The Vengeance of Rome (36 page)

I had no wish to snub the man, who had been a good friend in the past, so I suggested we sit down at a nearby café. I ordered some elaborate concoction, half-coffee, half-confectionery, for us both and told him I had believed him to be in Switzerland by now.

He smiled a little unhappily. ‘They turned me back at the border,' he said. ‘I think they were told to. I'm only here on sufferance. If I can't get into Switzerland then Laura will have to meet me somewhere else. Maybe Prague. My German friend Strasser lives there now. He's Gregor's brother, a real socialist. And then, I suppose, Argentina. Where all exiled Italians go. Or America. Though with my political record, I have a feeling they won't be pleased to see me.'

Wasn't it extraordinary, I said, how rapidly things changed! When he met me I was all but penniless. Now the boot was on the other foot. My resentment of him melted. I took some large-denomination notes from my wallet and inconspicuously folded the money into his hand. It was the least I could do for the man who had been instrumental in my new elevation.

‘It's a turning world, Max.' He thanked me for the money. ‘And I'm not sure I deserve anything less than this. It's all very well to talk about the poetry of violence. It's another thing to experience it. I still believe in Il Duce's ideals, but not many of his people do any more. He's out of touch with us. He's become too involved in power for its own sake.'

I repeated Major Nye's perception that all power corrupts. ‘Yet I cannot believe Il Duce himself is corruptible.'

‘Not in any ordinary sense, maybe.' Fiorello sipped his coffee. His lips were almost down to their normal size. He still looked like a horse who had escaped a serious encounter with a slaughterhouse. ‘But this wasn't done by Reds, Max, whatever you think. Fascists did it. Remember my mentioning Matteotti? A piece of accidental butchery. But now we are dealing with systematic terror. They've been doing a lot of it lately. They've crossed a line. I now believe every word Laura said. I just couldn't lose my faith in Mussolini. He united the country. He has done so much for us. The Blackshirts were the inheritors of Garibaldi's Redshirts—men and women of simple nobility who wanted only to see justice done. We called on that spirit, and the people responded. Today the industrialists are still in place, and the people are worse off. It will be the same with the Brownshirts. Money talks in the end. And there's plenty of it about to defend capitalist interests by any ruthless means. The March on Rome was for common justice. Do we have it? Do we, Max?' In Austria, he had clearly reverted to his old anti-capitalist illusions.

He was close to weeping when I left him outside the café and returned to my hotel. In spite of the great sympathy I felt for him, he had to be suffering from serious paranoia, doubtless brought on by his ordeal. Only many years later would I see that there had been an element of truth in his madness.

Doctor Hanfstaengl himself was in a rather grimmer mood. He had run up against some unexpected difficulties. It would all be sorted out soon. We would have to take the early train to Munich in the morning. He hoped I would not mind cutting the trip short. Things were changing all the time in Germany. The party needed him back. My purpose in leaving Rome was to visit Germany, I said. The sooner we arrived there the happier I would be. Unless you have an excessive liking for waltzes, cream cakes and cater-wauling modern music, Vienna has little to offer the discerning traveller.

Unfortunately I did not have time to visit the famous blue Danube. I saw only the brown one.

I am not a natural early riser, so Putzi Hanfstaengl had to wake me up and virtually put me in the shower before I was able to dress myself and make sure all my bags were taken down. I had hoped to spend some time
with Mrs Cornelius, but Hugenberg was not part of the Nazi movement. He had no need to cut his visit short. Through misty streets Hanfstaengl and I took a cab to the station and arrived just in time to gain our compartment before the train left. This time there was another passenger, a rather sallow cleric who did not like our looks and aimed his pointed nose into his little devotional even as we entered. We were to have breakfast on the train, but I excused myself and went to the toilet to take a soupçon of the excellent ‘snow' Seryozha had given me. He seemed to possess the stuff in unlimited quantities. At one point I suspected he had smuggled in at least a kilogram. He was always secretive about his suppliers.

Putzi had made himself comfortable when I got back. He knew the priest resented our presence and cheerfully ignored him.

I flung myself into the luxury of the seats, stretched and yawned. We used English, which further irritated our fellow passenger.

