Kaputt (55 page)

"What has he come down here for? " Rommel had asked. "Who sent him here?"

Tired of waiting, Mussolini, silent and black, had passed up and down before the unfortunate, pale, silent Governor of Egypt. In Rome the wounds that the appointment of Serafino Mazzolini as Governor of Egypt had inflicted on the courtiers of the Chigi and Colonna palaces, had still been open and fresh; for many people the problem of the moment had been not how to conquer Egypt but how to prevent Serafino from reaching Cairo. Everybody put their trust in the British. Ciano, along with the others, although for different reasons, had not been satisfied with the way things were going and had made a show of ironic skepticism. "Oh, yes! In Cairo!" he had said, implying that Mussolini would never get there. Actually what had comforted Galeazzo during the many disappointments of the El Alamein victory days, had been—according to Anfuso's account—Mussolini's absence from Rome, even if it were only of a few days' duration. As Ciano had put it, "At last he was out of the way!"

"The relations between Ciano and Mussolini do not seem to be very good even today," I remarked. "At least that's what I have heard in Stockholm."

"Perhaps he would like to see his father-in-law suffer a minor defeat," Anfuso said in French, affecting a Marseille accent.

"You are not implying that the war to them is merely a family affair?" Anne Marie said.

"Alas!" Anfuso exclaimed, sighing loudly and raising his beautiful eyes to the ceiling.

"Cyprienne looks bored today," Georgette said.

"Cyprienne has too much sense of humor to find Galeazzo amusing," said Anfuso.

"That's very true! In the long run Galeazzo is boring," Anne Marie said.

"On the contrary, I find him very amusing and witty," said Prince Otto von Bismarck.

"He certainly is much more amusing than von Ribbentrop," said Filippo. "Have you heard what von Ribbentrop says about Galeazzo?"

"Of course I have," Otto von Bismarck replied uneasily.

"No, you haven't," Anne Marie said. "Tell us, Filippo!"

"Von Ribbentrop says that Galeazzo would be a great Foreign Minister if he would not meddle in foreign affairs."

"Considering that he is Minister of Foreign Affairs I must say that he meddles very little in them," I said. "His fault is meddling too much in domestic politics."

"Quite true," Anfuso said. "That's all he does from morning till night. His waiting room has become a branch office of the Home Office and of the Fascist party."

"He is more concerned about the appointment of a prefect or of a provincial party secretary," said one of the two young secretaries from the Chigi Palace, "than he is about the appointment of an ambassador."

"Muti was one of his creatures," added the other secretary.

"But now they hate each other like poison," Anfuso said. "I believe the break came because of Count Magistrates appointment as Minister to Sofia."

"What business was it of Muti's?" von Bismarck asked.

"Ciano directed the home politics and Muti the foreign policy," Anfuso replied.

"Galeazzo is a strange man," I said. "He is under the delusion that he is very popular in America and Britain."

"That's the least of his troubles," said Anfuso. "He even imagines that he is very popular in Italy!"

"What excellent imagination!" von Bismarck said.

"For my part, I'm very fond of him," Anne Marie said.

"That's because you believe that he will change the course of the war!" Anfuso said blushing with a strange air.

Anne Marie smiled and looked at Anfuso, "You're very fond of him? Aren't you, Filippo?"

"Of course I'm very fond of him," said Anfuso. "But what's the use? If I were his mother, I would be trembling for him."

"Why aren't you trembling for him, if you are so fond of him?" Anne Marie asked.

"I have no time. I'm too busy trembling for myself."

"What is the matter with all of you today? " Lavinia asked. "Is it the war that makes you so jittery?"

"The war?" said Anfuso. "What war? The people don't give a damn about the war. Haven't you seen the posters that Mussolini has had hung in every shop and pasted on all the street walls?" They were large posters in the national colors with only four words in large letters: WE ARE AT WAR. "He was right to remind us about it," Anfuso added, "because nobody remembers it."

"The state of mind of the Italian people during this war is extremely odd," Prince von Bismarck said.

"I wonder whom Mussolini would hold responsible," Anfuso said, "if the war should take a bad turn."

"The Italian people," I said.

"No. Mussolini never holds many heads responsible for anything. He needs only one head, a head that seems to be made for that special purpose. He would hold Galeazzo responsible. What other use could there be for Galeazzo? Mussolini keeps him there for that special purpose. Look at his head! Doesn't it seem to be made just for that?"

We all turned our eyes on Count Ciano. His head was round, a little swollen, and too large. "A little too big for his age," said Anfuso.

