‘These machines, Professor, are the expression in steel and cordite of our Fascist ability to crush all opposition in a single efficient action.’
He would walk up and down our long model room studying a multi-engined flying boat here, a dynamite engine there, a jointed aircraft carrier, a superfast mobile gun and so on. Set against suitable backgrounds, the models created an astonishing impression of reality.
To my intense relief even Margherita Sarfatti was banned from this inner sanctum to which only my Chief and myself were privy. Here Il Duce could let his hair down (figuratively, since he was going grey and was forced to shave his head). He could forget the cares of state. I was flattered that he wished to spend so much time with me. I sometimes wondered what my company offered him. I knew nothing then, of course, about his plans for the rapid expansion of Italian influence into Africa and the Balkans.
Although he loved to speak in terms of war — the war for wheat, the war against crime, the war on terror, the war against alcoholism and so on — Mussolini’s nature did not lean much towards Mars. He enjoyed the game of it but had very little stomach for actual violence. He was probably never happier than when he stabbed the buttons of his radio-control, making my great War Ziggurat fire this way and that, rolling over infantry divisions, squadrons of cavalry, tanks, anti-aircraft guns, planes, forts and palm groves with mighty dignity. Sometimes Mussolini seemed a rather shy, almost timid person. When his defences were down he would ask quite naive questions with a direct, schoolboy innocence which made me admire and like him all the more.
I have heard it said that Fascism is not an ideology but a conflict of ideologies. If that were true, perhaps Mussolini mirrored that conflict just as much as he resolved it. While he controlled himself, he held Italy, with all her own inner conflicts, together. When his conflicts got the better of him, he was forced to make draconian decisions rather than find compromise. Then his power left him. Then Italy was lost.
Only when Mussolini was thoroughly decisive was Italy badly served. Perhaps this sounds like treachery against a man I still treasure as a friend. Yet it was Mussolini’s powers of compromise which enabled him to represent the Italian people and allow Italy to survive, just as my own similar powers have led to my own survival. One is neither a hypocrite nor a liar if one is by nature a diplomat.
In spite of his firm and necessary aggressiveness at the negotiating table, the Dictator always left doors open for alternatives. Tom Morgan believes that Hitler closed those doors for Mussolini and so initiated Italy’s downfall. Franco, says Tom, had far more sense and kept Spain stable until the present day. Tom bought a house in Spain, which is very pro-American, but he often visits my shop when over here to see his doctor in Harley Street. At least he and I still have our admiration for Il Duce in common. I, of course, understood Mussolini a little better than Morgan. Indeed, one thing Margherita Sarfatti, who perhaps knew her lover better than anyone, said to me was that I brought the man she had admired and respected back to life.
Sarfatti never told me much about her intimate episode with our friend. Yet sometimes, in the middle of making love to Maddy Butter, I would be seized by a chilling thought: could Mussolini and Margherita be discussing me? Might Margherita inadvertently reveal something to alert her protector to the truth? Nothing I could say would be believed by Mussolini. He would see me as her seducer (rather than her whore!). Disgrace would be the least I had to fear! For all his sensitivity, Il Duce was an Italian first. I was well aware how fiercely Italians defended their honour. This caused me to lose a certain spontaneity. Maddy began to complain that I had no time for her. When I explained how I was wearied by cares of state, she seemed satisfied, but some of her old, easy gaiety was lost in those heady first months.
Unfortunately, Margherita still found time for me. I think she was one of those people who feel obliged to keep all lovers, old and new, under their control. When she was in Rome I was often her escort in public, sometimes with Maddy as well, attending an opening of garish modernist art or sharing a box at some screeching contemporary opera. Maddy always complained of the smell. I was tempted to tell her she didn’t know the half of it. I was not at that time Margherita’s only lover, for her ardour, if not her peculiarity, had cooled a little, which was just as well, since I had developed bad headaches in the days when Il Duce was particularly energetic and demanding of my involvement.
One day in the restaurant where I usually met her, Margherita showed me the French and Swiss newspapers. To my amazement they had published shadowy pictures of my Land Leviathan, claiming they had been taken on secret manoeuvres in Libya. I was shocked. I had no doubt the pictures were of my models. They were so poorly reproduced, however, that they could have been the real thing if one did not know better. When I first looked I assumed for a moment that Mussolini had ordered a Leviathan built in secret. But certain features revealed both machines as the models we had installed in the Villa Valentino. The story, of course, was preposterous. Not a nut or bolt of the real thing had yet been made. Even at a most optimistic estimate, the project would take years to complete.
When I got to my office I immediately began enquiries to find out how a photographer could have sneaked through to a room only my staff was allowed to enter under the toughest security. They knew nothing. I was sceptical. I suspected some sort of Bolshevist plot. Brodmann, or even our own OVRA, kept files on everyone and might have spies in my people’s ranks. The photographs had been hastily taken and were not of professional quality. Any Brownie could have been used! I wrote a quick personal note to Il Duce saying I was baffled by this leak.
I waited in some nervousness to hear back from him. He might see this as an indication of disloyalty or un-Fascist laxity on my part. He could strip me of my rank, perhaps even expel me from Italy and consign my inventions to oblivion. Or claim them as his own.
Two days later I heard a familiar sound outside. The Fascist squadristi positioned themselves on both sides of doors flung open to admit the Dictator himself. I expected his expression to be stormy. But he was grinning in his familiar way as the doors closed and we were alone. My stomach turning over, I rose and saluted. He waved me back to my seat with an affable hand, unbuttoning his uniform jacket and loosening his belt.
‘Professore, you are worrying about nothing!’
He picked up one of the newspaper cuttings from my desk. ‘Who could tell anything from this? Does it matter how those photos came to be in the foreign press? Enough that they are believed. The newspapers are doing our work for us! Don’t you see it? Even before we have built our first machine, the world is alarmed, wondering where, how, what — when? Eh? Meanwhile, the machines will soon be in production and those who believe the pictures to be fakes will be shown to be fools, so we win on every level.’
Il Duce had a knack of calming my worst fears. ‘Professore, you are living in the Dark Ages. This is the world of modern communications when the truth can be tailored according to need. Let’s say someone on your staff required a little pocket money and gave the press these pictures. It has done no harm. Of course, you will make sure it doesn’t happen again. But as long as the world is mystified, we are strong.’
My relief was considerable. I would keep my job! Mussolini continued. I must think of him as the star of a cinema film, he told me. The whole art of the film is to suspend disbelief, win authority for the director without being obvious. The director does not succeed by drawing attention to himself or his own skills. He draws attention to his star, his script, his sets.