I might have been visiting a prosperous farmer and his family in the Romagna, the scene was so comfortingly ordinary. Mussolini’s instincts were perfect. Here was the reality to which he returned for supper before spending the evening with his family. He did this as often as possible. Only towards the end, I heard, did he forsake these habits. By then he had become enamoured of Hitler and of Clara Petacci. His wife, she would remind me when we met that one time after the War when I went with Mrs Cornelius to Italy on a package holiday, had warned him against both. These enthusiasms were to conspire in his downfall. She was to write a touching memoir of her husband. Rachele was well aware of her value to him. She loved Mussolini with that deliberate lack of criticism her culture had trained her to prize as a virtue. And Rachele had his ear on almost any question. They made, he sometimes said proudly, a perfect fighting unit, like any Romagnan peasant couple used to the hardships of existence and the realities of survival.
She was a good-humoured woman with a happy smile. Far from being the philistine peasant of popular gossip, she was dignified, well educated and, when occasion demanded, grave. She kept her feet firmly on the ground. Hardly anyone from the Romagna region was not a socialist and an anti-cleric. Like parts of modern County Durham and Northumberland. Today whole villages are communist. But she was no more a bigot than if she had come from a particularly devout part of the country. Like her husband, she formed her own opinions and had good reasons for maintaining them.
As if I was a long-lost nephew, she took to me in a matronly way. Perhaps I filled an emotional void for her. The Mussolinis had recently lost Il Duce’s brother Arnaldo who had died of a broken heart on the death of his son Sandrino from leukaemia.
Finishing his meal rapidly, my Chief leaned back with a groan, which he tried to suppress. His wife ignored him, as if she was used to him. He winced, then grinned at me. ‘Indigestion,’ he said.
‘He’s a slave to it,’ she confirmed disapprovingly as the plates were gathered up. In fact, La Sarfatti told me, he had a serious ulcer. It had ruptured on the night he heard Matteotti had been murdered.
Mussolini stood up. ‘Meetings with ambassadors this afternoon,’ he said. ‘Come on, Professor. I’ll give you a lift back to the Villa Valentino.’
The boys begged me to stay longer.
Mussolini laughed at this. ‘Don’t you have school this afternoon?’
They begged me to come back in the evening. Bruno in particular had questions about stunt flying and Vittorio wanted to know how you got to act in films.
Signora Mussolini took charge of her sons. Perhaps I might like to come back some evening? She would make me a decent supper and we could watch some films. Her husband seemed perfectly content with this arrangement and so we left. I had enjoyed the visit. For me it was such a relief to be a guest in an ordinary household. Signora Mussolini had taken me under her wing, just as my old Aunt Genia had done years before in Odessa. I envied Il Duce his security. I was to pay several visits to the Villa Torlonia that year. They remain my happiest memories of Rome, in spite of the success I enjoyed there. I watched movies with Mrs Mussolini and I told her boys stories of my flying exploits. They called me ‘Uncle Max’ and she was pleased. Since Mussolini’s brother had died, she admitted, there had been an aching absence. She knew my work must be exhausting and was so grateful I could find time to spend with them. I would always, she said, be a welcome guest. I found it a great relief to know I had somewhere I could relax.
Many lack the character to carry the burdens of public life. The small pleasures of privacy, those intimate moments in obscure cafes, visits to galleries and entertainments, begin to turn into public appearances. And, of course, one’s personal life is subject to all manner of minor and irritating constraints.
We special ministers were not required to wear our uniforms at all times, but Il Duce made it clear how our public image was of paramount importance. As long as that was properly maintained, so was the state. Admittedly the Italian, English and American press was not unkind to us and one’s more intimate secrets were never aired - at least while one remained in office.
A case in point was poor, honest Augusto Turati, whom I met once or twice in the days before he was so thoroughly disgraced. He was a notorious pederast and paedophile, though an excellent and honest party secretary. While he continued to perform his public duties properly, such matters were never put before the people. However, when, shortly before my own appointment, Turati rather foolishly criticised the party as corrupt, he was replaced.
Everything came out then, of course. Mussolini, who had turned a blind eye to his friend’s escapades, was shocked at the details presented to him by the OVFLA, his special police department concerned with internal affairs. He never spoke of Turati again.
Il Duce himself was highly tolerant of human foibles, though he had few of his own. His view very properly was that while a man served the public effectively, there was no need to dig up the dirt. ‘After all,’ he would say, ‘there are few of us who haven’t something in our past which could be interpreted unfavourably.’ If this attitude led to certain party members occasionally taking advantage of their positions, it also meant that public confidence was maintained. Franklin Roosevelt said we had nothing to fear but fear itself. To a nation, said Benito Mussolini, morale was more important than money. Both agreed that image and prestige were far more valuable than gold reserves.
‘Gold is a fantasy,’ my friend would say, as we played upon our desert battlegrounds. ‘It has no more intrinsic value than this.’ And his stubby, powerful fingers would claw up a mound of sand from the table, dribbling it back over the ruins we had just made of a well-defended fort.
‘We give it power. It has none of its own. What makes gold and diamonds valuable are their artificial scarcity. The British and the Dutch, together with the Americans, control most of that trade, which gives them their power in the world. Alone, these minerals can feed no one, kill no one, help no one. They are a fantasy. Their worth is in their beauty. Yet nations destroy one another for gold. So if mankind is willing to struggle and die for one fantasy, why not another? America’s greatest asset is not in her raw materials, but in her exports of fantasy across the globe.
‘Without Hollywood, America would be like Canada. Nothing. Fabulation is America’s greatest skill. It comes from having so many mad religious visionaries settled there. These people who accuse me of drawing an inaccurate picture of Italy are merely those whose own fantasies are at odds with mine. What is an “inaccurate picture”? Is the Wild West an inaccurate picture? No, it is an idealised vision. Similarly I describe the best we can become as a nation. After all, how much of a line is there between “idealism” and “fantasy”? What we are interested in, Professor, is the power of the human will to create reality.’
A common theme in those days. Mussolini expressed it well. I realised how pathetic El Glaoui’s provincial dreams had been. Mussolini promised me I would soon have the engineering and material resources of the entire Italian Empire at my disposal. Meanwhile, we needed to shroud our plans in secrecy. Much as I wanted to shout my successes from the rooftops, I understood this. My oath to Il Duce put my life in his service. Here was a leader I could trust, whose intelligence, experience and vision made him my equal.
In common with some of the old squadristi, I grew a handsome beard. This gave me a fierce, aquiline appearance, like an engraving of one of my Cossack ancestors. It suited my new aggressive enthusiasm. Maddy said I looked like her pioneer ancestor, ‘Black Bob’ Butter, who had founded the family fortune. But I think she had an otherwise rather ambiguous reaction to what she called my ‘whiskers’. I was in two minds about keeping them until Mussolini himself complimented me on them.