Unto the Sons (77 page)

At thirty-nine, Benito Mussolini became the youngest premier in the nation’s history. He achieved this not because he was truly powerful but because he had convinced the king and the parliamentarians that he was, and therefore he
was
. Whether he was an egomaniacal buffoon, as some politicians privately believed, or a ruthless, demented tyrant, as others
thought, he was effective in establishing doubt and fear in those who differed with him, a feat made all the more attainable since his opposition now consisted mainly of men who were weak, worried, and willing to accept any leader if it was hinted that they might continue their employment in the government. For a while Mussolini had duped them into thinking that he would welcome diverse opinions and coalitions, just as he had earlier manipulated the king into believing that to oppose Fascism was to invite a bloody left-wing revolution that would topple the monarchy.

Most of the nation’s business leaders saw in Mussolini’s appointment the enhancement of their own interests—an auspicious future with more tax concessions, fewer strikes, smaller state bureaucracies, less zeal directed toward the breakup of large estates; a possible termination of rent controls, a reduction in unemployment relief, and fewer annoying inquiries concerning surplus war profits and tax evasion. That Mussolini lacked experience as a government leader was also interpreted by many businessmen as an asset, for in recent years the most experienced leaders had committed the greatest blunders. And the Mussolini who in 1919 was condemning priests and advocating the confiscation of ecclesiastical property would be announcing through his controlled press in the mid-1920s that he was a “profoundly religious man” eager to enforce religious instruction in schools and universities, and to increase state subsidies to priests and bishops. He called for the ban of obscene books and periodicals, and would also make it illegal to swear in public. The sale and distribution of contraceptives would be not only a sin against the Church but a crime against the state. And while Mussolini’s regime in 1924 would become the first Western government after Britain to recognize Soviet Russia, Mussolini was soon expressing aloud his fear of world Communism in the hope of ingratiating himself further with Pope Pius XI—who, as a papal nuncio earlier in Poland, had been stunned by the Bolshevik siege of Warsaw, and who now as the Vicar of Christ wished to eradicate world Communism, Socialism, and other godless manifestations of liberalism and secularism.

Mussolini stood ready to indulge him—to convert Italy through Fascism into a state of prudery and repression. Not only did contemporary depictions of nudity and other pornographic expression come under severe Fascist review, but an Italian neo-Victorianism also looked disapprovingly upon nightclub entertainment and the “Negro dances” made popular in America, and upon any Italian woman who appeared in the streets wearing high heels, short skirts, or cosmetics, or who ventured
onto beaches in anything but the most demure of bathing attire. Since Mussolini did not smoke, and since his ulcers discouraged him from drinking anything stronger than milk, he was a natural spokesman against cigarette and alcohol consumption; and since he was an adherent of horsemanship, jogging, and tennis, he recommended sports activities as a healthy outlet for Fascist men and women—until the Vatican differed with him on the question of women’s participation. “If a woman’s hand must be lifted,” said a Vatican spokesman, “we hope and pray it may be lifted only in prayer or for acts of beneficence.” Mussolini’s further silence on the subject was interpreted as his concession to papal wisdom, and his diplomacy was to lead in 1929 to the Lateran Treaty in which the Church and the Italian government would officially recognize one another for the first time since the Risorgimento. The treaty created the autonomous State of Vatican City; affirmed Catholicism as the national religion; validated religious teaching in intermediate-level schools; and recognized religious marriage as binding under civil law.

Although the State of Vatican City was little more than one hundred acres—consisting primarily of the Vatican Palace, the Basilica of Saint Peter, and the piazza in front of it—the Church was compensated for the loss of ecclesiastical property confiscated during the Risorgimento with a financial settlement approaching two billion lire—after which an apparently satisfied Pope announced that for the treaty to have been completed “a man was needed like the one that Providence has placed in our path.”

