The Vengeance of Rome (29 page)

The rest of us hesitated in the lobby. I, of course, was still in uniform, as was Captain Göring, so we received the most courteous attention. We planned to have a drink in the bar but the place was still crowded with foreign delegates. Obviously we could not drag Seryozha in with us. Tiring of our discussion, Mrs Cornelius said she was done in. She needed to get to bed. ‘Which reminds me,' she said. ‘I think this is yours, Ivan.' She put my box of cocaine into my hand. ‘I certainly don't need any more o' that nasty stuff.' And with a prim goodnight she took her baffled Baron off.

Looking at his massive wristwatch, Göring, too, declared his intention of retiring. ‘Regretfully, I am expecting a visitor in an hour. A matter of politics. We must stay in touch, Professor Peters.' He took my hand in a serious embrace. ‘The delegation will be in Rome for a few days more. Give me a ring. We must talk aeroplanes, eh?' He asked me to oblige him by making sure Seryozha was comfortable. Then he, too, entered an elevator, filling it at a single step.

As soon as the lift doors had closed, Seryozha's vast body suddenly shook all over as he became alert. ‘Hermann?' He turned to me. ‘I think fate has once again thrown us together, Dimka, dear. It's OK. It's all this rich Italian food. I feel so much better now.' He offered me a vast leer.

Afraid that anyone else should overhear his conversation I gravely told the enquiring manager that I would see Seryozha to his room myself. My main intention was to get both of us out of the public eye as soon as possible. He gave me the key.

Only by promising Seryozha to have a nightcap with him could I get him into the lift and up to the third floor. Further reassurances were needed to make him stumble quietly to his rather cramped room near the service elevator at the back. I had expected something much grander. Even as he fell through the door, he apologised for his quarters. The party hadn't been able to pay his way. The Nazis were spending all their money on the elections. He didn't have rich friends like Göring. He didn't have millionaire mother hens like Hitler or successful actresses like Goebbels. He didn't have contacts with the powerful industrialists like Strasser. He wasn't related to old money like Hess. The list went on in this vein. His own patron, he insisted, was entirely independent, a military man of the strictest integrity. He himself received only a small allowance from his ‘Ernst', who was notoriously frugal, disdained most civilian comforts, and insisted on living upon what he called ‘an honest soldier's pay'. Unusually the ballet boy would not reveal the name of this paragon. Loyalty was the thing he prized most, he insisted, and disloyalty was severely punished.

As I shut the door behind us he began to undress. Then he tangled himself in his trousers and collapsed again on the carpet. I helped him up. I had no intention of staying. Only as I sat him on his bed and turned to leave did I realise again that I had no money and absolutely nowhere to go. The thought of enduring Seryozha's attentions disgusted me. Moreover I feared he would steal my
sneg
.

Then my problem was solved. Seryozha slid back down to the floor, placed his head on his arm and began to snore. Letting him lie there, I slipped out of my uniform and hung it carefully in his wardrobe. Buttoning my cocaine box into one pocket, I climbed into bed. The day had exhausted me. Probably I took a foolish risk, but I was desperate for sleep.

In spite of my anxieties, I slept deeply for several hours. At about five in the morning Seryozha's cumbersome mass engulfed the bed, and he seized me in his damp, yet muscular, embrace. As I felt his huge tongue slithering into my ear, I resigned myself to the inevitable. I could afford no further scandals.

Seryozha had always been a heavy sleeper. Next morning I was able to leave him sprawled among the stains of his own juices, get into my uniform, and take a little breakfast in the hotel before walking to the office. Descending the hotel steps I saw a taxi pulling away. In it was Margherita Sarfatti. Had she come looking for me and then changed her mind? Or had she been Göring's ‘political business' last night? She was rumoured to have been his mistress and to have acted as Mussolini's go-between. It did
not suit Il Duce's policies for him to be seen by the other foreign powers as friendly to German radicals, so perhaps that was what had been going on last night. Surely my exhaustion was making my eyes play tricks? Conscious of the gaze of the ordinary people, who were in no way impolite, I took pleasure in my stroll through the sunny dawn streets to my office.

As hoped, I was the first to arrive, going immediately to my dressing room where my uniforms were kept. Washed and changed, as far as my staff knew, I had spent the night like any other night.

