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

and drive our Faith out of Africa, restoring the old Moorish Empire and extending it as far as the Baltic. He had a brother, he said, who was a personal friend of Cesare de Vecchi, Governor of Somalia. De Vecchi had earned the Moslems’ respect by riding his horse into their mosques and pissing on their shrines. It was only ‘What they woulddo to us if they could. Raw power is what they respect. The Senussi were a spent force the moment we hanged that monster Omar.’
    With my usual social graces, I was able to turn the conversation to less controversial subjects, such as the success of the Nazi Party and its chances of bringing Germany under the fascist umbrella. Could fascism create the united Europe of which Mussolini would be both the chief architect and first premier? Ultimately it would take more than one member of a select company to shoulder the responsibilities of leadership. I told my fellow guests of my dream—to see a company of Carolingian knights—a court, attracting the paladins of the Christian nations—ruling Europe and perhaps America. A great wall of Western chivalry against the Eastern barbarian, ensuring that Constantinople would never fall again. But in those days it was unfashionable to speak positively of Christianity. Many of the best fascists felt the rôle of the Church to be over in modern life. Consequently, I clothed my remarks in the most general language.
    â€˜I’d agree we need good men for the job.’ Margherita Sarfatti held a long cigarette holder of polished marble and smoked foul-smelling Turkish ovals. As she drank, she seemed to become a little more angry, a little more cutting, a little more bored. She found most of the company irritating and it was clear she did not much care for da Bazzanno’s diplomatic invitation to the gentleman from Tuscany who was now repeating some gossip he swore he had from the lips of Il Duce himself, to the effect that the German National Socialists were ‘a bunch of limp-wristed interior decorators and ballet-masters to a creature!’ which, presumably, was how he would also have dismissed the Spartan Hundred. This bumpkin asserted with hearty prurience that the would-be German Duce actually wore rouge in public. The only gentleman among them, the only heterosexual with any kind of war record, was the ex-flyer Hermann Göring, who was a great fan of Mussolini’s and who got on famously with him.
    â€˜His are the kind who should lead the new Germany,’ said the
ras
’s cow-faced wife, continuing the speech for him while he took a breath, ‘people of the old stock but with new ideas. Hitler and the others are illiterate, mannerless dullards. Not one knows a fork from a dinner knife or a dinner knife from a dagger. They are typical lower-class Huns. They have no style. The Germans could never take such people seriously. They worship the Old Prussian order. They want the Kaiser back. They certainly don’t want to be represented by the worst examples of their own kind!’
    â€˜Which is why Prince August, the Kaiser’s son, is now a Nazi, perhaps,’ I said. ‘Who better to lead them?’
    Whereupon the folk poet, revived by wine and a puff on his cigar, ignored my pointed remark and continued his lecture on the fundamental discipline of the Germans and how they loved a leader, on the arrogant insouciance of the British and how they believed themselves and their nation unquestionably superior to all others, merely because of the voracious greed and cunning cupidity of those who had almost accidentally acquired their empire. This was, he supposed, the source of their strength and why they had no nationalist party and why they were so decadent. On almost every issue I found myself in irritable disagreement with that provincial bigwig. Most Italians were pro-British and dismissive of the Germans, who they feared would threaten Italy from Austria if they had the chance. They did