Unto the Sons (92 page)

In this Depression era, when many of the wealthier Frenchmen were
taking their money out of the country—and when the franc, which had slipped from fifteen to twenty-one francs to the dollar, was expected to slip further, along with industrial production—Blum’s coalition of Socialists, Communists, and bourgeois Radicals had demonstrated an unprecedented tolerance for strikes and work stoppages. It had committed itself to a workers’ wage increase averaging twelve percent, and the right of collective bargaining, and it would limit the work week to forty hours, with compensation for overtime. Workers were now entitled to a two-week annual vacation with pay, and Blum’s coalition would also allow the unionization of plants that employed more than ten workers.

Antonio employed nine men in his workroom, and should he hire two more his shop could fall under the control of a union, with his employees electing a shop steward who could challenge Antonio if he wished to dismiss or reprimand a tailor for inferior craftsmanship or an insubordinate attitude. Not only did Antonio worry that this might lessen his authority over his personnel, but he feared a decline in the standards of his craft. How could he insist that his men meet his highest standards with each stitch, and strive for perfection with each suit, if they knew that he lacked the power to punish them for deviations from his instructions? The shop steward, and not Antonio, would be setting standards. And what if the shop steward supported the men’s wish to work primarily on sewing machines, which involved less time and tedium than sewing every stitch by hand—what could Antonio do? If he said no, they could impose a work stoppage or a strike, and possibly put him out of business.

Strikes and work stoppages had proliferated throughout the nation; there had been revolts against management by French metalworkers, public utility workers, fuel oil deliverers, agricultural workers, bakers, and employees of hotels and department stores, restaurants and cafés. In excess of one million Frenchmen were on strike in early June 1936, and Léon Blum’s reaction was to sympathize with their demands, to condone their forceful takeover of factories as part of the class struggle, as a step toward an egalitarian society—giving the impression that he believed publicly, even if he did not privately, that equal rights and opportunities would produce equal results. If Léon Blum was so naive as to believe this, Antonio thought, the premier might have benefitted from knowing old Domenico Talese in Maida—who believed that some of God’s creatures were incorrigibly lazy, and that the proper way to wake them up in the morning was the method he used, slashing his whip against their bedroom walls. Antonio was not
really
sure that Léon Blum was privately any more democratic than Grandfather Domenico, as he noted in his diary:

Léon Blum is a wealthy descendant of a family of silk merchants. I knew him and his brothers from the time I began making their suits at Damien’s, and later at Larsen’s. Léon Blum became the family Socialist. He liked making speeches for workers’ rights and higher pay. But in his own household I know he was tough with his servants. He worked them hard and paid them little. I remember the messenger boy who used to deliver his suits saying that Léon Blum seemed to be changing his cooks, waiters, and other servants almost every week
.

It was finally not Blum, but his Communist colleague Maurice Thorez, who managed to convince the French strikers to evacuate most of the factories they had seized during the spring and early summer of 1936, and to accept the gains the Popular Front had negotiated in return for the restoration of labor peace and the workers’ resuming their jobs. At the Bastille Day celebrations of 1936, in the second month of Blum’s premiership, Antonio watched Parisians crowd the streets singing the “Internationale” as often as the “Marseillaise,” and waving what seemed as many red flags as tricolors of the French Republic. Antonio stood among the spectators as Premier Blum acknowledged the marchers’ salutes and their signs reading
“Vive Blum!”
and
“Vive le Front Populaire!”
and for the first time he thought seriously of Communist influence in the city.

Antonio had continued to think of Paris in these terms throughout the period of the Spanish Civil War, which began four days after that Bastille Day celebration and lasted until Barcelona fell to Franco in January 1939; and while the war was conducted on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees, hundreds of miles from Paris, its ramifications surrounded Antonio daily in the French capital. There were the red-bannered recruitment booths with posters urging men to enlist in the left-wing ranks of the Spanish Loyalists; the myriad events held to raise money and collect supplies for the Loyalists’ welfare; the rallies and revived strikes protesting the French government’s continuing failure to enter the war and assist their Popular Front
confrères
in Spain against the mutinous Spanish generals and their Fascist and Nazi friends in Italy and Germany. A work stoppage among Paris bus drivers and Métro workers in 1937, along with a strike at the Goodrich tire plant, were cited as the deeds of Paris-centered Communist union leaders who felt betrayed by the queasiness of Popular Front leaders in meeting the challenge of saving Spain from right-wing militants.

