Thus on that little cobbled street in a Majorcan fishing village I found myself embracing as a brother a friend I had not seen for ten years. ‘Fiorello!’ — laughing and shaking his hand as heartily as he shook mine. He was older, of course, but retained the long, comical face of a pantomime horse, his enormous lips drawn back from massive yellow teeth, his huge brown eyes sparkling with the flames of his generous, eternally ebullient soul. He still wore the wide-brimmed white hat, the lilac cape and gloves, the patent-leather shoes with their lavender spats, the perfect linen suit, a cream silk shirt and canary cravat. Flourishing his ivory-headed cane, he indicated his companions. Glancing at us with some curiosity, they remained seated demurely outside the bakery.
‘My dear fellow! I heard you became an actor and made a name for yourself in American politics? You must tell me everything!’
Remembering his manners, he turned, a graceful grotesque, to introduce us. ’Sweet ladies! My apologies! Bazzanno is an oaf! Ladies, may I introduce my dear friend, my mentor, my inspiration, His Excellency Prince Maxim Arturovitch Pyatnitski, late of the Imperial Russian Court, a philosopher and engineer of genius — one of the greatest Russians of modern times!’
The two beautiful women were Signora Margherita Sarfatti and Miss Miranda Butter. The first was his mistress. La Sarfatti was a brunette in her mid-forties, of aristocratic felinity and an arrogant, comradely disposition, whom I took to at once. The second woman was a young American redhead with a rather prim nose and lips who had travelled from Paris to see the new Italy with which, she said, she was in love. She loved Spain, too, she added, or at least this island. She was a journalist on the staff of the Houston Chronicle; she smiled a little uncertainly at me.
No stranger to genius, as I would discover, Signora Sarfatti had an air of easy power as she lazed across two rattan chairs. Keeping her cool, slitted Atlantic-green gaze on me, she listened with an amused air to the younger woman’s gushing praise of the country she thought was my own. Mrs Sarfatti was delighted to make my acquaintance, she said. I removed my hat and bowed. I kissed their hands.
My old friend from Rome, Fiorello da Bazzanno, was now the editor of Il Gruppo art magazine, distinguished member of the Italian Academy and a leading figure in Mussolini’s court. He and his friends had set off from Naples. On their way to Algiers they had developed engine trouble and put in to Majorca to make repairs. They were enjoying the pleasures of Andratx but had been gone too long already and by the following week must return to Venice where Sarfatti and da Bazzanno were to open an exhibition of new Fascist art.
‘That function is the only justification for my enormous salary, dear comrade.’ He winked. ‘I am rich. But I am no longer my own man!’
‘Surely you haven’t given up your painting?’ I asked him.
He was, he admitted, not painting much these days.
‘I always argued how politics was the century’s only valid art form and here I am proving it. It’s our millennium, dear Max, the triumph of the human imagination over the mundane world! At last the illusion becomes reality! What keeps you up so late?’ He assumed that I, like himself and his companions, had not yet gone to bed. When I told him the truth he was enormously amused. As we sat down, he continued to sing my praises to the ladies, telling them how I had been a hero of the Russian Civil War, a daring cavalry officer, a flyer and an inventor whose genius, had it not been for Bolshevik treachery, would have turned the tide in the Whites’ favour. ‘The perfect hero of the new Renaissance!’
I enjoyed all this, of course, and blossomed under the admiring attentions of the women. It made a pleasant change from Shura’s amiable disrespect. I had forgotten how much I relished recognition when it was properly earned. Da Bazzanno asked me what I was doing in Majorca.
Rather than disappoint him, I told him that I had come on Stavisky’s yacht and hinted that I was here on special business. He received this with another of his enormous knowing winks. He informed the women that I was in the confidence of more than one national government and we must therefore be discreet. I waved such a suggestion aside. ‘It’s simply not conversation for the public square.’ Recalling his duty to his companions, Fiorello suggested that I dine aboard their vessel that evening. I saw no new boats in the harbour. He explained that they had had to anchor on the other side of the headland.
‘She’s called La Farfalla Nera.’ He would send his launch for me to Les Bon’ Temps. I told him that I was not certain of my movements. I had companions, a cousin. Then naturally I must bring him too, said da Bazzanno. ‘But you must warn him that we shall monopolise the conversation. We have years to catch up on, you and I, old comrade!’
He spoke of the dozens of mutual acquaintances from the old Rome days. How was Laura, for instance? I asked. I did not mention that she had been his fiancée. His face clouded and he shrugged. ‘Oh, we’re no longer in touch. She’s so hard-headed. You know what these unregenerate communists are like.’ He was clearly unwilling to say more. I accepted this and left with a promise to see him shortly after sunset.
I returned to Les Bon’ Temps with my good news. Yet even as I rowed the short distance from shore to boat, I began to wonder if my two worlds were wholly compatible. Shura and Stavisky saw me as one of their own, a kind of poor relation of high-class criminals, whereas da Bazzanno, generous as always, had painted me in quite a different light, considerably closer to the truth.
As it happened, Shura had no interest in the artistic small talk he expected to hear at such a gathering, so he declined, energetically encouraging me to go. ‘Exactly what you need, dear Dimka,’ he assured me. ‘You will be able to relax with your own kind. Let your hair down, say what you like without causing offence. Holding back can be a strain no matter how good the company.’
I told him I knew exactly what he meant. That evening I donned my dinner jacket with a clear conscience and a light heart.
I had forgotten how thoroughly happy I had been in Rome. With Esmé at my side I was secure in the company of good friends. I had enjoyed the pleasure of talk for its own sake, the wild eloquence which seemed to come over us all. The best that was ever said in those days was never recorded. In comparison, Mr ‘Greene’, Mr Hemingway, or Prince Nabokov-Serin and their kind produce gibberish. But these were the years before tape recorders made us all cautious.
Fiorello’s launch called for me at seven. With a little too much rouge on lips and cheeks and too much powder on her fresh, oval face, Miranda Butter, her bobbed hair covered by one of her host’s lilac scarves, wore a wonderfully fashionable evening dress in green and pink silk. Standing unsteadily beside the seaman at the wheel, she waved to me with an empty martini glass as the other sailor helped me aboard. I had already noted her evident interest in me and hoped she had left behind that irritating habit Americans share with Moslems, of drinking for the illicit thrill of it.
I joined her under the launch’s awning. ‘I needed a few minutes with you alone,’ she said in that direct American manner. To my relief, she seemed perfectly sober. ‘Your story sounds so wonderful! I know that a lot of what you do is secret, but I’d guess there’s more than enough for an article. Or even a series.’
Assuming she sought a useful rationale for a liaison, I paid little attention to this at first. Since Americans were so ignorant of the realities of Europe and the Middle East, I hinted it might be possible for me to say a few words and illustrate them with an anecdote or two, but I must first consider the wisdom of such a decision.