Her past a mixture of glorious nobility and brutal greed, Venice is the crystallisation of the Mediterranean’s fears and needs. She offers all the satisfactions one ever desired and many which one never imagined. With da Bazzanno’s own brainchild, the Festival of Fascist Arts, the city had become the Mecca for bohemians, especially Italians who found the new Rome a little too austere for their tastes. Cafés and cabarets had sprung up for their entertainment, attracting performers from Berlin, New York and Athens, from Cairo and Paris.
Despite much of this clientele, I was still attracted to these places. I had spent my youth in them. I received much of my education in them, thanks to Shura and my beloved friend Count Nikolai Feodorovitch Petroff, my Kolya. I was, I admit, addicted to them. Soon Miss Butter was seeing a wholly different side of Italian life from the great public ceremonies of Il Duce and the Vatican. Every kind of sexuality was represented and catered for. Every kind of music, from the sweet, old tunes of Vienna and Prague, to the neurotic modern concoctions of Mahler and his arch-collaborator Schoenberg, from the bitter-sweet accordion to the wailing saxophone, harsh Berlin syncopation and syrupy English vibrato; all of which, I was assured, was untypical of Venice. The city had once been notorious for its lack of public nightlife.
Responding to my curiosity, da Bazzanno informed me with attempted amusement that Venice has attracted another kind of adventurer: the arms trader. All the big people regularly came to the city. No week passed without at least two or three South American governments sending their representatives to shop for guns. The air of the restaurants and cabarets where such transactions took place was very different from the rest of the city and few of the local people welcomed it. The Italian authorities considered Venice a free port and turned a blind eye to these activities.
In the course of a single evening I overheard plans for arming various Balkan factions and part of a negotiation where an Algerian businessman openly bargained for a consignment of Martini rifles to be used against the French.
Miss Butter was writing several stories a day and mailing them back to her paper. She was afraid to wire them. I hinted that secrecy or urgency were not necessary, especially since her editor in Houston was not greatly interested in the intricate corruptions of modern Europe. He wanted more immediate scandals, with personalities and titles he had heard of.
Meanwhile, Maddy continued to interview me and had now decided to write a book about my exploits. ‘You are the model of the modern hero.’
One evening, in a cabaret called the Little Gigolo, where many foreign businessmen met but where the show was amusing and not too raucous, I attempted to dissuade her from this perception, but we were both too drunk and she refused to have any of it. She even suspected me of protecting other aristocrats, helping them get out of Russia. ‘If only I had the power. I have had no word from my mother in years. I pray for her. It is all I can do.’ I changed the subject. I began to speak of my dreams, of my scientific ideas.
She was listening with her usual doting attention when my voice was suddenly drowned by a discordant chorus of some Bavarian folk song shouted vigorously by a group of very drunken Germans who sat together in a corner near the stage. They were ex-military. They had been there all evening, engaged with one of the South Americans, and had been drinking heavily. By their manner and conversation several of them were clearly homosexual. They were openly kissing and cuddling, to the amusement, rather than the disgust, of the other patrons.
I looked up in annoyance as the Germans began the umpteenth verse of their song and saw that a newcomer had joined them. He was large and effeminate in a fur-collared black overcoat and a Homburg hat a size too small for his head. His back was towards me but was very familiar. I was trying to recall the man when I heard his voice raised in angry German which almost at once turned into near-hysterical Russian, then into Spanish, and eventually into broken Italian, all on the same note.
My heart sank. This was not an acquaintance I wished to renew! There was no mistaking Sergei Andreyovitch Tsipliakov or his familiar complaints. His friend of the same sexual persuasion had not turned up. The Germans were far too drunk and careless to help find him.
It was obvious Seryozha, whom I had originally met on the Kiev—Peter Express, was no longer with the ballet, unless as a choreographer. He was running to fat. His ruined face turned away from the Germans. His self-indulgent jowls emphasised his lugubrious dismay. I tried to escape his eye. Then he had seen me. His hand flew to his mouth. His expression changed to one of utter joy. His voice rang through the room. I shrank.
‘Dimka! Dimka, darling! Dear heart, they told me you had gone back to Peter and were working for the Okhrana! Are you really a secret policeman now, Dimka, darling? Were you one in Paris? Oh, the stories I’ve heard! What ever happened to you? Why did you abandon me? Dear heart, I was so good to you!’
My only consolation was that he spoke in Russian, one of the few languages Miss Butter did not understand.
He engulfed me. His wet lips met mine. A small-time Judas.
EIGHT
Naturally I was embarrassed. Yet I could only see this further coincidence as destined. Events were moving towards some vast and significant conjunction. Everyone was being drawn to Italy and her charismatic leader.
To Miss Butter I introduced Seryozha as an acquaintance from my days in St Petersburg where he had been with the Ballet Foline. To change the subject as quickly as possible I asked him in German if he was appearing at the Arts Festival. This question encouraged a great gust of miserable laughter. ’If only that were true, Dimka sweetheart. Sadly, I’m on very different business!’
When I asked him what his business was he admitted that he was sworn to silence on the matter, which was of international importance. A little afraid that he might attempt to blackmail me and wishing to insure myself, I told him swiftly in Russian that I too was on secret business, travelling as Prince Maxim Pyatnitski. The American woman was suspected of being a Bolshevik agent. He must be unusually discreet.
Of course, Seryozha’s discretion was typical. After offering me a wink and a half-conspiratorial leer, he declared loudly in broken English that he had not seen his old comrade-in-arms ‘Prince Pyanisski’ since we fought side by side together in the war against the forces of reaction. Happily he was already so drunk that his mistake went unnoticed, and as he breathed gin over Miss Butter’s little pink hand he steadied himself by leaning heavily on our table. ‘You’re the prettiest agent I’ve seen in years!’
She explained that she was not an agent but a journalist and asked him if he knew Diaghilev. Seryozha, declaring that the famous ballet master was a charlatan, a philistine, a sensationalist, a rogue and a plagiarist, admitted that he had met him twice in Paris. ‘You were with me, Dimka, I’m sure. In the Café Pantin? I told him what I thought of his cacophonic eyesores and we were thrown out. That was you, wasn’t it, Dimka?’
In an aside I explained to Miss Butter that ‘Dimka’ was a nickname I’d earned in Petersburg’s cafe society. I could not quite remember how I had come by it. She was showing far more interest in Sergei A. Tsipliakov than he deserved. He had grown even more irritating and foolish. I began to feel that I was embroiled in some primitive and farcical commedia dell’ arte sketch, the kind of thing on which the Jew Chaplin based so many of his ‘original’ routines. In Russian Seryozha explained to Miss Butter that I was the greatest engineer he had ever known. In English he added affectionately that we had been special chums in Petersburg. We had met, he said, while sharing a sleeping car together. Did I, he enquired loudly, still use cocaine? He was desperate for some.