Antonio and other businessmen in Paris, few of whom believed that France had anything to gain by becoming entangled in the Spanish crisis, but who kept their thoughts to themselves (Paris abounded with spies, eavesdroppers, partisans unhesitant about smashing storefront windows),
went about their duties and errands each day striving to conceal their inner feelings about the raucous speeches they heard all around them: from the left against the Fascists, from the right against the Communists, and sometimes the more squeamish voice of a centralist interrupting to ask (before being booed): Had France not shed enough blood in World War I? Should it not concentrate on defending its eastern borders, or building more tanks as de Gaulle had suggested? Loudly represented within the French right-wing rallies were middle-class Catholics who had loathed Blum from the start, and who saw the Popular Front leaders as the bastard offspring of Robespierre and those other godless revolutionaries who had tried to cut out the heart of the Church from the body of the nation; now in the 1930s these leaders had unleashed a workers’ reign of terror and an economic crisis, and had all but delivered the French nation into the arms of Soviet Russia. Given the choice of Spain’s being run by the Communists or the Fascists, the Catholics overwhelmingly favored the Fascists. Some Catholics would go even further than that, as was clear from the signs they brandished at right-wing rallies bearing the words: “Better Hitler than Blum!”

Antonio had no idea what Mussolini’s true relationship with Hitler was during 1937 and 1938, since he read conflicting opinions on the subject almost every week in the French and Italian press. But from his regular visits to the Italian embassy in Paris, together with frequent trips to Rome (where he continued to receive recognition and medals from the Italian government as an achieving emigrant), Antonio deduced that Mussolini was at most flirting with Hitler, although at times the Duce seemed to be emulating Hitler. Antonio was concerned in November 1938 when Mussolini broadcast a speech expressing the Fascists’ desire to expand the Italian empire at France’s expense into Tunisia, Corsica, and Nice. But at a reception at the Italian embassy in Paris, to mark the return of the Italian ambassador after a year’s absence, the latter privately reassured Antonio and other business leaders that Mussolini was
not
being serious, that he was just venting some of his frustrations toward the French Socialists and the Paris press for failing to give him sufficient credit for his peacekeeping role two months earlier at the Munich conference.

The Duce had been magnificent at Munich, the ambassador reminded his guests; Mussolini had convinced the Führer to settle for a small piece of mostly German-speaking Czechoslovakia in return for a vow of no further aggressions in Europe. The French representative to Munich in September, joining Hitler, Mussolini, and British prime minister Neville Chamberlain, was Edouard Daladier, a Popular Front figure
who had stepped in as premier after Blum’s second cabinet had fallen in April 1938. When Daladier returned from Munich he was greeted enthusiastically by most Frenchmen for his efforts in maintaining world peace. In his cheering section was Blum, who, ignoring Mussolini’s participation, commented: “There is not a woman and not a man to refuse Messrs. Neville Chamberlain and Edouard Daladier their rightful tribute of gratitude. War is avoided.”

Antonio was unconvinced by Blum’s optimism, and was even less convinced in the following months as Mussolini became palpably more belligerent, unnecessarily provoking anger in Paris with such observations as: “The French respect only those who have defeated them.” When Chamberlain visited Mussolini in January 1939, no doubt trying to convince the Duce that Italy could have friends other than the Germans (Hitler had visited Rome the previous spring), Antonio was in Rome with his wife, en route back to Paris after spending the Christmas holidays with Adelina’s family in Bovalino. They had decided to leave their three children under the care of Adelina’s family in southern Italy, for they were unsure that Paris would be safe for them much longer.

