The Last Days of Il Duce (11 page)

This story too was one I'd heard before and so had my brother. It was a story Johnny Bruno had been telling for years, to anyone who would listen, and I was put out with myself for taking the bait. I didn't want to listen anymore.

“I am not finished. You want I should pour you a little wine?”

“I have to go, Johnny.”

“Drink the wine, humor an old man. Maybe I tell you something you don't already know.”

Johnny Bruno covered a cough and poured the wine. A gleam of triumph, small and mean, emerged in his eyes. He didn't get to tell his story much anymore, but he knew he had me, because I wanted to hear everything my brother had heard.

“It was 1953. Everybody had forgotten the war, but then Luci Pavrotti comes to town. You know, Pavrotti, Mussolini's general?”

I didn't know but Johnny Bruno explained. General Pavrotti had been in the catacombs the day of the Rome Massacre, when 350 Italians were rounded up by the Nazis. The way Johnny Bruno told the story, Pavrotti had been tricked into helping with the roundup, but when he discovered the Nazi's intentions, he stepped in front of their bayonets. “The Germans dare not fire,” said Bruno, “Pavrotti was Il Duce's favorite general.” A meeting was held, a compromise reached. What was repulsive to the Italians in the catacombs was not to die, but to die at the hands of the Germans. So the women were set free, and the Italian men lined up to be killed at the hands of Pavrotti.

“Kill me now,” each man said in turn (or so claimed Johnny Bruno). “I will die for Il Duce,” and Pavrotti shot them, one by one, weeping as he walked down the line.

“The Italian communists, the Americans, they twist the story of Pavrotti's heroism. Because the greedy pigs, they want Italy for themselves. So Pavrotti had to run. North Africa, Argentina, Brazil, every dump in the world. Eventually he ends up in North Beach, Columbus Avenue, on his knees in front of Micaeli Romano. Pavrotti is underground in America, broke and busted I tell you, so Micaeli gives him a few nickels and sends him to Reno. But Micaeli Romano was two-faced as ever. Here, I show you what I mean.”

Johnny Bruno stood up, his chest thrust forward. He was breathing more easily now, as if telling the story had rejuvenated him. He jerked opened a dresser drawer, shuffling through some papers, but his fingers were not much good anymore, and while he shuffled I peered over his shoulder at a news photo of Mussolini with his mistress, Claratta Petacci. Claratta had on her fur coat, Benito strutted smugly beside her, and when I looked at the two of them like that, I could not help but think of the mob that would desecrate their bodies, passing them hand-over-hand through the crowd, inserting their fingers into the wounds, peeling back the flap of Claratta's skirt. There was something in the slope of their bodies that forecast their future, I thought, that suggested Claratta knew her fate, and for this horrible devotion there was part of me that could not help but loving Claratta, too, at the same time as wanting again to see that picture of her devastated by the mob.

“Here,” said Johnny Bruno.

He handed me a scrap of yellow newsprint dated March 15, 1953.

WAR CRIMINAL FOUND DEAD IN HOTEL

Underneath the headline Pavrotti lay dead in a black and white photo, his feet skewed at a crazy angle. The news article told a different version of what happened in the catacombs: how Pavrotti had pulled the gun to show his loyalty to the Germans, then gone down the line, shooting the Italian men as their wives and children watched. He had also been good buddies with Himmler, it turned out, and helped with the execution of Italian Jews. It was clear from the article that officialdom did not much regret Pavrotti's death, and a thorough investigation was nobody's priority.

The article did mention that a man from North Beach had been held in connection with the investigation, then released. The man's name was Dios. I thought about it for a little while, but the name meant nothing to me.

“It was Romano arranged Pavrotti to be killed. He was afraid the public would find out about his own fascist background. He is no good Romano, a traitor to everyone.”

“How did Romano arrange it? Through J. Ferrari?”

I was only half-serious, saying it to mock the whole story, but the old man shook his head and let out a knowing little laugh, as if amused by my naiveté.

