Kaputt (54 page)

However, he was born in Leghorn which of all Italian cities shows the most vivid and colorful traces and the greatest immediacy and reality of the Levant—or because of the unfortunate educational effects of his exceptional good luck, or because of his peculiar conception of wealth, power, glory and love—a conception strangely similar to that of a Pasha. Isabelle had good reason to sense instinctively another Sursock in Galeazzo.

Thus within a short time Isabelle became the arbiter of Roman political life in the strictly worldly meaning that the word "political" has in the smart-set. To an inexperienced observer who never looked beyond the various aspects of smiling arrogance, she might even have appeared happy. But her happiness as it always happens in a corrupt society when it comes on evil and calamitous days, through a subconscious force, gradually assumed the semblance of moral indifference and sad cynicism that were faithfully mirrored by the small court gathered around the table of the palace in Piazza Santi Apostoli.

Everything best and worst that Rome could offer in names, manners, reputations and behavior sat around that table. To be asked to the Colonna Palace became the supreme and fairly easily attainable ambition of young women who belonged to the Roman smart-set, of neglected beauties from the North who were beginning to cross the fateful threshold—scions of Lombard, Piedmontese and Venetian families who more than once had succeeded in mixing in their veins new and obscure blood of the Cianos with their own ancient and illustrious blood. There were also minor actresses of the Roman film colony who, during the later days, seemed to attract Count Ciano more and more through a kind of weariness, quite Proustian in character, the
Guermantes
way, or through his illusion of craving for sincerity.

Every day there was a greater number of "Galeazzo's widows," those simple-minded favorites who had fallen into disfavor with Count Ciano—who was always ready to seek out new loves and was as fickle in matters of love as he was in all others. They were in the habit of pouring their tears, their confessions and their jealous rages on Isabelle's bosom when she had a "widow's day" three times each week. On these days at designated hours between three and five in the afternoon, Isabelle was at home to the "widows." She welcomed them with open arms and a
smiling
face, as if to congratulate them on some danger that they had escaped or on an unexpected bit of good luck; she seemed to experience an extraordinary joy, a peculiar, almost physical pleasure, a morbid and sensual gratification in mingling her shrill laughter and her irrepressible gay words with the tears and complaints of the unfortunate "widows," who instead of suffering with sincere grief and with deep pangs of a true love, were motivated by spite, humiliation and rage. Those were the moments when Isabelle's malignant genius, her genius for intrigue and delusion, rose to a height and nobility of pure art, of a free and voluntary game, of a disinterested immorality that was almost innocence. In that art, in that game of Isabelle's
materiam superabat opus,
Isabelle's great secret, probed for so many years, spied upon and scrutinized in vain by the evil curiosity of all of Rome, would have been revealed to an indiscreet observer at such times if indiscreet observers had been allowed to witness the pathetic, malicious scenes of Isabelle's triumphs and of the humiliation of the "widows." To the shocked and troubled observer, Isabelle's queer joy was enough to cast a revealing, turbid and pathetic light upon her complex, mysterious and yet unhappy mind.

Around Galeazzo and his elegant and servile court the desert landscape of indifference, contempt or hatred, which was by then the moral landscape of unfortunate Italy, was daily closing in. There were moments when Isabelle felt the gloomy horizon closing in on her, but she had no eyes for anything she did not want to see,- she was completely wrapped up in her hopes, and in the machinations of her unselfish intrigue that was intended to allow Italy to overcome the awful and unavoidable trial of defeat and to seek refuge like a new Andromeda in the loving arms of the British Perseus. The fact that everything was crumbling around her, that Count Ciano, with his fickle vanity, revealed more each day his severance from the realities of Italian life, confirming what she had known for a long time, what she had been the first one and, perhaps, the only one to discern: Galeazzo's complete lack of influence on Italian life, his purely formal and decorative value, his sole significance as a pretext—all this, instead of overwhelming her mind with bitterness and despair, instead of unsealing her eyes and making her aware of her fatal mistake, only strengthened her lofty and high-minded delusion and added new grounds for her pride. Galeazzo was the man of tomorrow. What if he were not the man of today? All alone Isabelle still believed in him. That young man loved by the gods, that young man whom the benevolent and envious gods had heaped with such extraordinary gifts and even more extraordinary favors, would some day save Italy, and carry her in his arms through the flames to the safe and generous bosom of Britain. There was the fervor of a Flora MacDonald about her mission as an apostle.

