The Laughter of Carthage - [Between The Wars 02]

by Michael Moorcock

  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.