“You mean that little monkey man? Down on Broadway. Only old woman go to him. To kill their fat husbands. These days, Ferrari's, it is all tied up with the Chinese. But even then, before the monkey man, no one goes to that place to kill someone important. It is local business only.”

“Then how did Romano arrange it?”

Johnny shook his head again, still smiling, but he didn't answer me, and my guess was that he didn't have an answer.

“Did you tell my brother about Pavrotti and Romano? Did you show him this clipping?”

“I can prove what happened. You talk to a man I know. Bill Ciprione. At the Alta Hotel in Reno. He has been quiet almost thirty-five years, but he is tired of the quiet.”

“Did you tell my brother about this?” I asked again.

“Sure, I tell him. He wanted a copy of the article, so I walked with him down to Zirpoli's, to the copy machine. Then your brother went to Reno to find the truth for himself. That's why he's dead.”

“This guy Ciprione, does he have a phone number?”

“No. Like me, he lives in an old man's hotel. They give us no phone, no refrigerators, no nothing. I don't know how we live, us old men. So you want to talk, you have to go knock on his door.”

“Write down his address for me and spell out the name.”

“Ciprione, like I told you. He didn't change his name to sound American. Not like a lot of people I know.”

“Here, Johnny, on this piece of paper. Write his name and address.”

“All of the Italians, they change their name. Susan Hayward. Tony Curtis. Tony Bennet. They were all Italians.”

“I know.”

“Marilyn Monroe, Joe DiMaggio, all of them, they try to be somebody they weren't. They want to be Smith, they want to be Johnson. It's because we were Italians, you know, that's why they treat us bad. But before the war, everyone was fascist. Henry Ford, Franklin Roosevelt. They kissed Mussolini's feet.”

“I remember.”

“And now look at you, a Jones. That's all we got left. I been to Italy, and it's the same thing. Pakistanis selling cappuccinos. There's not a goddamn Italian left in the world.”

“Okay, Johnny,” I said.

He'd finished with the address and I took it away from him. I was tired of Johnny Bruno. I wanted to give him a push, maybe knock him on the floor, but instead I patted his shoulder. This set off a coughing fit and he hacked away like he was being paid to do it.

I used the opportunity to lift the clipping about Pavrotti. If my brother had had a copy, I wanted one too. Then I patted Bruno again and hurried out of the Ling Wei Hotel, passing first through the lobby, under the portrait of Chiang Kai-shek, then out into the street.

On the way home I walked past the Portafino and caught a glimpse of Sammy Lucca inside playing cards. He was passing chips across the table and in that gesture, finally, I recognized him, the butcher from Molini's deli handing change over a counter, and I remembered too my brother and I grabbing the dogs from the butcher case, then running helter skelter into the Italian streets, where the piazzas were gushing water and the fruit was ripe as the Mediterranean sun, and the waters at the end of the peninsula were mysterious and deep and there was no other world but the sweetest of our imagination.

FOURTEEN

REMEMBRANCES

When I was a young man in law school, there was a professor, an old German, teacher of the history of law, who had on his office door a saying from the philosopher Santayana. Something to the effect that those who did not remember history were condemned to fulfill it. I was a diligent boy then, and so I studied my books and read my history and scorned those who led the unexamined life. My own conclusions in years since is that the philosopher may have glimpsed the truth, but he didn't get the whole picture in his eye. Because awareness may let you see what is about to happen, even contemplate its design, but as to whether it opens an avenue of escape, that is another question. It could be recognition is just the last stage in the completion of the design, a trembling of the web, whereby the spider senses exactly where it is we lie.

When my mother died, I discovered in her trunk two stacks of old letters. The first, tied with lavender ribbon, written in Italian and sprinkled with endearments (
Oh bella! Oh mi amore!
) had been sent to her by Micaeli Romano during the war. My command of Italian is not wonderful but I learned from those letters that Micaeli had hoped my mother would defy convention and divorce my father. Those hopes were crushed when my father was injured in a shipboard accident. My mother could not bring herself to leave her maimed husband.

