The Laughter of Carthage

TEN

THE ETERNAL CITY had seduced us both. Hand in hand we walked everywhere, entranced. Amidst the casual accumulation of three millennia, the conventional symbols of an antique greatness, her ruins, her churches and her modern monuments, Rome’s citizens conducted a routine life reminiscent of my own salad days in Odessa. Romans struck matches against Caligula’s columns and strung washing from balconies where Michelangelo or Raphael might have leaned to improve their view of St Peter’s. Motor-cars, trams, buses and trains buzzed and crashed around the Colosseum and the Circus Maximus, cheerfully unimpressed by this weighty glory. The natives were if anything amused by foreign pilgrims who piously gasped at their pagan and their papal shrines. Rome herself was looking forward, was more consciously a modern city than ever before.

In the little bars, dance halls and night clubs around the Via Catalana we would soon find convivial company. Here intellectuals and bohemians gathered; futurists clashed swords with socialists, d’Annunzio was toasted and Giolitti, the Prime Minister, slandered. Plans were made to build a new Empire whose legions would advance by rail and in tanks, pausing to establish factories rather than forts wherever they went. Yellow sandstone and pink marble walls were covered with every persuasion of political poster, indiscriminately mixed with advertisements for sports cars, air races, cinema films; all these equally of consuming interest to the Romans.

They were attracted to the romance of technology, by the thrill of the great, simple deed. They were simply entertained or irritated by the petty bickerings of corrupt liberals and apoplectic anarchists. In this tolerant humanity they were again like Odessans. They lived in warm, friendly sunshine, in their cafés; in their restaurants they ate and drank with gusto; in the streets they laughed and danced to the music of little brass bands and accordions; they even dressed with the gay flamboyance of pre-war Odessa. If they expressed admiration for Bolsheviks it was both dismissive and ironic, acknowledging the Reds as successful criminals, not with a pursing of the lips but with a sardonic laugh. Lenin was ‘that noble successor to Ivan the Terrible’ or ‘the greatest Byzantine monarch since Julian the Apostate’, while Trotski was either Joshua or Attila. Artists of Mayakovski’s bent were ‘the glorious children of Marinetti’ whose canvases were whole cities, whose materials were dynamite, gunpowder and ruptured flesh: Poets of a New Apocalypse opposed to all that was old, devoted to everything that was new, born into a world where electricity, the internal combustion engine and powered flight were commonplace, ‘to use, not to examine’.

We had arrived on the morning of a mass march through central Rome. Traffic crawled. Men in overalls waved mysterious banners and women in red shawls shook their fists and shouted, stepping in time to the music of rough-and-ready bands which played loudly and in conflict. When I came to ring the service bell in our room I found that it was the manager’s wife who answered it. She apologised. The restaurant waiters had gone on strike and the hotel staff had joined them. She said she could bring us sandwiches and mineral water, that she was hoping to prepare a meal of some kind in the evening. She advised us, however, to look for family-owned restaurants which would still, with luck, be open. Strikes were so frequent that people took them for granted. Normally I would have been furious at the inconvenience, but I was deeply glad to be in a Western city. I found myself shrugging and smiling, whereupon she began to cackle and made several jokes in Italian which I could not follow but at which I laughed anyway.

Thus Esmé and I spent our first day in Rome looking for somewhere to eat. That was how we discovered Via Catalana where many restaurants did, in fact, remain open. We were delighted with the novelty of everything and would probably not have noticed if we were starving. We marvelled at the sights and sounds of that civilised, ancient city; even the political rhetoric, so alarming in Russia, was here merely part of the vibrant air. Esmé breathed it in and became more wonderfully alive than ever. Rome in the summer of her most chaotic year, with workers occupying factories and ultimately D’Annunzio being expelled from Fiume, was a haven of sanity and order compared to what we had put behind us. For this was, if nothing else, the capital of a free nation. The debate was not whether one should live to see the next morning, or how one might escape the brutality of self-appointed militiamen, or what movements had arisen overnight radically to change our fate, but what kind of elected government could best rule. The old artistic and intellectual vitality of St Petersburg, before Kerenski ruined everything, was here reproduced in even more vivid colours. People discussed ideas with an easy gaiety which suggested all politics was fantasy, worthless unless it was outrageous enough to entertain the population for at least one Roman evening.

Esmé, when we went to bed that night, was astonishingly passionate, making sexual demands on me which I found at first surprising, for I had no idea she harboured such secret desires. Nonetheless I flung myself into this new experience with a will and all but exhausted our remaining cocaine in the process. Next morning, aching but utterly relaxed, having slept hardly at all, I told her we would start having to make friends rapidly, if I was to discover fresh supplies of our drug. She pinched my cheeks and told me that I was too prone to ‘stewing’: everything was bound to turn out for the best. She lived for the moment, my Esmé. She was the eternal present and that was possibly the reason I loved her so much.

I have always been a man of many worlds, able to move easily from one social ambience to another. Remembering the bohemian character of the district near the Tiber’s left bank more or less between the Capitol and Isola Tiberina, a stone’s throw from the Orsini Palace, I returned there with Esmé that same afternoon. We were in such a pleasant state of euphoria we soon selected a café, sitting outside under its red and white awning, swatting at mosquitoes, and drinking citrons presses from trumpet-shaped glasses. Half an hour later we were in conversation with a dark and attractively ugly little man who mistook us at first for English. Learning we were Russians, he became extravagantly delighted. He hardly needed to tell us he was an artist, with his wide-brimmed slouch hat and his scarlet silky cloak. He introduced himself as Fiorello da Bazzanno, painter. His monstrously wide mouth, full of yellow uneven teeth, made him grotesque; half-man half-horse in the head alone. His puny, underfed body, which twitched perpetually, completely contradicted the animalistic, pagan quality of his face. Yet the combination was magnetic. Moreover he revealed a facility for language which matched my own. To us he spoke a bizarre patois of Russian, German, Italian, French and English. He had been born in Trieste where most of those cultures meet. He insisted we drink a bottle of Tuscan wine with him. After an hour or so he had revealed he had been a petty thief, a street arab. Then in the trenches he had met his hero, the Futurist Umberto Boccioni, and discovered broader horizons. I told him of my own life in Petersburg, my engineering achievements, my flying exploits. He was quick to see similarities in our lives. Drawing a great, gold watch from within his rather dirty white shirt he told us we were to be his guests for supper. He paid the bill at the café and led us down the street towards Mendoza’s Café in the Via Catalana, which was distinguished by its black and yellow striped umbrellas, and thus known locally as ‘The Wasp’.

‘You’ll have the fried artichoke to begin.’ Fiorello was grave for a moment, ‘It’s Mendoza’s speciality and creates more spiritual uplift than a dozen Papal audiences.’

A woman was waiting for him at one of the outside tables. She was dressed entirely in black and was almost twice his size. She had dark bobbed hair, a black smock, black stockings, black shoes. The only contrast was in her rather pale skin and the scarlet cord tied around her waist. This was Laura Fischetti. She wrote, said Fiorello almost apologetically, for the socialist press. We shook hands. A plump, motherly, good-humoured woman, she was forever picking and patting at her tiny lover. While he talked she leaned back from him, her hand on his chair, and smiled at us, the proud parent of a spoiled but clever child. Occasionally she would bend her head towards Esmé and ask her a question. My Esmé opened up to Laura, telling her the version of her life story I had said would be most acceptable in Europe; how she had been orphaned, raised by Turks, was about to be sold to a Syrian merchant when I found her, recognising her as my long-lost cousin. If Laura found the story fantastic, she was too well mannered to pursue it. Instead she confined herself to enquiring about life in Constantinople where her father had been attached to the consulate before the war, but which she had never visited.

