Such was the picture in every Italian mind, as the visitor was to discover. They were a clear-sighted people, realistic and skeptical, even cynical. Mussolini had labored mightily to puff them up with pride, love of glory, the dream of a new Impero Romano; he had succeeded with part of them, especially the young, but now that dream was dead and stinking in their nostrils; their Duce was a bald-headed old lecher, suffering from stomach ulcers and syphilis; he had dragged them into this war, and Lanny would have a hard time finding anybody who would admit that he had ever wanted it. The P.A. was astonished to find how sick ordinary people were of Fascism as well as of the war, and how outspoken they were, high or low, rich or poor.
Here was this nobleman and landowner who had thought only of protecting his property. Fire-breathing Red agitators had come into the rural districts, poisoning the minds of the farm laborers and organizing them into unions, which in the landowner’s eyes were mere bandit groups. Mussolini had promised to end all that, and he had done so, and they had had a decade of reconstruction. But then Il Duce had led them into foreign adventures and had brought in the Germans, who were like a swarm of locusts, covering the whole land. Now the Americans were coming, and they were still another sort of locust, a sort that dropped fire and destruction out of the air upon cities and towns, ships and harbors, railroads and bridges—everything that Mussolini had constructed and of which he had boasted too loudly.
Here, also, was the nobleman’s wife, a Frenchwoman who, in the days of Fascism’s pride, had visited her native land and offended her relatives by suggesting that the way of peace for France was to give up her border lands at her neighbor’s demands. Now there was nothing left of that pride at all; the Marchesa said that the war was a tragic blunder, and that the Italians should give up whatever they had to in order to get the German masters out of it. Lanny had come expecting to hear these things in whispers, as he had heard them in Germany, where people went suddenly and opened their doors to make sure their servants were not spying, and put the tea cozy over the telephone because they had been told that the police had a secret device enabling them to hear even when the receiver was on the hook. But in Rome he found that the people’s discontent had reached the boiling point, and the only ones who pledged you to secrecy were those whose livings depended in some way upon the regime.
IX
He went out and walked in this Eternal City, much changed in the two decades since his ill-fated visit. Il Duce had put up some showy government buildings and monuments and had built a great boulevard, leading to a new Forum, named for his work. He had played a cruel joke upon his own gloria; on this Via del Impero—the Road of the Empire—he had erected a marble wall and on it had put large bronze maps, showing what the old empire had been at its height, and what the new empire had been at its start, and how step by step it had grown. He hadn’t yet got up the courage to take down the North Africa maps, and there they stayed, mocking him. Lanny took one glance and walked quickly; it was no place for a foreigner to linger.
To the visitor this Eternal City was Eternal Capitalism, the exploiting of the poor by the owners of the land and the means of production. This city, called “holy,” contained some of the vilest slums he had seen in all Europe, and Holy Mother Church was one of the greatest and richest of the landlords. That had also been the case in all the great capitals he had visited, not merely in the Mediterranean lands but in London and New York. Everywhere he had seen the shrines of Mammon, decked with the images of the humble and lowly Jesus, and had recalled the burning lines of the English poet Buchanan:
Great Christus-Jingo, at whose feet
Christian and Jew and Atheist meet.
The young men and the middle-aged of Rome were gone, all save the Fascist Militi. The women and the children were gaunt and half-starved, sad-eyed and silent. They came early and formed long queues, waiting for bread, for oil and greens; often they waited half the day, only to be sent away because the supplies were exhausted. They hid in their stifling tenements from the glare of the day, and when the sun went down they came out on the hot pavements for a breath of air. In peacetime they would have spent half the night outside, but now there was a curfew at dusk and the law was “martial.”
Lanny had no way to find out what these people were thinking, for he was an elegantly dressed stranger and they would bear him no love. The hotel porter had warned him against venturing into the slums; crime was rampant—it thrives in war, like poverty and its evil sisters. The filth was appalling; the children had apparently no place to relieve themselves but in the streets, and they did this by daylight; the adults for the most part waited until night. Furtive beggars pursued the stroller, whining out of the corners of their mouths; children pestered him with offers of every sort of vice. The men were gone and the women were hungry; he could have bought young girls or boys for a bar of chocolate or a couple of cigarettes. Everywhere amid this misery and corruption walked the black-robed priests—“black beetles,” the hate-filled workers called them. Lanny pitied them, for he knew that many were men of conscience and had no idea of what had caused this avalanche of suffering, and would not have been allowed to do anything about it even if they had found out. The Church had made its peace with Mussolini and was ready to do the same with the next groups of exploiters, whoever they might be.
X
Lanny telephoned Commendatore d’Angelo and asked the privilege of calling upon him again. The request was granted, and they sat alone in the old gentleman’s study. The visitor’s pretext was that he was concerned about a safe place to hide the alleged Giorgione if he bought it, and that led quickly to the subject of peace and how to get it. Lanny had only to listen and put in a few words now and then. The landowner took it for granted that the son of a great American capitalist would have the point of view of his own class; the question was how to save that class amid all the storms which were buffeting it. Fascism in Italy represented its effort to save itself from the Reds; but now Fascism was a prisoner and a pawn of Nazism, and that had shown itself as bad as communism. What did America have to contribute to that situation?