Isabelle conducted an able and tireless campaign through the Vatican, where Osborne, His British Majesty's Minister to the Holy See, had taken refuge since the beginning of the war—to make London and Washington aware of the love and respect that the entire Italian people had for Count Ciano. Nothing could free her from the delusion that Galeazzo was the only man in Italy on whom British and American policy could depend, the only man whom London and Washington kept secretly ready for the day of reckoning, that is for the day which Englishmen describe as "the morning after the night before." Even the wisdom of the many and powerful friends she had at the Vatican, their persistent doubts, their advice of moderation and humility, their tightening of lips and shaking of heads, and the icy reserve of the British Minister Osborne could not shake Isabelle's faith. If anyone had told her, "Galeazzo is too much loved by the gods to be able to save himself"—if anyone had revealed to her the fate granted as a supreme favor by envious gods to those whom they love best and had said, "It is Galeazzo's fate to be Mussolini's lamb at the approaching and inevitable Easter and that is why he is being fattened by Mussolini," the halls of the Colonna Palace would have resounded with Isabelle's shrill laughter. "The very idea, my dear!" Isabelle, like Galeazzo, was too much loved by the gods.

During the years when war began to reveal its true, mysterious face, a kind of sinister complicity sprang up between Isabelle and Galeazzo, a complicity that gradually swept them, as if by an invisible force, toward an ever more flagrant moral indifference, to a doom that follows a long and habitual acceptance of laxity and mutual deception. The law that governed their relationship was the same that governed the dinners and gay parties in the Palazzo Colonna—not the Proustian code of Faubourg Saint-Germain, not that of Mayfair of recent years, not that of a still newer Park Avenue, but the easy and affluent social code of the fashionable, modern sections of Athens, Cairo and Constantinople. It was an indulgent code based on caprice and boredom, and it functioned without any scruples. In a corrupt court where Isabelle reigned as the servile queen, Galeazzo assumed the role of a Pasha. Fat, rosy, smiling and despotic, he needed only slippers and turban to be in harmony with the decadent, saccharine atmosphere of Palazzo Colonna.

After a long absence of more than a year on the Russian front, in the Ukraine, Poland and Finland, I finally returned one morning to the golf links of the Acquasanta. Sitting in a corner of the terrace I was overcome by a feeling of discomfort and unrest as I watched the players as slowly and uncertainly they moved along the distant brow of the rolling hills that slope gently toward the red arches of the aqueducts, against a background of pines and cypresses that surround the tombs of the Horatii and Curiatii. It was a November morning in 1942, the sun was warm and a damp wind brought a smell of seaweed and grass from the sea. An invisible plane was humming in the azure heavens and the sound rained down from the lofty sky like resonant pollen.

I had just returned to Italy a few days before after having lain long in a Helsinki hospital where I had undergone a serious operation that had exhausted my strength. I still walked with a cane and was pale and emaciated. Small groups of players were beginning to stroll back toward the clubhouse; the beauties of the Colonna Palace, the dandies of the Excelsior Bar, the cold and ironic young secretaries from the Chigi Palace, passed by and smiled greetings,- some were surprised to see me: they did not know that I had returned to Italy, they thought I was still in Finland. Seeing me so white and worn, they lingered a moment to inquire how I was, whether it was very cold in Finland, whether I would be staying in Rome for some time or whether I was preparing to return soon. My Martini shook in my hand, I was still so weak. I answered "Yes" or "No" and looked in their faces and laughed deep inside—until Paola came and we found a secluded table near a window.

"Nothing has changed in Italy, has it?" asked Paola.

"Oh, everything has changed," I said. "It's incredible how everything has changed."

"Strange," said Paola, "I had not noticed it."

She was looking at the door, and suddenly she exclaimed, "Here comes Galeazzo! Do you think he, too, has changed?"

I answered, "Galeazzo has changed. Everybody has changed. Everybody is awaiting with terror the great
Kapparoth,
the
Kaputt
, the great Cat."

"What?" Paola exclaimed opening her eyes wide.

