The moment, if ever it would begin, was sacred and potent with glory. The Duce di Fascismo, himself, would arrive with certain members of the Party. He was to be greeted with Giovanezza, Giovenezza! They would salute in the salute of the Caesars, he would salute. The bandmaster would shout the order to about face, so that the banners and the guard were facing toward Rapallo, which lay by the sea two long downward curves of a road lined with people who would throw flowers and cry Duce du-ce du-ce! Viva l’Italia fascista!
They would doubletime, smartly, swiftly, elegantly, never blurring a note. The flags would stream in the wind. They would enter the town with tilted horns, tilted chins, under the banners strung from building to building.
MA È TEMPO DI CESSARE OGNI SCHERMAGLIA POLEMICA. GLI EVENTI INCALZANO. L’UNIONE DEGLI ITALIANI È ORMAI UN FATTO COMPIUTO. NESSUNO DEVE TURBARLA. NESSUNO LA TURBERÀ. È IL SEGNACOLO DELLA VITTORIA.
Two motorcycle couriers arrived first, minutes before the Duce. They braked, expressionless in their goggles, gave a gauntleted salute of the Caesars, shouted that the Duce di Fascismo was immediately behind them, and rode forward around the band, one to the right, one to the left.
The automobiles were suddenly there, while everybody was still watching the motorcyclists. The Duce was in his Alfa Romeo between two Mercedes. He was the first one out, doubletiming as soon as he was on the road. The bandmaster gave three salutes.
The Duce jogged in place, pulling down his tunic and setting his Sam Brown belt right. A gold sash looped his torso and hung from its hip knot down his left thigh. Il Aiutante danced beside him, his moustaches flapping, his chin high like the Duce’s.
— Avanti! shouted the Duce.
— Avanti a passo di corsa! ordered the Aiutante.
— Dietro front! bellowed the bandmaster.
And down the road they went, Giovanezza, Giovanezza! thumping out in a wonder of shrill brass and resonant drum, the ancient gonfalon of Genoa jouncing beside the tricolor and the Fascist flag with its Italic ax bound in a bundle of sticks. A yellow dog and a brown joined them on the first curve, outpacing the guard and the color bearers.
The sad eyes of Max Beerbohm watched them as they bounced past his garden wall.
SONO OGGI FIERI E FEDELI GLI ITALIANI ALL’ ESTERO!
The Mayor of Rapallo standing in a school of priests gave the salute of the Caesars as the band and the Duce trotted into the square in front of the City Hall. Children with bouquets of roses sang The Fascist Hymn. The Duce stood with his legs apart, his thumbs hooked in his belt, his chin high.
— Camicie Nere! he said. Popolo di Rapallo!
And made a speech. Non vi è dubbio che giammai, come in questi ultimi tempi, l’Italia ebbe uno spirito militare così elevato. And so forth.
Afterwards, the sun low over the bay of Tigullio, he visited the American poet Ezra Pound and admired his bust by Henri Gaudier-Brzeska.
— Why do you write poetry? he asked.
— To put my ideas in order, Ezra Pound said.
— Will you read us one of your poems?
Ezra Pound read two pages from his Cantos.
— Ma quest’, said Mussolini, è divertente!
AFTER NIGHTFALL, on my knees in the water, I dug. I scooped the sand out by handfuls. The deeper I went, the wetter the sand. This, hercle, was Rufus work.
The world is out there, independent of your will. I am here, behind the red furze of my beard, in my eyes, in my crazy knees and spine all but sprung. Demetrius the silversmith liked to say that he was a better silversmith than Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus Nero Claudius Caesar Drusus Germanicus was an emperor. Old Nihil Magnus. I am a better slave than he is an emperor. You suck such consolation at your peril.
Give me, frater, fatter consilia. I remember the tombstone seen by some traveler in Asia Minor which a barbarian woman had set up, saying that she was the mother of two strapping sons, and that she had attended the grammar school in her old age to learn to read and write.
I remember the bitch the urchins found trapped in a wareroom, her ribs a corrugation down her pitiful body. She had eaten one of her puppies all except the head. She had eaten her shit. They brought me the bitch and pups, knowing me to be a fool, and when I gave her a bowl of mush she would not eat until her puppies had eaten. And when she ate she kept an eye on her brood. I renewed my devotions to Artemis. Rome has declined in virtue since Remus and Romulus pulled at the wolf’s dugs. Would they had got her solicitude along with the milk.
I remember while licking my pan clean of its swill, dinners at which the vomitoria went around twice. You drink melted snow after you spew, chew a bit of ginger, and then go at the partridge breasts roasted in wine and garlic.
I remember tubs of leavings going off to the swine for which we would give thanks enough to run a sweet tickle into the ears of the gods. Once they brought a fat man here who wept like a woman while the smith soldered the shackles on his trotters. We watched the lard melt away day by day. He buckled fairly soon, pitching forward with his eyes rolled white and his tongue somewhere down his throat. His fellows beside him on the chain robbed him of his rags while he was still pitching in his agony. Liber ille est, someone said.
Voices, voices. I who had loved rhetoric like a mistress rarely hear two words together more articulate than the hinny of an ass. It was a voice hoarse as a raven over my shoulder when I was digging under my rock that said, You’re clearing a spring!
Caepoculus, who had a chancre for his left eye. I knew him
