The Vengeance of Rome - [Between The Wars 04] Read online

  By the time it was safe to trudge slowly up to the passenger station I saw that they had caught poor Mr Mix. I think he was wounded, as he shouted at them furiously in Arabic. I could do nothing for him, but I did not believe he was in serious danger. At worst he would be repatriated to his native USA. This could be the making of him, for he had a wonderful career awaiting him in the lucrative field of Race Kinema. If they were to catch me I would be lucky not to be sent to Devil’s Island. Nonetheless, I knew a pang of sadness. I was sure it was the last I would ever see of meyn hertrescher sidekick but meanwhile I was still at liberty.

  Elijah raises his staff against black skies. He points, signalling the end of misery. My cities will fly. My sons will survive. Who will lift this burden from me? Did I not try to help them? But their blood is not mine, neither is it upon me. My flesh is clean and I have cleaned my heart. Le’shanah haba’ah bi-Jerushalayim. I know these things. I mourn their dead. Not all are ignorant. I do not lie. Barach dayan emet. You think I can accept this trayf, I say. Lashon ha-ra. They speak nothing but lies. Brit milah, indeed! What do they know?

  * * * *

  For the next few months I was forced to enter Tangier’s notorious shadow world, where Spanish officers and the local demi-monde mingled and where, by a variety of undignified means, I was able to sustain myself. My life became almost civilised. I even managed to spend my birthday at the Hotel Cecil in the company of Captain Juan Lopez-Allemany of the Spanish Foreign Legion, the brute who was for a while my friend and patron. I was frequently a guest at the house of Hussein de Fora, one of the best-educated and wealthiest hide-merchants in the city, and I kept a liaison with Madame de Brille, wife of the French concessionaire.

  To all these I was known as Gallibasta. In that name, Madame de Brille was kind enough to obtain for me a French diplomatic passport (she had some idea of continuing our liaison when she returned home). I was offered several permanent business opportunities which I was obliged to refuse. My duty I now knew was to get to Rome as soon as possible. Also, the jobs on offer were either unsavoury or liable to place me in peril again. I had had my fill of perils. The secure magnificence of Il Duces Italy so near at hand was much more attractive. Even this caution was not enough, however. Soon I learned that enquiries were being made about me in the Outer Market and shortly afterwards I was arrested. Happily it was on a trumped-up vice charge. Even the police thought it ludicrous. They told me they sensed the hand of a jealous woman but I could not help thinking of my old enemy Brodmann. I had nothing to gain by using the French passport. The authorities accepted my Spanish papers, so I was able to pay my way clear only, needless to say, to find myself the subject of extortion. I was rapidly growing reconciled to accepting a previously rejected prospect when one rainy afternoon in the Inner Market, not far from the British Post Office, I recognised two welcome faces.

  Only a Russian, especially a South Russian, will understand the joy of meeting fellow countrymen in a world as alien as Tangier’s. When one of those countrymen is a relative it is no surprise that your Russian will shout out his pleasure and run, arms wide, to embrace him! The faces belonged to none other than my dear cousin Shura and his elegant boss, the Ukrainian turned Parisian, that famous eminence grise of French politics, Monsieur Stavisky, whom I had known when a boy and met later at a party of Mistinguett’s in Paris. I had not seen Shura since he had disembarked from our boat at Tripoli, on some business of Stavisky’s. Now the two sophisticates strolled through the market as if they took the air along the Arcadian corniche. Ignoring the light rain, they were chatting and enjoying the sights and the warm weather. Their stylish suits, in canary yellow and lavender respectively, with matching spats, drew admiring attention from the ever-present touts and beggars of the Tangier streets. Hugging him I noted that Shura’s sleeve, empty since the War, was now filled. I admired his artificial limb. The hand that projected from the crisp linen of his shirt-cuff looked almost real. ’Oh, Shura! Shura!’ Shura laughed heartily as he recognised me. Even the cool Stavisky showed pleasure at the coincidence. ‘It is a small world, this,’ he said. ‘Let’s have some of that terrible fig brandy they sell here.’ He pointed to a cafe and we soon took our seats at a little outside table. ‘What are you calling yourself these days, Dimka? Are you still a film star? Are you on location? Or on the run?’ He laughed and clapped me on the shoulder.

