She had not understood I had played such an important part in politics. I had been far too circumspect. A Klansman! She and Mussolini had seen The Birth of a Nation three times when it first came to Milan. So romantic, so daring. Just the kind of hero for the New Italy.
I decided that the faint note of mockery in her voice was permanent and not especially directed at me. With it she protected herself in a world which, in the intensity of its vendettas and cruelty of its judgements, was far worse than any political world. The world of the international art scene. The budgets of small nations were spent on art, especially by Americans like Hearst and J. P. Morgan, and the power struggle was intense.
She had read some of my speeches. And I had told Mussolini he had no American equivalent! The course of United States history might have taken a very different turn if I had been in power. But she could tell I was a dreamer, a poet-engineer, who had no interest in ordinary political power. There was only one D’Annunzio. My combination of experience and innocence was very touching. She came over to where I stood, draped in black cloth, and made a few murmured suggestions to the tailor, touching my figure with a kind of casual, abstracted intimacy I might have found degrading if I did not have so much inner pride.
By the time the tailoring ordeal was at an end, she took me to lunch in the vast Rolls-Royce which called for us. At least the restaurant was small and there was no one there I knew. She asked why I had given up my political career. I told her that it was chiefly because the Klan had become corrupt. It had lost all its original ideals in its effort to reach accommodation with ordinary bourgeois politics. She was sympathetic. That was the early history of Fascism, she said. But the Klan still survived. I said that I doubted now if it would ever gain real power.
I was first and foremost, I explained, an engineer. In America, because of my connections with well-known producers and directors, I had been induced to act and design film sets. As soon as I had the chance, however, I returned to my first love, my engineering projects.
‘Your airships and your steam-cars,’ she said. ‘Not to mention all your other ideas. I have read the articles.’
Clearly Tom Morgan had not turned up the more accusatory pieces. This was very comforting to me. At last I was with people prepared to believe the best of their fellow men rather than the worst. She asked me what was happening with my projects. I explained how the independent inventor and entrepreneur was being squeezed out of America by big corporations and a tax structure which favoured Big Business but did nothing for the small man. I told her how my projects had been bought by these powerful interests and then ‘mothballed’ or scrapped. The commercial failure of my steam-car, for instance, was a case in point. The car was a victim of the vastly powerful oil companies like British Petroleum and S&O. In offering certain inventions to the US government, I said, I had again been sabotaged. Washington was so thoroughly corrupt you could no longer trust her institutions, even the Patent Office. Besides, I no longer felt that I wished to give the US any more of my inventions, my political wisdom or my theatrical gifts. I was now exclusively at the service of Il Duce.
‘Well,’ she said, playing with my thigh under the table, ‘he is delighted. I have not seen him so happy for a long while. Your war machines, independent of oil, are exactly what we need. Il Duce is concerned in the event of war that any military action should be swift and decisive, over within days or weeks. Any other kind of war is uneconomical and far too wasteful for one’s own side. All current strategic thinking says this. Tanks and planes and bombs are what win modern wars. The bigger the plane or the tank or the bomb, the more chance one has of winning. You and Mussolini think on the same scale. That is why you will control the future.’
I was, as ever, surprised at her grasp of the principles. Such understanding was highly unusual in a woman, especially an Italian woman.
I could see why, in her youth, she had been so attractive to Mussolini, so helpful to him. She had been married to a businessman, some socialist from her early years. Mussolini, too, had been a socialist, but, for obvious reasons, no mention was made of that these days.
Il Duce’s journey to political maturity had been swifter than most, but it had been a journey nonetheless.
Margherita was eager for any Hollywood gossip. I explained to her that I had been in Africa on my own particular expedition into the heart of darkness. I had eschewed most things Western and had lost touch with many old friends. I had seen the latest films, of course. Indeed, one of my main preoccupations while forced to stay so long in Tangier, was visiting the cinemas. But I had not seen a talkie until I came to Italy and I must admit I had not been overly impressed. They were full of stilted dialogue uttered by men in spats and women in evening dresses before a static camera. They were all about darkies or people who dressed up as darkies. The Jazz Singer was a combination of both. My own preference, so far, was for Steamboat Willie. There would come a time when the talking film approached the artistic perfection of its silent predecessor. I had seen no proof as yet.
She was inclined to agree. She was watching an art form turn itself into a sensational novelty to please an increasingly crass public. Was I never depressed that this progress towards tosh seemed endemic in the American arts? She spoke of certain painters and composers I did not know. We were, I told her, dependent on the tastes of the petite bourgeoisie for our livings. We moved towards the common denominator as if it were a cause. I was sure there could be a combination of popular and fine art to meet all the criteria.
‘That’s what we’re producing in Italy,’ she said, ‘especially in architecture.’ She was helping commission some important public buildings but was meeting resistance among certain Fascist ministers. She claimed they hated her simply because she was a woman. ‘If a man had done what I have done for Italian prestige around the world,’ she said, waving her arm in a panoramic arc, ‘he would be weighed down with honours and rewards. Meanwhile I have to make a living as best I can. I have no one but myself.’
A melodramatic statement from someone who had as her protector the greatest man in the history of modern Italy, the natural successor to Garibaldi! I had no clear idea, then, how insecure she felt. Mussolini’s wife was no illiterate. Rachele Mussolini became deeply unhappy if she saw Margherita’s name in the press. Margherita depended upon the newspapers for her living and her fame. Without them, much of her power was threatened.
Of course, I did not understand this then. I was beginning to slip into that extraordinary sense of security and comfort that comes from finding one’s natural place among the powerful. I had never been so thoroughly accepted as I was by Il Duce and his people. I had never felt so safe. Yet that feeling of acceptance and well-being was not complete. I was still keenly aware that Margherita Sarfatti was my chief’s long-time paramour. I had a horror of being caught between the two of them. I was still wondering, for instance, what had happened to my friend da Bazzanno, Sarfatti’s earlier lover.
In the private dining room, as the uncrowned Queen of Italy took her singular pleasures with me, I guessed it would be some time before she tired of me. I had no choice but to comply. I let my mind drift towards other things. I was astonished that Il Duce could ever have found this rutting harpy attractive. I did not know then, of course, why she should be so repellent to me.
Back at the Grishams’ my hosts had returned and were laughing heartily over drinks. Handing my coat to the maid, I asked the reason for their amusement. Billy said they had had at least ten different telephone engineers round that day. ‘It shows you’re much more important than me, Max!’ and he lifted his glass in a toast as Ethel handed me my champagne cocktail. I did not follow his reasoning. Then he told me that a visit from a telephone engineer was considered to be identical to a visit from the secret police. His phone, he said, was thoroughly tapped. He didn’t mind, since the office’s phone wasn’t tapped and he could always use that. This seemed childish stuff to me and I ignored it. It pleased people to pretend they were constantly under Il Duce’s personal surveillance. It gave their escapades an added thrill, I suppose. The whole rather cynical tenor of the conversation depressed me. I had had an exhausting day and needed to relax. Billy and Ethel did not ‘coke’ and I felt a need for some more of the nourishing powder. Politely I wondered if they would mind if Maddy and I returned to the Villa Borghese. Of course they understood. Billy drove us back in his own car. He was in a merry mood and kept beginning sentences which he did not finish. I thanked him warmly for his hospitality and help. I regarded him as my best journalist friend in Rome. I would let him know the story as soon as I could, even if it were the middle of the night. He was grateful for that.