Kaputt (52 page)

"Do you really think that Britain is always right?" Princess Dora Ruspoli asked Lord Perth.

"Oh no, thank God!" Lord Perth replied with a blush.

"I wonder," said Princess Jane di San Faustino, "whether the story of the caddy and the Home Fleet is true?" A few days after the Home Fleet had made its appearance in the Mediterranean, Lord Perth had been playing golf. His ball had bounced into a pool of muddy water. "Will you fetch me the ball?" Lord Perth had said to the caddy. "Why don't you send the Home Fleet after it?" the Roman urchin had replied. The story most likely was not true, but it had delighted all of Rome.

"What a lovely story!" said Lord Perth.

The sun shining on his face, mischievously showed off the delicate, pink color of his forehead and lips and his clear blue eyes that had something childish and effeminate in them, so typical of every well-bred Englishman—a wonderful shyness, a color of innocence, a childish reticence that with the passing of years and with increasing responsibilities and honors instead of withering and dying out, finds new life and comes to marvelous bloom at a late age in a quality that in an Englishman, goes with white hair and blushing on the slightest provocation.

"Britannia may rule the waves, but she cannot waive the rules," I said with a smile.

Everybody around me laughed, and Dora Ruspoli, gesturing with her right hand and thrusting her sallow-skinned face toward Lord Perth, said in her hoarse, rushing voice, "It's a great privilege for a country to be unable to infringe on the laws of tradition, isn't it?"

"To rule the waves, to waive the rules— It's a nice play on words," Jane di San Faustino said. "But I detest puns!"

"It's a joke of which Hammen Wafer is very proud," I said.

"Hammen Wafer is a gossip writer, isn't he?" Dora Ruspoli asked.

"Something on that order," I replied.

"Have you read
New York
by Cecil Beaton?" asked William Philips, the United States Ambassador who sat next to Cora Antinori.

"Cecil is a very attractive boy," said Beatrice, or "Bee" as her friends call the daughter of William Philips.

"It's a delicious book," Cora Antinori said.

"It's a pity," said Jane di San Faustino, "that Italy has no writer like Cecil Beaton. Italian writers are provincial and boring. They have no sense of humor."

"That is not entirely their fault," I said. "Italy is a province and Rome a provincial capital. Can you imagine a book written about Rome by Cecil Beaton?"

"Why not?" Dorothy di Frasso asked. "As far as gossip goes, New York has nothing on Rome. What Rome lacks is not gossip, but a gossip writer like Cecil Beaton. Just think of the stories about the Pope and the Vatican. As far as I am concerned, I have never been responsible for as much gossip in New York as I am in Rome. And what about you, my dear?"

"Nobody has ever gossiped about me," Dora Ruspoli said with a hurt glance at Dorothy.

"They simply treat us like tarts," Jane di San Faustino said. "At least that keeps us young!"

Everybody laughed, and Cora Antinori said that provincial living was not the only reason why Italian writers were boring. "Even provincial writers can be entertaining!" she said.

"At heart," Dora said, "New York is also a provincial city."

"The idea!" exclaimed Jane looking at Dora with contempt.

"It depends partly on the nature of a language," Lord Perth said.

"The language is very important," I said. "Not only to writers, but to peoples and countries as well. In a certain sense, wars are only grammatical errors."

"Or merely errors of pronunciation," William Philips said.

"The time is over when the word 'Italy' and the word 'Britain' were spelled differently but pronounced the same way," I said.

"It may be only a matter of pronunciation," Lord Perth said. "That is precisely what I ask myself after leaving a talk with Mussolini."

I visualized Lord Perth during an audience with Mussolini in the huge room of the Palazzo Venezia:

"Announce the British Ambassador," Mussolini would say to Navarra, his chief usher.