  My life was suddenly enriched. These true friends understood the necessity and usefulness of a nom de guerre, and only needed to learn that I was Señor Juan Miguel Gallibasta, an import/export agent, to accept that I was now, to all intents and purposes, a Spanish national.

  The two Ukrainians were in Tangier on business, making their way to keep an appointment at the Banque d’État du Maroc to take care of the paperwork. Shura was delighted to meet me alive in Tangier. Rumour had it, he said, that I had died upriver in Egypt. Before he disappeared into the bank, Stavisky amiably suggested I join him and Shura on his yacht Les Bon’ Temps that evening. ‘We’ll have an Odessa reunion,’ he said. He was leaving for Casa in the morning but Shura would remain with the boat.

  Once again Odessa, the location of my transfiguration, was proving central to my fate. In that city of Odysseus my adventures had begun and my destiny had been determined. There Shura had been my mentor, my alter ego, my hero. There I had discovered all the world’s pleasures and not a little of its pain, and there I had met Mrs Cornelius. I have always known that the turning point of my life was in Odessa, but I have never properly been able to understand why. It does me no good to recall those days. Perhaps it was the Jew in Arcadia. But what did he do?

  There is a piece of metal in my womb. The Nazi doctor found it. Oh, yes, he said. It is certainly there. It was on the X-ray. In the shape of a Star of David, as you say. He had no reason to humour me.

  That is how they did it, I explained. That is how they transformed me. You must tell your superiors immediately. I must be released. I am the victim of a disgusting plot. The Reds are behind it. My father was German. I served the Reich in 1919. I am an engineer. The Führer is a personal friend. I have used my skills in the service of the Fatherland. This is a matter of historical fact.

  —My dear chap!

  —Those Jews in the shtetl. They put it there. They poisoned me.

  —My dear chap! Do not cry, he said. —There, there, there. We will soon have you well. But first you must be clean. You must get rid of all this dirty clothing. You must have a shower and a shave and be deloused. The Fatherland has great work for you.

  When later I joined him aboard his magnificent yacht and explained my rather difficult position, Stavisky gave me a name and an address where I could obtain an exit visa in my Spanish passport. Within a day my means of escape was accomplished. When the yacht left port Shura insisted that I go with him. He was heading for Europe, he said, to a particularly nice little spot in the Balearics where their organisation did quite a bit of business. The customs boys knew them well and the system was amiable, as in Tangier.

  The luxury and security of the boat, the polished brass and gleaming oak, the wealth of exquisite cocaine and cognac aboard, the sheer relief of not being hunted or suspected, filled me with a sense of well-being I had not experienced for years and soon we were racing away from the African shore into the relatively tranquil waters of Europe. Les Bon’ Temps was a steam-yacht. Under another name she had once served the Russian imperial family. She had been seized by the Reds during the Civil War then changed hands several times to be sold eventually by her mutinying crew in Albania, whereupon she came into Stavisky’s hands. As a tribute, he told me, to our beloved Tsar he had restored her to her full magnificence. It was a privilege to be permitted to sail in her, I replied. He dismissed my thanks. We ‘Moldavians’ should stick together. He referred, of course, to the Moldavanka in Odessa where I had lived for so many happy months under the protection of Shura’s father, who had been killed by anarchists during one of several occupations of the city.

