The Last Days of Il Duce Read online

  After a while he came to me, though not in any particular hurry, and it was clear that another two bucks in the register didn’t matter to him either way. He spoke in Italian. “Private club.”

  “Chianti,” I said. “A glass of Chianti.”

  He went on speaking in his own tongue. “Sorry, but it is not possible for me to serve you a drink, only people who have membership in the Italian club.”

  Though I had a pretty good idea what he was saying, I didn’t want to be given the stiff, so I played stupid. Or maybe Marie had got to me, and I decided to show some nerve.

  “No, no. I want Chianti. A glass of red wine.”

  Meanwhile the old men at the table kept their noses in their cards, their faces hidden beneath the wide brims of their decaying fedoras.

  “I’m looking for my brother,” I said and slid Joe’s picture once again across the bar.

  “How am I supposed to know your brother?”

  He spoke English now and his big brown eyes glimmered at me from behind the bar. He’d known the language all the time, of course, but had been playing the same game with me he played with the tourists, just to keep me out of this hair.

  “He was in here about a week ago,” I said. “A few days before he died.”

  The man took Joe’s picture and studied it more curiously now, his mouth open, his eyes intent. He had on his face that troubled, rapturous look people get when they study the faces of the dead.

  “He looks like you.”

  “Do you remember seeing him?”

  “I am not here everyday.”

  “Ask your friends. Maybe they remember.”

  The bartender shrugged his shoulders, exaggerating his gestures, and tried to hand the picture back to me. “Please. These are old men, this is their place, do not drag such business into here.”

  “My mother was Rose Abruzzi. We lived on Vallejo Street. Surely one of these men knew her.”

  “You from the neighborhood?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I never seen you.”

  “I never seen you either. Maybe it’s the age difference.”

  “You’re not so young,” he said.

  “Go ask them, will ya?”

  The bartender relented and took the picture to the old men. They were stubborn and did not want to look up from their cards, but eventually they did, making a big deal about it, leaning back in their chairs and passing the picture around. I could hear my mother’s name muttered about the table, and my father’s. At length one of the old men came over to me. His face was as old as the fucking wars.

  “You do not recognize me. But I recognize you. The instant you walk in this place, I recognize you.”

  I peered into the old man’s face but all I could see was his age.

  “I knew your mother, your father, I knew all these men on all these streets. Now you young people, you know nothing.”

  “I agree. It’s a sin, the way we are.”

  “No. Sin is for people who know God. No God, no sin. And life is meaningless without sin.”

  “I’ll commit one soon,” I said. “Tell me your name.”

  “I am no one. Only Sammy Lucca the butcher. I sold your mother meat for twenty years. And I watched you and your brother steal hot dogs from my shelf.”

  I nodded and peered into his face.

  “I remember now,” I said, but it was a lie. I didn’t remember Sammy Lucca or his hot dogs.

  “I knew you would.”

  “Have you seen my brother around this place?”

  “A couple weeks back, he was sitting over at a table here, with John Bruno. You know Johnny? Il Buffone? Il Facsisto?” The old man smiled a sad smile. Johnny Bruno, with his Black Shirt still hanging in the closet, was a joke around Little Italy.

  “Si,” I said.

  “Your brother was talking to Johnny Bruno. The two of them left together, went to Johnny’s place. Now I want you to pay me for those hot dogs.”

  I laughed, thinking it was a joke, but Sammy Lucca didn’t see anything funny. His friends were watching him from the table, he had his hand out, and it was all a matter of honor now. I’d seen it a hundred million times before. So I gave the old bastard his nickel, plus thirty years interest, then went out to hunt up Johnny Bruno.

  THIRTEEN

  IL FASCISTO

  Johnny Bruno was one of those exiled men Mrs. Tollini had been going on about the other day. One of those San Francisco Italians who had been snatched up and penned inside the Western States Internment Camp during the war. When those men came back to San Francisco, most did not stay long. The streets were wrapped in all that euphoria, confetti tumbling down, and the shame was too much for the Il Buffone who had supported Mussolini once upon a time. Shame and then shame again, because how else could it be, all North Beach celebrating and then these men, aliens now, walking about with their heads hanging in everyone else’s hoopla. Most gathered their families and scattered soon as they could, and a number ended out in Reno. Johnny Bruno was one of those. He had returned to North Beach after his wife died. His son lived over in Oakland, and this way Johnny could take the subway under the bay once a week and get a look at his grandkids growing up underneath all those eucalyptus trees.

