Stalin. I’m the only person who can say I contradicted him in public. Other people did it too, of course. Except that they didn’t live to tell the tale. ‘And what are we going to do now?’ everyone asks me. After a long time the first shy signals are coming in from Moscow. Djilas is raising a cloud of dust. Serov’s spies in every corner, in all likelihood. The British are suggesting a film. Very peculiar. A strange way to familiarise the West with our form of socialism. And then I say: bring me Cary Grant.
Ten minutes away.
Will he be bothered by smoke?
Enter Cary. Clean-shaven, finally, and wearing a suit sent from Palm Springs for the occasion. This is the Cary Grant everyone knows, the one Tito imagines he knows, nerves of steel, intent on wiping out a network of Nazis in Notorious. Tito expresses himself in passable English, apart from the occasional faux ami: he says ‘anaemic’ instead of ‘enemy’. Cary doesn’t correct him. As usual when acting the generous host, Tito makes the coffee in person. Cary looks on with amusement. A few mentions of Trieste, the coat recovered in no time at all by the AMG agents. And who is this character Rizzi? A poet. Ah. Tito talks about his first visit to Trieste. He was eighteen, he arrived on foot, eighty kilometres from Ljubjana. He was stunned by the sheer size of the harbour. He felt lost.
Grant asks Tito about the schism with Stalin, adding, ‘That took a bit of nerve, he looked like one of the bad guys in a Disney film!’ Tito laughs and thinks about the wicked witch in Snow White interrogating her mirror. He thinks about Kardelj, about Djilas, about decisions that were so hard to take. He thinks about Moscow, about the purges, about the ever emptier floors of the Hotel Lux. Then he rewards his guest with a few anecdotes. Just after the war a team of Russian film-makers turned up here, also wanting to make a film about our Resistance. They were really a bunch of boozing whores and scoundrels, they got drunk day and night, they caused trouble over the merest trifles, on a number of occasions our police were called to sort them out. The film was an obscenity. Our war emerged from it as a secondary conflict, a diversion to keep the Axis busy while the Red Army got on with the job. And in fact it was we who broke first the Duce’s back, then the backs of the Germans. Your Churchill understood that after the Fifth Offensive, although if he’d worked it out earlier many of the comrades would still be alive. Oh, it’s true, you aren’t English any more, or rather you’re English and a nationalised American. He should have said ‘naturalised’, but Cary doesn’t correct him. He feels good.
Today we’ve got information suggesting that members of the crew were spying for Stalin. It was an initial attempt at destabilisation. They’ve always been afraid of us. Tito finishes, so to speak, with an allusion to his knowledge that he can take care of himself, even when there seems no immediate need to do so. You’re better off not owing anything to anybody. Grant sips his coffee, which is very good, and delights Tito with details of his conquest of artistic and economic independence. People admire Tito, they really do. And what about this film? Tito smiles, lights a cigarette and raises a quizzical eyebrow. No, it doesn’t bother me. You know, I managed to give up, thanks to my wife. I used to smoke, of course I did. Thanks to your wife? What did she do, if you don’t mind my asking? Did she threaten you with not.? The two men laugh. No, no, she hypnotised me. Really? But does it work? I can guarantee it. Your wife is a hypnotist? Well, she tried it and it worked. You know, she subscribes to these oriental disciplines that are so much in vogue in California, less so in Yugoslavia, I would guess. Tito blows out a smoke ring. I’ll set up a commission of doctors. If they can prove to me that hypnosis works, then perhaps one day we’ll make it part of our public health system. If it exists, the people have a right to it. Cary arches his eyebrow. At the end of the day, we are in the East.
You know where I met my first American citizen? In Moscow, in the shower. In the Hotel Lux, where foreign communists stayed. The hot water wasn’t on all the time, and when there was any it ran out almost immediately. Moscow isn’t Palm Springs, it was absolutely freezing. To wash ourselves, we showered in pairs. That was how I met Earl Browder, the great leader of American communism. He stood for the presidency if I remember correctly. I don’t know what happened to him in the end, but I’m sure he isn’t getting on too well with that oaf McCarthy. Oh, Stalin took good care of him. What? They killed him? Not physically, but in 1944 he declared that capitalism and communism could coexist, and lost his post as Party secretary. Two years later the Cominform called him a ‘deviationist’ and expelled him from the Communist Party. I don’t know what he lives on now. I see him as a precursor of what we’re trying out. Browder was in favour of an American way towards socialism.
I saw you in that film where you were dressed as a woman. Which one, the one with the leopard or the one with the male war bride? The male war bride. Really good fun. And the one with the Nazi wine cellar. Notorious. Terrifying. You know, my secret services gave me a file on you. Don’t worry, nothing compromising as far as I’m concerned, quite the reverse. You’ve served your country and the antifascist cause in a sector of such crucial importance as entertainment. Cary holds his breath. What I was about to say: in the photographs you wear exceptionally well-tailored suits. I have some too, you know. We working-class children have to acquire elegance. Doggedly. Ever alert, as though we were at the front. At the end of the day this is war as well. Cary is almost moved. He thinks about his childhood in Bristol. He thinks about the mother he thought was dead and who came back from the grave. He thinks about his time as a sandwich board man on stilts, in New York. Just to say it isn’t a silly question. You don’t wear a belt. You don’t wear braces. You haven’t got a pot belly. How on earth do you hold your trousers up? Cary laughs. Tito laughs.
They mention that the Italian tailor and fashion house takes its name from the Islands of Brioni. Strange, isn’t it? I don’t know why. You know, I think we have a lot in common. I know it’s strange, we’ve had very different lives, and yet. Cary expounds his views. Tito surprises him: konspiracija and cinema have forced them to adopt different identities. Let’s try and count them! I have been Josip Broz, Georgijevic, Rudi, John Alexander Carlson, Oto, Viktor, Timo, Jiricek, Tomanek, Ivan Kostanjsek, Slavko Babic, Spiridon Mekas, Walter and finally Tito. I have been, to cite only a few: Archibald Alexander Leach, ‘Rubber Legs’, the magician Knowall Leach, Max Grunewald, Cary Lockwood, Jimmy Monkley, Jerry Warriner, the palaeontologist David Huxley, Sergeant Archibald Cutter, the pilot Jeff Carter, the newspaper editor Walter Burns, Leopold Dilg, Ernie Mott, Joe Adams, the millionaire C. K. Dexter Haven, Johnnie Aysgarth, Mortimer Brewster, Cole Porter, the agent Devlin in Notorious, Mr Blandings, who wanted to build his dream house. To come here I have assumed the identity of ‘George Kaplan’. What I don’t know is who I would be expected to play in the film, if it should happen. Why did you decide to leave the cinema, Mr Grant?
They chat like old friends. Have you stopped drinking, too? Certainly not. Then I shall have them bring a brandy from these islands, an aperitif. This evening you will dine with me, have you told them that?
Cary realises that Tito has not the slightest interest in the bizarre suggestion being put forward by MI6. His game is one of temporisation, waiting to see what’s happening in Moscow, keeping a foot in both camps. He goes to dinner with Her Majesty, and the heretic Djilas is immolated on the Moscow altar. A strategist, a political animal following the trail, scenting the smell of death: every time Stalin is mentioned, a light in his eye goes out for half a second. He hears something. The patter of feet dancing on the tyrant’s grave? In any case, the idea of the film is a load of crap. That or a huge joke. Tito and Cary Grant converse amicably. Can you imagine a more surreal scene? Nothing means anything, apart from the fact that I am here and I feel good. What? Oh, sorry, I was thinking out loud.