That the Duce was now acclaimed by Catholics worldwide was a miraculous achievement for this onetime Socialist priest-baiter whose anticlerical writings in the past included a tawdry novel entitled
The Cardinal’s Mistress
. Mussolini had written it two decades before, while serving a prison term for left-wing insurrectionism; and while the book had not been published in Italy, it had been translated and sold in foreign editions, including an English-language edition distributed in the United States. But after the signing of the Lateran Treaty, Mussolini’s popularity in America was even shared by the nation’s leading cardinals (he was praised by William O’Connell of Boston and Patrick Hayes of New York), and his already established shift toward capitalism had won his regime goodwill from American business and political leaders.

Mussolini began inviting to Rome thousands of Italian-born business and professional men who had become successful in foreign cities. Their visits were marked by many ceremonies and grand tours that allowed Mussolini ample opportunities to congratulate both his guests and himself
for achievements in the name of free enterprise; and he also used these occasions to promote closer bonds, through Fascism, among influential Italians at home and abroad.

Among the invitees to Rome in July 1928 was a group of Italian-born entrepreneurs and artisans from France, ranging in occupation from contractors to jewelry designers, from engineers to restaurateurs. The members of the 102-man delegation had been encouraged to bring their wives, in keeping with Mussolini’s recent pro-family attitude. His own wife, Rachele, was not with him to greet those from France because she was pregnant with their fifth child (the year before, at thirty-five, she had produced their fourth child), but her image as an ideal Fascist wife was so well publicized that her presence was not required; Mussolini tirelessly boasted of her virtues to all but his mistresses (even in the privacy of their bedroom Rachele now addressed him as Duce). There were ninety-eight wives with the group from France; the four single men were widowers wearing mourning bands.

After boarding a special train in Paris, the group was taken first to Turin for a banquet in their honor given by the city’s leaders, and they were further celebrated with a parade on the following day at which bands played both the “Marseillaise” and the Fascist anthem “Giovinezza.” The group then continued south into Rome, where, after another orchestrated ceremony at the rail terminal, the guests were taken to luxury suites in the Grand Hotel and briefed before proceeding on to Palazzo Venezia for their first meeting with Mussolini.

“The Duce respects people who speak directly and to the point,” one of Mussolini’s protocol ministers explained to the group leader in the lobby, as everyone gathered to board buses for the palazzo. “We received your countrymen from South America the other day, and their spokesman was so nervous and intimidated in the Duce’s presence that little was gained from the meeting. These meetings are for learning about our brothers working in other countries. We want to know them better, want them to know us better. The Duce does not want a lot of courtesy and flattery from his visitors—he wants facts and figures.”

“I understand perfectly,” said the French group’s leader, who would be called upon to speak at Palazzo Venezia. “So let’s load the buses and move on without delay.”

Mussolini awaited them at his office in the palazzo, an imposing brick edifice that was built four centuries before, in the style of the early Renaissance with some stones from the Colosseum. Near the palazzo, and
the neighboring white monument to Victor Emmanuel II and Italian unity, stood the Forum of Trajan and the Tower of Nero. Mussolini’s office, on the second floor, was approximately sixty-six feet long and forty-three feet wide, and on one wall was an ancient map of the world—which was why the office was referred to as the Sala del Mappamondo. A double row of windows looked down upon the square below, and the tall center window opened onto a balcony from which Mussolini liked to make speeches. He was seated at his desk in the far corner of the room as the delegation arrived, and with a smile he quickly rose to greet them.

He wore a gray double-breasted silk suit—he was two years away from adopting military uniform as standard dress—and his hair was shaved off in preference to allowing his receding hairline to make further inroads across his crown. Escorting the group was a Fascist minister named Giuseppe Bottai, a onetime journalist. After saluting Mussolini, who briefly welcomed the group in the name of Fascism and the king, Bottai nodded in the direction of the group’s leader, summoning him forward to say a few words.