The artichoke was as delicious as Fiorello had promised but the various pastas and meats which followed were better still. During the course of this wonderful meal, various friends arrived and seated themselves around us. When the table proved too small, they drew up another and placed it at an angle to the first until half the area belonged to one large group, all of them talking, drinking, eating and gesticulating with such energy and pleasure I should not have cared a second if I understood a word of what they said. Two or three of them had visited Russia before the war. They said they were poets. I suspected them of anarchist affiliations. It was Italians who so affected Petersburg’s bohemians on every political and artistic level. I did not mind. They were not the savage, primitive anarchists I knew. To them anarchism was the logical persuasion for an artist, any artist, and particularly Italian artists. The Italians are the great individualists of Europe and anarchy is merely a formal description of the country’s fundamental attitudes. (That was why so few people properly understood Benito Mussolini, his philosophy and his specific problems.) Meanwhile a tone-deaf guitarist wandered in and out of the restaurant singing popular sentimental songs for an indulgent lira or two while Fiorello remembered another item on the menu we must try and ordered innumerable bottles of wine. It was heavenly for me, to sit there eating grilled fish and macaroni and enjoying the fabulous luxury of unchecked conversation. It was Laura, that night, who found us good cocaine (‘the drug of all true Futurists’) and Fiorello who insisted on paying for it (‘pay me when your first aerial liner sails for Buenos Aires’).

Their friends were equally generous. For the first week of our stay in Rome virtually our only expense was the hotel. We went every day to the Via Catalana and from there would be taken on to restaurants, night clubs, private parties. The Roman bohemians were eager to hear my tales of the Civil War, of the Turkish nationalists and life in Constantinople. With these stories, sometimes just a little embroidered, I paid for our suppers and wine. If I had too much to drink, I might also draw on Mrs Cornelius’s first-hand knowledge of the leading Bolsheviks. I continued to borrow her name, since it was on our forged British passports. I did not wish to risk confusing the authorities and I still could not be sure, in that company, who might be a police spy. There was always bound to be at least one in any group.

Our new companions, for all their apparent carelessness, did not take the fate of their country lightly; they could become furious, near hysterical, aggressive, violent with one another over the most obscure points. Every shade of anarchism, monarchism, socialism and nationalism was represented. Few Romans were fascists. Fascist! in those days meant merely ‘a bundle’ or ‘a bunch of flowers’; that is to say it was slang for a group. It was left to the Bolshevik press to give the word its sinister connotation. Many of Fiorello da Bazzanno’s friends, like Kolya, possessed an obsession with the future which mirrored my own; they gave words and pictures to my ideas. My scientific rationalism and their poetry formed a perfectly balanced combination.

Fiorello insisted, one warm evening beneath burning strings of coloured electric bulbs on Mendoza’s terrace, that the old warring families, the Borgia and the Orsini, had their contemporary equivalents in the makers of motor-cars. ‘Soon it might be necessary to declare one’s loyalties, my dear Max, and if necessary fight for them.’ He jumped up, pushing his hat away from his thin, dark hair, striking a pose with his cane. ‘Avanti! I am Count Fiorello da Bazzanno, henchman to the Ferrari!’ This amused him so much that, his lips curling back over his yellow teeth as he laughed helplessly, he had to sit down again.

‘And who will be the next Pope?’ Laura patted his back. She spoke in her usual quietly sardonic tone. ‘A Lancia? A Fiat?’

Fiorello gasped at this, shaking his head violently, controlling himself long enough to get to his feet and put his hand on my shoulder. ‘He could be a foreigner. There’s already a movement in the Vatican to elect a Ford. But the French support the Peugeot Cardinal.’ He leaned forward in mock-seriousness. ‘For my part I’m behind the dark horse. The Infant Cardinal.’

‘Who’s that?’ We all bent our heads towards him.

‘Why? None other than the Baby Rolls-Royce, my friends. Mark my words, you’ll hear more of him in a year or two. He has stolen your plans, Max. He means to lift St Peter’s closer to heaven. The whole papal city is to be seated on a massive dirigible, floating free of the Earth, no longer bound by temporal ties, removed from all petty politics. And when the Pope flushes his toilet, his piss will fall on Catholic and Protestant alike!’

‘And Turks,’ I begged. ‘Let it fall on Turks as well.’

He was generous. ‘They shall have the entire Vatican sewer. And with their land covered in such holy shit, they’ll perforce grow nothing but Christian food. Thus they’ll be converted, as our own ancestors were converted, through their bellies.’

When she was drunk, Laura was inclined to become a little sombre. ‘I think Ford and Austin are already sufficiently powerful to do as they please.’ She also tended, in this condition, to take a disapproving view of Fiorello’s flights of fancy. ‘It’s cash in the end which impresses people. Buy their oil and so give them enough money to buy our cars.’

‘The triumph of trade!’ I, too, responded perhaps more earnestly than was necessary. ‘Trade makes all men friends. A wealthy world is a peaceful world.’

Laura began to scowl. ‘But who’ll have the greatest share?’

‘That issue’s being decided in Russia at the moment.’ The little man did not want to be brought down to earth. ‘When the result is announced, we’ll all know how to proceed. What a sublime clarifier is Lenin. Perhaps we should ask him to be Pope? Then everyone will feel much easier about him.’

I, too, became anxious to counter Laura’s socialistic pieties. ‘We’ll simply move the flying Vatican City to Moscow!’

‘But what about the Patriarch of Constantinople?’ asked one of their friends from over Fiorello’s shoulder. ‘Where will the poor old fellow go?’

Fiorello raised his cane. ‘I have the answer. A triumvirate: Pope Henry Ford, Patriarch of the Greeks and Romans Vladimir Lenin, and Dictator D’Annunzio. Ist es gut so? All shades of authoritarianism represented. A holy compromise.’

Esmé was utterly fascinated by his strange little face, his animated movements. From time to time she would burst into giggles at completely inappropriate moments; or she would sit staring at him, her face a combination of uncertain expressions, her eyes wide, like a child at the play. She loved his comic poses, his melodramatic gestures, his trilling eloquence; applauding his braggadocio for its own sake. I felt no jealousy. He was a natural clown and I wanted nothing more than for Esmé to be happy. This company and its attendant ambience had consolidated her good health, I knew, and I was grateful. I prayed we would find similar friends in Paris and London, for this was my natural habitat and, ideally, Esmé’s as well. Here ideas and money, politics and art, science and poetry all mingled. Amongst such people I must inevitably find those who would appreciate my inventions and help me make them reality, just as Kolya would have done if he had been allowed more time in government. (This is why I am convinced Lenin was personally responsible for my frustration and misery, because Kolya fell when Kerenski was overthrown.) Now, however, in Rome and elsewhere I foresaw a future where these young men could truly build Utopia. They would plead with me to be its architect. Fiorello’s rhetoric further inspired me. He spoke of ‘the violence which powers the engine’. Society would have to accept violence if it wanted progress. ‘Can a train run without the flaming energy in the boiler of the locomotive? Can steel be forged without a furnace? Can the aeroplane fly without consuming oil? Ich glaube es nicht! And, by the same reasoning, a nation cannot be hammered into perfection without blood and bayonets. Out of violence comes forth order! That wonderful tranquillity which falls on us after the battle. My Russian friends, I give you “Peace Through War!” and “Order Through Struggle!’”

