The Vengeance of Rome (30 page)

I saw him several times in Rome during that uncertain period. I know now that he worked for intelligence, keeping an eye on the Nazis as well as the Fascists. He took the Nazis seriously, though he was not entirely uncritical of them. He admitted to finding Göring, for all his corpulence
and vulgarity, charming. ‘It was impossible,' he says, ‘to believe that a man who looked and dressed like a lovesick baron in a Viennese operetta could be capable of evil.'

‘Perhaps he was not capable of evil.' I have always been able to take the broad view.

Sometimes Major Nye is a little too judgemental. After all, look at the British record of genocide. I find it ironic that the survivors of the Irish famines and clearances were the same men who lynched Negroes in New York and joined the American Army to fire into unarmed Indian villages, a rather more direct and efficient act of genocide than any their own families ever suffered.

History and God alone put us in a position to be aggressors or victims. It is not unusual these days for a person to know both rôles in a lifetime. I cannot find it in me to judge all those now branded as ‘war criminals'. Were all Germans villains? All Jews heroes? Surely it is time to forgive and forget? You who never knew the all-pervading stink of fear filling your guts, eating your bones, taking control of your brain and bowels, should not judge us who have had such experiences. Believe me. I am not excusing anything. The death camps went too far. But remember, there were only four of them built. The rest were concentration camps.

In Rome Major Nye made an appointment to visit my office. I received very few people there and was glad to welcome him. He took my mind off so many other matters. Of course, I had no hint of his real reason for seeing me. He was interested in my inventions. Years later he told me how part of his brief was to check up on my Land Leviathan. By 1931 rumours of my great moving battle tower were rife in Europe.

Since Mussolini's territory bordered their own, the British were chiefly interested in learning his African ambitions. They were inclined to think of him as an ally. Most British politicians admired Mussolini. Chamberlain, Eden and Churchill spoke warmly of his intelligence and acumen. David Lloyd George, who invented the National Health Service, saw him as a fellow ‘wizard'. Sir Oswald Mosley, under the influence of his wife and sister-in-law, left the British Labour Party to form the British Union of Fascists. All these people believed Hitler a parvenu, a coarse interpreter of Mussolini's genius. Certainly, without Mussolini a Hitler would probably not have emerged in Germany. And without Hitler, of course, Mussolini might still be keeping a steady hand on Italy's tiller. Like us all, he fell under a madman's spell.

Typical of his caste, Major Nye asked me no direct questions. He was never admitted to my inner sanctum, where my models were displayed. Most
of our conversation was casual, about sights seen, art admired, food eaten. He might have been any tourist. Did he seek my company because I might be in contact with Mrs Cornelius? I was glad to patch things up between them. We all had tea together at the English Tea Rooms near the Spanish Steps where the English poets used to catch food poisoning. The English will risk almost any danger for an infusion of Typhoo or Twinings. The place smelled of damp wool and digestive biscuits. It reminded the tourists of home.

I remained shocked by Maddy Butter's extraordinary rudeness. I wanted to confront her, but she avoided me at every turn. She had no proof that I had deceived her, save La Sarfatti's word! Yet she maintained complete silence. Her telephone was never answered. I saw her twice from the window of my official car. Once she was standing outside a large toyshop in the Piazza di Espagna studying rows of model soldiers in the window. I wound down the window of the car, but a newspaper seller thought I was signalling him and shoved a copy of the
Popolo d'Italia
in my face. When the fool was disposed of, suffering a severe telling-off from a policeman on the beat, Maddy had disappeared. The second time I was passing the Palazzo Venezia, where the Head of State traditionally had his offices, and saw her driving through the gates in a brand new red Fiat tourer, saluted by the guards. I guessed she was at last interviewing our Chief. I could only pray he was not also interviewing her. Billy Grisham showed me a cutting from the
Houston Examiner
that discussed the ‘charlatans and exploiters' who thronged Mussolini's court. She did not mention me by name, but it was clear who the ‘certain Russian-American con artist' was supposed to be. I prayed my leader had not seen this piece, or at least had ignored it as it deserved. Clearly no scandal impressed him. I kept my position.

