With the engine still running he grinned, panting, at me. I was still recovering from the experience and had not noticed, until the Chief pointed it out, that we had arrived at my house. I asked the Duce if he would care to come in and rest but he refused. I think there were memories he did not wish to revive at that time. He said he would wait in the car and smoke a cigarette. He asked me if I had a match.
The evening had been a confusing one for me and I planned to help myself to a quick sniff of cocaine (of which the Duce rather prudishly disapproved) and be able to continue in better mood. As I walked along the little crazy-paving path, I thought I saw two figures through the window. I opened the door and went in quietly. There was a man standing with his back to me. Slowly he was turning one of the pictures I had placed facing the wall. He adjusted it and stepped away from it. I saw that several other pictures had been turned, all of a similar style. I did not demand to know what the man was doing because I thought I recognised the set of his shoulder.
When however I coughed and he looked back rather wanly to see who it was I did not immediately recognise his face. One of the eyes was closed shut, badly bruised. The nose had been broken. The mouth was split and scabbed and most of the front teeth were missing. I felt sick. The single large brown eye regarded me with the expression of a dying horse. I knew it was Fiorello.
"The pictures," he said. "They're mine. Don't you like them?"
I would not have hurt his feelings for worlds. This was the man who had done most to help me reach my present eminence. "I love them," I said, "I was afraid the sun would get to them. "I know nothing of oils. My God, Fiorello, were you in a crash?"
"You might say that." With a sigh he flung himself into an armchair, wincing. "A fall from grace, maybe. I'm not the golden boy I was a few short weeks ago, Max, as you probably know."
All I knew was that his plane had been found but that he had been missing. I told him this. I said how worried I had been.
I was half-crazy with distraction, aware the whole time that the Duce himself was waiting in the car. I could not find my office keys. As I went towards the bedroom to look for them, Mandy came out. She seemed surprised to see me. "Oh, Max," she said. "I'm not sure you want to get involved in this."
"Involved?" I still had my momentum. I was still searching for my keys. "I'm delighted that Fiorello is safe. I have something to do that will take less than an hour and then I will be back."
"Fiorello isn't safe," she said. "At least, not that safe."
"I can't find my keys," I said. "Have you seen them?"
She suggested I look in the box on my dressing table. Sometimes I put them there.
"What do you mean?" I asked. There they were, in the box! I snatched them up. "Not safe? He's here, with us!"
"I wasn't sure how you'd take it," she said.
"Take what? Listen, my darling, I have a car waiting. It is very important that I leave immediately. Take what?"
"Fiorello's on the run," she said. "He was caught coming back from Switzerland. He never made it to his plane. They kidnapped him. Beat him up. One of them was De Vecchi, the Education Minister!"
I agreed it was terrible, but was glad he was safe now. When I turned to leave, Fiorello was standing in the doorway, his lopsided, hideous face looking like something you would find in a charnal house, scarcely human at all. "I don't expect you to help," he said. "I was trying to get Laura to safety. She's all right now. She's in Austria I'm sure." He shrugged and glanced away. "Bloody commy."
"You helped a communist?" I asked disbelievingly. Suddenly the enormity of the situation struck me. My legs lost their power to hold me. l I sat down on the couch. Outside, with his motor running, was the supreme Fascist. Inside, a supreme traitor to Fascism. Should they meet, I would be irredeemably compromised. But there was nothing I could do, save dash back out to the car and hope Mandy had solved the problem by the time I returned. I began to give up any idea of going on to the private party.
"He'll be gone when you get back," Mandy promised.
I willed strength into my legs, staggered to the door and reached for the handle. As I did so a key turned in the lock and it began to open. My legs threatened to fold at the knees again and I fell back, expecting to see my Duce himself.
But it was Margherita Sarfatti, an affectionate Fury in yellow and black silk. "Darling, I couldn't wait to see you! I've been longing for you. You must tell me everything that happened tonight."
I tried to speak, but no words came. I attempted to shove my way past her, but she pushed me back into the room, pausing with a look of almost comic outrage when she saw that there were others standing there.
Slowly she absorbed the scene. She looked from me to Mandy to Fiorello. Her breathing seemed to grow more rapid, almost an animal snorting, as if a dragon fired up its venom. And then she screamed.
"There's nothing between us, honestly," said Mandy. "I think maybe we all need a drink and a sit down."
I was close to screaming myself. Had the Duce seen Margherita come in? If so, would he draw any particular conclusions? It was, after all, her house. Mussolini would comee to investigate and find me harbouring a traitor while keeping a liason with his mistress.
"I really do have to leave," I said.
"How long has all this been going on?" Margherita wished to know. "Now I realise the depths of treachery you've plumbed! I helped you all! I gave you everything! My own blood I would have given you! And this is my repayment? I am nothing, eh? I don't even get an invitation to the little boys' parties any more. This will not be forgotten. Both of you I nurtured as a mother - as a lioness her cubs. I taught you everything. I even made you characters in my book. I protected you. Both of you would be in prison if it were not for me. Yet, behind my back, you plot and scheme. Well, the Duce shall know of this!"
It was what, I will admit, I most feared at that moment.
As I tried to frame a reply which would buy me the time I needed, I heard a tap on the door. This was certain to be the Duce.
Not one of the million explanations which entered my head had the slightest ring of truth. I sighed and prepared myself for the inevitable.
But it was not Mussolini. A jolly gust of laughter announced the arrival of Hermann Goering, Mrs Cornelius and an extremely drunken Seryozha who was scarcely able to stand but stood between the other two with a look of depraved sentimentality on his face worthy of Kominski or one of the other great clowns of the old Kiev circus. "Why!" exclaimed the smiling German. "You're already ahead of us! The taxi driver was right, after all. I hope you haven't sniffed up all the 'snow', ha, ha, ha!"
I stood there open-mouthed. The vast captain waved my own card under my nose. A taxi-driver had read the wrong side.
"Ain't yer goin' ter let us in, Ive?" suggested Mrs Cornelius a little peevishly. "It's bleedin' freezin' art 'ere.".
I stepped back.
Mrs Cornelius led the way into the little house. "'Ow sweet!"
Fiorella's ruined face expressed the comic distress of a Commedia horse. Mandy folded her arms in disapproval.
Goering flung himself in one of our comfortable armchairs. "Is all the fun over? Who has the happy-powder?" His thickly-accented English was indecipherable to everyone but me. They ignored him. Mrs Cornelius handed her coat to Fiorello. "Gawd! What 'appened ter you? Somebody beat yer up?" Gracefully De Bazzanno took her coat and handed it to Mandy Butter who had by now recovered at least a patina of conventional hospitality. "Can I get you all a drink?" she wanted to know. "Camparis? Manhattans?"
"Fuck your Campari Manhattans," said Margherita Sarfatti, hurling herself onto the sofa. "Hello, Hermann, mein liebschen. How was the party?"
Mandy grasped at the only fact which had at last emerged for her. She looked steadily at me and said in a small voice as she poured the drinks. "Do I understand that you and Margherita have been having an affair?"