Like Hitler in his first years, Mussolini made women ecstatic. He would have his aides select from the letters he received and deliver a fresh female to his office every weekday afternoon. The Italian people loved him for it. His virility reflected the virility of their race. This much I already knew from common talk and ordinary observation. Certain individuals carry a kind of magnetism which makes them irresistible to the masses and which Virginia Woolf called ‘It’. She, admittedly, was referring to the pornographer and arabiste whose films are so fashionable these days.
As far as I am concerned Lady Chatterton, Odysseus, Hank Janson and The Well of Loneliness are all the same. Janson himself agreed with me. He was the only one of that crowd I knew well. I helped him with the details he needed of the Spanish Civil War. He was not present, of course, but had been forced to live in Spain when the courts found him guilty. He had nothing but contempt for the others. They had all done considerably better out of their stuff, he said, than he had from his. He had made the mistake of selling the copyrights of both the books and his identity! Others were now writing new novels using his name!
Janson was a bitter man in his last years, as were Gerhardie and Priestley. Both were deeply jealous of Kingsley Amis and his angry young Turks and hated their crudeness. I met Amis several times. The first time was in the West End when he was posing for a suit commercial (he supplemented his income with endorsements of various products, especially wines and spirits). I knew the photographer. I remember Amis made fun of my accent and would not even listen when I offered him my manuscript and a chance to collaborate. At the time his words hurt me worse than the Cossack Grishenko’s whip. From the booze on his breath, the lighting man said they were amazed that he could still stand up. That filth he wrote already weighed on his conscience. There is Welsh blood there. I was unmoved by his insult. After all, I have rubbed shoulders with some of the finest artists in the world and have been on first-name terms with the most powerful men in history. But I was depressed that a national figure should so lower himself. I have since learned that rudeness and self-involvement is characteristic of all but a few writers. They are jealous, petty, envious creatures. Their sense of their own importance is astonishing! I have known dictators with more humility.
Years earlier I had fallen in love with Rome. Now all the pleasure returned, though tinged with a little sadness as I thought of Esmé, who had betrayed me in the end. I found it hard to blame her. She had been a child. She hardly knew what she was doing. For a little while, at least, I had rescued her from the squalid life she had now, doubtless, returned to.
Signora Sarfatti had, we discovered, been wonderfully generous. She had loaned us a magical little half-timbered house in its own walled garden, off the Via Pencioni, bordering the gardens of the Villa Borghese and near the zoo. Reminiscent of the Normandy Apartments in which I’d stayed while in Hollywood, the three-roomed cottage stood in its own tiny courtyard adorned with old masonry and an erratic fountain. Twice a day the dryads and sylphs who adorned it moved into dramatic action, spouting, pouring, gushing, gurgling from almost every orifice. The cottage was decorated in a mixture of rustic and modern taste, which I found pleasing, save for some of the paintings, which were in the latest neurotic styles. The worst of them I turned to the wall before collapsing on the bed.
I had been so eager to leave that I had not given myself enough time to recover in Venice. For the first few days, I lay in the massive bed, which Maddy turned towards the balcony so that I could see into the lovely garden with its fig trees, its orange and white bougainvillea, its profusion of golds and browns in the tawny sunlight. I stared, hour after hour, into a living tapestry. From the nearby zoo came the shriek of a large bird of prey or the yawning roar of a lion. Occasionally the scene would change and become the long, dark avenue of poplars, the winter river, the woman walking her dog turning to warn me. Then began my vision of the ministry of Satan upon Earth and in Heaven and Hell. Clad in the wealth of the Fall, Satan sat upon the throne of all three Spheres. God was overthrown. The arch-fiend triumphed. The Good and the Just were singled out for special punishment. What was our crime?
What was our crime? Perhaps we indulged ourselves in too many sentimental lies. We should have been better prepared. We should have understood our predicament. Now I stand humiliated before our grinning conqueror while the cruellest, the strongest, the greediest, the most wicked are rewarded, elevated to the highest command. The rest of us, who tried to make some positive use of our lives, are forced to bow before the will of the Great Lord and are used in any way that pleases him.
I understand such tyranny. I have been its victim more than once. I live in the shadow of eternal fear. Shall I become its victim again? My vision would not leave me, night or day. My vision still comes unexpectedly without warning. I am assured that eternity would be no better. I am doomed to perpetual torment. Such is my reward, for choosing the conquered side. My mistake was to believe in Jesus Christ. The price of idealism is disappointment. The price of idealism is despair.
Unquestionably someone had attempted to poison me in Venice. But I was recovering. The doctors Maddy brought were all baffled. If I had murmured the word ‘Cheka’, no doubt they would have understood too well and never returned! My old friend Brodmann was rarely far away in those days, gloating over what he had seen in the Cossack camp. No doubt he took particular pleasure in his recollections. At times like these the pain of the whip always returned.
I had not remembered Rome as so Mediterranean a city. Gradually I grew stronger. I took short drives with the fashionably dressed Maddy in the car she had rented. American girls are always resourceful. Their culture demands they be both men and women. I relaxed as she took charge. I delighted in white terraces spilling foliage and bright blossoms down into gardens filled with trees and shrubs. I was comforted by the orderly parks and squares. Mussolini was transforming the city architecturally, and making her the hub of the new Roman Empire. He had filled her with a fresh, inner light. Even the remaining poorer quarters, with their twisting medieval streets, the churches, shops, decaying villas, apartment blocks and public buildings all crowded together, exuded an atmosphere as lively as my own Moldavanka in Odessa.
Mysteriously, although we left messages for them, our two greatest friends were not in Rome to see us. We understood that both Fiorello and Margherita were involved in important affairs of state. At such times Il Duce commanded every moment of their waking lives. As soon as I was well enough, I took Maddy to some of the wonderful haunts I had first discovered with my darling Esmé. The increasingly delicious young American was learning what she called ‘Continental ways’ with eager alacrity.
We visited the Ristorante Mendoza, where I had spent so many happy hours. Had they seen Laura Faschetti or any of the old gang? They were nervously discreet, though friendly enough. These days it was no longer fashionable to have a left-wing clientele. I did bump into a couple of my old acquaintances but was deeply disappointed. Their only interest was in mocking me or describing with some bitterness how this or that person had ‘sold out’. The failure’s whine the world over. At least Mendoza’s fried artichoke was as wonderful as always. Maddy was amazed at the variety and richness of the food. She had believed until then, she said, that all Jewish food was lox, blintzes and latkes.