As we cheered his histrionics we could not know he was the genuine herald of a vigorous and realistic new age. That glorious reawakening of Italy’s pride would be marked only two years later by Mussolini’s March on Rome. ‘You must stay with us, my dear Cornelius!’ With one hand Fiorello lifted his wine bottle, with the other his hat. ‘Stay with us and help us create -’ He fell back again, giggling. ’Excusez-moi, Der Motor ist uberhitz!’ And he put his head into Laura’s tolerant lap, falling into sleep with a series of immense snores. Delighted as I was, I did not really take him seriously, yet his poetic vision was to prove splendidly accurate. Under the guiding hand of her remarkable Duce Italy began her glorious celebration of all that was vital, noble and modern. Mussolini’s only failing was his willingness to believe in the worth of turncoat friends. I would eventually identify with him even more than with D’Annunzio. The engineer of a brilliantly reborn nation, his dream was uncannily close to mine. I am the first to criticise the excesses of Hitlerism. The tragic injustice was that Benito Mussolini came to be tarred with the same brush. Sometimes the blackjack and the bottle of castor oil must be displayed, as a dog is shown the stick. He was martyred because he could not see the evil in his allies, in men who called him Master while plotting his downfall. It heartens me in England today when many people at last begin to realise the virtues of those leaders. Even the thankless defender of his nation’s pride, Sir Oswald Mosley, is finally accepted for the honourable patriot he always was: a man whose intellectual powers and imaginative instincts rivalled my own. But he must feel horribly bitter, sitting out his lonely exile in that rural French chateau, seeing all he warned against coming to pass. I was able to shake his hand only once, at a dinner given for Pan-Europeans in the late forties. It struck me then that a simple physical factor might have turned his destiny. As he thanked me for my support there were tears in his eyes; but what I noticed most, to my eternal discredit, was his hideously bad breath. I wondered if anyone had ever pointed it out to him. I spoke to his loyal lieutenant, Jeffrey Hamm, suggesting that an ordinary commercial mouthwash, if used daily, might seriously enhance his leader’s fortunes, I was misinterpreted. Hamm ordered me thrown from the room. He told me if I ever returned he would see me beaten black and blue. So much for good intentions. Together, Mosley and myself might have saved Britain from her steady slide into socialistic fantasy. Mussolini did not have a breath problem, or if he did I did not notice it, since the heavy use of garlic and olive oil in the Italian cuisine (not to mention tomato paste and so forth) makes everyone smell the same. Hamm’s anger did not stop me voting for Mosley in 1959 when he stood for this district as Member of Parliament, but by then the rot had set in. The negro vote won the day.

The twentieth century is a graveyard of well-intentioned heroes and unrealised dreams. When they talk about their mythical Six Million they never consider the real victims of Socialistic Reductionism: the magnificent, golden visionaries, the clear-eyed fighters for Order and Justice, the tireless, selfless Knights of Christendom who, from Denikin to Rockwell, took up the sword against Bolshevism only to be cut down by cowards, deceived by traitors, betrayed by followers who lost their nerve at the crucial moment. They dragged poor Mussolini to a black tree and hanged him. The mob, the very men and women who had worshipped him, tore at his body, ripped him to pieces, and years later they sold scraps of his clothing to tourists in the Via Veneto and St Peter’s Square. Mussolini should not have trusted the Pope and his Cardinals. They pretended to support him, then as soon as the British and Americans began to win the War, they turned against him. Mussolini’s nation was ironically the ultimate Roman Catholic state, more a product of its Church than any passing political fad.

If it had not been for Hitler, who took everything too far, Italy would now be the world’s most advanced nation. But Hitler went mad. He turned against the Church. His hatred of Bolshevism, worthy of itself, clouded his judgment. His attempts to compromise with Stalin lost him those of us who had up to then supported his policies. The forces which conspired against him also conspired against me. Benito Mussolini was one of the many who recognised me for what I was. It was little, jealous, creeping people, whispering together, laying despicable petty traps, making miserable plots, who undermined the very rock on which our visions were founded. Those are Bolshevism’s heroes: pale, mean faces with squinting eyes which never saw the light of the sun. I hear them whining outside the shop on Saturday mornings and I drive them off. They scatter and squeal like the cowardly vermin they are. I hear them sniffing round my windows at dead of night, scuffling behind my doors, scratching on my walls. They melt away when I challenge them to display themselves. Would Mussolini or Horthy, Mosley or Hitler melt at my challenge?

It was important to leave Rome and get to Paris as soon as possible, before Kolya went on his way to America or Berlin, but the city was like a possessive mother. Every time I gathered up the willpower to go, she found something new to astonish me, to distract me from my purpose. One morning, for instance, after we had spent half the night discussing how best to reach Paris, we were making our way from the Hotel Ambrosiana to the Café Montenero just across the river in the Trastevere quarter where we had arranged to meet Laura, who lived there. Along the main street and heading for the bridge came a great double-decker tram of the old ‘Imperiale’ class, with two more single-deckers connected behind her, rolling smoothly and very slowly in the direction of the eastern suburbs. A triple-coach tram was not a particularly unusual sight in Rome, though the double-deckers were more characteristic, I was to learn, of Milan and London, but these were painted a jet, shining black, the only colour on them being their brasswork which was polished to gleam like gold. The sides and the rims of the following cars were rich with multicoloured flowers, forming wreaths, vines, loops, while inside, dimly seen behind half-open black curtains, were the weeping mourners, also in black. I had never seen anything like it, but I realised it was a modern funeral procession, with the coffin, also covered in great masses of flowers, clearly seen on the upper deck of the leading vehicle. The trolley pole hummed and crackled in a rather light-hearted way, considering the gravity of the occasion. The driver sat, in a special black uniform, stiff and sombre at the front (the ‘Imperiales’ had only one driving seat and one set of stairs, at the back). I was virtually mesmerised by the sight, removing my hat and paying homage rather to the miracle of up to date technology than to the poor corpse within. How readily, with so little fuss, did Italians adapt themselves to and advance the course of twentieth-century thinking! When I told Laura and her friends about the procession they were amused by my excitement. Apparently the funeral trams were a regular service in many parts of Italy and elsewhere. I was realising how drastically cut off from genuine culture I had been during the Civil War and my sojourn in Turkey. In my enthusiasm for Rome’s forward-thinking transport system I did not this time forget to mention our urgent need to reach Paris. I asked Laura if there was work I could do. I still had some money, but I should feel happier if I had earned what I needed for our first-class train fares. She told me she would consider the problem. That little square in Trastevere, just off the Piazza di Santa Maria, was an oddly quiet corner of the city, away from the crash and clamour filling Rome’s main streets. The houses were like those one found in the country. Their walls were painted a faded, peeling pink or blue or green. The awnings of the cafés were like ancient parchment; they might have been there since the reign of Caesar Augustus. On many roofs were gardens so unkempt they appeared totally wild, while the faces of the inhabitants were faun-like. One felt one had been removed in time to a pagan past. Almost the whole of Rome had something of that same mellowed, sun-bleached quality, particularly in the early morning sunshine, or at twilight. When one was able to see the surrounding hills one could easily imagine oneself protected forever from all mundane problems obsessing the rest of Europe. From Trastevere it was possible to wander across a crumbling bridge to the Tiberina Island. On that tiny strip of land in the green-brown waters of the river stood a building (I think it was a monastery) apparently built up over the centuries. It contained fragments of the architecture of the past thousand years. Here Romans fished, tied up their boats and simply lounged on weedy slabs of stone, smoking and regarding those rooftops, like the dome of St Peter’s, which could be seen beyond the trees. A few wild cats lived here, and presumably the monks (though I never saw them). Even the cats had a subtly different appearance to those which stretched their muscular little bodies in the sun falling on the ruins of the Circus Maximus. If Constantinople were a city of dogs, then Rome was a city of cats. You might easily have expected to find a Temple to Bubastes somewhere nearby. One rarely saw a building without a cat on a step or window. Orange, black, grey, brown, white, marmalade and ginger, they washed themselves, slept, made love, utterly uninterested in the swarming human beings, merely watching with neutral eyes those which came close, displaying wary curiosity if there was a chance of someone feeding them. They prowled over marble which had been flooded with the blood of martyred Christians; they defecated on granite carved to the satisfaction of the Imperial ego; they copulated beneath columns erected to the glory of Gods and Goddesses, and in some ways they symbolised the enduring spirit of the city and her population. Esmé found them fascinating. There were days when she would spend most of her time watching them with much the same expression as they watched others. Her eyes fixed, her little chin in her perfect hands, she breathed slowly, languorously, with unfathomable contentment. It was not only I who noticed. Laura would often look at her and frown, at once understanding and mystified. Even Fiorello the Futurist, full of his own eloquence and self-absorption, would sometimes spare her a curious glance and smile at me in bafflement at the ways of femininity. Yet I was not myself baffled; I felt I knew what she experienced. Perhaps I merely imposed my own imagination onto her, believing her capable of profundity of feeling which was in fact non-existent. She was, I admit now (though I would have denied it vehemently then) at least in part my creation: the apparent fulfilment of my deepest desires. A little of this occurred to me then, when she would look up suddenly and brighten with a smile as if in response to my unspoken command. But I refused to consider such implications. They were extremely distasteful to me. They remain distasteful, but I am not one to avoid the truth for long.

