"Not at all," I said.
"Judas," said La Sarfatti absently. She was smiling at Goering and helping herself to a bar of chocolate which had been lying on the table. "Did you get that Lautrec I recommended?"
"Oh, Margherita! I am still a poor man, you know!" He asked again after the niege. I had begun to realise this creature was something of an addict. I felt sympathy for him, of course, but I have always said that if the drug begins to use you, that is when you should stop the drug. I was to learn later that his favourite drugs were narcotics, like morphine, which have a debilitating effect on the character as well as creating addiction. I have always warned young people off such drugs. The narcotics are a danger to society, robbing men and women of all will. Stimulants, however, like cocaine, have a completely different effect, creating dynamism and positive progress in society - unless a narcotics user decides to use them. Then a very strange result occurs. Herman Goering, whom I last saw at Nurenberg, was a living example of that result. Fifteen years earlier, however, he was still not the slave to his addiction that he became. Ultimately, of course, Hitler had to renounce him.
I was still trying to reach the door. I had decided to say nothing further but to make my escape now, while attempting to redeem myself later. From outside, I heard an impatient toot.
Fiorello came up to me. "Max, I don't plan to involve you. But you can't realise what's going on. They beat me up - squadristi thugs. I escaped. They were planning to kill me. They said so. De Vecchi's their boss. He really hates me. I don't think Mussolini understands. You know how much I admire him. If you could put in a word, perhaps, we could clear all this up. He doesn't mind as long as the communists are out of the country. I was simply getting rid of another one." His attempt to smile at me was unfortunate. I murmured that there was little I could do. I had no power and little real influence. I was a scientist, after all. Not one of the political people. I was sure if he threw himself on the Duce's mercy everything could be sorted out.
The horn sounded for the second time. The Duce would be furious by now. He had been impatient to begin with.
I thought of suggesting to Fiorello that he go personally and ask the Duce for clemency, since it seemed a convenient moment. By now Mandy had stopped pouring drinks and was placing tall red glasses into uncomprehending hands. "Do you mean to say," she continued firmly, settling herself on the couch between Goering and La Scarfatti, "that you and Max have been doing something behind my back?"
"And who is Max?" asked Goering agreeably.
Seryozha had found the gramophone and was winding it up. "What marvellous records," he said. "You can't find these in Berlin." He put on Home on the Range. I think it was Gene Autry's earliest recording. As the first bars began to play, Seryozha threw up discretely behind a chair. Goering smiled apologetically to his hostess. "He is not German," he explained. He leaned forward and whispered something to her. Mandy got up and went in to the bedroom.
The horn sounded for the third time. The beating of my heart suggested to me I could probably not live much longer.
Mandy came back in to the room with our cocaine and the apparatus for taking it.
It occurred to me to ask Fiorello if he knew the best way of getting into Switzerland.
Mandy, stone-faced, began to chop out a line of coke for everyone. As Seryozha fell to the floor, his face striking the carpet with a peculiar soft crunch, she incorporated his line into her own.
Fiorello was still beside me. I had begun to tell him that our leader was outside in the car and might be growing impatient when I felt pressure on the door handle. My first thought was to hang on to it, hold it tight and resist any further intrusions. My second was to begin weeping.
My third, as the door opened to admit a glowering Benito Mussolini, was to fall against the wall with a groan.
"That's awfully good of you," said Captain Goering, in his best English, "I can't tell you how much I've been in need," and bending forward over the marble table he put the little silver tube to his nose he inhaled his lines in a single bovine snort. He seemed to expand to twice his size, threatening to burst the walls of the room. He sat back in the couch. "I love my wife," he said. "I love her with all my soul."
Mussolini regarded the scene in disgusted silence.
"Caro!" cried Margherita Sarfatti, rising like a blustering pheasant from cover. "Caro mio! Thank God you are here!"
I looked for Fiorello. He had disappeared.
Where Fiorello had been standing a moment ago, there was Mussolini, hands on hips, a look of irritable disapproval on his features, his back pointedly to the others. He spoke quietly. "Are you ready?"
I saw my keys on the table, next to the line of coke Mandy had cut for me.
"Sorry if I'm breaking anything up," I said casually. "I was looking for my keys. Ah, there they are! Sorry I have to go. It was nice to meet your friends, Mandy."
Save for Goering, the others were all staring at the Duce. Ignoring the uncrowned Queen of Italy, Mussolini turned once to stare thoughtfully at an obliviously happy Captain Goering before leading the way back to the car in silence. I heard Margherita's wounded shriek behind us, but she did not come out.
We got into the car. The Duce shook his head. "What's Margherita doing with that Hun? I've been trying to keep them apart all week. Did you invite them?"
"Certainly not," I said. "My guess is that, thinking I would be away, she arranged to see him there. But who knows. She's a strange one. Maybe she can seduce him. He seems besotted with his wife. He says Mrs Cornelius reminds him of her. Surely Signora Sarfatti wouldn't attempt -"
"You don't know the half of it," said the Duce. "You want to be careful of her." An expression passed across his face which, in a lesser human being, I would have taken for terror.
As we drove towards the Ministry, Mussolini began to lecture me on the dangers of having anything to do with Germans. "They want to gobble us all up. And as for these Nazis - it is a corruption of everything I have ever said or worked for! A mish-mash. That Goering is a degenerate. You saw for yourself. They're all vicious boy-buggering dopers and masochists. Everyone knows what they're like. They admit it openly. That bugger Rohm makes no secret of it. He's published his love letters to his catamites. They give our Fascism a bad name by associating themselves with us. Believe me, Max, Germany can never be anything but an enemy of Italy."
If only he had heeded his own judgement. But he was too good-natured, too trusting. And in the end he was abandoned by all, to swing upside down in a Milanese meat-market, one carcass amongst dozens. It is a tragedy which will be told over and over again down the ages, just as Julius Caesar and Caligula are told.
Mussolini's death was symbolic of the entire twentieth century.
And we wonder why our young people no longer understand their history!
This time the Duce came with me as I went to my office and found the plans we needed - simplified drawings which would give nothing away.
He was extremely pleased with the idea of involving Spanish capital. (I think he had probably been worrying over fiscal matters recently. He was after all in charge of every aspect of the nation's running. While others slept soundly, Il Duce was up, pacing his lonely corridors, taking Alka Seltzer for his ulcers and going over the affairs of the day.) I had the distinct impression that my Land Leviathan was moving a little closer to reality. By the time I had gone into my office, found the appropriate plans and brought them out, he seemed in an ebullient mood again. I saluted and watched him drive away.