Galeazzo came in. He lingered a moment on the threshold, and rubbing his hands, he laughed pursing his lips. He raised his chin in acknowledging the greetings; opening his eyes wide with a broad cordial smile that did not unseal his lips, he carefully looked over the ladies and glanced swiftly at the men. Then, pushing out his chest and drawing in his stomach so as to try to conceal the fact that he had grown fat, he crossed the room. Still rubbing his hands and turning this way and that, he took a seat at a corner table where he was joined at once by Cyprienne and Marcello del Drago, and Blasco d'Ayeta. Voices that had dropped to soft whispers when Ciano had appeared in the door, rose again as everybody began talking loudly across the tables as if they were calling to each other from opposite banks of a river. Everybody addressed each other by name and hailed acquaintances across the room, glancing at Galeazzo to make sure that he had heard and noticed them; that was the sole purpose of the loud questions, the festive little shrieks, the smiles and fleeting glances. From time to time Galeazzo raised his face and took part in the general conversation. He spoke in a loud voice, gazing intently now at this, and now at that girl. His eyes never rested on the men, as if there were only women in the room. He smiled, winked cunningly and made slight signs with an upraised eyebrow or with his fleshy, protruding lips. The women responded to his coquetry by laughing too loudly, bending over the tables with their heads tilted to one side so they could hear every word, all the time watching each other with jealous intensity.

At the table next to us sat Lavinia, Gianna, Georgette, Anne Marie von Bismarck, Prince Otto von Bismarck and two young secretaries from the Chigi Palace.

"Everybody looks happy this morning," Anne Marie von Bismarck said. "Has something happened?"

"How can anything new happen in Rome?" I replied.

"I'm new in Rome," said Filippo Anfuso, approaching the von Bismarcks' table. Filippo Anfuso had arrived that very morning from Budapest where he had recently been sent to replace Giuseppe Talamo, the Minister at the Royal Legation.

"Oh, Filippo!" Anne Marie exclaimed.

"Filippo! Filippo!" voices called from everywhere. Anfuso with his usual embarrassed air turned with a smile to greet this or that person,- he moved his head as if he had a boil on his neck and, as usual, he did not know what to do with his hands that now were on his hips, then stuck in his pockets and then let hang limply by his sides. He looked wooden and newly varnished, and the blackness of his over-glossy hair seemed excessive even for a man like him, even for a Minister. He laughed; his eyes, those beautiful, almost mysterious eyes glittered, and as he laughed he flickered his eyelids in his usual languid and sentimental way. His knees, that were bent slightly inward and almost touched each other, were his weakness about which he secretly suffered. "Filippo! Filippo!" voices called from everywhere. I noticed that Galeazzo had stopped in the middle of a sentence and, as his eyes fixed on Anfuso his face darkened. He was jealous of Anfuso. I was surprised that he was still jealous of Filippo. Ciano's knees were also his weak point, being slightly knock-kneed himself. The only thing that Galeazzo and Filippo had in common were knees that touched each other.

"Americans landed yesterday in Algiers," Anfuso said, seating himself between Anne Marie and Lavinia at the von Bismarcks' table. "That's why everybody is so happy today."

"Shut up, Filippo! Don't be naughty!" Anne Marie said.

"In fairness, I should add that people were equally as happy the day Rommel reached El Alamein," Anfuso said.

In June four months earlier, when the Italian and German troops had rushed into El Alamein and seemed about to capture Alexandria and Cairo at any moment, Mussolini, in the uniform of a Marshal of the Empire, had hurriedly started by air for the Egyptian front, carrying in his luggage the famous "Sword of Islam" that Italo Balbo, the Governor of Libya, had solemnly presented to him a few years before. The Governor of Egypt whom the Duce was about to install in Cairo with such pomp was a member of Mussolini's suite. Serafino Mazzolini had been appointed Governor of Egypt. Formerly he had been Italian Minister to Cairo, and he, too, had started hurriedly by air for the El Alamein front accompanied by an army of secretaries, women typists, interpreters, experts in Arabian matters and a brilliant staff of officers many of whom were already quarreling and backbiting among themselves and filling the Libyan desert with their jealous and vainglorious complaints. They were lovers, husbands, brothers and cousins of Ciano's favorites along with some magnificent, proud, melancholy specimens from among Edda's discarded favorites. The Libyan war, said Anfuso, had not brought any luck to the favorites from Edda's and Galeazzo's harems. Whenever the British in the vicissitudes of the desert moved forward, some of those grand personages invariably fell into their hands. Meanwhile news had begun to filter back to Rome from the El Alamein front about Mussolini's impatience to make his triumphal entry into Alexandria and Cairo, and how Rommel was so furious with Mussolini that he refused to meet him.