had joined them. He was large and effeminate in a fur-collared black overcoat and a Homburg hat a size too small for his head. His back was towards me but was very familiar. I was trying to recall the man when I heard his voice raised in angry German which almost at once turned into near-hysterical Russian, then into Spanish, and eventually into broken Italian, all on the same note.

My heart sank. This was not an acquaintance I wished to renew! There was no mistaking Sergei Andreyovitch Tsipliakov or his familiar complaints. His friend of the same sexual persuasion had not turned up. The Germans were far too drunk and careless to help find him.

It was obvious Seryozha, whom I had originally met on the Kiev–Peter Express, was no longer with the ballet, unless as a choreographer. He was running to fat. His ruined face turned away from the Germans. His self-indulgent jowls emphasised his lugubrious dismay. I tried to escape his eye. Then he had seen me. His hand flew to his mouth. His expression changed to one of utter joy. His voice rang through the room. I shrank.

‘Dimka! Dimka, darling! Dear heart, they told me you had gone back to Peter and were working for the Okhrana! Are you really a secret policeman now, Dimka, darling? Were you one in Paris? Oh, the stories I've heard! What ever happened to you? Why did you abandon me? Dear heart, I was so good to you!'

My only consolation was that he spoke in Russian, one of the few languages Miss Butter did not understand.

He engulfed me. His wet lips met mine. A small-time Judas.

Naturally I was embarrassed. Yet I could only see this further coincidence as destined. Events were moving towards some vast and significant conjunction. Everyone was being drawn to Italy and her charismatic leader.

To Miss Butter I introduced Seryozha as an acquaintance from my days in St Petersburg where he had been with the Ballet Foline. To change the subject as quickly as possible I asked him in German if he was appearing at the Arts Festival. This question encouraged a great gust of miserable laughter. ‘If only that were true, Dimka sweetheart. Sadly, I'm on very different business!'

When I asked him what his business was he admitted that he was sworn to silence on the matter, which was of international importance. A little afraid that he might attempt to blackmail me and wishing to insure myself, I told him swiftly in Russian that I too was on secret business, travelling as Prince Maxim Pyatnitski. The American woman was suspected of being a Bolshevik agent. He must be unusually discreet.

Of course, Seryozha's discretion was typical. After offering me a wink and a half-conspiratorial leer, he declared loudly in broken English that he had not seen his old comrade-in-arms ‘Prince Pyanisski' since we fought side by side together in the war against the forces of reaction. Happily he was already so drunk that his mistake went unnoticed, and as he breathed gin over Miss Butter's little pink hand he steadied himself by leaning heavily on our table. ‘You're the prettiest agent I've seen in years!'

She explained that she was not an agent but a journalist and asked him if he knew Diaghilev. Seryozha, declaring that the famous ballet master was a charlatan, a philistine, a sensationalist, a rogue and a plagiarist, admitted that he had met him twice in Paris. ‘You were with me, Dimka, I'm sure. In the Café Pantin? I told him what I thought of his cacophonic eyesores and we were thrown out. That was you, wasn't it, Dimka?'

In an aside I explained to Miss Butter that ‘Dimka' was a nickname I'd earned in Petersburg's café society. I could not quite remember how I had come by it. She was showing far more interest in Sergei A. Tsipliakov than he deserved. He had grown even more irritating and foolish. I began to feel that I was embroiled in some primitive and farcical
commedia dell'arte
sketch, the kind of thing on which the Jew Chaplin based so many of his ‘original' routines. In Russian Seryozha explained to Miss Butter that I was the greatest engineer he had ever known. In English he added affectionately that we had been special chums in Petersburg. We had met, he said, while sharing a sleeping car together. Did I, he enquired loudly, still use cocaine? He was desperate for some.

In murmured Russian I promised him some superb cocaine, but he must keep quiet. His friends at the other table were frowning and showing signs of impatience, even nervousness. I said that I thought he was wanted back with his comrades.

‘They're not comrades! They're gun-runners, Dimka. I came all the way from Manchuria to meet them. Well, more or less. But I did come all the way from Manchuria. And I know it's to do with guns. They won't tell me anything. I'm just a damned dogsbody, really, dear. I
had
to get out of Bolivia. I can't tell you what I had to do to leave La Paz.'