  E
arly one morning, just as Tangier’s cypresses and palms grew black against a powder pink sky and she began to yell her cacophonic dawn chorus, a pale blue Duesenberg tourer pulled up on the quayside. Stavisky stepped elegantly down the gangplank, entered the car and waved farewell to us even as our crew bustled to catch the first tide. Then almost before the Duesenberg was out of sight, swallowed in the surging mass of white cotton and red fezes which swept down to the docks as soon as the prayers were over, we, too, were leaving Morocco. From Spain, Shura assured me, it would be an easy step to Italy. They had no intention of returning to Marseilles or to Cassis for a while. We were bound for the pleasant, unspoiled island of Majorca where many of Spain’s wealthiest nobility summered and where, Shura confided with a happy wink, the customs regulations were extremely relaxed. In 1930 Stavisky had many reasons to prefer the less public coves of the Balearics!

  In my cabin I was able to check my films and take some sort of inventory of the reels we had rescued from El Glaoui. They had a projector and screen aboard the yacht, and Shura insisted I use all the facilities. Stavisky, he said, was famous for his generosity, especially towards old friends and countrypeople. I asked if he would care to watch the films with me. He declined. Perhaps later. He had a great deal of paperwork to catch up on. After looking into the little theatre to admire the riding of a Masked Buckaroo who, as it happened, was a stand-in, he left with an apology.

  Thus, in solitude, I communed with my former self.

  The experience was a mixed one. As I recalled my salad days in Hollywood, watching, sometimes for the first time, the scratched and jerking evidence of my cinema stardom, I had not expected to be filled with quite such a sense of loss and disappointment.

  I had rescued a complete serial, Buckaroo’s Secret, both reels of White Aces, several reels of Buckaroo Justice, Ace Among Aces, The Masked Buckaroo and the Devil’s Tramway and The War Hawks. I relabelled and rewound them until they were in the finest possible condition. These and the scientific plans I carried in my bag were the best credentials to present to Signor Mussolini when I was finally granted an audience with him.

  In common with many other serious people I saw Mussolini as an effective antidote to Stalin. Until his coming, Christendom’s leading intellectuals feared we must soon descend into a series of bloody tribal wars, which would mark the end of Western civilisation. The Balkans were to be the powder keg and Mussolini the fireman, forever playing his hose upon that volatile zone and periodically stepping in to stamp out the beginnings of an unmanageable conflagration. I think this view did him insufficient credit as the dreamer and sometimes impractical idealist he really was. The Mussolini I knew was a poet. Since the Second World War it has become fashionable to denigrate the Italian dictator, but in my day men of conscience, who saw the whole of Europe slipping into chaos, admired him.

  Entering the Straits I enjoyed the distant view of the Rif Mountains and below them, among cypresses and palms, the little white boxes, tall towers and red clay domes of villages, while on the other side lay the blue outline of the Spanish coast which for a while grew more distinctive and then, too, vanished as in open sea I put Africa behind me for ever. A day later our destination, that much disputed island paradise, rose up over a pale grey horizon, her lower slopes shrouded in bright, silvery mist and white, transparent clouds upon her peaks. Sunlight glinted on her limestone terraces, cast deep shadows into her evergreens and butter-coloured settlements, but for me the next sight was even more inspiring!

  If you, too, are a believer you will understand the joy and relief I felt at seeing the cross of Christ lifted everywhere, on steeples, walls and banners. Majorca had defended her Christian honour against the Saracen for a thousand years or more. She had fallen long after the whole of Spain had fallen. Better than most, she knew the meaning and the value of Christ’s cross.

  Only then did I realise how much I had longed for the security which that cross represented to me. In Majorca I arrived as a respectable Spanish citizen, a Christian gentleman. In Morocco I had been suspected of being a Jew or a French spy, of being all the treacherous, nefarious things a Nazarene can be in the Arab’s mind. For years, since setting foot in Egypt, my life had been under constant threat. No surprise, I thought, that the Jews elected to leave their native Palestine for the enlightened and humane Christian lands across the Mediterranean whose laws protected and even facilitated their natural proclivities. Offering a gentle transition from ancient Carthage, the dark heart of Oriental Africa, to modern Rome, the blazing light of European civilisation and justice, Majorca lay on the border between the two spheres.