"You are unbearable, Filippo," Anne Marie said.

"I thought you were Galeazzo's friend," I said to Anfuso.

"Galeazzo needs no friends and does not want any. He does not know what to do with them. He despises them and treats them like menials," Anfuso said and added with a laugh, "He is satisfied with Mussolini's friendship."

"Mussolini is very fond of him, isn't he?" Georgette asked.

"Oh yes, very!" Anfuso said. "In February 1941, during that wretched campaign in Greece, Galeazzo sent for me at Bari to discuss matters concerning the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. For Ciano it was a very difficult moment. He was then a lieutenant colonel in a bomber squadron, at the Palese Air Field near Bari. He was very annoyed with Mussolini. He called him
il Testone
—the blockhead. Shortly before that a conference had taken place in Bordighera where Mussolini had met Franco and Serrano Suner. Galeazzo, who had been ready to start, was left behind at the last moment. With a suitcase still in his hand, he said to me, 'Mussolini hates me.' That same evening Edda called to tell him that Fabrizio, their first born, was seriously ill. Galeazzo was very much upset by the news. He wept and said, 'He hates me! There's nothing I can do—he hates me!' Later he added, 'That man has always brought me bad luck.'"

"Bad luck?" Lavinia said with a laugh. "God in Heaven, men are so vain!"

"If I am not mistaken, Galeazzo was on the point of resigning," Gianna said.

"Galeazzo will never leave of his own accord," Anfuso said. "He is too fond of power. He fondles his ministerial seat as if it were a mistress. He trembles at the thought of being thrown out on a moment's notice."

"In those days in Bari," I said, "Galeazzo had another reason for being afraid. That was the time when Hitler, at one of their meetings at the Brenner Pass, handed Mussolini Himmler's report on Galeazzo."

"Wasn't it more of a report on Isabelle Colonna?" asked Anne Marie.

"How do you know about it?" Otto von Bismarck asked uneasily.

"All of Rome talked about it for months," Anne Marie said.

"It was a bad moment for Galeazzo," Anfuso said. "Even his most intimate friends turned their backs on him. Blasco d'Ayeta happened to tell me on that occasion that between Galeazzo and Isabelle, he would have sided with Isabelle."

I answered, "And between Hitler and Isabelle? Obviously it was clearly not a question of having to choose between Count Galeazzo Ciano and Princess Isabelle Colonna, though most people thought so. One morning Galeazzo asked me to come to his house. The hour was unusual, about eight o'clock. I found him in his bath. He got out of the tub, and while he was drying himself, said, 'Von Ribbentrop has stabbed me in the back. Himmler is behind von Ribbentrop. They have asked for my head in that report. If Mussolini presents my head to von Ribbentrop, he will reveal himself publicly as the coward that he is!' Then, pressing both his hands on his naked belly, he added: 'I must lose some weight.' When he dried himself, he dropped his bath towel and standing stark naked in front of a mirror, began to grease his hair with a bunch of grass he had sent to him from Shanghai that is used in China as brilliantine. 'A good thing that I am not the Foreign Minister of the Chinese Republic,' he said. 'You know China as well as I do. It is a delightful country, but think what would happen to me there if I were to fall into disfavor.' He began to describe to me Chinese tortures that he had witnessed in a Peking street. The victim, tied to a pole, was stripped with a penknife piece by piece of all his flesh, except for his nerves and his arteries and veins. The man became a kind of trellis made of bones, nerves and blood vessels through which the sun could shine and the flies could buzz. In that way the victim could live for several days. Galeazzo lingered with masochistic complacency on the most horrible details and laughed merrily. I felt the sensual pleasure he took in being cruel and also his fear and his powerless hatred. 'Things are not so different in Italy,' he said. 'Mussolini has devised a torture even more cruel than the Chinese—a kick in the behind.' As he said it, he touched his buttocks. 'It's not the kick that hurts,' he said. 'It's the waiting, the continuous, exasperating waiting from day to day, from hour to hour, from minute to minute.' In jest I remarked that he and I both had looked ahead and that luckily we were provided with fat buttocks. Galeazzo's face grew dark and, feeling himself, he asked, 'Do you really think my behind is fat?' He was deeply concerned about it. Later, while he was dressing, he said, 'Mussolini will never present my head to anyone. He is afraid. He is perfectly well aware that all Italians are with me. The Italians know that I am the only man in Italy who dares to stand up to Mussolini.'

