Fantastic Metropolis

I looked for Fiorello. He had disappeared.

Where Fiorello had been standing a moment ago, there was Mussolini, hands on hips, a look of irritable disapproval on his features, his back pointedly to the others. He spoke quietly. “Are you ready?”

I saw my keys on the table, next to the line of coke Mandy had cut for me.

“Sorry if I’m breaking anything up,” I said casually. “I was looking for my keys. Ah, there they are! Sorry I have to go. It was nice to meet your friends, Mandy.”

Save for Goering, the others were all staring at the Duce. Ignoring the uncrowned Queen of Italy, Mussolini turned once to stare thoughtfully at an obliviously happy Captain Goering before leading the way back to the car in silence. I heard Margherita’s wounded shriek behind us, but she did not come out.

We got into the car. The Duce shook his head. “What’s Margherita doing with that Hun? I’ve been trying to keep them apart all week. Did you invite them?”

“Certainly not,” I said. “My guess is that, thinking I would be away, she arranged to see him there. But who knows. She’s a strange one. Maybe she can seduce him. He seems besotted with his wife. He says Mrs Cornelius reminds him of her. Surely Signora Sarfatti wouldn’t attempt–”

“You don’t know the half of it,” said the Duce. “You want to be careful of her.” An expression passed across his face which, in a lesser human being, I would have taken for terror.

As we drove towards the Ministry, Mussolini began to lecture me on the dangers of having anything to do with Germans. “They want to gobble us all up. And as for these Nazis—it is a corruption of everything I have ever said or worked for! A mish-mash. That Goering is a degenerate. You saw for yourself. They’re all vicious boy-buggering dopers and masochists. Everyone knows what they’re like. They admit it openly. That bugger Rohm makes no secret of it. He’s published his love letters to his catamites. They give our Fascism a bad name by associating themselves with us. Believe me, Max, Germany can never be anything but an enemy of Italy.”

If only he had heeded his own judgement. But he was too good-natured, too trusting. And in the end he was abandoned by all, to swing upside down in a Milanese meat-market, one carcass amongst dozens. It is a tragedy which will be told over and over again down the ages, just as Julius Caesar and Caligula are told.

Mussolini’s death was symbolic of the entire twentieth century.

And we wonder why our young people no longer understand their history!

This time the Duce came with me as I went to my office and found the plans we needed—simplified drawings which would give nothing away.

He was extremely pleased with the idea of involving Spanish capital. (I think he had probably been worrying over fiscal matters recently. He was after all in charge of every aspect of the nation’s running. While others slept soundly, Il Duce was up, pacing his lonely corridors, taking Alka Seltzer for his ulcers and going over the affairs of the day.) I had the distinct impression that my Land Leviathan was moving a little closer to reality. By the time I had gone into my office, found the appropriate plans and brought them out, he seemed in an ebullient mood again. I saluted and watched him drive away.

It was with a feeling of depression that I saw one of the secret service cars came out of the shadows to pick me up.

Reluctantly I got into the car. I could still not be sure if the Duce had absorbed the scene at my house or whether he would start to think about it later. I was certain, however, that Mandy Butter was in no doubt about what had been going on. It was with some misgivings that I anticipated returning home.

I doubted if my lady friend would bring a worldly, European attitude to the situation.

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“An Evening at Home” is an excerpt from novel-in-progress The Vengeance of Rome (the fourth in the Pyat series). It also appears in Leviathan 3 (Ministry of Whimsy, 2002), edited by Jeff VanderMeer and Forrest Aguirre.