Through Fiorello we met the young man who was to prove a great benefactor in the years to come. Bazzanno’s cousin, he lived and worked primarily in Milan but travelled frequently to all parts of Italy and many European cities. He was as handsome and as well-formed as his cousin was misshapen. Fond of severe tailored suits, he liked to show, as we used to say, a lot of cuff. His shirts were always apparently brand new and his silk ties impeccably knotted. His manicured hands were heavy with gold and his white teeth were also occasionally punctuated with gold. His name was Annibale Santucci. This flamboyant dandy was three or four years older than me. He had what in Kiev we called a ‘Black Sea taste’ for white suits, black and white shoes and lavender ties; though he could also dress more conventionally when the mood or the occasion demanded. Walking past the fountain in the Piazza di Santa Maria one misty morning we first saw him: or rather we saw his car. It roared into the square, a huge blue and red Lancia booming and yelling, filling the whole quarter with shocking echoes. Fiorello was with us. He turned to snarl at the car until with a cry of glee he recognised the driver.

‘Balo! Balo!’ he shouted, and was rewarded with a dove-grey salute before the car changed gear and went bellowing down an alley scarcely wide enough to accommodate it. Fiorello capered with pleasure, twirling his stick and throwing up his hat, but Laura did not seem so delighted. Esmé was merely puzzled. She returned immediately to telling Laura about a dress one of her friends had been given soon after she went to work for Mrs Unal. I had tried to check her, but it was useless. She was oblivious; so I shrugged and let things take their course. It was not particularly important what Laura Fischetti believed about us. We arrived at the Café Montenero and took our usual places. The little old man, who was the only waiter , emerged to wipe an already clean table for us and bring coffee and rolls. Fiorello was babbling on about his cousin. ‘He’ll have presents. He always has presents. You must meet him, Max. He loves the English. He did a lot of business with them during the war. And the Russians, too.’ (He had made up his own version of our origins, which he retailed to everyone, and it suited me to humour him in this.) ‘I wonder where he was off to.’ His face dropped, then brightened swiftly. ‘He’s bound to look us up before he leaves Rome. He’s an utter bastard. A complete crook. A monster. Laura disapproves of him. He is the epitome of the capitalist disease, she thinks. But she can’t resist him either, can you, Laura?’

Laura shrugged. ‘He’s got a coarse sort of charm, if that’s what you’re saying.’ She smiled then, mocking herself. At that moment the whole square seemed to vibrate and the howling, the vital whine, the blustering, joyful roar approached from somewhere within the maze, as if a pack of drunken baboons had invaded a Trappist retreat. The red and blue Lancia sprang clear of an alley, skidded in a turn which threatened to bring the rear of the monster crashing into our little enclosure, and stopped. Out of the huge front seat rose Santucci, peeling off his kids and his calf-hides, smoothing back his hair and replacing his helmet with a grey fedora. He pulled his camel-hair overcoat over his shoulders. He dragged his wide brim down over one eye. He touched his lips with a silver cigarette holder, kissed the silver head of his perfect stick and sprang like a demigod to the pavement. He was splendidly unashamedly, vulgarly romantic; enjoying his own antics as much as he knew we must enjoy them. He was the perfect foil to the equally grandiose but tiny Bazzanno who, with monkey-like agility, leapt to balance on the rail, then bounded to the street to embrace his cousin. Almost six feet tall, Annibale Santucci possessed the rather crude good looks of a music-hall juvenile. He would have been a perfect film star. He shook hands with me, kissed the tips of Esmé’s fingers, made a number of general compliments which came automatically to his tongue and immediately ordered us wine and more food against our insistence that we had already eaten enough and it was too early for alcohol.

‘Never say “too early”,’ he cautioned dramatically. ‘For you will quickly find it has become “too late” if you do.’ This, too, had the sound of an aphorism he had frequently found convenient, likely to impress the cautious. Indeed, it impressed Esmé. She laughed loudly and received, for a moment, his lordly attention. Then he drew up a chair and proceeded to tell us about Naples. He had had business on Ischia, the island beyond Capri in the Bay, where his mother and father now lived. There had been a boatmen’s strike and it had cost him a fortune to find some means of reaching Ischia: ‘A sailing boat. A prototype for the Ark!’ Then coming back he had been unable to get benzine for his car because of the strike at filling stations. He laughed. ‘This is the prelude to a true anarchism, when every individual is forced to fend for himself. We’ll have our own petrol pumps, our individual water supply, our own cow, repair shop. Unless we check this trend, we shall soon know utter boredom, with time only to maintain ourselves and our machines. Fiorello! Laura!’ An elaborate flourish and he produced from the inner pocket of the camel-hair coat two black velvet cases, handing one to each. Within were matching diamond-studded wrist watches, a man’s and a woman’s. ‘My friend from Marseilles was grateful. He said to give these to my mother and father!’

‘You are a dutiful son,’ said Laura sardonically, putting the watch upon her muscular wrist and admiring it.

‘What use would they have for these? To tick away their autumn hours? Pointless!’ He turned, all contriteness, to us. ‘Please, please forgive my rudeness!’

Esmé and I would have forgiven him anything. His smile was calculated to disarm, and did not fail him. Fiorello told him we were planning to head for Paris but were a little short of money for the ticket. Did his cousin know of any engineering work available?

Santucci became matter of fact. He presented his open palm to the sky. He spoke casually. ‘But you will come with me. Keep me company, eh? I can be there in not much more than a day.’

I mentioned our large amount of luggage, but I was greedy for the Lancia. I began to feel the tiny shivers of pleasure with which I always anticipated the Escape of Motoring.

Santucci shrugged this off. ‘My car is of infinite volume. She has been designed by my kinsman Bazzanno to conquer the ordinary limitations of space. Did he not tell you?’

I looked towards the car, almost believing him. Fiorello smiled and was unable to answer.

‘He is too modest!’ Annibale clapped his cousin on the back. ‘This ugly little dwarf is the greatest metaphysical inventor in Italy.’

Laura kissed him on the cheek. ‘You are addressing a real scientist, Balo. Signor Cornelius has designed and flown his own planes. He invented the Death Ray used against the Whites at Kiev! You read about it, surely, in the newspapers.’

Annibale bowed from his chair. ‘Then you must certainly come with me to Paris. I’ll milk your brains on the way!’

I accepted. A perfect opportunity, it solved several problems for us at once and meant we should probably have far less trouble at the border. I recognised a man who was used to living on his wits, who was familiar with the situations we were likely to face. Expecting only a vague reply, I asked him what his business was. I said he seemed very successful.

‘I buy and sell. I travel. I am in the right place at the right time. Just like now! I buy cheap ewes in Tuscany and sell them dear in Sicily where with my profits I buy wine and sell it for a fortune in Berlin. But it is all on paper, Signor Cornelius. I scarcely ever see the commodities themselves.’ He extended his manicured hands for my inspection. ‘Not a spec of grime, eh? Not a callous. I am an entrepreneur. I learned, in the War, the secret of being a good general. Never get to know the troops. Keep everything as abstract as possible. I, myself, was a driver. I drove trucks and armoured cars. There were, of course, business opportunities attached to my trade. After the War I simply kept on driving. Wherever I stopped I did some buying and selling. Now I have no money to speak of, but I have good suits, a wonderful car, and plenty of girls. I am not respectable - but I am respected. Better, I am needed. I have a flat in Milan I hardly ever see. Otherwise I do not even have to pay rent on a permanent office. There is my office!’ And he pointed to his Lancia. Lines of heat rose from her bonnet; her scintillating enamel glowed from under a coating of fine dust.

