The Phoenix Land (45 page)

I did not meet any Italians who were not present officially at the conference because of the long-established diplomatic
etiquette that such meetings do not take place while in foreign countries on this sort of mission. The rule is, of course, made to be broken but only in private.

An acquaintance of Hungarian origin, Stefánia Türr, offered to invite Mussolini to Genoa if I wanted to meet him. I did not accept, although I have often regretted it, as it would have been a most interesting experience, especially for me as a writer.
However
, I already held in such detestation the movement for ‘racial purity’ in Hungary – and, indeed, abhorred the thought of any organization that inspired hate – that I did not then feel any inclination to meet a leader who professed principles of that sort.

Despite diplomatic etiquette, I did make one exception in
getting
to know an Italian politician unconnected with the
conference
. This was Nitti, the former prime minister who had written a book entitled
Europa senza pace – Europe Without Peace
– in which he had been frankly critical of the peace terms that were imposed at Versailles and had shown much sympathy for the Hungarian people. I wanted to thank him for this; and I also thought it would prove useful to my country if I were to be in touch with him since there were many signs that the weak Facta government would soon fall and that, when it did, Nitti would be recalled to office.

I used the Easter holiday for this. Through our embassy in Rome I received a message from Nitti asking me to visit him at his flat in Naples on – if I am not mistaken – Easter Saturday. I told the secretary of the conference that I would be leaving for Rome that weekend. Luckily, the wedding of our ambassador’s daughter to a Prince Antei-Maffei had been arranged to take place just after the holiday.

On Good Friday I boarded the evening express, and even though it went straight through to Naples, I left the train at Rome, thinking that if my movements were being watched by the police this is what they would put in their report. After a swift breakfast at the embassy I then left again, without any
luggage
, and took a taxi back to the station. Early in the afternoon I was in Naples.

Nitti lived up a very steep street on a hill in the centre of the city.

His looks took me by surprise. I had expected a typical Neapolitan of the Mediterranean type, black-haired,
olive-skinned
and the face of an eagle. Instead I found a rather small man, fair-haired, with a red face and a flat nose. His eyes, sunken deep in fat, radiated goodwill and great intelligence. He
welcomed
me heartily.

We talked for a long time. He assured me that he would help us as soon as he once again found himself at the head of affairs, which he was certain would be in a few weeks’ time. I returned to Rome in the early evening. Unfortunately, those two hours are the only memories I have of him since when the Facta
government
did fall it was not Nitti who succeeded him in office but the March on Rome … and Mussolini.

The wedding of Count Nemes’s daughter was held on the Monday or Tuesday after Easter in the church of Santa Maria della Victoria which since the war had become Rome’s most fashionable place of worship. The ceremony was attended by hosts of princes and princesses all bearing names famous in
history
– such as Doria, Colonna, Aldobrandini and Borghese – and among them I found one or two acquaintances from my previous visit. Since I was neither a relation nor a close friend, and a heretic to boot, I placed myself discreetly near a side altar, where I was in no one’s way and unlikely to cause a scandal by not taking part in all the genuflexion and crossings of oneself going on around me.

I have no idea whether all the wedding guests were devout churchgoers, for they gave the impression of merely attending a social gathering as secular as a charity concert. It may have been a fashionable church, but I personally did not find it conducive to worship. Above the altar there were no pictures but only reliefs in white marble by Bernini with various saints receiving their stigmata. Bernini may have been a wonderful artist, but his work here approaches the rococo, with its pretty female angels
gracefully
inflicting the five wounds with needle-sharp marble arrows and sadistic little smiles. All the while the saints swoon in ecstasy. The whole object makes a most perverse impression
121
.

Afterwards I returned to Genoa, where the waiting in the wings went on for me as before. Discussions behind the scenes
there were, for the most part with the Russians, as the English, French and, I assume, even the Americans hunted for their own economic advantage: all matters which did not concern me. If I had not had to stay for our Declaration I would have left long before the end.

I used to spend much of my time enjoying the art treasures in which Genoa is so rich. I saw the Holy Grail in the cathedral of San Lorenzo – the thick green glass chalice sanctified by the blood of our Saviour – and the onyx dish upon which Salome received the head of John the Baptist. Both of these dated from the early Renaissance and were set in gold and enamel, and whether or not we believe the legends, the objects themselves are so beautiful that discussion of their origin is beside the point. I also went to many privately owned palaces where I saw countless Van Dyk portraits made during that artist’s protracted stay in the city. The acme of perfection was a Cellini amphora that I saw in the Doria palace, to which I had been taken by Prince Durazzo. Only the podium of the Esztergom Calvary comes
anywhere
near this unique masterpiece.

I also saw a living and walking masterpiece. This was the widow of the world-famous tenor Enrico Caruso, who had died only a few months before. She was then living at the Excelsior Hotel in Genoa. Every day, dressed in the deepest mourning – white, like the queens of France – the widow would take a walk along the terrace that stretched the full length of the hotel façade and from which there was an unsurpassed view of the city and the harbour far below. Her wonderful figure, enhanced by the soft folds of her dress, and her brown hair garlanded with a laurel wreath of white velvet, reminded me of a Greek statue, although none of the marble women on the Parthenon were more
stunningly
beautiful than she. She made a lovely sight as she walked up and down before the backdrop of the blue sea and the blue sky, with all the majesty appropriate to the wife of the king of all artists. Many people would climb up to this mountain terrace just to watch her and admire; and this was made all the easier since it was known that the sorrowing widow of Caruso was a very punctual lady, and that it was always at the same hour and for the same time – between midday and one o’clock – that she
would appear in front of the drawing-room window and walk up and down. If it rained she would take her walk inside the great hall of the hotel; and never, in her great sadness, would she look at another person or talk to anyone. But anybody who turned up a little early for lunch at the Excelsior could see and admire her; and so many did this that it made good publicity for the hotel and perhaps was good too for the lovely widow herself.