For the following week there was only silence from my Chief. I did not find this especially significant. He had left Rome for a special tour. The newspapers said Il Duce was inspecting the draining of the Pontine Marshes but Grandi, whom I bumped into at the café where he usually took his lunch, winked at me and said, ‘The Chief has a new enthusiasm,' by which he meant a new paramour. ‘It's not the marshes he's draining! And not the Italian delta he's exploring.' He whistled a few bars of ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy'. He was given to coarse jokes of that kind. Frequently they were as vulgar as they were mysterious. He reassured me, however, that I was probably not out of favour. ‘The boss's powers of concentration are genuinely remarkable,' he said, ‘but sometimes he focuses on one thing to the exclusion of everything else. Sometimes weighty affairs of state, sometimes Turkish wrestling holds.' One of Mussolini's closest friends and associates,
Grandi had been left twiddling his thumbs for months sometimes, waiting for Il Duce to return his attention to whatever pressing matter was at hand.

I spent as little time in the cottage as possible. Seryozha had found my phone number and had called me several times. I told him it was unwise for me in my present position to spend too much time with foreign nationals. The OVRA were suspicious of such liaisons, and I would jeopardise my position. He understood but spoke of passions which had to be released. Could we not meet in secret?

I told him I could see no such possibility. The OVRA knew every movement of every one of the state's officials. Their duty, after all, as representatives of the people, was to ensure that the people's servants were behaving with due responsibility. Bureaucrats could no longer secure little nests for themselves in which they could practise any decadence.

Of course I exaggerated the power of the secret police. True they were everywhere, but this was really to their disadvantage. When I met Gilbert Keith Chesterton, the founder of the British Empire Movement, an author and journalist in his own right, who planned to make Notting Hill a Fascist enclave, he described a story in which every character who seemed to be an anarchist was actually a secret service agent. The joke in Rome was that the secret police were watching even more secret policemen who were watching still more secret policemen and so on! To some degree you could avoid them. Frequently, a small tip would secure their discretion, for they were usually very poorly paid, and they were never the unreasonable bullies propaganda made of them. As it was, I do not believe I was watched excessively. Those police people made themselves very obvious.

Maddy Butter had certainly disappeared from Roman society. I must admit I missed feminine company. I took tea several times with Mrs Cornelius and her Baron. On occasions we were joined not only by Major Nye but by Captain Göring, who now travelled frequently between Rome and Berlin. He seemed very sympathetic to me. He understood my predicament with Seryozha. He often remarked how difficult it was to get rid of old but embarrassing friends. One day, by way of reassurance, he told me how ‘Lieutenant Kranz' was currently a guest of the Ministry of Works and was being taken on a special tour of Rome's antiquities. ‘It keeps him out of trouble,' said Göring with a hint of a smile. ‘You must not judge us by our admirers, any more than we would judge you by your relatives.'

Göring and I were almost friends during those weeks. He spoke often of his wife, who was an invalid. He felt very sentimentally towards her. In fact, he had a softness to his character which people used to call Austrian.
Franz Stangl had this same characteristic, but it did not stop them hanging him all those years after the event. The thing he cared most for, even before the Führer, was his wife's approval. He would not make a move before he had that.

Of course Stangl did not tell her everything. The SS were trained in discretion. As they were informed on the first day of their training, their job was to do what ordinary people could not do. Their work was arduous and sometimes difficult, but their sufferings were what made Germany hard and allowed those ordinary, honest citizens to go about their lives in security, comfort and happiness. It took an especially dedicated type to join the SS in the early days. Schnauben himself explained this to me in Dachau. Only later, during the war, did the SS begin to recruit any kind of foreign riff-raff and that, of course, is when their troubles began. I do not defend them. I scarcely have reason to remember them before they received their unfortunate reputation. There are good and bad in every walk of life. I know what the SS was
intended
to be. Heinrich Himmler, a colourless and humourless individual whom nobody could stand, turned it into the bureaucratic monster it became. Röhm said that his troops had to have shoulders broad enough for the public to lean on and backs broad enough to hide the horror which threatened. Civilians, he said, were inclined to panic at the sight of a spot of blood.

