Free The Vengeance of Rome by Michael Moorcock Page B

thoroughly conversant in American and European literature, music and painting, while sharing an aversion to the neurotic obscenities of certain French and Norwegian ‘artists’. Inevitably I would add to Il Duce’s greatness as he would add to mine. His was a mighty soul ready to embrace the future and all its brilliant uncertainties, its monumental rewards. I saw myself in a Griffith film, marching up the Appian Way to the Gates of Rome, striding through the wide streets to the Palace of Il Duce, up the steps and through corridors to that vast hall where at last Mussolini himself stepped away from his desk, from which he directed all affairs of state, and came forward to embrace me.
    â€˜
Il ragazzo è arrivato!
’
    I will admit I came close to weeping as I visualised the scene.
    That night, my pleasure was complete. At around eleven, after we had dined at the hotel, Fiorello da Bazzanno made us get into a huge Mercedes he had hired and drove us down the curving, rocky road to Palma where he had arranged for the local cinema to be available, together with a projectionist. We sat in the comfort of the first-class seats, da Bazzanno, Margherita Sarfatti, Miranda Butter and myself, while before us, larger than life as he should be, the Masked Buckaroo rode again! Before a background of prairies and buttes he performed his acts of daring and skill, defending justice wherever it was threatened. We watched as the White Ace’s twin Lewis guns raked the skies clear of Hun battle-birds or I embraced Gloria Cornish, the loveliest lady of the screen, with a passion which was electrically conveyed to the fascinated audience. Da Bazzanno flung himself into the adventures, hissing and applauding, clapping me on the back whenever my screen persona performed a particularly spectacular piece of heroism. Even Signora Sarfatti drew amused relish from the proceedings and her manner to me was even warmer when the lights went up. Miranda Butter was ecstatic. She clapped her little pink hands together and cried that I had revived all her most wonderful memories. She had seen several of mymovies before as a girl, and had been entranced by them. ‘That must be why I was reminded of Valentino!’ Later she would apologise and repeat that my looks were far more refined than the ex-gigolo’s, that I was so clearly an aristocrat and Valentino merely a coarse peasant of the type who appealed to the commoner sort of girl. Encouraged by her remarks I introduced her to some refined aristocratic pleasures that very night and at last the ghost of Esmé was laid to rest.
    Next morning, in the flying boat’s miniature saloon, Fiorello spread out my blueprints and sketches, the photographs and news cuttings I had managed to save from a hundred different disasters. My Desert Liner especially impressed him. He became almost exaggeratedly enthusiastic. ‘But my dear Max, with just a few of these ideas you could transform the world! Why has no other government put them into production?’
    The financial collapses of the past years were not conducive to investment, I said. And, what was more, I had chosen to show my designs only to a few select people. It concerned me that they might fall into the wrong hands. Imagine the Reds equipped with such inventions! Fiorello agreed that the notion was terrifying. ‘You carry a terrible secret, my friend. Now it is clear to me why these days you lead such a discreet life. And yet here you have been the most public of figures! You have nerve, Max. I don’t think I could stand to be the guardian of such earth-shattering secrets. Or to live such an exhausting double life. How have you been able to sustain it for so long?’
    â€˜I have been waiting,’ I spoke gravely, ‘for the right man to emerge, the kind of man who will mount his own horse and brandish his own sword and lead his own troops into the field to drive back Red Jewry even as she now masses against