"It was a delusion, but it was not for me to disillusion him, and I kept quiet. Even as far back as that he was sincerely convinced that he was standing up to Mussolini. Actually, Galeazzo trembles from morning till night in fear of that kick in the behind. Face to face with Mussolini, Galeazzo is like everybody else, like all of us—a frightened menial. He always said 'Yes' to Mussolini. But behind Mussolini's back, he has the courage of a lion and is afraid of nothing. If Mussolini had his mouth in the back of his head, Galeazzo would not hesitate in placing his head between his fangs like a lion-tamer in a circus. Sometimes, when he is talking about the war, Mussolini and Hitler, he says the most amusing things. No one can deny that he has wit or intelligence. Sometimes he evaluates a political situation like a man who knows what he and others are about. Once I asked him how he thought the war would probably end."

"And what did he say?" Prince von Bismarck asked with an ironic smile.

"That it was still impossible to tell what country would win the war, but that it was clear what countries had already lost it."

"And what countries have already lost the war?" Prince von Bismarck asked.

"Poland and Italy."

"It's not very exciting to know who will lose it," Anne Marie said. "I would like to know who will win it."

"Don't be indiscreet," said Anfuso. "That is a state secret. Isn't it true?" he asked turning to von Bismarck.

"Naturally," said Prince von Bismarck.

"Occasionally, Galeazzo is unbelievably imprudent," Filippo Anfuso said. "If the walls of his study in the Chigi Palace and if Isabelle's table could talk, Mussolini and Hitler would hear some funny things."

"He ought to be more careful," Georgette said. "Isabelle's table is a talking table."

"That old chestnut again," von Bismarck said.

In the beginning of 1941, when Hitler at a meeting with Mussolini at the Brenner Pass had placed Himmler's report on Galeazzo in his hands, the news aroused first amazement in the Roman world, then fear and finally open and malicious pleasure. But at Isabelle's table people laughed about that report as if it were a bad joke by a faithless or indiscreet valet. "Hitler is a bungler!" Isabelle said. The report was aimed not as much at Count Ciano as at Princess Colonna, whom Himmler called "The Fifth Column." Day by day, and word for word, all the conversations that took place around that table were reported with scrupulous accuracy—not only the actual words of Galeazzo, Edda and Isabelle and the remarks of guests whose social rank or political and government positions made them important, not only the opinions about war of Ciano and of the foreign diplomats who visited the Colonna Palace, and Hitler's and Mussolini's mistakes of war policy, but even social gossip, women's backbiting and innocent words of minor figures such as Marcello del Drago or Mario Pansa were recorded. Edda's jokes about this or that, about Hitler, von Ribbentrop and von Mackensen; stories of her frequent trips to Budapest, Berlin and Vienna; Ciano's indiscretions about Mussolini, Franco, Horty, Pavelic, Pétain and Antonescu,- Isabelle's cutting remarks about Mussolini's vulgar affairs and her bitter forecasts about the end of the war, along with Sandra Apaletti's amiable Florentine gossip and the scandalous little stories about young German and Italian actresses of the Roman movie colony and the love affairs of Goebbels and Pavolini—everything was recorded in that minute and detailed report, a large part of which was devoted to the amorous life of Galeazzo, his fickleness, the jealousy of his favorites and the corruption of his little court. What had saved Count Ciano from Mussolini's wrath was the tribute Himmler's report paid to Edda. If that report had not mentioned anything derogatory to Edda, her affairs, the
liaisons dangereuses
of her women friends, the scandals at Cortina d'Ampezzo and Capri, Galeazzo's fate would have been sealed. The charges against his daughter had forced Mussolini to defend his son-in-law. But Himmler's report had been successful in stirring suspicions in Ciano's and Isabelle's courts. Who had provided Himmler with the information for that report? The servants in the Colonna Palace? Isabelle's butler? Some of Ciano's or Isabelle's intimate friends? The names of this one and that were mentioned, and one young woman whose pride had been hurt by the recent success of a rival was suspected. Every "widow" was carefully questioned, scrutinized and investigated. "At any rate it cannot be you or I," Isabelle had said to Count Ciano. "Certainly, not I," Galeazzo had replied. "Oh, my dear!" Isabelle had answered, raising her eyes to the ceiling, with its frescoes by Poussin. The only result of Himmler's report had been Count Ciano's temporary removal from Rome. Galeazzo left for Bari where he was assigned to a bomber squadron of the Palese Air Field, and for some time in the halls of the Colonna Palace and even in the Chigi Palace, he was not mentioned except in lowered tones or with affected indifference. But in her heart Isabelle, though deeply hurt by that "Certainly, not I," remained loyal to Galeazzo—a woman of her age simply could not be mistaken.