Franco never did free himself from a sentimental attitude towards international Jewry shared by many Latin Catholics. Even Mussolini was forced to accommodate the threat. Neither fascism nor dictatorship in themselves are sufficient remedy. In the end they depend upon the popular will and upon the resources, courage and character of the men who install them. I am the first to admit there have been very few successful fascist regimes. That was not Mussolini’s fault. His imitators failed to grasp the most obvious fact - to achieve what Mussolini achieved, one must actually be a Mussolini! He inspired lesser men who were never able to match his achievement. To be Mussolini, one also had to be what Schiller called Selig, welchen die Götter, die gnädigen, vor der Geburt schon liebten! Or, in Mr Mix’s laconic observation, ‘born lucky’.
Sometimes in Venice I missed the Negro’s dry wit and natural good sense, neither of which were dominant qualities in Maddy Butter’s personality. Her eagerness to learn all I could teach her was an attractive trait but she was sometimes indiscriminate. She was a happy puppy, tongue hanging out, eyes bright and utterly trusting of a life that had never given her anything but the most marvellous rewards!
This quality is of course repellent in those Americans who display their cultural sophistication as if it were a flag when they are merely signalling their distance from the rest of their countrymen. They receive our sympathy and therefore our tolerance and as a result tend to believe that we are as isolated from our society as they feel from theirs. This, in turn, can prove an embarrassment.
Sometimes Miss Butter’s provincial protestations of superiority (in which the name of every great artist of the past thousand years seemed to be underlined) made me a little suspicious. It was difficult to believe her so completely what she seemed.
I even wondered briefly if Seryozha was right and Maddy was a singularly clever Bolshevik agent, maybe even working for Brodmann’s section. She shared one thing with most socialists — she discussed art as if it were a moral conviction rather than a source of sublime pleasure. Even the street mummers received her sober respect. While she had the appetites of a Barbary ape, typically she had even come up with some sound ethical reasons for indulging in cocaine and sex. Like the Arabs, Americans are forever coping with their puritanical inner conflicts and have no way merely of enjoying themselves.
When I proposed this, Maddy laughed. No doubt I had made a meaningless joke. Americans are as incapable as anyone of seeing themselves in others’ eyes. Only a few of us, self-trained to study our own behaviour with the clinical tolerance of a good anthropologist, have the power to stand back and see the whole picture.
To avoid Maddy’s intense conversations about love, life, art and politics, I took to spending as much time as possible in the streets. As soon as the sun began to set I would propose another costumed escapade, so we explored every corner of that relatively small city.
Tiring of the usual splendours of St Mark’s Square, the Grand Canal or the Rialto Bridge, with their brilliantly costumed crowds and good-humoured drunks, we wandered further and further into suburbs. Even here the festival was celebrated. We still found it necessary to wear our rough-and-ready costumes to avoid unwanted attention from strolling comedians. We discovered tiny shops presided over by little wizened craftsmen who handled their wares as if they were precious children, and they were content to talk, displaying none of the subtle salesmanship for which Venetians are said to be famous. Indeed, we had been told the city was expensive and its citizens pirates to the last youth, yet we discovered trattorias and restaurants where the food was good and the prices were low, which was as well since I, of course, had no funds immediately available to me. I was forced to accept Miss Butter’s generosity. She received an allowance from her father in Galveston as well as the fees paid by the Houston Chronicle, but this barely kept us. Da Bazzanno’s hospitality was as open-handed as one might expect. Pleasant as it was, we did not wish to spend our entire time in Venice eating with old Signor da Bazzanno. His kindly cynicism scarcely suited our mood. By walking a little way and putting some distance between ourselves and the main thoroughfares and squares, we could eat very inexpensively.
One evening we crossed the Grand Canal at the San Simeone Bridge, discovering ourselves near the railway station. The area was full of cheap rooming houses and cafes, none of which attracted us, so we turned to the right, crossing the first bridge we came to. Here, hardly anyone was in costume and since it was a warm night, I threw back my cloak and removed my mask with some relief, holding it in my hand in case I needed to don it again.
The area was unlike any other I had visited in Venice. Some of the houses leaned as high as six storeys, threatening to sink into the mud beneath their own weight, and the whole place had the atmosphere of some sort of enclave. Troops of merrymakers came and went, but did not seem welcome. I soon realised we had entered the notorious Ghetto, the Jewish area of Venice, which had been here since the twelfth century and which provided us with the legend upon which Shakespeare based his oracular, yet almost philo-Semitic, play Shylock; or, The Merchant of Venice, which I had already seen in the excellent silent film version starring John Barrymore.
Only Jews had been allowed to build so high, by special agreement. The alternative would have been to extend the Ghetto area which, of course, nobody wanted. We were intruding and I became anxious to leave. I had no wish to give offence to the Jews. I knew how vengeful they could be. It has been fairly said that Jews have long memories and do not easily forgive a grudge. I already had Brodmann on my tail. I did not need an entire tribe of the Chosen People taking against me! The Ghetto was claustrophic. Narrow streets closed in on us. Brightly lit bakeries, butchers’ shops and little coffee houses were everywhere. From their steamy windows dark eyes regarded us; dark hands stroked glistening black beards. The alien smell from the little restaurants was delicious, however, and reminded me of wonderful food I had eaten in Rome’s Via Catalana a decade earlier. I was tempted to consider risking the wrath of the Sons of Shem and see if their love of money would conquer any antagonism they might feel towards us. We were hungry and had no idea how long it would take to find our way out of the Ghetto. Maddy Butter, with her usual happy insensitivity to the nuances of our environment, was delighted with everything she saw. We entered a square which seemed to have no exit and I realised to my discomfort that the building immediately ahead of us was a synagogue.
‘I’m sure we’re not welcome here,’ I told her. My instinct said we should turn and go back the way we had come. But La Butter found the whole place wonderfully exotic. She stopped an old woman to ask her the name of the synagogue. The woman responded with a superficial friendliness but could not understand our Italian. When she replied, her accent was equally difficult. It had the strong Spanish sound of most Venetian speech. I asked her in Yiddish how we might get back to St Mark’s Square. Either she affected not to understand me or was one of those Jews whose first language was Hebrew. Eventually she shrugged. With a hypocritical smile she continued on her way. Now Maddy saw a dark narrow opening leading out of the square. We headed for this — at the precise moment that a band of elaborately costumed merrymakers spilled from the alley into the gaslight. Urgently I tried to replace my mask and cape, but it was too late.