62
PARTISAN REVIEW
changed even in sunlight depending
011
where the observer stood. There was
a trace of something like superstitious dread in the way Malcolm behaved
towards the engl"aving: he tri ed to look the other way and considered it
slightly indiscreet of me to stand in fi"ont of it in the corner of the room. Oth–
erwise - and you are right about that - he made no secret of being a mem–
ber of the Masonic Lodge. On the contrary, he spoke openly and freely
about Magna Grecia. You must understand that he did not at all have clear
and decided opinions about things; rather, he had a variety of phobias capri–
ciously mixed with sympathetic appreciations. He was a conservative En–
glishman who at the same time made fun of conservatism, and how! He did
not like Communists or the British Labour Party, but he granted they were
right "about some things." He was a liberal with a yearning for "firm-handed
government." He could not stand priests and derided them, but he was a
practicing Catholic. (They can tell you something about that at the Church of
Santa Chiara, where he often went to Confession and took Communion). His
favorite way of describing the world we live in was to call it a madhouse. It
may be that the Masonic Lodge in Naples actually struck him as the
quintessence of the universal madhouse in miniature. The backbone of the
membership were representatives of the rich bourgeoisie and professional
people, business executives, magistrates, retired army officers and
cara–
binieri,
landowners and industrialists, and relatively impoverished aristocrats.
But there were also well-known Communist Party members, and occasion–
ally a monsignor would come from Rome dressed in layman's clothes with a
cross in his lapel, evidently unaware of the Church's anathema to Freema–
sonry for its anticlericalism and its reputedly progTammatic opposition
to
reli–
gion. It was with amusement and delight that Malcolm would quote the de–
scription of Freemasonry in the Neapolitan Statutes of 1750 as an
"association of citizens utterly devoted to religion and the fatherland, and for
the good of mankind united by the closest bonds of virtuous friendship in a
single harmonious family." What was essential for him was the family har–
mony , the Italian yardstick for everything, the Italian navel of the entire
world. As a foreigner he felt he was in good hands, probably the same way
his father had fett. The Lodges also had something of a private club about
them; after the meetings they brought in a buffet, played bridge and chess.
One thing that struck me about Malcolm at the time was that you never
heard a word out of him about his love life; even when mellowed by alcohol
he frowned at the slightest mention of women. Was he following in Sir
Harold's footsteps ? Ifhe were, there would have been no need to hide it in
Naples."
"Until Tommaso Patano appeared on the horizon . When was that ex–
actly?"
