Kaputt (53 page)

The British had left. The French had left. Other foreign diplomats were preparing to leave Rome. German diplomats had replaced the British and the French, and there was a perceptible lowering of standards—a certain diffidence, an undefinable uneasiness had succeeded the old free graciousness, the old free ease. Princess Anne Marie von Bismarck—her clear Swedish features embroidered on the silken blue sky against a background of pines, cypresses and tombs of the Appian Way—and the other young women of the German Embassy had a shy and smiling grace that was rendered more gentle and reticent by a realization that they were foreigners in Rome where every other foreign woman feels Roman. There was sorrow in the air, a subtle and mellow regret.

Galeazzo Ciano's youthful court was rather easygoing and generous; it was the court of a vain and capricious prince to which entrance was gained through the favor of women and from which people were exiled because of the prince's sudden disfavor—a marketplace of smiles, honors, positions and sinecures. The court was rightfully presided over by a woman,- not by one of Galeazzo's young and beautiful favorites, but by a woman who considered Galeazzo her favorite, and her colt. Roman society long since had finally accorded her the recognition after having offered hardy resistance to her in the beginning—a recognition of courtly predominance because of her name, rank, wealth and an angelic predisposition for intrigue, to which were added a natural gift of a vague sense of history and a class consciousness that obscured her already weak and uncertain political understanding.

Assisted equally by her long-undisputed position as "first lady of Rome," and by the dismay that had overtaken Roman society due to war dislocations and the uncertainty of the future—a sort of pagan despair that penetrates the weary veins of old Catholic aristocracies when some awful storm is approaching—and by the decay of moral principles and manners that is a harbinger of great revolutions, Princess Isabelle Colonna had in a short space of time succeeded in turning the palace of Piazza Santi Apostoli into a citadel of those principles of illegitimacy that were represented in the political, as well as the social field, with fresh and vivid glamour by Count Galeazzo Ciano and his court. This surprised only those who, being unfamiliar with the political vicissitudes of great Roman families during the last thirty or fifty years, or being ignorant of the "public secrets" of the smart-set, were not aware of the real position that Isabelle enjoyed in the Roman world.

The fact that for many years Isabelle had carried on the duties of a stern vestal of the most rigid principles of legitimacy, had not prevented the "little Sursock"—as Isabelle was called when, newly married, she had arrived in Rome by way of Cairo and Constantinople with her sister Matilda, the wife of Alberto Theodoli—from being considered by many people an upstart, an intruder who represented the Corinthian order in the Doric order of the Colonna house. Later, when confronted by an illegitimate Italy that Mussolini and his "revolution" had brought to the fore, Isabelle for several years, until the Concordat, assumed an honest and smiling reserve; she sat, so to speak, by the window. She adjusted her relations with the "revolution," as she saw it from the windows of the Colonna Palace, with the same minute etiquette and strict protocol that she provided for her notorious leases with the unfortunate Mrs. Kennedy who for a long time had been renting an apartment in the Colonna Palace. The "legitimate" Rome was not surprised the day when Isabelle had opened her doors to Italo Balbo, nor had this innovation caused any scandal. But then, one surmised the true and deeper reasons for Isabelle's changed attitude, and for Italo Balbo's presence in the drawing rooms of the palace of Piazza Santi Apostoli.

Not only to Isabelle and to Roman society, but to the entire Italian people, the war became what the Spaniards, using a bullfighting term, call
el momento de verdad
—the moment of truth—when a man, all alone, grasps the sword in his hand and faces the bull. In that moment the truth about the man and about the brute that faces him stands revealed. All vanities, human and animal, fall away. In that supreme moment the man stands naked and alone face to face with the brute who is also naked and alone. At the beginning of the war, in that moment of
verdad,
Isabelle also had found herself naked and alone; she publicly opened the great front gate of the Colonna Palace to Galeazzo Ciano and his court, making it clear that she had definitely made her choice between the principle of legitimacy and illegitimacy, and transformed the palace of Piazza Santi Apostoli into what the Paris Archbishop's palace had been in the days of Cardinal de Retz— herself becoming a Cardinal de Retz in a certain sense. Over that citadel of illegitimacy, over that palace where gathered everything equivocal and spurious that had risen to the surface in a new Rome and in a new Italy, Isabelle reigned as queen without for a moment renouncing an ancient, amiable and mischievous predisposition for tyranny. Within that world Galeazzo appeared more as a tool of tyranny than a tyrant.