  Our yacht sailed slowly along the island’s rocky coast. Very occasionally we sighted a small beach or a cove, but nothing good enough for landing until the boat turned a headland, entering the mouth of a long, narrow bay flanked by carob trees, pines and wild olives clinging to tall cliffs of pink stone. In the wooded hills high above were the roofs and walls of large white houses, their balconies engulfed by bougainvillea and hibiscus, oleanders and geraniums, looking exactly as they might have done in Roman times.

  Ahead of us was a little fishing harbour, with brightly painted hulls bobbing at the quayside, their red and yellow sails reefed, their prehistoric eyes winking in the sunlight. I would not have been surprised to see patricians in togas and sandals leaning out to look at the new arrival. Shura came to stand beside me and sniff, as if at the ozone. ‘Good, eh, Dimka? That’s the smell of money, my dear! We are entering the Port of Andratx. Only the most exclusive people spend their summers here.’ The harbour was indeed a mixture of disparate vessels, though workaday fishing ketches predominated, with magnificent private schooners taking second place in the magical tranquillity of the tiny bay.

  Shura was pleased with my delight. ‘It’s like Cassis, only better. Hardly anyone knows about it.’

  We anchored offshore at the far western end of the harbour and rowed one of our boats up to the quay, whose cobbles smelled strongly of fish. I slipped in blood and innards as I stepped ashore and was caught from falling by a grinning ape with lively brown eyes who might have been a minor Tuscan deity. He shouted some amiable observation at me in what seemed a barbaric mixture of French, Italian, Spanish, Arabic and Portuguese and laughed enormously when I tried to thank him in Spanish. Shura took my arm and led me over the cobbles to the little road that led up into the town. ’Come and meet some pals of mine. They’ll love you. I know you’ll take to them.’ He nudged me in the ribs. His grin was full of its old charm. I remembered those wonderful first months in Odessa, when he had dragged me all over the Moldava Quarter, introducing me to the best circle of friends I have ever known. Through him I had gained my first sexual experiences, discovering the harsh realities of this world as well as her pleasures. If I had an opportunity to return to an almost perfect point in my past it would be to Odessa before the folly of World War engulfed us in the stink of fear and a taste for gunpowder. With her warm and welcoming streets Odessa was a breathing, brilliant entity. Jews, Moslems and Christians lived in wonderful harmony. Only rarely did the roar of Cossack cavalry echo through the streets. The stories have been much exaggerated. Odessa respected all faiths and all men of faith. She had no fear of the alien. She welcomed him. She had her mighty cathedral, her tolling bells, her confidence in the strength of Christ. She could afford to tolerate and even encourage a diversity of people. She was everything that was best in the Russian heart. The joyous writers came from Odessa. Only when they went to live in Moscow did they grow gloomy. They tell you such lies about places. Odessa was, in comparison to most modern cities, a paradise of peace and cosmopolitanism. They make you think Belfast is nothing but bombs and gunplay, but everyone says it’s the boredom that’s the worst of it. I am always amused when Americans, who are used to living with thousands upon thousands of murders every year in their own country, become nervous of visiting a place where one or two minor outrages have been reported. If I could relive at this little Balearic port just a fraction
of the happiness I had known in Odessa, I would be enduringly grateful both to friends and to God.

  And so it was.

  Shura’s ‘pals’ included many famous stars of literature and the entertainment business who chose what the natives called Port d’Andratx as the perfect location for their luxury hideaways. The little town built up above the quay was dominated by an eighteenth-century church of local stone, topped by a clock and a conventional angel, doubtless their domestic saint. The perfect whiteness of the houses was broken by oddly fashioned chimney pots and slates, their soft curving lines in gentle contrast to the ultra-modern vivid yellow and blue Egyptianate Hotel Bristol which was patronised chiefly by the yachting crowd. They had colonised the fishing port in recent years, bringing with them a glamorous lifestyle and easy habits of spending and were revered by all but the most committed socialist. On warm nights the Bristol’s were usually the only lights still burning at dawn.