I must take every precaution, Antonio wrote in his diary on January 26, shortly after returning to Paris. I don’t feel right about what’s going on. I don’t trust any of these people in government. I wouldn’t trust Mussolini, Hitler, Chamberlain, Daladier, Blum, or any others. I don’t trust the crowds around them. The crowds in the streets of Rome gave Chamberlain a tremendous reception. I’m told they also did that for Hitler. I remember hearing them cheer for President Poincaré as he waved from his carriage after returning from Russia in 1914. You should never trust people when they are enthusiastic
.

In mid-March 1939, disregarding the promises made in Munich, Adolf Hitler invaded and conquered all of Czechoslovakia, while other nations protested but did nothing militarily. The Nazi army was now operating unchallenged; and Benito Mussolini, as if envious of Hitler’s success as an aggressor, sent Italian soldiers into poorly defended Albania a month later. Satisfied with this easy triumph, Mussolini in May 1939 signed a cooperation agreement with Hitler; Antonio saw this as a sign that Italy was beyond being courted by the Allies.

Soon after, Antonio left Paris for two weeks, entrusting his shop, as he always did when he went away, to his most senior tailor, and escorted Adelina back to Italy by train to rejoin their children. Despite her tearful and persistent pleading, Antonio refused to remain with them in Bovalino, and he returned to Paris alone in early June. He was not yet ready to abandon all that he had built and owned in the French capital. Paris had
seemed oddly festive all spring, crowded with tourists and well-dressed people jamming the hotel lobbies and sidewalk cafés, speaking various languages and seemingly unconcerned about the things that had long been tormenting Antonio. French and foreign journals no longer featured Czechoslovakia and Albania in the headlines; and not only had the Spanish Civil War come to an end, but the French government quickly recognized Franco’s Fascist regime and appointed as ambassador to Spain the most famous and respected general in all of France—eighty-two-year-old Philippe Pétain, the hero of Verdun. Although Antonio was lonely at night in his large apartment and did not enjoy having all his meals in restaurants and bistros, he was encouraged by the revival of trade and energy in the city, and the fact that he had just received an order to make fifty tuxedos for the Folies-Bergère.

I must stop this obsessive worrying
, he reminded himself in his diary in early July 1939, as he looked forward to closing his shop for two weeks in August and rejoining his family at the seaside home of one of his wife’s relatives along the Strait of Messina.
I must accept the fact that life goes on, that what seems so bad today may change tomorrow. Remember, nobody has declared war! All this hysteria that I’ve had might just be my overactive imagination when I’m not busy at night. But even in the sunshine of the day I see things that make me worry about the future. I see that the Fascist officers, with their black shirts and arrogant manners, have moved into the Italian Consulate. I’m not sure this is a good thing. Do they want to aggravate our relationship here with the French who want peace? I read in the Italian press that French anti-Fascist gangs are extorting money and harassing Italian businessmen here, but I know this isn’t true. The Fascists are just trying to stir up new problems between the French and Italian people, and I must contact Ciano about this and object in the name of our Federation
.

Count Galeazzo Ciano was the Italian foreign minister, and although he was only thirty-six and relatively inexperienced in international affairs, he was tremendously influential because he was the husband of Mussolini’s daughter Edda, the Duce’s favorite child. Antonio had met Ciano on a number of occasions in Paris and Rome, the first when Ciano stepped forward to greet Antonio in 1935 when the latter had received the title of Grand Officer of the Crown of Italy for his craftsmanship and civic leadership. After consulting with his fellow officers in the Italian Economic Federation in mid-July 1939, Antonio drafted a communiqué to Ciano and wired it at once:

I bring the greetings of the Italian Economic Federation of France, of which I am the president, and I also bring my personal greetings
… and would like further to offer my modest contribution to increasing the Italo–French relationship that at this moment is hindered by misunderstanding.

I have lived and worked in France for most of the last thirty years, and I feel qualified to interpret the thinking of most merchants, artisans, and industrialists toward the Italian nation … and I can assure you, for example, that it is
not
true that Italians are being harassed or discourteously treated by French officials or French citizens. The Italian people who live honestly in France and who respect, as the Duce has ordered, the laws of France, are allowed to continue to remain here as always, in the spirit of mutual understanding and respect. I hope that you share my hope that nothing is done, or falsely reported as being done, to disturb these many years of fine relations between the French and Italian people.