Laura said with a small twist of her lips, a kind of smile, ‘He’s telling you he’s a gangster. In Ischia he was probably selling his mother and father.’

‘What can you get for an old man and an old woman these days? They’re out of fashion. I am a common gangster, if you like. But as an artist I am unique. Vouch for me, Fiorello!’

Laura nodded vigorously. ‘You’re certainly unique, my darling.’

Fiorello insisted his cousin was the finest artist to emerge from the War. ‘Art is action. Action is Art. The logic’s simple.’

‘And like most simple logic it’s ridiculous.’ But Laura was laughing now.

‘I wish I could come to Paris with you.’ Fiorello looked disgustedly about him. ‘Rome’s a stale cake. Bite her and she’ll break your teeth. Too little’s happening. She needs to be softened up. With dynamite. I blame the government.’

‘The government,’ Santucci winked at a passing tom, ‘is doing its best.’

‘Too tolerant! We need bloodshed in the streets!’ And Fiorello was off ort his favourite horse, galloping and whooping. ‘Where are the Cossacks! Signor Cornelius has fought in Russia. He’s half Russian. Or is it half Jewish? He’s half something. He knows the wonderful sport true tyranny provides. Where are our own tyrants, this country which once provided the world with its finest despots? Are they too timid to come out of hiding? I’ll accompany you to Paris and discover a genuine Napoleon. Nicht wahr?’

‘Then be ready by next Wednesday. That’s when I leave.’ Santucci threw some bank notes on the table. He said he would pick us up at our hotel. We would travel via Milan and through Switzerland. Did we know the Alps? It would be a wonderful experience. ‘There is a truly stale cake. But the frosting is magnificent.’ The weather was perfect for motoring.

I was already relishing the prospect of travelling again, especially with Santucci. I have always loved large, expensive cars; to enter one is to forget every care. The few problems I still had would be left behind once the Lancia was moving. Even if I had not originally planned to go to Paris I would probably have accepted the lift, just for the experience of being in the car. Esmé, too, was excited, although she had grown attached to Rome, her cats and her coffee shops. ‘Will Paris be as wonderful?’ she asked. I promised her it would be. Fiorello bent over us, neighing with pleasure. ‘Ah, my dears. Tonight, by way of celebration, I shall take us all to the Caffé Greco in Via Condotti. You shall meet new friends. Everyone at the Greco is both foreign and an artist, so you will feel at home. Then we shall go to the cinema. Are you familiar with Fairbanks? A marvellous comedian. And Chaplin? And Fantomas? They’re all together tonight! Then tomorrow we’ll borrow a car, or a horse and trap, and spend the day at Tivoli. I intend to make sure that you see everything so that you’ll want to come back to us as soon as possible!’

‘But you’re going with us, Fiorello,’ said Esmé.

He bared his yellow teeth in a grin. ‘My dear little girl. My cousin knows me. I cannot live without the air of Rome. She and I are of the same stuff. We are symbiotic. Beyond Tivoli I begin to dissipate. If I went as far as Milan, now, I should fade to nothing. But you will go to Paris for me. I shall think of you there. And you must write, so that I can enjoy the experience through you.’

He was a bizarre little creature. I was almost inclined to believe he spoke the truth.

That evening at the cinema I got up between films to visit the lavatory. As I came back to my seat in the semi-darkness I saw a squat, familiar-looking figure sitting in the secondi posti section near the front. I was convinced it was Brodmann. I spent the rest of the programme glancing in his direction, hoping he would turn so that I could see his face. I became afraid. Next I thought I saw Bimbashi Hakir, and Yermeloff. I knew for certain that Yermeloff was dead. I felt the agony of the Cossack whip. I was pursued by vengeful Jews. Carthage schemed against me. I was glad when we all rose and shuffled out into the warm, brilliant air of the Roman night. Soon we were sweating with the effort of eating huge plates of fettucine and fritters at the Pastarellaro in Via San Grisogono, not far from the Piazza di Santa Maria.

I think we remained drunk the whole of the rest of our time in Rome. On our last night, Fiorello embraced me with regretful affection. ‘You must return to us next year, Max. Italy needs you. Laura and I need you. In Rome you will find exactly the resources you require. Believe me. Come back to us!’

‘As soon as my affairs are settled in England,’ I promised.

We parted sadly and more than a little unsteadily.

In the morning Esmé was up before me. I was yawning and groaning alternately. She parted the curtains, leaning over the little wrought-iron balcony, waving into the street. ‘Look, Maxim, darling. He’s here!’

Santucci had kept his promise and had come in a huge, glistening new car to meet us; only it was not the Lancia. From somewhere he had provided himself with an American Cunningham almost the size of a truck. It was an outrageous green with brass trim. Its horn was loud enough to herald the Day of Judgment and its throbbing engine was of the very latest design, producing over 100 hp. Santucci sat at the wheel smoking his cigarette, chatting amiably to a horde of ecstatic little boys. Other vehicles in the street slowed down to look at the Cunningham. He was in danger of creating a traffic jam. When he saw us on our balcony he beckoned for us to join him. Our luggage was ready, and we dressed rapidly while porters took our trunks, loading them in the back of the car. We discovered the bill had been paid, presumably by our flamboyant benefactor. All I had to do was tip the porters. We both climbed into the front seat, with Esmé in the middle, as Santucci opened the car’s throttle, let go the clutch and steered his vast machine between the gaping drivers, almost comically pleased with the attention he received. Since he gave no explanation for his change of cars, I felt it tactless to press him for one. We were soon passing through Tivoli again, where he stopped for a few minutes outside a little brown house and went inside, then re-emerged with an expression of satisfaction. (Tivoli was the scene of an important moment for me when I returned to Italy at the Duce’s own request. I had originally been so naive I had thought it a beer-garden, like the ones I had known as a boy in Arcadia).

After Tivoli the roads were frequently bumpy and often very dusty, but some were the best I had ever known. It was Italy, after all, which was the first country to build a specific autostrada. We made astonishing time. The Cunningham could touch over eighty miles an hour and Santucci pushed it to the limit whenever the chance arose. He talked constantly for the first two or three hours, as warm, yellow villages and vast tawny fields went by; then he cocked his head, listening to me with an expression of grave concentration as I replied. We were talking mostly about cars and transport in general, a subject of abiding interest to both. Esmé did not seem to mind. She stared ahead, tranquil and happy, enjoying the sights of the countryside, the sensation of movement. At around noon Santucci asked us to get the basket which sat on the seats behind us. From it we dragged chickens, sausages, bread, wine, sliced meats and bottles of Zucco from Palermo, a wine to match that of the best French vineyards. The warm Italian wind in our faces acted with the alcohol to relax us further. Our silk scarves kept most of the dust from our mouths and the goggles Santucci had given us protected our eyes. ‘These are the ultimate cars!’ said our host, peering forward because he thought he had seen a policeman (the speed limit in Italy was then 30 mph). ‘The best the War produced, eh?’ He shared some of Bazzanno’s notions. He too had been a friend of Boccioni. He had been at the painter’s side when he was wounded. ‘Boccioni needn’t have died. It was a stupid business.’ He would not elaborate. Although he appeared to dramatise everything in his life and make some kind of verbal capital from it, he in fact had a strong sense of discretion which I would call ‘gentlemanly’. Later I came to recognise this trait in people of his type, but then it was fairly new to me. I am still uncertain why he chose to take us to Paris with him. No matter how often I think of it I usually conclude he was moved by amiable generosity, by altruism and by a simple wish to enjoy our company on a long journey. I grew to like him very much, though I was still not used to people who saw virtue in War.