At a discreet sign from Navarra the door would open obediently, Lord Perth would cross the threshold and move with slow steps across the marble patterned floor toward the massive walnut table standing before the great sixteenth-century fireplace. Mussolini would stand with his back against the table or the mantelpiece; he would be waiting with a smile and go to meet him; they would face each other; Mussolini self-conscious and, at the same time, strained from constantly trying to appear affable, would shake his huge, swollen, white, round, fat, bald head on which a large cyst just behind his ear protrudes from his neck to add a horrible massiveness; Lord Perth straight, smiling, cautious and shy, his forehead lighted by a faint childish blush. Mussolini, if he really believed in anything, believed in himself, but he never believed in the incompatibility of logic and luck, of will and fate. His voice was warm, deep and gentle—a voice that occasionally had strange, deep, feminine notes, something that was morbidly feminine. Lord Perth did not believe in himself. Oh no, thank God! He believed in the power, prestige, everlasting quality of the Fleet, the Bank of England, the Fleet's sense of humor, and in the fair play of the Bank of England. He believed in the close connection between the playing fields of Eton and the battlefield of Waterloo. Mussolini would stand there before him, completely alone: he was aware that he represented nothing and no one. He represented himself. Lord Perth was merely the representative of His Britannic Majesty.

Mussolini would say: "How do you do?" as if he meant, "I want to know how you are." Lord Perth would say, "How do you do?" as if he meant, "I don't want to know how you are." Mussolini spoke like a peasant from Romagna; he uttered the words: problem, Mediterranean Sea, Suez, Ethiopia—as if he were uttering the words: card game, Lambrusco wine, riot, Forli. Lord Perth had the accent of an Oxford undergraduate who is distantly related to someone in Scotland—the accent of Magdalen College of the Mitre Hotel, of the Mesopotamia Island and of Perthshire. He uttered the words: problem, Mediterranean Sea, Suez, Ethiopia— as if he were uttering the words: cricket, Serpentine, whisky, Edinburgh. His face was smiling but impassive, his lips moved slightly, caressing the words; his expression was deep and secretive, as if he were looking with closed eyes. Mussolini's face was pale and bloated, contracted into an amiable grimace of assumed calm and forced complacency; his thick lips moved as though sucking in each word, his eyes were staring and round, his gaze was both fixed and restless. He had the look of a man who knows how to play and how not to play poker. Lord Perth had the look of a man who knows what is and what is not cricket.

Mussolini would say: "I want!" Lord Perth would say: "I should like."

Mussolini would say: "I don't want." Lord Perth would say: "We can't."

Mussolini would say: "I think." Lord Perth would say: "I suppose, may I suggest, may I propose, may I believe."

Mussolini would say: "Unquestionably." Lord Perth would say: "Rather, maybe, perhaps, almost, probably."

Mussolini would say: "My opinion." Lord Perth would say: "The public opinion."

Mussolini would say: "The Fascist revolution." Lord Perth would say: "Italy."

Mussolini would say: "The King." Lord Perth would say: "His Majesty, the King."

Mussolini would say: "I." Lord Perth would say: "The British Empire."

"Eden, also, has had trouble in getting along with Mussolini," said Dorothy di Frasso. "They appear to pronounce the same words in different ways."

Dora Ruspoli began to tell about the amusing incidents that had aroused the morbid curiosity of Roman society during Anthony Eden's recent stay in Rome. Immediately after the luncheon given him by Lord Perth at the British Embassy, Eden went out for a walk. By six o'clock he still was not back. Lord Perth was beginning to worry. Shortly before closing time, a young secretary of the French Embassy, who only a few days before had arrived at the Farnese Palace straight from the Quai d'Orsay, was paying a novice's tribute to Rome by following in the footsteps of Chateaubriand and Stendhal and by roaming through the halls and passages of the Vatican Museums, perceived a fair young man with a small blond mustache, seated on the lid of an Etruscan sarcophagus, between the club of Hercules and the long, pale thigh of a Corinthian Diana; he was absorbed in reading a little leatherbound book that seemed to the young secretary of the French Embassy to be a copy of Horace. Remembering the photographs on the front pages of the Roman papers that day, the young Frenchman recognized the solitary reader as Anthony Eden who was relaxing over Horace's
Odes
in the twilight of the Vatican Galleries after the tedium of official dinners and receptions, diplomatic talks and discussions, and, perhaps, escaping the unconquerable boredom to which every well-born Englishman is prey when he thinks about himself.

This discovery, that the young secretary of the French Embassy innocently revealed to his colleagues and to two or three Roman princes whom he had met at the Hunting Club and at the Excelsior Bar, caused a great stir in Roman society, apathetic by nature, tradition and pose. That evening, at a dinner given by Princess Isabelle Colonna, it was the only topic of conversation. Isabelle was enraptured. That simple personal item, so meaningless in a certain sense, suddenly struck her as sublime. Eden and Horace! Isabelle could not recall a single line of Horace, but she felt certain that there was something in common between Eden and that dear old, amiable Latin poet. She felt secretly annoyed with hèrself that she had not guessed long before anyone told her what Horace had in common with Anthony Eden.

