I admitted that I had already given a considerable amount of thought to the prospect of serving Il Duce or resuming my Hollywood career. My agents, I assured him, were instructed to accept no further offers for the time being. Fiorello reached across the table and put his huge hand on mine. ‘Your first duty is to yourself, Maxim. To your art. You must not let my enthusiasm, our needs, lead you off your chosen path. But as one artist to another, I must assure you that Mussolini is the true medium of our ambitions!’
This phrase struck an emotional chord in me. I had tried so hard to present a measured manner, but my voice shook a little as I told my friend that my duty was rapidly becoming crystal clear. He had convinced me. I was now prepared to refuse all other temptations, give up previous ambitions and accompany him to Rome, to offer my talents in the service of his master.
‘I believe,’ I murmured sincerely, ‘that I am about to come face to face with my destiny.’
I was close to tears. At last I had found my Tsar.
I was going home.
* * * *
SEVEN
I had been sleeping and came awake suddenly with no notion of the time. I was alone. For some reason I experienced a rush of terror and then opened my eyes to see that a steward had brought me some tea. He seemed amused. My hand trembled badly as I accepted the glass. He told me that Signorina Butter and Doctor da Bazzanno requested urgently that I join them in the observation cabin.
Still conditioned to crisis, I quickly washed and dressed. I hurried from my quarters, along the vibrating metal passage to the cabin where my friends were already seated staring out of the wide window at the approaching horizon.
‘You seemed to need the rest,’ said Maddy Butter with a smile. Only then did I realise it was not morning but late evening. We were nearing our destination. That afternoon, while airborne, I had entertained Miss Butter in my quarters and then, evidently, fallen fast asleep.
‘I didn’t want you to miss this.’ Da Bazzanno was alive with warm, proprietorial pride. ‘It is, after all, the birthplace of my ancestors!’
I took my seat beside him. The plane suddenly banked, levelling out close to the water, and as the horizon came up again I understood why da Bazzanno had wakened me so insistently.
Most of us see pictures of them from childhood and in some sense know what to expect, yet all the wonders of the world, the Pyramids or Niagara Falls or any of the others, have this in common: we are forever prepared for them and yet never quite ready for their actuality. The actuality is always breathtaking, never disappointing, always better than any representation we have seen. The desert in that Lawrence film was a tawdry backdrop in comparison to the original. The Grand Canyon in Cinerama is still merely a cheap illusion. The reality is too vivid ever to become truly familiar.
And so it was, of course, with Venice. Her sky was alive with gold and rose. Her olive cupolas were half immersed in a ruby-coloured aura. Smouldering bronze, silver stone, emerald tiles, a thousand shades of terracotta, canals like mercury, woven into one great carpet of colour whose tones faded or deepened with the setting of the sun. With her vast variety of domes and towers, curves and angles, she surely existed in more than a mere four dimensions.
Da Bazzanno chuckled at my astonishment. Venice’s confident beauty contradicted any conventional understanding of space, just as she revealed whole varieties of tints and washes which, I could swear, I have never seen since. As her colours darkened, her lights made little pools of shivering copper and warm saffron refracted in water that diffused and enriched her so that the outlines of her buildings merged with sky and water and made it impossible to know where the reality ended and the mirage began. I could easily believe the whole vast scene to be illusion. I understood how she had resisted her would-be conquerors for so many centuries.
Again La Farfalla Nera banked steeply, lending that fabulous city a further crazy unreality. We swept towards the vivid tapestry as if to be absorbed by it. We banked again, making a pass at the water as we prepared to put down. I heard a sudden loud bang, felt a series of sharp shudders, then a sense of bouncing gently forward until at last we settled. Da Bazzanno’s next remark was lost under a massive roar from the engines steadying the ship as she came about. She prepared to taxi towards the dark outlines of churches, storehouses, palaces, merchants’ mansions, banks and museums built with that same enchanting combination of knowing magnificence and unrivalled, artless beauty. Even Odessa in her Golden Age could not begin to match the brutal and subtle glamour of that ethereal Queen of Ports whose influence once stretched across the globe, whose style has so frequently been imitated and never successfully equalled, even by Hollywood. Venice’s beauty set the standard by which all watery cities, be they Stockholm, Rovaniemi, Amsterdam or Bangkok, measure themselves.