Perhaps because Italy had experienced comparatively little fighting on her own soil, her ex-soldiers looked at things differently. Certainly Bazzanno and Santucci were not the only Italian to return from the front invigorated, anxious to find fresh worlds to conquer, fresh stimuli for their creative impulses. Italy gained impetus while other nations sank into exhaustion. Something in the Italian blood will make the most of any grim situation. They kept their idealism; they deserved to press on, to conquer Africa and destroy the threat of Carthage, which they, better than any, knew so much about. Their Achilles heel would be the Roman Catholic church. Without it, they could have owned an Empire from the Atlantic to the Red Sea. The Son is the Son of Light, but the Father is the Father of Ignorance, wiping spittle from his chin with an ornamental crook, his mitre falling over his eyes to blind him, while his limbs tremble with senile palsy. This is the way the old suck life from the young. They deny us our power; and they are jealous of our vigorous movement, the quickness of our brains, the joy of our bodies. The Curse of the Latin countries is unreasoning loyalty to outmoded papal institutions and a marked willingness to compromise with Judaism. You do not hear of such compromises from the Patriarch of Constantinople.

The country was a thousand shades of gold, amber, old ivory, sprawling like a lazy lion beneath the sun; our nostrils were filled with the scent of petrol and wild poppies, of lemons, mustard and honey, our hearts with an innocent relish for simple freedom. Nobody pursued us. Brodmann was a ghost invented by my overtired brain, as was Hakir. Turks and Reds could be a million miles away, fighting in a different universe. Europe’s complacency in those days seemed more like genuine optimism, an apparent willingness to reject past vices and favour modern virtues. I was even heartened when, just outside Milan, I saw the decorated caravans of a Gypsy tribe beside the road and was reminded of Zoyea, my first love. These gypsies symbolised the continuation of Romance, an element of the past which did not threaten, which spoke to me of permanence without decay. They were camped beneath a wall of thick hedges, their horses cropping the grass of the verge and their thin dogs running back and forth looking for scraps. This nomad people had survived a thousand European wars. They spoke a language older than Sanskrit and had come from the East not as conquerors, or as merchants craving power, not as a proselytisers for a dark religion, but as natural wanderers full of ancient, simple wisdom. I have never understood the prejudice expressed towards this people. The so-called gypsies, the travellers of the motorway camps, are merely a shiftless, thieving riff-raff, too lazy to work, too slovenly to seek the responsibility of permanent housing. These degenerates have merely failed to meet the ordinary challenges of urban living. The true Romany, with his dark curls and his gold earring, his violin and his sixth sense, has always attracted me. The women, with their bold eyes and aggressive stance, are amongst the most beautiful on Earth. I was glad to see them. I waved at them as we raced by and wished they had waved back. In my view Hitler went too far when he extended his War against nomad invaders to the harmless gypsy.

Santucci had already apologised for Milan, which he said had nothing to match Rome, but to me the city, when we arrived, was a revelation: factories and massive office-buildings, a sprawl of general industry which took my breath away. Vast numbers of trams running smoothly on intricate track. We had nothing so huge in Russia, not even Kharkov. Milan stank of chemicals and hot steel, of smouldering rubber and blazing coal; her streets were a jangle of metal, of roaring machines, of gloriously energetic people. So much of the architecture was modern, Milan might have sprung up overnight. I had been told the city was ugly; instead I found it magical in its dirty, productive splendour. Here an engineer could work and create, taking his materials from close at hand, drawing on abundant expertise. To me Milan represented a twentieth-century land of plenty, a Garden of Eden with infinite possibilities. It is no wonder this city was the true birthplace of Mussolini’s dynamic new movement. It was the pulsing core of a splendidly impatient nation; a dynamo to power a mighty dream which would become the concrete expression of a true Industrial Revolution. As in Rome, I could have remained longer, breathing in smoke as another breathed ozone, filling my lungs with the essence of metal and oil. But Esmé hated it. She said it left dirt on her skin. It was frightening and too grey. It was noisy. I laughed at her: ‘You must get used to it, little beauty. It’s your future as much as mine.’ She sank back into her trance until the evening, when Santucci took the road again. We spent the night at a tiny pension just short of the Swiss border. We could see the Alps rising before us. Santucci said they were the battlements of a fortress: a fortress of bland certainty, of neutrality, of bourgeois safety. ‘The most magnificent mountains in the world protect the world’s dullest human beings. It is a paradox which captures my imagination. If it’s cleanliness and peace you prize, Signorina Esmé, you should not have to look anywhere else. In Switzerland people complain if a cowbell clanks above the legal level or the tulips grow an inch too tall. It is the very essence of bovine egalitarianism, of the middle-class desire for comfort at any cost. And it is the death knell to Art. In no other country is boredom so thoroughly identified with virtue!’

We crossed the border next morning and were treated to disapproving civility. With innocent efficiency they studied our papers not for clues to our criminality or radicalism but for evidence of penury. Presumably they found us rich enough to be admitted for a day or so to their mountain fastness. To be poor in Switzerland is regarded as the gravest breach of taste. We drove along smooth, well kept roads. Esmé admired the neatness of the flowerbeds, the spotless lack of character in each of the orderly towns, the freshness of the paint on chalets and precisely thatched farmsteads. I half expected to see men outside their barns with brushes in their hands, washing their cows as today the suburb-dweller washes his car. It was strange how in Switzerland three dominant and vital cultures could come together to form, as it were, a vacuum. Possessing neither tension nor vision, Switzerland was the symbol of one particular future; the future desired by those same small minds who eventually sought to diminish my own achievements and thus preserve the status quo. When, that evening at sunset, we crossed into France at a little town called Sainte-Croix, Esmé yearningly looked behind her; Lot’s wife expelled from some sanitary Sodom.

Santucci seemed as relieved as I to leave the oppressive orderliness of Switzerland. He began to sing some popular song in a loud, unmelodic voice. Like most Italians he believed he was naturally musical, just as negroes labour under the delusion they are all naturally rhythmic. The wind was cool in our faces now and the white lamps of the car outlined massive oaks on both sides of the road. There were no obvious signs of the recent War, but since my geography was so vague I was unsure if the conflict had reached this part of France or not. The sweet air and the silent little towns contradicted the impression I had of Ypres or Verdun: here things looked unchanged and unchallenged for centuries. The smoked goggles we all three wore had the effect of mellowing the landscape further.

With the confidence of familiarity, Santucci swung the car along narrow roads and round sudden bends, singing all the while. As we swept through the villages he would call out names dimly familiar from the newspapers. He knew France well, he said. ‘This is where I received my business education.’ He had been attached to an aerodrome while on duty here in 1916 and had made himself an indispensable supplier of whisky and gin to Allies and Axis alike. ‘I’m no narrow nationalist but a practising international anarchist!’ He laughed and passed Esmé the wine bottle from which he was drinking. She seemed to have forgotten her regret at leaving Switzerland and drank deeply, wiping her mouth on the back of a lovely little hand. Santucci winked at her. She attempted to wink back. She squeezed my arm. He asked me to put a cigarette into his holder for him. I did so and lit the fresh ‘Hareem Lady’, the brand he favoured. ‘Why are you going to England, Signor Cornelius? You seem to prefer, like me, to travel. Are you visiting your family?’

‘I have a wife there. And business, too. I wish to register a number of patents. Everyone has told me it is best to do that in England.’

‘You should go to America instead. Most of my brothers and cousins are there. But it’s much harder now, I suppose. You can’t get in officially. Not if you’re Italian. They think we’re all arsonists!’

I smiled. ‘I’d heard you were.’

‘By nature, certainly. But by training we are very law-abiding. Our loyalties are to the church and to our families. People frequently don’t understand.’