Röhm would have made the SS what it was supposed to be—the epitome of the Nazi ideal, not a glorified butchering corps. Schnauben knew this. Major Nye is inclined to agree with me. He says this century has been a great century of idealism, in which millions of human beings at last began to believe that they could alter their destiny and improve the human condition. That idealism was one of the most wonderful things he ever witnessed. But he also believes it was subverted by Big Business and its servants for the most appalling and banal ends. The faith that once sent missionary youth to Africa now sends selfish boys to Coca-Cola for ‘the real thing'. The country most able to translate human longing for justice and peace into a good sales pitch and pervert the noblest ideals to commercial exploitation is today the most successful. America is living proof of that. Everyone wants to live in America where money and God are inextricably married.

Only Mrs Cornelius says she has no wish to go there again. ‘They got a buckbone where their backbone ought to be.' She doesn't want to waste time with them any more. The British have always been jealous of American wealth. They were jealous of them in the War because they fought with ordnance rather than men. Both nations in their way have dedicated
themselves to avoiding experience. They have the superior attitude of a people who have never had to beg for their bread. They think this reflects a natural superiority. Well, the Germans thought the same thing until 1945.

And perhaps they had better cause.

I contacted my journalist friends in case they had heard from Maddy, but they seemed honest in their ignorance. Nobody knew where she was. Judging from the stories she was filing, said Billy Grisham, she was almost certainly covering exclusives out of town. She seemed suddenly to have carte blanche with the Italian authorities.

The telephone began to assume unusual importance in my life. I waited for Maddy to phone. I waited for my Chief to phone. I even waited for Margherita Sarfatti to phone.

None of them phoned. But suddenly one Monday, completely out of the blue, my secretary took a call from someone on Signora Mussolini's staff. Rachele suggested we meet the next day for lunch. I would be expected at the Villa Torlonia at the usual time. I had almost forgotten my Duce's request for me to teach his boys to fly.

Was that the reason for my invitation? So uncertain had I become that I immediately wondered about Mrs Mussolini's motives. Was she inviting me to give me a dressing down? Or to relay a secret message from Il Duce who wished me to perform some discreet task for him? A thousand possibilities passed through my mind. However, I was not, as I had begun to fear,
persona non grata
at the Italian court!

Then at about eleven o'clock that same day, I received another telephone call, this time from Margherita Sarfatti in Milan on a long-distance line. She had tried to contact me earlier but could not get through. Apologising for her earlier poor temper, she spoke of my patience, my kindness, my intelligence. She knew I would forgive her.

As a gentleman, there was little I could say.

She suggested we meet for lunch the next day. I told her I already had an important appointment. I might, I said cautiously, be able to meet her that evening.

She accepted.

Now there were further intricacies to contemplate! In casual conversation with some of my fellow Fascists I tried to find out if something unusual was happening. They were unaware of any such atmosphere. They advised me to relax, as they relaxed, and enjoy the pleasures of office. They tried to get me to meet attractive women of their acquaintance, but I would have none of it. I was still aware of Rachele Mussolini's bright judgemental eye.

I had dinner that evening with Major Nye at the Excelsior. He was complaining about the French. ‘They're behaving like peasants as usual. As if a few miles of land is worth making so much fuss over. The French have never been able to beat the Germans on their own. It's damned unseemly how they insist on their spoils. That sort of attitude puts the whole of British diplomacy in question.' Britain was a good friend to Italy. Nye himself saw the German point of view. The reparations question was one which should have been solved and then forgotten about. The Germans wanted a chance to get back on an even keel. ‘Unless they do so soon, there'll be civil war there. The Soviet Union will get involved, and no doubt the rest of us. They have to find some kind of stability.' His main hope rested on the moderate Nazis. He was clearly on good terms with Göring, who passed our table in high spirits. He was surrounded by a group of high-ranking Fascists, most of whom were also out of uniform. They seemed to be congratulating him.