‘I’ll send my orderly to the harbourmaster with a note,’ Fiorello told me. ‘They’ll come and collect us in a decent boat. We shall be staying at my family home near La Fenice. I apologise in advance for the building’s condition. I was only recently able to reclaim it from the people who had occupied it since we lost it in 1797. Their taste was typically bourgeois. I’m having the whole place redecorated.’
I remarked that he had reached quite a height. Ten years ago, as an impoverished artist, he had only dreamed of the world he was now helping to create.
‘It’s crazy, isn’t it?’ My observation seemed to sober him. ‘Yet isn’t there an emptiness about it? Doesn’t it feel to you, my dear Max, as if it could fade away tomorrow, like fairy gold? This is our time, Max. I doubt we’ll have another. We must enjoy it to the full. When we wake up, we could be rotting in some prison or, worse, discover our real selves to be nothing but bank clerks and minor civil servants with cheap ambitions!’
I was a little surprised by his change of mood. Only a day or so earlier he had been describing the triumph of a New Rome which would rule the world for millennia. I said that I thought he was being both too self-deprecating and too pessimistic. He received only what he had honestly earned. ‘What you starved for. What you worked for. These are the rewards of the hard, dangerous, hungry years. Your Duce knows what you are worth.’
He leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek. ‘Well, let us hope you are right. Meanwhile, I suggest you take my advice anyway. After all, what can you lose if I’m wrong? Life should always be relished by the moment. Death takes everything but that moment from us. Everything.’
Miranda Butter was much impressed by this profoundly Latin attitude which to me seemed to carry a certain cargo of self-pity, so unlike our own Slavic soul-searching. Slavic angst contains an intellectual element lacking in the Italian’s fiery despair.
‘But death,’ I said, ‘also presents us with that moment.’
My lovely companion gasped and placed her hand on mine. Her eyes were hot with tears. ‘That’s so true.’
Da Bazzanno shrugged and called for more cognac. His normally droll face was suffused with emotion. He now resembled a pantomime horse playing Ibsen. In silence he grew absorbed in the scene beyond the window.
‘What does Venice mean to you, Prince Max?’ Maddy still habitually used my formal title in public. ‘Do you, too, have family here?’
I shook my head. ‘Venice means betrayal. Had she not withdrawn her fleet in 1453, Constantinople would not have fallen to the Turk. Yet now she redeems herself. Now she remains one of the few unfallen bastions of Christendom.’ I looked across the black, jewelled waters to where the lights of gondolas and fishing boats came and went against the misty outlines of the quayside buildings, the queerly angled mooring posts. ‘She is a marriage of Western and Eastern civilisation. I long to know her better.’
Miss Butter spoke softly. ‘We’ll explore her together, shall we? But you must remain my spiritual guide and my teacher. I’m so ignorant of European history.’
‘Unfortunately for my family,’ I told her, ‘we are almost nothing but history.’ My smile was self-mocking. ‘And we are not known for our la
ck of spirituality, either. We are Russians.’
Da Bazzanno, pulling himself out of his mood, laughed suddenly, displaying his huge, yellow teeth. ‘We want as little history in Italy as possible. Until now Italy too has been nothing but history. Picturesque ruins, memories of former glory. We have lived off tourism and tagliatelle for centuries. The new Italy has a place only for the future — the history we are making today!’
We drank to the future in champagne. We drank to the city, to the nation, to the leader. We drank to the fulfilment of our dreams. Our faith was in a fascism as yet untarnished by the actions of its less disciplined adherents. Real, idealistic Fascists, like da Bazzanno, loathed everything that their movement became; a party divided by crude rivalries and guided by orthodoxy which Mussolini himself always sought to discourage.