Putzi and I were discussing the merits of French and Austrian operettas when I heard a woman exclaim from the corridor. I looked up. She was already passing but I noted something familiar about her broad, tall figure in its conservative black silk costume. She turned, as if to confirm something, and I recognised her at once. My old mistress, Baroness Leda von Ruckstühl, with whom I had escaped from Odessa. I had left her in Constantinople. I must admit, I had hoped never to see her again!

She came back, of course. She was smiling with a kind of bewildered malice. She drew open the door in a single powerful movement, standing over me like some avenging Valkyrie, an armoury of layered cosmetics and floral oils. I took control of myself. With puzzlement in my eyes, I rose. ‘Madame?' Happily I still wore my imperial. I was experiencing one of those moments I have described before, when all elements of past, present and future seem to rush together.

‘I thought you were dead, Prince Pyatnitski,' she said. ‘In America, I heard, after the Paris scandal.'

I felt physically sick but somehow I retained my self-possession. ‘Forgive me,' I bowed, ‘but I do not believe I have had the pleasure …'

‘You are Prince Maxim Arturovitch Pyatnitski,' she said in Russian. ‘The father of my son.'

‘My dear lady,' I replied in English, ‘I am unfortunately a mere commoner, a humble American actor, no less. While I am flattered by this elevation, I fear you have me confused for another.'

She frowned. I could see I had not convinced her. It would be extremely embarrassing for me if she revealed our past. She knew far more about me
than I liked and evidently still resented me. She was not above making the most fantastic claims. Her interest in me had been more intense than I supposed. She had gone to the trouble of tracking down misleading stories about me in the French press. She probably had a dossier as thorough as Brodmann's!

I had no other choice. I had to continue with my bluff. Putzi Hanfstaengl was amused by the scene. He had not taken very much of it in. He could tell the lady was angry and that I was embarrassed.

She did not move.

‘You have mistaken me for some other gentleman,' I said again. I made to open the door for her, but she pushed past me and went up the corridor without a further word.

‘Phew!' said Putzi with something which passed for a leer, ‘a mighty angry doll, what? You're a bit of a devil on the quiet, eh? What did she call you?'

‘Well,' I said, ‘it's an odd thing. I played the part of a Russian nobleman more than once. I believe you mentioned enjoying
Red Queen, White Queen
. She seems to think that I am one of my screen characters. Poor creature. It's a familiar delusion. As a public figure one becomes used to such encounters. I must have had a dozen in the past year alone.'

Putzi nodded. ‘Something very similar happens to Hitler. Women wet their knickers for him and have the most incredible daydreams about him. Some of them even think the dreams are real. And the ideas they get! It makes you shudder what some of those women want to have done to them! Do you get letters also?'

‘They are no longer forwarded to me,' I said. ‘At my request.'

Hanfstaengl winked again. It was a grotesque twisting of the face which made him look for a moment as if he were suffering a difficult bowel movement. ‘They say Il Duce answers all
his
letters personally.'

I smiled at this but would neither confirm nor deny the story. It suited Mussolini, I know, to have his masculinity vaunted in this way. Not a red-blooded Italian man or woman failed to wish him well in the fulfilment of his healthy animal appetites. Few leading National Socialists possessed this natural virility, one of many fundamental differences between the Italian
fascisti
and their imitators.

Putzi Hanfstaengl said no more about the Baroness. She did not bother me again. I saw her only once more during a minor delay on the line a mile or so from the border. The train stopped. We were told we could disembark and walk about, if we wished. I decided to smoke a cigarette in the open air.
As I paced the narrow area of grass between track and fence I saw a stunning young woman look up from picking yellow daisies. She had that rich, pale hair, almost transparent skin and luscious blushing red lips of the typical South Russian beauty. Her slender figure might have belonged to a leading mannequin. Hatless, she wore a dress of grey linen with a matching jacket. Her only jewellery was a string of pearls. Her hair was waved in the latest fashion. From her clothes she was clearly a Berliner. Convinced we had met before, I approached her. Then she looked back at a woman who called to her as she descended from the train—the Baroness von Ruckstühl. I remembered then who the girl must be. She was Kitty, the child I had originally courted when seeking the attentions of her mother. She had grown even more beautiful. I stepped into the train's shadow.