Telephoning the cottage, I received no reply. Was this as a sign that I was still unforgiven?

As an instinctive precaution, I went to the files and removed certain copies, making up a short dossier of my designs, together with photographs of the models lining the walls of our ‘war room'. All this went into a large envelope labelled ‘Manufacturers' Brochures and Specifications'. This I put in an attaché case. I had no intention of betraying Italy, but these were my livelihood, my passport to immortality. Although my faith in Il Duce was in no way diminished, a misunderstanding might attract his disapproval. By now the poison-tongued gossips could have whispered stories and already be amplifying my innocent associations. From the evidence, Mussolini could form a completely erroneous idea of my behaviour. In the unlikely event of my dismissal, it was wise to take out a little insurance. While Mussolini was altogether a greater and more honourable man, my experiences of El Glaoui were still fresh in my mind.

Again I telephoned Maddy Butter. Again there was no answer. I had little money and most of my documents were at home. I remained at my desk for an hour or two. My staff were impressed to find me at work so early. I explained how I had been under special orders from Il Duce. Together we had worked into the night. My secretary said she had heard that we had been in. I looked worn out. She was sympathetic. I told her I had better go home for an hour or two and get a little sleep. She ordered my car.

I took my attaché case with me when I left. A limousine was waiting for me outside. The driver saluted and opened the door for me. His name was Santucci and he was a sergeant in the political police. Not knowing what the OVRA would make of my behaviour, I behaved normally, pretending to work on documents as he drove me through the lunchtime streets.

After a few miles the car was forced to slow and eventually stop. No amount of official threatening could budge the policemen on duty. They were supervising an increasingly complicated problem. The cause of the traffic jam was a broken-down number 5 tram bound for Piazza San Croce, a Pente
Negro-bound number 5a bus, a horse-drawn bakery van, two taxis, several cyclists and a variety of other people and vehicles. The spectacle of Italians in furious debate would have engaged me had I not been otherwise distracted. I grew impatient. The driver could only stick his head out of the window, scream at a few people, make the odd stab at reversing and then sit, tapping his wheel, while the debate between the drivers and others grew more heated.

Over an hour later I reached the cottage. Telling the driver to wait, I entered the courtyard and put my key in the lock. This time it turned.

Everything of Maddy's was gone. Not a stick of make-up or a scrap of clothing remained. All my things were exactly as I had left them. There was no note.

My mind leapt to the obvious conclusion. La Sarfatti had seduced my girl! I knew she was capable of anything. Had Maddy gone with Margherita to her apartment? Or had they gone back to Venice? I imagined them planning all kinds of terrible female vengeances together.

My nerves worsened. After I had made arrangements for the locks to be changed and the keys sent round to the office, my driver headed to Margherita's place on the Via Nomentane. Taking a short cut, we passed the back wall of the Villa Torlonia. I had not realised it was so close. The car pulled in before an ornate entrance. La Sarfatti's flat. Though this was guarded, everything gave way to my rank. I took the stairs to her door and rang her bell.

A maid answered. The signora was not at home. She had gone to the country or perhaps Capri. She had not been awake when her mistress made the decision. I asked if another woman had been with Signora Sarfatti and the maid shook her head. I showed her my party book and told her it would go badly for her if she was lying to me. She swore that her mistress had been alone.

It grew late. If Il Duce needed me, he would find me gone. It would be another mark against me. I returned to the cottage and was relieved to find no one had tried to contact me.

I now wondered if Maddy Butter was really as innocent as I had assumed.

Maddy telephoned that afternoon. She had found herself a nice little place near the Ponte Tarantino. We should remain apart for a while. She didn't want to hear my explanations but needed time to think things over.

Her actions were a little too cold for someone who had represented herself as an innocent virgin only a few months earlier. I was deeply disappointed in her. I told her as much. She simply wasn't the stuff progressives
are made from. Sometimes I was astonished by American conservatism. How had they had been such enthusiasts for Mussolini and, until the Führer let himself down, Hitler? Their own US Nazi Party lasted far longer than the original! Yet most Americans, though supporting Mussolini, did not really have the will to change, as the ballot boxes revealed, and Franklin

D. Roosevelt, who would have qualified for euthanasia in some countries, was elected. In those first years many called him ‘the American Mussolini'. Their optimism was to be proven utterly unfounded.