We stopped that evening in Dijon where he insisted on buying us a dozen different pots of mustard. He was dressing a shade more conservatively now, perhaps out of respect for the French. ‘One should always buy mustard in Dijon and sausage in Lyon.’ He was evidently well-known to the little woman who ran the pension. She welcomed us through her low doorway into a hall of white plaster and black beams; Villon himself might have sprawled, pen in one hand, grog-pot in the other, upon her polished wooden floor. When we were seated at a carved elm table near the inglenook she brought us our first real taste of French food. Even France’s worst critics forgive her arrogance and uncalled-for attitude of superiority when they taste her cuisine. Esmé smacked red lips and filled her tiny stomach until it was round and hard. Her eyes became dreamy. She was in heaven again. Our hostess smiled like a benign conqueror as she cleaned away the dishes. Santucci exchanged a few polite sentences with her and then we all went slowly up the narrow stairs to our chambers.

In the secure confines of our timbered room Esmé prepared herself for bed. I laughed at her. With her papers and creams she was like a child playing at being a woman. ‘This magic goes on forever,’ she said as she climbed into the four-poster, ‘but isn’t there a price, Simka?’

It was unlike her to indulge in such considerations and I was unreasoningly surprised, almost angry. Her remark seemed like ingratitude, though I was by no means sure why, and I found that I was disturbed, impatient with her. Surely this was misplaced pessimism? I curbed my bad temper, however. ‘I think the price has already been paid. By you. By me.’ The bed was white and soft in the warm darkness of the little, low-ceilinged apartment. I enjoyed an infantile sense of safety. ‘All of it is my reward for my sufferings. And you are sharing in it. You, too, have suffered.’ I fell back on my pillows with a grunt of pleasure. They were edged in intricate lace. She grinned and leaned against me, her mood untroubled again. I appeared to have reassured her easily enough and consequently reassured myself. Esmé had no business voicing uncomfortable notions. With her firmly in my arms, I went to sleep.

Santucci at breakfast was eager to get on the road. He had a friend to meet in Paris. ‘An eminent soldier with a small army for sale. I shall need a larger car on the way back.’ It was a joke, we realised. He was wearing his formal suit of wheat-coloured silk. I envied him his elegance, for my own clothes were rather inappropriate to this part of the world. I decided to equip myself and Esmé with a new wardrobe as soon as we settled in England. I had grown self-conscious about my Russian clothing which had seemed so modish in Odessa and rather ahead of the fashion in Constantinople. Here, however, it felt heavy, shapeless and dowdy. Again I was tempted to put on a uniform, but realised it might look inappropriate worn by a man travelling with a British passport. Some of my existing luggage could be sold and what it fetched invested in one decent suit. Such details I would decide in Paris. I planned to return to my Russian identity and acquire papers for Esmé establishing her as my sister from Kiev.

When I considered the difficulties, the amount of work I should have to do, I became almost reluctant to reach Paris. I consoled myself that I should be in London within a week or two. I still found it almost impossible to believe only a couple of hundred miles separated me from Mrs Cornelius and her beloved Whitechapel. London, of all those great cities, had seemed remote, legendary: as abstract as my unrealised dreams. Now Rome and Paris took substance, but Odessa and Constantinople became merely a hazy fantasy from which I had emerged into reality. I had conserved our cocaine as we travelled, not wishing to risk famine in Paris. I had used no more than a pinch or two in the morning after waking. Cocaine has always had the effect of bringing me down to earth, forcing me to examine the realities of life. I determined to apply myself to these problems as soon as we were established in the city. I would seek out Kolya, in the hope he had not yet left. Kolya would help solve everything. I also tried to imagine what life would be like in Whitechapel. I knew a quick thrill of excitement mixed with some trepidation. I remembered my last unfortunate meeting with Mrs Cornelius, her expressed disapproval of my liaison with Esmé. My friend was bound to change her mind when she met my little girl.

As we went out into a beautiful, soft morning of pine-filtered sunlight, driving through Dijon’s picturesque streets, a cheerful Santucci described the new car he meant to buy as soon as it came on the market. An electric racer, he said. Citroën were developing it. We drove now through thinly forested hills, vivid yellow crops of mustard. Occasionally we passed an old chateau, a distant brown stone village, a farm. Passive livestock grazed in the fields, adding to that sense of timeless permanence so characteristic of rural Ukraine before the Revolution. Might my Ukraine one day return to her former perfection? Surely, I thought, the corpses and the broken gun carriages must soon sink into the cornfields and be forgotten. How could I know? How could I anticipate Stalin’s capacity for cruelty and hatred? He placed a sentence of death upon an entire country. The Bolsheviks starved the granary of Russia! They mined meadows, forests, whole villages to blow up the population, together with any invader. As I have observed many times, people grow so used to conflict and terror and death they cling to them as certainties, in the way the more fortunate cling to old, peaceful rituals. Why do most human beings resist any change, when change usually means their continuing survival? Santucci asked me my opinion of the Citroën Electric. I told him some of my own ideas for cars. These, too, would not be dependent upon benzine. They might be powered by rockets or beam wireless. I even had plans in my case for a car driven by tiny charges of dynamite.

Naturally, he liked this notion best. ‘Dynamite! There’s your answer, Signor Cornelius. From dynamite our New Europe will arise like a phoenix. All this’ - He waved a magnificently gauntleted hand at the little hills and streams - ‘must be blown away. The job was only half done when they called it off to arrange that miserable Armistice.’

I could see little reason for such destruction. ‘There’s room for everything in my future.’ I was somewhat pious.

‘To produce a genuinely different world one must wipe out every memory, every sign, every clue to the past. History must go!’ He was laughing. We took a humpbacked bridge and flew for a few seconds before returning to the road. The long bonnet of the Cunningham glittered in the sun like the barrel of a Krupps cannon. He even pointed the machine as if it were a gun. He took joy from his control.

‘You’re a Bolshevik, then!’ I shouted over the engine. ‘You should visit Russia. Go soon. They’re already putting your theories into action!’

He took this in good part, shaking his head and grinning. ‘But with so little style, my friend. If a thing is to be done properly, it must be done with grace! Any Frenchman would tell you that much.’

I had met such dandified nihilists in Peter. Most of them had died or been imprisoned in the first days of Lenin’s triumph. Not only did I refuse to take Santucci seriously, I felt a certain pity for him. If he ever experienced real revolution he must surely become an early victim. He was far more a bad poet than a bad politician, however, and one can always forgive bad poets. Power is the last thing they want. They are usually too frightened by the responsibility involved. Sometimes this does not happen: then a ferocious combination is achieved. Our good-humoured driver however was in every way amusing and entertaining. His charm remained as potent as ever. I wished he would decide to go on to London or Berlin. While one moves one does not ‘stew’. The Escape of Motoring is best when one has no true idea of one’s destination.

Yet when Paris eventually appeared, my uncertainty vanished. We approached through suburbs, sometimes on a slight hill, sometimes in a shallow valley. I had never expected to see the Eiffel Tower so soon. It dominated the city: a wonderful pyramid of steel and cast-iron: the nineteenth century’s salute to us, the inhabitants of her future. Here was the city of Jules Verne, who had been chiefly responsible for my decision to express myself through the medium of science and technology. Here the engravings from my Pearson’s Magazines came to life, while elsewhere the monumental tributes to Napoleon, his arches, tombs and museums, and the glorious palaces of the great French kings, almost unearthly cathedrals and churches, were ordered like the model of a pure, eighteenth-century mind: a little too rational, perhaps, a little cool, but with a superb and almost simple tidiness. We drove through suburban streets in the evening mist, with the sun red and huge above, this sense of orderliness countered to a degree by slums, buildings in poor repair, featureless apartment blocks, narrow alleys and busy, chaotic traffic quite different to Rome’s, yet moving at the terrifying pace common to old Petersburg’s. Paris at twilight began to bloom with electricity. She was a city of light. A city of delicate glass and fine traceries of stone. Her gas lamps were a vibrant yellow. Flaring charcoal from her street stoves glowed the deepest possible red. I thought I could hear music, hear her heart pounding as Santucci drove his monstrous Cunningham deeper and deeper towards the centre. Paris smelled of rosewater, coffee and fresh bread. She smelled of motor exhausts and garlic, of chocolate and wine. I looked towards Esmé and saw there were tears in her eyes. She was now truly looking upon Heaven.

