There were always some, I proposed, who would demand legitimacy for themselves by making such claims.
‘As you say, signor,’ I continued, ‘we have a thousand liars for every honest man. With so many lies in the world is it surprising things are as they are? You lie to people enough and they are forced to make up their own ideas about reality. Is that not the secret of Mussolini’s success? He thinks and acts with plain common sense, in ways we can all understand. He does the practical thing, just like the man in the street. We need more such leaders.’
But old da Bazzanno, his long face full of bafflement, said he was not sure. ‘The secret of power is not action,’ he thought, ‘but inaction. It is what you do not do that brings you the greatest rewards. Often the “common sense” of the “ordinary man” leads to unmitigated disaster. I am a dyed-in-the-wool republican, I’ll admit. The secret of self-respect is self-rule and noble action — but that brings a politician little power, merely influence, which is only worth so much.’
I was familiar with his old-fashioned fatalistic attitude. An attitude which so weakened Italy and which Mussolini specifically sought to fight. Yet the ancient patriarch was so sweet-natured and so fond of his son, I could not bring myself to argue with him. Unlike modern British children who are without any manners or grace, I was brought up to respect my elders. However, today was not the appropriate time for cynicism. Italy was again making a place for herself in the world. She was the most vibrant force in Europe, an acknowledged leader. While the others sat passively by and let pipsqueaks order them about, Italy expanded and went forward, increasing her territories, bringing enlightenment to her African possessions and fresh pride to her citizens. Was he, too, not proud of his nation?
He told me that he was not sure.
The old house was still in a state of disrepair, with electrical wires emerging from bare brick and piles of plaster scattered here and there. But at night, with the candles and the oil lamps burning, it seemed to come alive, to be its old self.
Da Bazzanno’s complaint that the place had hardly been touched since 1797 was legitimate. His house was full of peculiar bits of furniture, oddly woven tapestries and rather mysterious paintings. Maddy and I explored the rooms together, expecting to come upon a secret chamber or a whole suite where a previous tenant still lived, unaware that their relatives had moved away. The place certainly had its ghosts, but they seemed in no way malignant. Had we turned a corner to confront some ethereal nobleman in doublet and hose on his way to the bedroom of a lover dead five hundred years, I doubt if either of us would have been alarmed.
As the festival progressed with vast water-borne processions and almost everyone you met wearing some kind of costume or at least a mask, da Bazzanno’s house grew more and more in tune with its surroundings. Venetians, no matter how respectable and conservative, love a disguise. They have made the masque their own, and they are proud of it. By early evening the streets and canals of Venice were crowded with men, women and children in the finery of every previous age. There were cave people and eighteenth-century exquisites. There were ladies from the Second Empire and boys who might have served Lorenzo the Magnificent, soldiers from France and Spain, Huns and Mongols, Japanese samurai, Vikings, condottieri, courtesans and harlots, Amazons and Scythians, Chinese mandarins and a thousand varieties of commedia characters — Pierrots and Pierrettes, Harlequins and Harlequinas, grotesque old Pantaloons and sweet young Colombines, not to mention all the mooning inamoratos who, with guitars and lutes, wailed their passion to the skies or swaggered with a captured mistress on quilted arms.
Soon anyone not in costume or uniform became fair game for these strolling commedia actors so skilled at staging impromptu scenarios, usually from the classic repertoire. No one was safe. They would attack young and old alike, involving respectable grandfathers and their dignified dames as cheerfully as self-important youths and their squealing consorts. Willy-nilly all became characters in ‘The Comedy of Venice’. For all the victims’ threats or cries for mercy, the play would be performed from beginning to end frequently under the good-humoured gaze of local police or blackshirts who joined in the fun as enthusiastically as the rest of us.
Miranda Butter and I took pains to wear at least some sort of costume whenever we went out. I had bought a white papier mâché Trivelino mask, with bulbous nose and staring eyes, over which I wore a velvet cap. My ordinary suit was swathed in a cloak I had borrowed from da Bazzanno’s house. The place was full of clothing abandoned by the previous occupants, much of it threadbare or worn, covering a period of a hundred years or more. In this store Miranda discovered a large, cowled cape of tarnished silver brocade and black velvet, which completely engulfed her. She wore a simple ‘diamond’ mask to match.
So that it would not clash with various traditional carnivals and festivals upon which Venice depended for much of her income, da Bazzanno’s was held at this time in high summer. It meant that the disguises were often uncomfortable and could scarcely be worn in daytime. As the festival proceeded, we spent more and more of the sunlit hours at the palazzo indulging our pleasures without restraint or caution. Getting dressed only for dinner, we would merge with the masked crowds which flooded through the narrow alleys and tiny squares, a noisy, colourful, good-humoured tide, caught up in the ebb and flow of the city where brilliantly coloured barges and gondolas filled the canals with blazing light and every bridge was festooned with flags, bunting and happy students full of wine and faith and a transcendent belief in a golden future.
We could not fail to be involved in the general sense of celebration. When newspapers reported misery and disaster in all fields of human endeavour, here was the one country in Europe which actually had something to celebrate! That was the miracle of Mussolini’s rule. If history, now the private property of Bolshevik Jewry, no longer acknowledges this miracle, why should I be shocked? The interests which presently control us do not wish us to know how much better life was then. The triumphs of democracy were to produce poverty and despair, murder and general bloodshed, a nightmare without foreseeable end. Was it not surprising if Italy was involved in a long love affair with herself?
A year before, the people had handed Il Duce the reins of responsibility and power. By popular assent, he became their Dictator, their Speaker. Italian engineering, with its style and dash, had already captured the world’s imagination. Aeroplanes like the Macchi 52R, cars like the Lamborghini, locomotives, ships, bridges, dams and public works were all on a magnificent scale. Economically, Mussolini’s personal ideas had proven it possible to escape economic disaster not merely by controlling the budget but by investing in public works. Hitler and Roosevelt learned how to do this from Mussolini but sadly Franco, the true reactionary, sold himself to the vested interests of a corrupt Church and Big Business before he ever came to power.