  I already knew most of his story but Johnny told it to me again, sitting in his room at the Ling Wei Hotel. The Ling Wei was a pensioners’ hotel, formerly the Hotel Colombo, one of the few places around not owned by Jimmy Wong, but that didn’t make it any more pleasant. Johnny Bruno sat slumped in a chair under the window, smoking one Pall Mall after another, stinking out the place.

  “I read about your brother in the paper. Terrible, the way they kill him.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But no one pays any attention these days.”

  “No.”

  “Meanwhile, Molini, two hundred years old, he gets an obituary the size of the moon. But what do you expect?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “A Genovesi like him, big shot delicatessen owner, he buys himself flowers in advance, pays the newspaper. Goddamn Genovesi think they can buy everything. When I was a kid, we Sicilians.…”

  He would’ve gone on it with, I know, but the Pall Mall got to him and he started to choke. The people in the Mission might lock you out, tell you nothing at all, but these Italians loved nothing better than to intertwine you in their familial wars, so that any slight had precedent in a feud generations old and ultimately pertained to their own grievances more than your own.

  “Why did my brother come to visit you?”

  “We just talk, that’s all.”

  “What about?”

  “The old days, he let me reminisce. But my reminisce, you know, is no sweet stuff. I have some stories to tell and nobody wants to listen. Your brother, I guess, he had his own reasons. But I have my life in boxes all around me. It’s the way I am.”

  It was true. Johnny Bruno’s apartment was a cluttered mess, pictures everywhere, Sicilian fishermen, haggard women, Johnny as a young man hanging out in Washington Square, slouching around, curly-headed, arm hanging over some girl’s shoulder. He wore his Black Shirt and a cigarette hung from his lips.

  “That’s what gets me in trouble. I joined the Fascio Umbrile. We met every week. The truth is, some people did not want me in. A Sicilian. But the group, it was paid for by the Italian Consul. And the Consul says everybody gets in. That’s the word from Rome. From Il Duce.

  “Some people say why you keep this picture in your house? You were no fascist. You were just a young man, you didn’t know what the words mean. I say, I have nothing to be ashame.”

  He stopped here to catch his breath. He wheezed and coughed a little, then pointed at me with his cigarette.

  “Your father, they called him to the stand. 1942. Mr. Snitch, he told the USA a list of names. Supposed fascists.”

  “He wanted to protect my mother.”

  “No. He did it because your mother was in love with that son of a bitch Micaeli Romano. Your fat
her wanted to punish all the Italians at Fugazi Hall. But I don’t blame him, no. The Committee knew his weakness, they had him by the balls.”

  I was getting tired of Johnny Bruno. He’d a sly look on his face, a bitter old man up to no good in the world.

  “Is that what you talked about with my brother?”

  “A little bit.”

  “That all?”

  “I’m telling you now. Everything. There were rumors you know, when you were born.…”

  “The rumors are wrong.”

  I knew what was coming and cut him off hard. I had heard this story before, when I was about sixteen years old. I didn’t believe it then and didn’t believe it now, but I had computed out the years once, adding them up in my head to see if it were possible Micaeli Romano was my father. It wasn’t. I had been born after the war, my brother two years after that, and all this while Micaeli had still been overseas, serving on the American mop-up crews in Italy. Anyway I had my father’s short nose, his Anglo eyes, his Irish feet. I do not look anything like Micaeli.

  “The day the Japs hit Pearl Harbor, all that smoke was coming out the radio, so the police buzzed North Beach. They rounded us up. Took us to Sharp Park, we could see the Japs and the Germans the other side of the chain fence. Six weeks before there’s even a hearing. But Micaeli, they let him out in two days. His father’s money.

  “Papa Romano, he was the biggest fascist of them all. Visited Italy and kissed Il Duce’s ring. So we were glad when his son, young Micaeli, the lawyer, gets himself sprung. We figure it won’t be long before he springs us too.”

  “Papa Romano renounced fascism. Micaeli.…”

  “It was a lie. We got messages all the time in jail. ‘Romano is still with you. Long live Il Duce!’ This kind of shit. Only Micaeli never helped us. He was playing it both ways. Just seeing how the war would go.”

  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. B
ut 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.