The latter wore a gabardine suit with a striped white vest, and pointed tan shoes with spats, and carried a pearl-handled walking stick. Short as he was, barely five feet, six inches, he was nonetheless an imposing figure even in the exalted company of the dictator of Italy; and he looked directly into Mussolini’s eyes as he began, in a firm voice:
“Duce, cifre volete … eccole”
—Duce, figures you want … here they are. Rapidly, he went on:

“There are a total of 2,348 members of our group in France, a group broken up into fifteen specialized categories specific to our various trades and professions, and today we in this room proudly represent all of them with the same pride that in France we bring to our work as energetic and progressive Italians. To the people of France we uphold Italy’s highest standards in craft and service, in innovation and reliability. We can be seen each day in any of three hundred ninety French towns and cities—from Marseilles in the south to Calais in the north. We are most numerous, of course, in the capital of Paris, where each of us thinks of himself as an unofficial Italian ambassador of goodwill, as an exemplar of …”

Unhesitatingly he continued, barely pausing to take a breath, and Mussolini listened with raised eyebrows, seemingly impressed with the perkiness
of his visitor. Then Mussolini turned questioningly toward his minister Bottai, who stood next to him.

“He’s a tailor from Paris,” Bottai whispered. “He has won many awards there. His name is Cristiani. Antonio Cristiani …”

38.

A
ntonio Cristiani was a happily married man of thirty-four, was thriving financially, was a frequenter of fine restaurants—and was no less hungry for success now in 1928 than he had been when he had first come to Paris as a seventeen-year-old runaway from Maida in 1911, arriving at the Gare de Lyon on a misty day that he would remember with lasting clarity.

But his impressionistic early days in Paris were eventually replaced by indistinguishable weeks and months of hard work and little time for enjoyment of the city—and then by the war. And then Joseph had come and gone.

It had been nearly eight years since Antonio had seen Joseph. His cousin had spent most of those years living alone on a small island off the shore of New Jersey. His letters indicated he was struggling as a tailor. Antonio would have welcomed his return immediately. Although he already employed half a dozen tailors, he needed another one. His business was expanding.

Antonio’s new shop was on the fashionable Rue de la Paix, near the Place de l’Opéra. The director of the Opéra was a client and friend, and Antonio was often invited to sit in the management’s box overlooking the center aisle—where nearly two decades before, as a young member of the claque, hiding his poverty under a tuxedo, Antonio used to applaud every soloist generously and without discrimination. But the applause was now coming
his
way in the form of praise from customers who patronized his shop, and from French charitable and military societies which during the postwar years became appreciative of his civic-mindedness.

He had helped raise money for the welfare of elderly citizens displaced during the war. He had worked toward the establishment of more trade schools for disabled veterans who were potentially employable as
tailors or other craftsmen. He was commended for founding a Paris-based association of former Italian servicemen currently living and working in the French nation that had once been part of their combat zone. In the postwar years, as these Italian veterans cosponsored benefits with French veterans and joined them at memorial ceremonies, they revived feelings of camaraderie that had existed between the two nations during the Great War.

In his role as an intermediary between leading French citizens and the resident Italians, Antonio had maintained connections with most of his French wartime acquaintances, some of whom had remained in the military and were now senior officers, while others had returned to civilian life to pursue careers in the government. One morning in 1928 he was visited by a friend from the French Foreign Ministry who cheerfully reported having overheard that Antonio would soon be made a chevalier in the Legion of Honor. Antonio was delighted. But weeks later his friend returned in a somber mood to say that the nomination might be overturned. Some members on the selection committee apparently resented the fact that Antonio, having first come to Paris in 1911, had never applied for French citizenship.

“But that’s not fair,” Antonio said. “The Legion of Honor is often given to citizens of other nations. And besides, when you and I were in battalions fighting side by side at Verdun, and later along the Marne, nobody in France was complaining about my Italian citizenship. And even more to the point: If I revoked my Italian citizenship, I’d be a bad Italian. Would a bad Italian make a good Frenchman?”

His friend said he would try to get this message through to the committee. A year and a half later, in 1930, Antonio was named a chevalier in the Legion of Honor. But he stayed on in Paris as a citizen of Italy; and this would continue to be his policy even though Paris would remain his primary residence throughout his lifetime, and be the locale of such added laurels as the Legion of Honor’s third highest rank of commander.