Read Online The Vengeance of Rome by Michael Moorcock - Free Book Online

Bolshevik treachery, would have turned the tide in the Whites’ favour. ‘The perfect hero of the new Renaissance!’
    I enjoyed all this, of course, and blossomed under the admiring attentions of the women. It made a pleasant change from Shura’s amiable disrespect. I had forgotten how much I relished recognition when it was properly earned. Da Bazzanno asked me what I was doing in Majorca.
    Rather than disappoint him, I told him that I had come on Stavisky’s yacht and hinted that I was here on special business. He received this with another of his enormous knowing winks. He informed the women that I was in the confidence of more than one national government and we must therefore be discreet. I waved such a suggestion aside. ‘It’s simply not conversation for the public square.’ Recalling his duty to his companions, Fiorello suggested that I dine aboard their vessel that evening. I saw no new boats in the harbour. He explained that they had had to anchor on the other side of the headland.
    â€˜She’s called
La Farfalla Nera.
’ He would send his launch for me to
Les Bon’ Temps
. I told him that I was not certain of my movements. I had companions, a cousin. Then naturally I must bring him too, said da Bazzanno. ‘But you must warn him that we shall monopolise the conversation. We have years to catch up on, you and I, old comrade!’
    He spoke of the dozens of mutual acquaintances from the old Rome days. How was Laura, for instance? I asked. I did not mention that she had been his fiancée. His face clouded and he shrugged. ‘Oh, we’re no longer in touch. She’s so hard-headed. You know what these unregenerate communists are like.’ He was clearly unwilling to say more. I accepted this and left with a promise to see him shortly after sunset.
    I returned to
Les Bon’ Temps
with my good news. Yet even as I rowed the short distance from shore to boat, I began to wonder if my two worlds were wholly compatible. Shura and Stavisky saw me as one of their own, a kind of poor relation of high-class criminals, whereas da Bazzanno, generous as always, had painted me in quite a different light, considerably closer to the truth.
    As it happened, Shura had no interest in the artistic small talk he expected to hear at such a gathering, so he declined, energetically encouraging me to go. ‘Exactly what you need, dear Dimka,’ he assured me. ‘You will be able to relax with your own kind. Let your hair down, say what you like without causing offence. Holding back can be a strain no matter how good the company.’
    I told him I knew exactly what he meant. That evening I donned my dinner jacket with a clear conscience and a light heart.
    I had forgotten how thoroughly happy I had been in Rome. With Esméat my side I was secure in the company of good friends. I had enjoyed the pleasure of talk for its own sake, the wild eloquence which seemed to come over us all. The best that was ever said in those days was never recorded. In comparison, Mr ‘Greene’, Mr Hemingway, or Prince Nabokov-Serin and their kind produce gibberish. But these were the years before tape recorders made us all cautious.
    Fiorello’s launch called for me at seven. With a little too much rouge on lips and cheeks and too much powder on her fresh, oval face, Miranda Butter, her bobbed hair covered by one of her host’s lilac scarves, wore a wonderfully fashionable evening dress in green and pink silk. Standing unsteadily beside the seaman at the wheel, she waved to me with an empty martini glass as the other sailor helped me aboard. I had already noted her evident interest in me and hoped she had left behind that irritating habit Americans share with Moslems, of drinking for the illicit thrill of it.
    I joined her under the launch’s awning. ‘I needed a few minutes with you alone,’ she said in that direct American manner. To my relief, she seemed perfectly