One experiences a particular frisson on seeing a woman one knew as a child, especially if she is as striking as Kitty von Ruckstühl. Running towards her was a dark little boy, perhaps the result of his mother's union with a Turk. After I had gone the Baroness had obviously discovered another protector. A powerful Constantinople businessman no doubt found her title useful. The connection between Germany and Turkey was always strong. How had she turned up on the Munich train? I hoped she was making connections to some other city and that I was seeing the last of her. I was sorry we had parted on less than perfect terms. I would have appreciated an introduction to Kitty again.

We arrived in Munich on the following Friday. I found myself admiring the wonderful architecture with its variety of Baroque flourishes. I had never before experienced such peculiar charm in a city. Munich was all pink and gold. She reminded me not of my real childhood, but of my childhood storybooks, my happiest dreams. Even when there was a delay while they searched for my trunks at the station, the city continued to delight me. Some of my luggage had been sent on but other pieces were not with the train. I was only mildly put out. I had not expected to be so entranced by Munich's ambience. In spite of all I had heard of political instability, near-civil war, military putsches and Bolshevik takeovers, in spite of its reputation as the heart-city of revolution, Munich possessed a wonderful air of unchanging security. The luggage remained absent. The fawning stationmaster was called and duly apologised. He would take my address and have my trunks delivered by the following morning. Could the trunks have been held up at customs, perhaps? The border people were so difficult these days. It was unlikely, I said. Although I feigned impatience, I was not particularly upset. The city was absorbing me already. Some cities feel immediately
familiar. I told the stationmaster I would be obliged to him for any assistance he could give. Most of what I needed was in the luggage which accompanied me.

Doctor Hanfstaengl linked his huge arm in mine. He was pleased to have a new American friend. A German would have made a mighty and completely useless fuss about the matter. Americans took so much in their stride. He wished Germans were more like Americans and Americans a little less like Germans. He laughed heartily at this cryptic sally. I did my best to join in. While I liked the man enormously, half of what he said made no sense at all!

We had become so thoroughly involved with the lost luggage that I did not have to time to see if the Baroness and her party had left the station. They were probably getting the Berlin train. I was relieved. I would soon be back in Italy, and the woman would no longer be a danger to me. What a shame, I thought, that she should live while my poor Esmé was no doubt dead on some
shtetl
's dungheap. But I had learned long since that life was neither fair nor very controllable and as often as not the good died in agony while the bad flourished in the lap of luxury. Increasingly, we were seeing the rule of the strong over the weak, the exploitation of the state's liberal laws by a few rich and powerful businessmen with international links. It was no secret with what inefficiency Berlin's federal government dealt with local issues.

No wonder the National Socialists were gathering strength. Anyone with a sense of common justice resented such social and economic inequalities and wished to see them overturned. But some of us knew the Bolshevik alternative was even worse. And that was why I have always believed that it was an act of treachery to our shared ideals and culture, our religion and our traditions, to vote for the Reds.

These children who accuse me of condoning every evil have no idea what they mean. A Red Germany would have meant a Red Europe, and a Red Europe would ultimately have engulfed us in the most appalling world war of all time. The Second World War would have seemed as nothing to that war. Armed men were divided between extremes of left and right, recklessly prepared to risk civil conflict. Parties like the National Socialists sought to find a middle ground between the two. The few rough elements who attached themselves to Hitler were no more typical of the average ‘Nazi' than the brutes who pillaged Belgium in the name of the Kaiser.

Our cab soon swung away from a quaint tangle of medieval streets into the great tree-lined prospects of the outer city, where huge private villas
and municipal offices sat back among well-kept lawns and trees. I do not think I had ever seen such a pleasantly ordered conurbation, with parks and squares and pleasure gardens all adding to its air of cultivated tranquillity. It had rightly been called ‘the most civilised city in Europe'. Only then, I think, did I truly realise I was in Germany. Munich, they said, was the heart of Germany just as Berlin was her brain. And what an unexpectedly beautiful heart it was!