‘What were you doing in Manchuria, Mr Tsipliakov?' enquired Miss Butter with that direct, polite innocence only Americans command. I expected Seryozha to become coy, but he answered quickly.

‘They have an absolutely huge Russian community. All forced out by the Reds, of course, and wretchedly hungry for
any
kind of art. The old story, ma'mselle. An emissary arrived in Paris. He knew of me and came with an absolutely splendid, unrefusable offer—and the chance to be chief star and choreographer of the Ballet Manchurienne. A
marvellous
opportunity. The Russians were longing to hear Tchaikovsky performed by genuine Slavs and to watch some decent dancing. Of course, I agreed. My heart was touched, you know. I am too soft, as all my friends tell me.' He fixed a large, self-loving eye upon Miss Butter.

‘What happened to you there?' I asked.

‘Well, darling, I arrived in Harbin, by a most
unseaworthy
Chinese steamer, to discover that I was the entire company and was expected to create an alternative to the Bolshoi out of absolutely
nothing
. Darling, believe me, I did my best. Every silly little Russian girl that had ever had a dance lesson was auditioned, every little boy who had ever yearned for toe-shoes. And I put something together for them. They thought it was
wonderful. But then, of course, they didn't want to
pay
for a ballet company. Eventually I found myself in financial trouble. A stupid, pointless scandal. Nobody would give me my salary! Luckily, I became great pals with a successful fur trader, late of Nizhny Novgorod and now of La Paz, who told me that the Bolivians were simply crying out for a good ballet master. He promised to back me, but by the time we arrived in Bolivia we'd quarrelled over a stupid matter and he wasn't speaking to me. I gave private lessons for a while. Then that bastard Salamanca overturned the government and it was all gone. I'd become rather a friend of the president's wife, who was a keen balletomane, and I suppose I was identified with the ruling class. Luckily, I'd made a couple of German chums there and when they got the chance to leave I went with them. It's a familiar tale, isn't it, ma'mselle, for these days? But we soldier on.'

She had not heard my question and had scarcely understood anything Seryozha had said. ‘And you're performing at the Arts Festival?'

‘I'm here as an observer only.' A dissolute steer, Seryozha widened his huge bloodshot brown eyes and shrugged at me, as if asking whether he had played his part properly.

Miss Butter was in no way confused. ‘It's thrilling,' she said, ‘to be in the company of people with such experience of the world. I have experienced so little.'

‘Then stick with Dimka, sweet mademoiselle,' guffawed the dancer. ‘No one has had more varied experience!' He reached to kiss me but this time I avoided him.

‘So I gather.' She smiled in a way which suggested she was privy to arcana which would astonish even Seryozha. This further alarmed me since, given the opportunity, I knew what a gossip my old acquaintance could be. I was very surprised that he had successfully kept his purpose in Venice unknown to us. I guessed he must be extremely afraid of his employer. Either that or he had been told nothing at all by someone who knew him as well as I did.

He had money to spend. Producing a handful of large-denomination notes he ordered ‘real' champagne. When Miss Butter had retired to the ladies' room, he leaned forward and in a thick whisper, begged me to let him have some
sneg
for old times' sake. I was glad to hand him the rest of a pillbox I was carrying and privately told myself that I had at last settled the account with him I had had since he left his own snuffbox behind all those years ago on the Petersburg train. That box had proven very helpful to me in my first days as an engineering student at the Institute.

By the time Miss Butter returned Seryozha had pocketed my pillbox, muttered something mysterious about putting in a good word with the ‘
vozhd
' for me, kissed me affectionately on the lips, and informed me to my great relief that he was due to leave in the morning, taking the early train to Vienna and from there to Berlin, where he had been promised his own apartment. ‘I'm an official emissary now,' he said before he staggered back to his ‘business contacts'. By his gestures, I knew he was dismissing me as an old colleague from the ballet.

Miranda Butter complimented me on my fascinating friends. She had a sparkle to her which contrasted rather sharply with the slightly seedy appearance of those around us. ‘This is exactly why I came to Europe. We Americans are all so unsophisticated. You were right to leave when you did, Max. I admire your courage. So few could turn their backs on all you had— Hollywood, fame, wealth …'