The next day, by ten in the morning, the entire Roman smart-set, as if by chance, turned up in the Vatican Museums, each member confidently carrying a copy of Horace under his arm or clutching one with jealous hands. But Anthony Eden failed to make an appearance and by noon, everybody left, feeling very disappointed. It was hot in the Vatican Galleries and Isabelle Colonna, pausing by a window to breathe a little fresh air with Dora Ruspoli and to let "all those people" get away, said to Dora when they were left alone, "Look at that statue, my dear! Doesn't it look like Eden? It's undoubtedly an Apollo. Oh, he looks like Apollo! He too is a wonderful, young Apollo!" Dora walked over to the statue, examined it with care through the rosy veil of her shortsightedness. "It's not an Apollo, my dear! Look at it more closely!" It was a statue of a woman, perhaps a Diana or a Venus. "Sex has no meaning in such matters! Don't you think it looks like him, anyway?"

Within a few hours, Horace became the fashion. On the tables of the Acquasanta Golf Club, on the red-and-white checked cotton tablecloths, next to a Parisian Hermes bag, a package of Camels or Gold Flakes and a Dunhill lighter, there was always a Schiaparelli Horace—that is, a copy of Horace wrapped in a silken handkerchief or cover, in accordance with Schiaparelli's latest advice in
Vogue
on how to protect books against the burning sands of the seaside and the humid dust of the golf links. One day an ancient Venetian copy of the
Odes
of Horace in a gorgeous cinquecento binding wrought in gold was found on a table,- it could have been left there on purpose. The imprinted Colonna arms, although the gilt had slightly faded through the centuries, were shining on the binding; the Sursock arms were missing, but everyone guessed that it was Isabelle's bedside volume.

The following morning Eden had to go to Castel Fusano and, as soon as the news spread through Rome, there was a procession of luxurious cars on the road to Ostia. But Eden, after a brief swim and a sunning on the sand, left Castel Fusano an hour before anyone arrived there, and everyone went back to Rome disappointed and angry with one another. That evening in Dorothy di Frasso's house the "treasure hunt" was the only topic of conversation, and Dorothy spared no one except Isabelle who, according to Dorothy, had discovered that one of her ancestors, a Sursock who had lived many years in Constantinople during the days of Edward VII and in London during the reign of Abdul Hamid, had translated the
Odes
of Horace into Syriac. Consequently the Sursocks, Horace and, of course, Eden had something in common. This unexpected relationship with Anthony Eden filled Isabelle with legitimate pride. Later, when Eden suddenly left for London, everyone on the links of the Acquasanta looked at one another with suspicion like jealous lovers, or with sad reassurance like disappointed lovers. Isabelle, to whom someone returning from Forte dei Marmi had repeated Jane's innocent jest—it was an allusion to the ritual meal that follows after funerals in the East—had canceled a dinner at the last moment. Dora rushed to Forte dei Marmi to acquaint Jane with the latest events and gossip of that wonderful week of passion.

"You, too, my dear!" said Jane di San Faustino. "I saw you from a distance that day with such an expression on your face! I said immediately to myself: something has happened to her, she has struck her funny bone!"

"Rome is such an extraordinary city!" Lord Perth said. "Eternity can be felt in the very air. Everything turns into a legend, even society gossip. Behold Anthony Eden elevated to the world of legend. He has entered eternity by simply spending a week in the Eternal City!"

"Yes, but he left in a hurry, the wily fellow," Princess Jane said.

That had been the Golden Age for the Golf Club, the happy and haloed days for the Acquasanta. Later the war came, and the links became a sort of
paseo
where young Roman women marched under the eyes of Galeazzo Ciano and his court and balanced their golf clubs in their small white hands. Galeazzo's star, borne by the reddish vapors of war, had risen rapidly on the horizon, and a new Golden Age, new happy and haloed days, seemed to return to the Golf Club, though the names, manners, appearances and clothes had something too new and too colorful about them without arousing the often undeserved suspicion usually aroused by men and things too new in a world that is too old—a world in which newness and youth are never accepted as signs of realness. The excessively rapid rise of Galeazzo and his court was in itself an obvious sign of its illegitimacy, a sign that could not be mistaken.