Isabelle's table was no longer adorned with white and red roses and with winter strawberries—royal bounties, the gifts of Italo Balbo—sent daily by air from Libya, but with the smiling faces, rosy cheeks and strawberry lips of young women whom Isabelle offered as royal bounties to the insatiable vanity of Galeazzo.

By then Italo Balbo was dead, and dead were the roses and winter strawberries of Libya.

No young woman whom Galeazzo had noticed during a fleeting encounter, no foreigner of standing, no aspiring gallant, no dandy of the Chigi Palace who yearned for promotion or for a sinecure in some comfortable embassy, could escape the obligation that was sought through every conceivable art—to pay tribute with a convivial wreath of roses to Isabelle and Galeazzo. The chosen crossed the threshold of the Colonna Palace with an air of mysterious and yet open complicity, as if they were members of a publicly known conspiracy. An invitation from Isabelle was no longer of any real social value. Perhaps, it still had a political value, but many were mistaken even about the political value of an invitation to Piazza Santi Apostoli.

Isabelle was the first and, perhaps, the only one to perceive even before she opened the gates of the Colonna Palace to him, that Count Galeazzo Ciano, the young and dashing Minister of Foreign Affairs, the lucky son-in-law of Mussolini, was unimportant in Italian life and politics. Why then had Isabelle hoisted the colors of Galeazzo Ciano over the Colonna Palace? A number of people were simple-minded enough to accuse her of playing chaperon to Galeazzo merely out of social ambition—could a more ludicrous charge be imagined?—or out of a passion for intrigue, but they overlooked the fact that the "first lady of Rome" was not in any need of improving her social position and even less so of defending it; she had everything to lose and nothing to gain by her alliance with Galeazzo. Justice must be done to Isabelle's social genius and to her far-reaching, worldly policy; no one, not even Mussolini, could have reigned in Rome against Isabelle. In rising to power Isabelle had nothing to learn from anyone,- she had carried out her own march on Rome and she had made a much earlier start, almost twenty years before Mussolini. Her efforts were crowned with much greater success.

The reasons for Isabelle's partiality to Galeazzo are much deeper and more complex. In a decadent social body approaching its final ruin, in a nation in which the principles of historical, political, and social legitimacy no longer held any authority, in a country in which the classes closely linked with the fate of social continuity had lost all prestige, in an Italy which, with her unfailing Sursock instinct Isabelle sensed, was about to become the greatest Levantine country of the West—from the standpoint of political morality Rome, no less than Naples, deserved Lord Rosebery's description: "The only Eastern city in the world that lacks a European quarter"—in such an Italy only the victory of the principles of illegitimacy could have insured a peaceful recovery from the terrible social crisis that was proclaimed and precipitated by the war, or could have attained the supreme and passionate aspirations of the conservative classes during days of serious social upheaval to save what can be saved.

Some people have been simple-minded enough to tax Isabelle with abandoning the cause of legitimacy for illegitimacy, which, in the language of the smart-set, means having preferred Count Galeazzo Ciano to the Prince of Piedmont who, according to the conservative classes, embodied the principle of legitimacy, that is, of social order and continuity, and who appeared to be the only man capable of insuring a peaceful recovery from the upheaval within a constitutional framework. If there is any prince in Europe richly endowed with virtue, it is Humbert of Savoy. His grace, good looks and smiling simplicity of manner are the virtues the Italian people demand from their princes. However, he lacked some of the gifts that were indispensable for shouldering the task which the conservative classes assigned to him. The Prince of Piedmont thought that he had as much intelligence as he needed, but not so much as others thought that he needed. To say that he lacked a sense of personal honor would be unfair. He had a sense of honor, but not to a degree that conservatives expect from a prince in moments of danger. In the vocabulary of frightened conservatives the term "personal honor" in a prince means a particular kind of honor that is concerned with saving not only the monarchical principle, statutory institutions and dynastic interests, but also everything back of that principle—the institutions and interests that constitute the social order. Nor was there anyone in the Prince of Piedmont's entourage who could be expected to grasp what the term "sense of honor" means to conservatives during days of serious and dangerous social upheaval.