Faithless creatures, we forgot Rome at once. Paris instantly became our new love. Santucci’s letting forth with a piece of Rossini did not disturb us. Bells pealed from Notre Dame. Boats hooted on the Seine as we negotiated the bridges of the Isle de la Cité. Paris was herself a symphony of ordered movement and colour. The scarlet and gold sails of the Moulin Rouge were the spokes of a cosmic wheel. The Cunningham boomed along Rue Pigalle and turned back along Boulevard Magenta towards Place de la République, with Santucci swearing he could never get to grips with the streets of Paris, until we pulled up suddenly just beyond the green, gold and purple doors of Cirque d’Hiver, the little amphitheatre housing the Winter Circus in Boulevard du Temple. Children playing on the pavement around the plane-trees gathered as always to Santucci, staring at the huge car. It might have been a vision of the Madonna. Their silence was broken by his salute, a squeeze of his horn, then all let forth with their questions. He sent one boy into the little hotel, whose sign was illuminated by a single purple bulb. Out came the plump porter. He wiped his lips on the back of his hand which could easily have been a penguin’s wing. Waddling up to us, nodding, swaying, he was delighted to see Santucci. Our friend called him ‘sergeant’, shook hands and spoke of the trenches. Santucci seemed to exist in a network of relationships, some business, some personal, some filial. He never dealt with a stranger. Even the man who filled his petrol tank knew him as M’sieu Santucci, mentioning a common back complaint and the new cure he had read about in Le Figaro. Now I listened while the porter asked after his cousins in America and the weather in Naples. He was introduced to Esmé and myself and we might have been Santucci’s blood relatives, judging by the ceremony with which he presented us. We, too, shook hands. He said he was at our service. Would we require supper? Santucci said we had an appointment to dine elsewhere. The porter blew a whistle. Out came another boy to guard the car while we were shown to our accommodation. Our room contained an old double bed, a washstand, a couple of chairs and little else, but it was perfectly adequate. After the luggage arrived we washed and changed, but soon Annibale Santucci knocked on our door to beg us to hurry. Back we went to the limousine. With horn blaring we drove faster than ever through the glamorous streets, back towards Notre Dame where the massive cathedral shone in golden glory over the black water. Across the bridge again and along Saint-Michel, into a narrow backstreet near Saint-Germain. Parking the Cunningham half on the pavement, half in the road, Santucci told us we had arrived. Disembarking, we entered a discreetly illuminated restaurant whose windows were curtained from the street, whose interior, lit by gas, was warm as yellow ivory. White linen and silver, potted palms, hushed air, revealed this place to be a temple of food, one of thousands, I was to discover, in the city. From the far end, in a curtained alcove, a thin, elderly man rose to hold out a hand, delicate as a dying orchid. The hair of his head and his moustache had the appearance of a fine mould. He smelled like a flower past its prime. His small, sad smile made me think him more priest than soldier. Feebly he gestured for us to sit with him, though he seemed upset at our presence. We were cousins, Santucci told him, from England. We would eat with them, but the business could be discussed later. The old man accepted this gracefully enough, though plainly the arrangement was not much to his taste. Folding his fingers before him in a gesture of disciplined patience he bowed again to us. His skin was probably painted here and there; it had a parched brown quality to it where it was not unnaturally pink. His hair was sparse. Only his English tweed suit, his excellent tie, did not look worn out. Indeed they seemed unnaturally new. He wore them like a borrowed carapace. He was never introduced by name, though I had the impression he was an aristocrat, a high ranking general. Any curiosity I had about him was dispelled by the quality of the meal. It was superb. We had oeuf en meruerte to begin, a cassoulet as our main course, some Neufchatel cheese and crème brûlée. While Esmé and I sat drunkenly at the table, too full to speak, capable only of grinning stupidly. Santucci and his client moved away to the bar where they ordered their cognac. The business took hardly any time at all. When it was over the soldier did not rejoin us at the table, but slipped away. Santucci returned, insisting we have some Armagnac ‘to celebrate’. ‘All settled,’ he said. ‘And, as you see, I did not have to inspect the army personally. No money changed hands. Yet everyone is satisfied. That is the essence of international finance.’

‘Where’s the army going?’ It was rare for Esmé to ask a direct question.

‘Going?’ Santucci pretended astonishment. ‘Why, to a war, of course, pretty dove! The details aren’t important, I assure you. They are soldiers. They know only fighting. One provides a service - in this case a war - which will satisfy their blood lust and keep them from doing much harm to honest civilians. But it is all a question of telegrams and the telephone. By now I have a good commission waiting for me in Benghazi. The secret is to have pockets of credit all over the world, then travel towards them. Spread the money as far as you can. Have people pay it into banks in London or Lahore. It gives you an incentive to visit places you might otherwise never go to. Once there, why a fresh opportunity usually presents itself. If someone is looking for a stockbroker, I am a stockbroker. If they want to buy corn, I become a corn merchant. It’s easy enough to be a middleman. One relies on the impatience, the greed, the uncertainty of one’s fellows. People would rather deal with a jack-of-all-trades who is personally attractive and willing to talk the dirty business of money and transportation, than with an expert who is aloof. Since the goods rarely pass through my hands, I remain innocent of any misuse or minor breach of the law. I’ll never have the massive fortune of a real entrepreneur, but I live well and, most important,’ he winked at Esmé, ‘I have girls in every port.’

‘I can’t think why more people don’t do what you do.’ She was honestly puzzled. His matter-of-fact tone had convinced her. She had missed his irony.

He stroked his perfect waistcoat then broke wind behind his hand. ‘Because they are not Annibale Santucci, little dove.’ He expressed sober regret. He was profoundly sympathetic of everyone else in the world. ‘I’ll take you back to the hotel. I have some personal business now. You’ll forgive me if I don’t invite you.’

The bill was paid in banknotes of intricate beauty.

We saw our friend briefly the following morning, when he kissed us both farewell and whispered to Esmé that the hotel bill was settled for the next two weeks. ‘By then you’ll be on your way to London.’ He turned to me. ‘I wish you luck with your inventions, professor. Write me a postcard. Invite me to stay with you when you have a place. There must be business I can do in London. It is after all a city of thieves - a nation of thieves, by God!’

Laughing, I told him I did not have his address in Milan. Where could I write to him?

‘To Mendoza’s in Rome. He’ll always find me. To The Wasp. Any of those regular cafés.’ He paused by the door to draw a piece of hotel notepaper from his inside pocket. ‘I have written down the address of some friends. Wonderful people. You’ll fall in love with them. They’re exiles here. I’ve written a note. Visit them if you can.’

We watched the gigantic green automobile move into the traffic of the Boulevard du Temple. She was like a ceremonial barge negotiating a fast flowing river. Her horn sounded. Her engine began to rage like a million demons as Santucci accelerated towards the animated statuary of the Place de la République. It was a beautiful morning. We did not go back into the hotel but, hand in hand as always, we turned down the Rue du Turenne in the general direction of the Hotel de Ville. A light rain was falling through the early autumn sunshine. Everyone had umbrellas except us and we did not want one; we welcomed this gorgeous rain as enthusiastically as we welcomed everything Paris offered. Most leaves were still green, but here and there they were golden or brown. There was a strange atmosphere, a mixture of sweet melancholy and a hectic, celebratory air. In Paris, since November 1918, a huge party had been taking place, twenty-four hours a day.

Before long we should be invited to join that party. We would unhesitatingly accept. For us at least the Jazz Age had its beginnings in Paris.