I recently spoke to Mrs Cornelius about this. We sat in the window of the East and West last Friday morning in Westbourne Grove. She was having a cup of the sickly Madras coffee she enjoys and I was sipping a lassi. The owner is Mr Hira, a Hindu. He tells me that most of the people from the Indian subcontinent who work for you are the lowest class of Moslems. It is impossible to find a decent South Indian chef. His eldest son is at university, reading mathematics. They share this ambition in common with the Jews, of course.

We watched the people coming and going from the Portobello Market. On Fridays they are mostly dealers. They wear old-fashioned country-style suits, stout tweed skirts and shapeless hats woven by mad Orkneymen or else some variant of the current fashion, all black velvet and dirty lace, like Mrs Cornelius's feckless children. They arrive early. By noon the pubs are crowded with them enjoying the euphoria of dealers everywhere, talking of legendary coups and fabulous profits. I find it impossible to get served.

On Fridays we usually walk up Kensington Park Road to have a drink at Finch's. Then we take lunch at the fish restaurant there. Lately it has become too expensive and attracts the wrong sort of clientele. We content ourselves with the Windmill across from the Odeon. Very few dealers ever use the place, which is run by the better type of Greek family. The restaurant does a very good lamb joint. I always have two helpings of their roast potatoes. They remain well priced and friendly. Mrs Cornelius has a soft spot for them because her daughter was almost born there. She reminds me how the young Jerry rushed into the Alhambra, the nearest pub, to call the ambulance on their phone. He returned half an hour later, just as the ambulance was arriving, and he was almost too drunk to climb in. She was in labour. The Irish clientele of the Alhambra, under the impression that his sister was already born, had insisted Jerry help them toast the baby's good health. Catherine was born, as she put it, in the shadow of Wormwood Scrubs. Actually it was Ducane Road Hospital, one of the best in the kingdom. I have nothing but admiration for the staff there.

The specialist there asked, for the first time, if I had had my operation on medical or religious grounds. Medical! I cried. At least he did not automatically assume me to be Jewish. I almost kissed his hand. Mrs Cornelius insisted the chips at the Windmill had brought Catherine on. ‘Not many people get ter be Windmill girls at her age, eh, Ivan?' She was back at home by the next day. She said she never had any trouble conceiving them and hardly any less trouble popping them out. She was an amiable if inattentive mother.

Mrs Cornelius reminded me that almost any political figure who showed any personality was called someone's Mussolini. ‘It was amazin',' she said, ‘just ‘ow many people go through their entire lives lookin' for someone to boss ‘em about! Some bastard starts shoutin' orders at ‘em an' they brighten up like a brass knocker! Hermann told me Adolf's war record was amazing. ‘E loved obeying orders, too. Takes one ter know one.'

Given how widely travelled she was, Mrs Cornelius has a rather simplistic and stereotypical view of foreigners, especially Germans.

She remains convinced ‘they'll do it again'. Do what again? I ask her. Defend themselves against their exploiters? All Hitler wanted was a Polish Corridor, and the French and English used it as an excuse to attack him. They were eager for the chance. He was liberating the Poles from Jewish dominance. She must remember Germany during the Weimar days! No honest person could walk the street in safety. Male and female prostitutes were everywhere. The common people were horribly demoralised. Their intellectuals had become cynical, their teachers hopeless. The only stability left was in institutions like the army. Where were they supposed to turn to avoid the civil war everyone predicted? Would the Allies have stepped in, as they did in Spain, if there had been internal war? No. They were waiting only for Germany to tear herself apart. They hoped any winner would turn on the Soviet Union and rid them of the other threat. They were foolish to expect that particular free lunch. The Americans made the same mistake in Vietnam. There are no free lunches in realpolitik. The Germans themselves found that out to their cost. The British learned that lesson from their centuries of colonialism, which was why they were so reluctant to enter the Common Market. Or the New German Empire as Major Nye insists on calling it. I hardly ever see him these days. He is on his smallholding in Kent. His wife is dead and his daughters are married. He says he's never been happier.