Lanny knew that he was talking to an influential person, one who was honest within the limitations of his point of view. It was necessary for a P.A. to trust someone if he was ever to get anywhere; he decided that this was the man. “I am going to ask you to let me speak to you in confidence,” he said. “It happens that my father is a man of considerable power, and when he learned that I was planning this trip he asked me to make inquiry as to the attitude of the Italian people toward the problem of ending this war.”
To a man of experience in affairs that was equivalent to saying, “I am an American agent.” The Commendatore replied promptly, “I am glad you came to me, and you may surely count upon my good faith. We Italians have been dragged into this war, and we learned with consternation that we were supposed to fight Americans, whom we think of as wealthy relatives overseas.”
Lanny could say that the American people surely did not think of the Italians as enemies, but as victims. He told about his friendship with Italians in New York, in Florida, and in Newcastle, and did not mind exaggerating this intimacy. His host showed his confidence by saying that the Italians and Americans had a common enemy and should be fighting him together. “That enemy is a dangerous beast, an old one, but he still has his teeth and claws.” Lanny knew whom he meant and did not ask him to name names.
The Italian continued, “I do not think that anything can be done until the American Army has actually landed on our soil and made it plain that a serious invasion is meant. So long as there is any possibility that Italy will be by-passed, our people will continue to hesitate and dally.”
Said the art expert, “I am not in the confidence of our military, but the situation appears obvious. The Italian airfields are being used by the Germans against us, and we can have no security in the Mediterranean until we have taken them over.”
“Hélas, hélas!” replied the old gentleman—they were
speaking French as before.
The question was, what was going to happen to Italy when the Nazis were prized off her back. Lanny said it would of necessity depend upon how this operation was performed. If the Italians did it themselves, they would naturally have more voice in deciding their future. He pointed to what had happened to the French in North Africa; he revealed that he had been there and had been able to watch events. Admiral Darlan, General Juin, M. Lemaigre-Dubreuil of Huiles Lesieur, and other leading Frenchmen had had to make the same decision which now confronted the Italians. They had come over to the Americans, and as a result they enjoyed security.
The old gentleman declared that he and his friends had not failed to make note of this precedent. He revealed himself to be a monarchist; he did not think the Italian people would accept the old King, who had too closely allied himself to the Fascist regime, but the King’s eldest son, the Prince of Piedmont, was an excellent young man, handsome, not too intelligent, and in every way adapted to become a constitutional monarch on the English pattern. Lanny pointed out that British armies would undoubtedly accompany any invasion, and it was to be assumed that Winston Churchill would favor a government of the British sort; certainly he could be counted upon to oppose the setting up of any Red or even Pink regime. Wherever the Allied armies came there would be law and order and respect for all property rights. To hear this suave gentleman talking you would have thought he was a member of the Comité des Forges—he knew many of them, and had managed to satisfy them just as he was satisfying Commendatore d’Angelo.
XI
This proved to be a long conference. The cultivated Roman revealed that he and his friends had been consulting together for months as to what they could do in the crisis they foresaw. He did not name these friends, but as the conversation developed Lanny took the liberty of mentioning various persons, and it turned out that the Commendatore knew them all. When Lanny asked, “Do you suppose that General Badoglio would be willing to discuss these matters with me?” the reply was, “I think it would be an excellent thing for him to do.”
When Lanny went out from this mansion he possessed a complete picture of the mind of the haute bourgeoisie of the Italian capital, their hopes, their fears, and their plans. He was surprised by the freedom with which this wealthy gentleman had spoken, just as he had been surprised by the attitude of the Caporinis. He took it as a sign that the situation was far more ripe than either he or Roosevelt had imagined. A good field for a P.A. to work in, and a chance to please the tired man in the White House!
The information was important enough to justify a report. Lanny did not want this to be in his handwriting, so he went for a stroll in an obscure part of the city and picked out the office of a real estate agent; he went in at noon and asked permission to use the typist’s machine while she was at lunch, paying for the privilege of course. He looked very much the gentleman, spoke with his German accent, and his request was granted. He sat and picked away, one sheet of plain paper which he had in his pocket, and no carbon.
He had devised a code and left a copy which F.D.R. had tucked away in a drawer of the reading table by his bed. Lanny had taken the first names of the presidents of the United States and assigned them a new meaning; George was Roosevelt himself, John was Hitler, Thomas was Göring, James was Mussolini, Andrew was Badoglio, and so on through a list of the various persons Lanny was likely to meet on his trip. For the further confusing of an enemy who might get hold of one of the reports, German cities and Italian cities were to exchange names. Thus Lanny wrote that Traveler—his own code name—had been in Rome and was now in Berlin; he had seen John and John was greatly excited over the program to put George out of the way. As it happened, there was a definite program to put John out of the way; it was a military plan and the persons were of top importance. He went on to tell about the attitude of the well-to-do Berliners, and said that he was expecting to meet Andrew very soon and would report again.