But then, in our happy innocence, we drank to our Golden Age.
A little later a motor launch, carrying a small blackshirt guard of honour and the deputy mayor, drew alongside. Signora Sarfatti had joined us. She sat across from me. From time to time she offered me a friendly wink. She was completely at ease and exuded authority. We climbed into the launch. I felt uncomfortable, sitting, with my precious luggage, between two stern foot soldiers of the new Italy, but they were eager to oblige us in every way. Within minutes we reached the quay and the blackshirts helped us disembark, carrying our bags to a waiting cart which they proceeded to steer at a trot, with loud whistles of warning, through San Marco’s gathering crowds.
To my still befuddled mind we were shadows, insubstantial and colourful, perhaps, but nonetheless still merely actors in some extravagant movie. My sense of unreality was increased by the expressions on various faces around me. The vibrant Venetian air heightened the contrasts. Grotesque, immobile, animated or familiar, every face bore a certain theatrical cast. People’s clothes, though frequently of modish design, had the quality of stage costumes. The buildings, canals and alleys continued my impression of an enduring artificiality. Even the voices of organ-grinders, fiddlers, jumping-jack sellers, the hawkers of tin toys, cheap scarves and whole ensembles of masks, felt as if they were orchestrated for the stage. We crossed a couple of small, dramatically arching bridges, passed down a zigzag of twittens, stumbled for a while on a cobbled path running beside a narrow canal over which gaudy washing hung like welcoming flags. At last we entered a small dead-end square smelling strongly of cat urine. Here the cart was brought to an abrupt stop and the fascisti saluted. Da Bazzanno returned their salute, took a ring of rattling metal from his pocket and inserted a large brass key into the lock of a rather scruffy-looking door made from ancient, iron-bound wood. Light spilled suddenly into the little square and a shrill voice cackled in happy surprise from within. ‘Fiorello! Fiorello! Mio figlio!’
In the doorway an old man appeared. His back was curved with scoliosis but his huge head beamed up at us, his vast mouth displaying a few brownish teeth. His amiable, short-sighted eyes were bloodshot mahogany, his jowls were covered in white stubble. Dressed in a coarse, brown monk’s robe, he appeared to be a priest. His resemblance to Fiorello was striking. If he lived long enough my friend would one day exactly resemble his sire.
Hugging the old man tightly, Fiorello introduced us to his father. Servants appeared, greeting us all with the same nods and grins before carrying our luggage into the house. With warm thanks and ample tips, da Bazzanno dismissed our guard of honour, informed the deputy mayor that he would call at the town hall as soon as he was settled, shook hands and closed the door on the street.
The palazzo was like the backstage of a theatre. I half expected to find dressing rooms leading off the main passages of what was, in fact, a typical old Venetian house, built around an interior courtyard completely inaccessible and invisible from outside.
The high-ceilinged passages were lit by candles and oil lamps. They threw long shadows upon walls, staircases and old black beams. Our shadows continued to dance and shudder as we followed the two Bazzannos, deep in happy conversation, through a house smelling strongly of the canals outside and for which, over his shoulder, Fiorello periodically apologised. His whole attention was focused on his father. I have rarely known two male relatives take such tremendous joy in each other’s company. I experienced a pang of loss for my own father, whose foolish radicalism had separated us. I assumed them to have been apart for months, but a fondly indulgent Margherita Sarfatti told me it had been only a couple of weeks since da Bazzanno had departed. ‘It is a love affair that has been going on since he was born.’ She shrugged and offered me a droll wink. ‘How can I compete?’
Not by nature a discourteous soul, da Bazzanno remembered himself soon enough to tell us how he had wanted the house to be ready for guests. ‘But we have almost a hundred and fifty years of neglect to cope with. They did nothing. They didn’t spend a penny on the place.’
‘A Jewish family,’ said old da Bazzanno by way of explanation. He shrugged. ‘Very pleasant people. Nothing wrong with them. But you know how they hate to part with cash.’
