High life
The twain meet
Tau
Southampton, Long Island In the winter of 1978 my friend Anthony Haden-Guest went to Italy to research a long article about terrorism. After about a month in Turin and Milan he rang me in Gstaad and asked if I could put him up in my chalet. 'I've just about had it,' said Anthony over the telephone, 'my liver is shot, and if I see any more caviar I shall die.' I assumed that Haden-Guest must be drunk, as one does not normally research terrorism in places where caviar is freely available. It just shows how little I knew.
When Anthony arrived in Gstaad he really looked a mess, and slept for the first two days without even getting up for a meal. Then he told me all about his research and it was indeed a tale of horror. He is now writing a novel about it, although a long magazine article appeared three years ago in which names were changed in order to protect the guilty.
I knew that urban guerrillas were a strange bunch. But I had not previously heard about Inga Feltrinelli, the widow of the billionaire publisher Gian-Giacomo Feltrinelli, who obligingly blew himself to bits while trying to dynamite a capitalist pylon somewhere in Italy. Inga inherited all the money and, of course continued the 'struggle'. After all, she was German, and the Red Brigades and the Baader-Meinhof gang had much in common, including a love of beautiful things.
Gian-Giacomo used to fund the Red Brigades and Inga was eager that Anthony should give him credit for it. She invited him to visit her in the beautiful village where she lives close to Turin. Anthony was telling me last week how unspoiled and terribly clean the village was until suddenly he realised that the only inhabitants of the hamlet were servants of the Feltrinelli's. Nobody else was allowed to live there and the few who were there before the Marxist publisher bought the place had been driven out.
There was a small problem when Inga and Anthony returned to her mansion in Milan. She was giving a party and had realised when it was already too late to cancel either person, that she had invited both Nicki Gancia, of the Vermouth for tune, and Renato Curcio, the founder of the Red Brigades. The reason she was concerned was that Curcio had kidnapped Gancia the year before and had let him go only after a king's ransom had been paid by his family. However, this was Italy, and everything went off smoothly. The reason for all this is that I have been spending Easter weekend in my Southampton house in the company of HadenGuest and a few other Englishmen. As everyone knows, Southampton is the clean, well-lit place of Gatsbyan mansions that are called cottages, of manicured lawns, striped tents, helicopter pads, and Mercedeses for the servants. It is also the place where people who cannot read or write spend their time looking at Women's Wear Daily when they are not looking at each other at a party.
So I was surprised to be invited, to a neighbour's house to meet a real live Marxist. I told my host that he could keep his radical chic and I would keep my chic English friends. My host, who prefers English gentlemen to phoney left wingers, then disinvited the radicals. But, being without shame, the Marxist turned up. So did I. When I saw him I withdrew my troops, to the great regret of the host. I also gave him an accidental nudge which made him spill champagne over his suit. But I'm sure he has lots of other suits to choose from.
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