Lanny had two envelopes, one larger than the other, and each purchased in a different store. Making sure that no one was looking over his shoulder, he addressed the smaller “To the President, Personal and Confidential, from Traveler.” He carefully sealed the letter in this, and then sealed it in the larger envelope, which was addressed to Pietro Padrone, and no street address. Lanny went out and walked again, this time to the American “post office,” the secret address which the OSS had given him.
This was the most dangerous part of a P.A.’s duties. He could not entrust this letter to the mail; he had to put it into the hands of the right person. And for all he could know, this person might now be in the hands of the Gestapo or under their observation. Lanny knew that the American Intelligence Services would never arrest a spy until they had watched him and all his activities and had made note of all his associates. He had to assume that the Germans would be no less thorough; and it might be that they had staked themselves out on all sides of this “post office” and had set up cameras in rooms across the street to take photographs of everyone who entered.
It was a chance that had to be taken. Lanny had walked past the place once and noticed that it was a small stationery store, a business that must have been difficult to keep supplied in this time of universal scarcity. Now he strolled, and turned in, calm in appearance but with heart thumping. There was a young woman at the counter, and no one else in the place that he could see. He asked, in Italian of course, “Have you any sepia carbon paper?” The word sepia was code, and the girl was supposed to say, “I beg pardon; sir?” She said it, and Lanny repeated, “I would like some very good quality sepia carbon paper.”
The girl appeared nervous, but she couldn’t have been more so than this middle-aged American gentleman wearing a tiny brown mustache and a brown suit of linen, neatly pressed. She said, “I will find out, sir.” Lanny waited, and in a moment there appeared a short stoutish Italian, rosy-faced and wearing spectacles. He said, “I am expecting a shipment from Livorno.” That was the code answer, and Lanny replied, “I would like to book an order for some.” He took the envelope from his pocket and handed it to the man, then turned on his heel and went out, looking anxiously around to see if there were any suspicious-appearing characters lurking in doorways or peering from windows. He saw none and guessed that he had got away with it this time.
5
The Light That Lies
I
Lanny Budd was doing what is called “moving” in fashionable Roman society. This wasn’t as much restricted by the curfew as he had expected, for these rich and clever people had always been above the law and still found ways to be. They had permits of one sort or another, and when Lanny had been properly vouched for, he too could have one. What astonished him was the cynicism of this society, and the freedom with which its members expressed themselves. Fascism, in order to survive, had to succeed; and here it was, failing before the eyes of the dullest. In “smart” society nobody is willing to be counted among the dull.
The P.A. had imagined his role as secret and subtle; he would meet only the key persons and keep himself as obscure as possible. But he found that he had chosen the wrong sponsor for that sort of career. Julie Caporini, all kindness and helpfulness, could not be made to understand his idea. “How can you expect to buy paintings,” she exclaimed, “if you do not meet the right people and find out what they have and whether or not they need money?” And when Lanny couldn’t find a satisfactory answer to that, she added, “Oh, you must meet Isabelle Colonna! She is our social queen, our arbiter elegantiarum; if she approves of you, everybody will take you up. Let me take you there for coffee—she may have the real thing!” Lanny had to say yes.
The Colonna family was one of the oldest in Rome, and the Princess Isabelle lived in a palace that was a show place in a city with a hundred palaces. It was humiliating to have to arrive at such a place in a cab, but Julie said that many of the very best people were reduced to that state. On the way she talked about their hostess, who had conquered Roman society by her wi
t and charm, despite the fact that she came from the Levant. She had chosen Galeazzo Ciano as her political guide and was standing by him even now when he had fallen from grace. “That is very unusual in our world,” explained Julie, “so you see that she is a person of courage and honor.”
To this Lanny replied, “If the rumors I hear are true, Galeazzo has not responded in kind.”
“Oh, well,” said the Marchesa, “that would be too much to expect from a man in his position.” She said this without the trace of a smile, and Lanny assented in the same way.
The magnificence of the marble palace led him to expect a stately person, well on in years and conscious of her social responsibilities. He was surprisd to meet one who was young, or at any rate who appeared so, and sprightly and frivolous, in the mood of a decadent time. Like all the others, she was bored by this time of strain and privation; so many men were away, and travel was so difficult. It was the first summer she had ever spent in Rome, she assured her guests. She wanted above all things to be entertained, and here was a visitor who had been in a dozen countries and had met many persons whom she knew. In short, he was an acceptable man, and she proposed to give a card party at the golf club, where “everybody” would meet him. She served real coffee and explained that it had been brought to her from Turkey by an attaché of the embassy in his diplomatic pouch.
II
The name of the institution was the Acquasanta Golf Club. In this most pious of cities Lanny had got used to the idea of a Queen of Heaven Prison, and now he was taken to a Holy Water Golf Club. (Some wit had said, “In Rome the Faith is made; elsewhere it is received.”) The club was a beautiful spot, with lawns kept green in spite of summer drought and smooth in spite of the scarcity of labor; there was a view of rolling hills, and between them the arches of a red stone aqueduct built by the ancient and stern Romans. Here, at the summons of their queen, came the new Romans, the crema di la crema, the gratin, the upper crust; three times as many women as men, for in these desperate times even the most highly placed officials had to do some work.
One Clear Call I Page 12