‘We’re having electricity, gas, water — everything piped in. And new sewers. And walls have to be repointed. Plastering . . .’ Fiorello returned his attention to his father.
Old da Bazzanno added: ‘They were not real Jews. They went to the same church as my aunt. Everyone liked them. They were generous to the church, she said. But not to themselves. Or the house.’ His shrug was a distorted echo of his son’s.
‘What happened to them?’ I asked Margherita, as we continued to penetrate the warren of tiny passages and rooms. She shook her head. She had heard something, she said, but she wasn’t sure if it was true. She had an idea they had moved to Austria where they had a son. She sauntered ahead of us to inspect a faded tapestry.
‘They weren’t Jews at all, then,’ interposed Maddy Butter almost aggressively. ‘Were they? I mean, they were Christians.’
‘Once a Jew always a Jew,’ I told her kindly. ’In America you have not had quite our experience of the Children of Abraham.’
I would remember those words some years later and only then understand their full significance. At that time I did not pursue the subject as Margherita had rejoined us with a murmured apology and an enthusiastic diversion on the subject of fourteenth-century Norman tapestry.
Eventually the passages opened out on to a gallery. Here the smell of mould was strongest. We were on the first floor, looking down into a large hall where a table was being laid and a fire made. Clearly the servants had not known when da Bazzanno fils would return. We crossed the gallery into another wide corridor. We discovered our bedrooms, our bags already there.
Again I felt I had wandered into some Hollywood historical extravaganza. The rooms had huge four-poster beds. Their iron-hard oak was carved with dark animals and plants tinted with faded gold leafing. The heavy hangings were filthy with age. The furniture was preserved by candle wax and cooking fats, the grease and grime of centuries. Mysterious pictures, so blackened it was impossible to tell the subject, clung to the walls. A small fire had managed to take hold in my grate, and fat copper lamps guttered in iron sticks mottled with oil and verdigris. My evening clothes had been unpacked and laid out for me. My few other clothes were put away in a massive armoire. The rest of my possessions — my films and my plans — had not been touched, but I leafed through my rather dog-eared blueprints and notes to make sure no enterprising trainee spy had removed anything. I also checked that my cache of cocaine was in order. Here I made a happy discovery. With a rush of gratitude I found my cousin Shura, as a parting gift, had left me with ten large packets, sealed neatly in waxed paper like grocer’s sugar, of the very finest sneg. A year’s supply, even if used with irresponsible abandon! To celebrate I called Signora Sarfatti and Maddy Butter to my room, and we indulged a small line or two before dinner, chopped out by Margherita Sarfatti under the gaze of an admiring Miss Butter. She had only with our acquaintance become an enthusiast for the life-enhancing powder. Da Bazzanno had, at least for
the moment, renounced cocaine. I had every sympathy for him. From time to time a little fasting is good for the soul as well as the blood. But he did not like to be reminded of what he had given up, so Signora Sarfatti was delighted to join us in this innocent secret.
Later, we enjoyed a simple meal of tripe soup and fried shellfish while da Bazzanno the Younger, in graphic gestures and with wild laughter, retailed the problems they had had with the flying boat. Da Bazzanno the Elder, devoting himself to his dinner in the manner of the aged, occasionally interjected a polite exclamation. I was again reminded of two trick horses from the old Funabile enjoying a gossipy manger of hay together. At one moment they might break into the mock-philosophical patter for which Ah-Ee and Ee-Ah were famous when I was a boy in Kiev. The candle flames graced the faces of our female companions with new angles and secrets. The servants all had that prematurely wizened appearance of a people with blood so ancient, so little diluted, that they could be representatives of a different and earlier race altogether.
The Venetians, Signora Sarfatti, a native of the city, would tell me, not only looked different and spoke differently, they also thought differently. They had, she said, antique minds, full of sophistications and experience unknown to the rest of us, full of strange, uncommon assumptions about matters of health, morality, politics and even literature.