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Margherita Sarfatti hated them, murmuring the opinion that they were all baboons. It didn’t matter if they called themselves Bolshevists or Fascists, they were just a bunch of gibbon apes snapping and snarling and struggling for ascendancy. They wanted power for the basest of reasons. ’To fuck,’ she said in English, ’to feast and to frighten creatures weaker than themselves. The only three things they can actually feel. Those are the three Fs of their fascism.’ Pure fascism, she said, could be understood only by intellectuals and artists.

‘But surely,’ I insisted, ‘there is an ideological struggle? You can’t believe that everything reduces to bestialism?’

She shrugged at this and laughed into the air. She gestured with her cigarette. ‘I would like to think that it didn’t, Prince Max, but I suspect that I see only the truth. Not palatable, I suppose, to you dreamers.’

‘Quite right. I am inspired by altruism and idealism. They mean more than meat and drink to me. The brute motives you describe are as far from mine as can possibly be.’

She seemed anxious to change the subject, perhaps because I resisted her cynicism. ‘Which I suppose is why I like dreamers. Da Bazzanno is no more practical than you are, for all his talk of machinery and efficient violence and the rest of it. There must be a difference between the likes of you and the likes of those swaggering gangsters over there. But not quite the large difference you would prefer to believe.’ And she showed hearty amusement at my chagrin. ‘Without them, dear Prince, our Duce and his ministers could not survive a day.’

‘They are the salt of the earth,’ I said. ‘I have every respect for your old fighters.’

‘Just as well, for they have no respect whatsoever for you. You should be grateful for their tolerance.’

I found her cynicism a little hard to accept. I caught her watching some of the ras with a speculative eye and could only conclude that she felt sexually attracted to those tough pioneers of the March on Rome, Mussolini’s most loyal administrators. In spite of her physical stillness, her expression was forever restless, forever bored. She seemed perpetually on the point of creating a crisis, though I never knew her to engineer anything of the kind. She was completely loyal to da Bazzanno, at least while attached to him. Her flirtations were almost always intellectual, in the nature of a specialised and abstract game. Da Bazzanno was proud of this quality in her. He would watch her from a table or two away, remarking to me on her beauty, her cool easiness, her clever manipulations.

‘We have not made love in a year,’ he told me. ‘We do not need to. And we are so happy, Max. Of course, we still see other people.’

I understood perfectly. I, too, had known the joys of purely spiritual love; the case with myself and Mrs Cornelius. Though married, we had never physically consummated our union. The spiritual compact was far more satisfying. One learned to relish the subtler ecstacies of the desert life, I told him. Eventually they became preferable to all others. In the desert, ‘love’ took on a more important meaning, when it truly was possible to love one’s camel more than one’s wife. In the desert one must frequently choose between life and death. The desert does not tolerate empty words.

Da Bazzanno blew his nose on a silk Liberty handkerchief and remarked approvingly how much harder I had become since he had last seen me in Rome. He repeated that he meant to introduce me to Mussolini as soon as possible. ‘Italy has always honoured such men as yourself, Prince Max.’ His enthusiasm rose. ‘The editor-writers, the soldier-poets and the philosopher-engineers — those who combine the talents of a man of action and a man of creative intellect. You have read Jünger, of course. It’s all in Storm of Steel. So much better than Remarque’s novel. Every great Renaissance artist was also an expert duellist. We cannot turn our backs on our violent natures. But we can control that violence and direct it. Promise me, Max, that you will come with me to Rome - that you will throw in your destiny with ours — that you will become an Italian! A modern Italian!’

I restrained myself, merely smiling and saying that I was seriously considering the idea.

‘We take off for Venice in two days’ time.’ He refilled my champagne glass for me. ‘You will love Venice. And then — to Rome! What do you say?’

When I hesitated, anxious not to seem too eager now that my great dream was so close to realisation, he became apologetic. ‘My dear fellow! How insensitive of me. You are afraid that this diversion will interrupt your career as an actor. You must have many contracts and obligations!’

I admitted that I had already given a considerable amount of thought to the prospect of serving Il Duce or resuming my Hollywood career. My agents, I assured him, were instructed to accept no further offers for the time being. Fiorello reached across the table and put his huge hand on mine. ‘Your first duty is to yourself, Maxim. To your art. You must not let my enthusiasm, our needs, lead you off your chosen path. But as one artist to another, I must assure you that Mussolini is the true medium of our ambitions!’

This phrase struck an emotional chord in me. I had tried so hard to present a measured manner, but my voice shook a little as I told my friend that my duty was rapidly becoming crystal clear. He had convinced me. I was now prepared to refuse all other temptations, give up previous ambitions and accompany him to Rome, to offer my talents in the service of his master.

‘I believe,’ I murmured sincerely, ‘that I am about to come face to face with my destiny.’

I was close to tears. At last I had found my Tsar.

I was going home.

SEVEN

I had been sleeping and came awake suddenly with no notion of the time. I was alone. For some reason I experienced a rush of terror and then opened my eyes to see that a steward had brought me some tea. He seemed amused. My hand trembled badly as I accepted the glass. He told me that Signorina Butter and Doctor da Bazzanno requested urgently that I join them in the observation cabin.

Still conditioned to crisis, I quickly washed and dressed. I hurried from my quarters, along the vibrating metal passage to the cabin where my friends were already seated staring out of the wide window at the approaching horizon.

‘You seemed to need the rest,’ said Maddy Butter with a smile. Only then did I realise it was not morning but late evening. We were nearing our destination. That afternoon, while airborne, I had entertained Miss Butter in my quarters and then, evidently, fallen fast asleep.

‘I didn’t want you to miss this.’ Da Bazzanno was alive with warm, proprietorial pride. ‘It is, after all, the birthplace of my ancestors!’

I took my seat beside him. The plane suddenly banked, levelling out close to the water, and as the horizon came up again I understood why da Bazzanno had wakened me so insistently.

Most of us see pictures of them from childhood and in some sense know what to expect, yet all the wonders of the world, the Pyramids or Niagara Falls or any of the others, have this in common: we are forever prepared for them and yet never quite ready for their actuality. The actuality is always breathtaking, never disappointing, always better than any representation we have seen. The desert in that Lawrence film was a tawdry backdrop in comparison to the original. The Grand Canyon in Cinerama is still merely a cheap illusion. The reality is too vivid ever to become truly familiar.