Many people pinned their hopes on the Princess of Piedmont, but she was not a woman with whom Isabelle could get along. During moments of serious social upheaval, when not only the Royal family and their dynastic interests, but everything is at stake and in danger, a Princess Isabelle Colonna, Sursock by birth, cannot conceive of coming to terms with a Princess of Piedmont except on equal terms. Isabelle called her "the Fleming" and, falling from Isabelle's thin lips, the word brought forth a vision out of a Flemish picture of one of those fleshy girls with red hair, wide hips and a lazy, greedy mouth. Isabelle was of the opinion that certain attitudes assumed by the Princess of Piedmont and certain strange, indeed rather foolhardy contacts maintained by her with opponents of the monarchy and even communists, justified the surmise that the Princess of Piedmont was inclined to prefer the advice of men, even of foes, to the confidences of women, even of friends. "She has no friends, and she does not want any," was the inference Isabelle drew, and she was deeply concerned about it, not on her own behalf of course, but on behalf of the
pauvre Flamande.

Between the Prince of Piedmont and Count Galeazzo Ciano Isabelle could only choose the latter. Yet among the many reasons that induced her to prefer Count Ciano to the Prince of Piedmont was one that was a grave error of judgment. Unquestionably, from a political and historical view Ciano was the most genuine representative of the principles of illegitimacy that among the conservative classes was known as "a tamed revolution," and a tamed revolution is always more advantageous for the object of social preservation than a raging, or merely a stupid and inept reaction. But Isabelle made a fatal mistake in permitting her choice to be influenced by an opinion she shared with many people that Ciano was the "Anti-Mussolini," that in fact as well as in the minds of the Italian people he embodied the only policy which could "save what can be saved," namely,- a policy of friendship with Britain and America and finally, that, if not "the new man" sought for and awaited by everyone—Galeazzo at thirty-six was too young to be considered a new man in a country where men begin to be regarded as new only when they are past seventy—he was at least the man of tomorrow required by danger and the complexity of the situation. Later it became apparent how grievous was this mistake, and how pregnant with consequences. Some day it will be perceived that Isabelle was merely a tool of Providence—the very Providence with which Isabelle maintained such good relations through the Vatican—in speeding and evolving a style for the agony of a society that was fated to die.

Many people shared with Isabelle the delusion that Count Galeazzo Ciano was the "Anti-Mussolini," the man to whom London and Washington looked expectantly. Galeazzo himself, thanks to his vanity and smug optimism, was secretly convinced that he was viewed with favor by English and American public opinion,- that in speculating about the future, London and Washington considered him the only man in Italy who could take over Mussolini's complex legacy and, after the inevitably disastrous ending of the war, accomplish a transition from the Mussolini order to a new order agreeable to the liberal, Anglo-Saxon civilization, without causing irreparable ruin, unnecessary bloodshed or a serious social upheaval; finally, he believed himself the one man who could guarantee to London and Washington a social order and, above all, a necessary continuity of social organization that had been badly shaken by Mussolini, and was now threatened with complete destruction by the war.

How could the unfortunate Isabelle avoid sharing this delusion? A Levantine by birth, an Egyptian in fact, she loved Britain through her nature, education, habits and moral and material interests. Consequently she was inclined, almost predestined to look for or imagine in others what she strongly and deeply felt herself and wanted other people to feel. Moreover, in observing Galeazzo's nature, character, manners, and external attitudes that easily could be mistaken for political convictions, she had discovered a number of traits that inspired her with confidence and opened her heart to great and lively hopes—traits that formed a kind of spiritual kinship between her and Count Ciano,- the lower, so to speak, Levantine traits in the Italian character that never had been so conspicuous as when the crisis, the war, began to move toward its inevitable conclusion. Galeazzo had an abundance of such traits in a particularly sharp and apparent form. He was aware of them and was on occasion complacent about them, maybe because of the origin of his family that was more Magna Grecian than Tuscan. His ancestors, simple fishermen who owned a few wretched boats, hailed from Formia near Gaeta.