The second stack of letters was unbound, written in the blunt hand of my father.

“Offshore, Corsica. Mussolini on his last legs. Only fifty miles out but all I see is water, flat and endless. German planes yesterday.”

My father returned not long after that letter. Micaeli, stationed in Italy, stayed until the end of the war, then signed up for a second tour. He did not come home to North Beach until three years later, until after he had met Vincenza in Florence and married her on the steps of some cathedral.

I first read those letters a few days after my mother was buried. It was in the old house, and my father was downstairs that day. He'd be dead too, in a few months, but I didn't know that then. I'd been living my life pretty much as they both had wanted, working for a law firm downtown, still engaged to Anne. The longer we were together, the more everyone expected we would be married. I had to admit I liked being with Anne. I enjoyed her wholesome and fervent spirit, and maybe it was true I loved her and was just too stupid to know. Still, I could see our path together snaking ahead through the years. Though that way seemed pleasant and lush, I could not help looking back with a certain longing, especially on those days when I visited Joe and brushed past Marie in the hall. She would glance up at me with those eyes from our childhood, and I'd imagine her warm breath on my cheek and her voice saying she would never let me go, not really, she would be a figure in my dreams, half-buried in the sand, and one day it would be she and I again, embracing in the waves. Or that's the kind of thing that went through my mind when I read those letters.

I was in the middle of them, when my father came into the room. I could see from the way he looked at me that he knew what they were, and maybe he'd read them himself.

“Do you want to me burn these?” I asked.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“If I had wanted that, I would have done it a long time ago. Those meant something to your mother.”

He always effaced himself; he always acted the fool. “What about you?” I asked. “What do they mean to you?”

My tone of voice, he should've hit me with his crutch; but he didn't. He was long past that. “When you want something,” he said, “you have to be cautious.”

I laughed.

“Sometimes you have to take your hands off. You chase something too hard, you run it down, you corner it—then you end up killing it. You destroy everything. So instead you let things be. You appreciate something for what it is. Otherwise you are tempting fate. You are looking for trouble. You will start things going you can't control.”

“I don't buy it,” I said.

“You will. You'll learn to accept things the way they are. So put the letters down.”

I put them down, but I didn't agree with him. I did not want to live my life like my father. Nor did I want to do what Micaeli and my mother had done, hiding their desire in letters bound with lavender ribbon. So a few days later I drove down to Redwood City, where Marie and Joe lived as husband and wife in a pretty little bungalow a few blocks from the freeway. I told myself I was going to visit my brother, but of course I knew he worked during the day and it was Marie who answered the door.

We walked together up some naked hillside, Marie and I, making a path through the dry grass. We didn't speak much, because there wasn't much to say. We both knew what was in our heads. Then we reached the top of the hill and sat down under a live oak whose branches looked like an old man's fingers that had somehow sprouted leaves. I put my arms around Marie and we lay beside each other, trembling on that golden hill.

“Let's just hold each other,” I said.

“Yes.”

“We don't need to do anything else.”

“We shouldn't.”

“It would ruin everything.”

So we lay like that for a little while, like schoolkids touching one another while pretending not to touch. Her dress was thin and the scent of her body under the sun was like the scent of the sky and the earth, and I could not help but caress her, my hand under her billowing dress. Soon her legs wrapped up around my chest and we became fierce like animals under that tree. We did not get off the hill until after four in the afternoon. By then my brother was home. Or at least his truck was in front of his house. So I left Marie off around the corner and drove back to San Francisco.

Six months later they were divorced, and Marie and I met secretly. We met during the day, when I was supposed to be at work; at night, when I was supposed to be in the library preparing a case; on weekends, when I told Anne I was tied up with colleagues. We met in hotels, in diners, in barrooms. We did, I guess, what Micaeli and my mother had done before us. Anne figured it out, but I didn't care. And I didn't care either when I lost my job for not being around. Then, after everything had been risked and the affair could not remain a secret much longer, I plunged my dick into a bucket of ice.