And so the days passed.

At last, I think it was towards the end of May, Facta asked me to lunch. He lived to the west of the city at San Pier d’Arena in a villa built into the side of a cliff that jutted out onto the sea.

There were quite a number of guests at the luncheon, mostly Italian politicians as well as a few diplomats. We had been invited for half-past one; but we waited and waited and still did not get to table because
il signore
Schanzer, the foreign minister, had not turned up. They telephoned. Secretaries bustled in and
whispered
things in Facta’s ear. Then they bustled out again.
Something
had gone wrong – and everyone felt it.

Finally, at half-past two, we sat down to eat – without the minister. His place, next to me, remained empty. It was on the hostess’s left. Just across the table sat Signora Schanzer. She was a plump good-natured woman, the image of old Mrs Adler who had an antique shop in Kolozsvár when I was a law student. The poor lady looked very worried.

We finished the soup, and also a most delicious fish.

Then the door opened, and in came Schanzer: he was deathly pale. Uncertainly he stumbled to his chair and sank down as if he had just marched fifty miles on heavy flat feet. Facta and all the other Italians plied him with questions, but the only reply they got was a few broken words:
‘Tutto e perdutto … una catastrofa … la conferenza si rotta…’
– ‘all is lost … it’s a catastrophe … the conference will break up…’

From all these questions I managed to glean that what I had already heard that morning as rumour was now confirmed as true. The Russians had made a commercial agreement with
Germany
.

Facta and the other Italians did not appear to regard this news in the same tragic light as their foreign minister; but Schanzer
was a broken man. In vain did they ply him with champagne and the finest red wine. In vain did his nice wife smile at him and send encouraging signals telling him with her eyes and with waving hands that he should not worry, for this was nothing to fret about! Poor Schanzer just sat in his chair, hair and beard all in disarray, staring in front of him and touching nothing, while his pince-nez kept falling off his nose. He was a pitiful sight. I have never seen a man as broken as he.

By the time we returned the whole of Genoa was ringing with the news of the Russo-German agreement. Everyone knew it. The agreement had been made with great cunning. While
everyone
knew that the English, the French and the Americans were all competing for an economic agreement with the Soviets, no one, despite the presence in Genoa of some two thousand eager reporters who watched every move made by all those delegates, had the slightest idea of any discussions between the Russians and the Germans. Neither Wirth nor Rathenau were involved in the negotiations but a certain Baron Maltzan, whom no one had ever seen. The agreement was signed at Santa Margherita; and the reason the Russians rented the Hotel Ferrari in the centre of Genoa may well have been so as to divert everyone’s attention there. According to this agreement, Germany would supply Russia not only with quantities of agricultural and industrial machinery but would also send her engineers and supervisors to build the factories and modernize the mines. It was a tremendous undertaking for Germany, since it was tantamount to taking in hand Russia’s entire economy. It would help to end
unemployment
in Germany and bring infinite opportunities for German industry. The Soviets would pay in cereals, manufactured goods and raw materials. All the advantages that the English and American capitalists had hoped for now fell into the lap of the Germans with one stroke of a pen.

The Victorious Powers were deeply shocked.

Schanzer had been right. The conference broke up.

Now at last it became clear to everyone that all those slogans about bringing us together to work for peace were little more than a smokescreen to cover the Great Powers’ desire to meet the Russians and find a new market for their wares. And now all that
treasure Chicherin had dangled so temptingly was to go towards rebuilding defeated Germany’s industry! The disappointment was shattering.

It was the end of the conference: and the end too of the Declaration we wanted so much but which was now just another piece of unfinished business. There was no longer any reason to stay on; and everyone left soon after the departure of the Great Powers.

Almost the only tangible legacy of this first pan-European conference was the album of caricatures I was to publish a year and a half later: nothing else remained.

When we left Italy every delegate to the conference was accompanied to the frontier by a detective – for our security, they said!

Mine was a most sympathetic little Italian who hailed from somewhere in the Veneto. When he first presented himself to me he asked how I was going to travel, when, and where? I told him I would stop in Milan so as to go to a performance at La Scala. The following day I would go over to Novara to call on my old friend the Marchese Ferrario. From there I would travel to Venice and so would find myself at the frontier in three days’ time. My detective was filled with joy when he heard my plan, for this meant five days’ special pay for him. He asked if I would expect him to act as my guard all the time. ‘Of course not!’ I replied. Then he revealed what he would like to do. He proposed something beloved of all Italians –
‘Una piccola combinazione’
– ‘a little conspiracy’, by which instead of keeping me under
surveillance
he would go back to his own part of the country and spend those few free days with his fiancée.
‘Una bella ragazza’
– ‘a beautiful girl’ he said as he produced her photograph. At the frontier he would be there well on time to sign the certificate swearing he had never left my side for an instant.

And so it was.

We said our farewells at the frontier. I pressed a generous tip into his palm as we shook hands, and I stepped into my
compartment
. As the train started my little Italian friend cheered me on my way with a hearty cry of
‘Evviva!’
He was a very nice young man.