Great Apennine Saloons: Drinks With Mussolini
Farrell, Nicholas
~ REAT APE N N I N E SALOON', by Nicholas Farrell Drinks With Mussolini Benito's birthplace is the home of black red wine. Preda##io, Italy K een to start offon the right note, I said to the...
...My remark about her Mussolini eyes had the desired effect...
...She means "very, very black," not like a black man, but like a blackshirt...
...N o matter how much fun Fascists may be, you cannot forget what Fascism did in the past, can you...
...Not being a Fascist myself, I cannot bring myself to do the Roman salute back at them...
...But mostly, I make no sign at all...
...A short walk along the dirt path led to more houses, sitting on stilts and open to rain, animals, and mosquitoes...
...What is more, the owner of the house I rent is unhappy at the messy state it is in and when 1 asked Giusi if she would come and clean my house, she agreed...
...They cheer when I finish...
...Didn't they hold Communism at bay in Europe and establish the welfare state...
...Didn't they invent the phrase so beloved of President Clinton, of all peop l e - the Third Way...
...Afro, a local peach farmer, is brilliant at it...
...Dense, green jungle covered the hills that marched endlessly beyond...
...Human Rights Watch 72 Jwly/August 2ooo " TheAmerican Spectator...
...Often these Fascists greet me with the Roman salute followed by the Fascist equivalent of the Nazi "Sieg Heil"--"A Noi...
...The local slang Italian word for "to make love" is trombare--to trumpet--as in, did you trumpet...
...SLORC, which has since transmuted into the less-sinister sounding SPDC, annulled the election, put Suu Kyi under house arrest, and arrested many of her followers...
...Quite apart from all that, I have an excuse of sorts, like a journalist caught doing fly-on-the-wallresearch in a club with a lap-dancer wrapped around him: I am here to write a biography of Mussolini...
...It's Him...
...Like thousands of other ethnic Karen in Burma, they had been displaced by the Burmese military--the dictatorship styling itself the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC...
...Still, it was something in which CFI head Jim Jacobson-whose cargo pants, print shirt, floppy hat, and running shoes seemed more appropriate to Washington...
...Nor does Giusi-the girl with Mussolini eyes...
...What puzzles me with all these Fascists about is how it is that the local council has been controlled since the war by the Communists and their various post-Cold War, post-Communist permutations...
...The bar is run by two attractive women in their thirties, Marina and Rosaria, who are unmarried and live together...
...how shaky it feels the democracy founded on the ashes of Fascism to be...
...Is it true...
...He has dense, black shoulder-length hair-which, it is whispered, is dyed-- and a hairy chest on which numerous pieces of gold jewelry bounce about...
...One is a primary school teacher, the other a university psychology student...
...The bar has it on tap at the equivalent of 75 cents a half pint...
...Now the turret is the nesting place for eagles...
...But if me and Giusi, the girl with Mussolini eyes, ever get round to a spot of trumpeting, I know who will cast the first stone, cN i/Ill D lIll::llUll_m LII It] l! [~ 7~ I~ I~ [4hi by Doug Bandow A Forgotten War The Karen are in Burma, not Kosovo, and thus unknown...
...In the mountainous countryside there are wild boar, hares, porcupines, and even the odd wolf...
...I n Mussolini's day, a lighthouse on top oft_he tall, thin turret of the castle sent out a red, green, and white beam of light 2 5 miles into the countryside in the colors of the Italian flag...
...Just kidding," I say...
...I cannot tell...
...Sometimes, thinking about such remarks, I really think I am losing touch with reali...
...Rosaria, who has tattoos on her forearms, winks at me a lot...
...He propels the women round the narrow spaces between the old wooden tables as if at the wheel of an expensive sports car...
...Every Tuesday Giaeomo belts out the same old songs--not his own--with much thrusting all over the place of his tight white pelvis, drooping of his microphone left, right, and center, and sweat pouring from his brow...
...Mass protests for democracy in 1988 led to creation of the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), which crushed dissent with martial law backed by bullets...
...They tour alone...
...SLORC foolishly called elections a decade ago and Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy won more than 8o percent of the votes...
...So everyone says they are lesbian...
...His father was the village blacksmith, a revolutionary socialist, and his mother, the village school teacher, a devout Catholic...
...But later that night she caught me talking to another woman and she came up and whacked me hard on the head...
...And once, he himself tells me, the entire two front rows of women at a big concert of his somewhere in the south lifted their skirts in unison just for him...
...I already knew that Giusi, like many of the 5,ooo odd inhabitants of Predappio, is a Fascist...
...I see this as a sign of how shaky Italy feels about its relationship with its past...
...I had known which button to press...
...Often, I wonder ifI should be spending so much time in the company of such people...
...Freedom Hospital Number One, as it was called by Christian Freedom International (GFI), a relief group based in Front Royal, Virginia, looked anything but...
...The eyes in question opened even wider...
...I ask...
...Ah, those were the days...
...Like most of the men present, many of whom are old with gnarled farm laborer's hands and missing teeth, I watch with a smile on my face to conceal my envy...
...The Italians in my neck of the woods, like all Italians, are deeply superstitious, as was Mussolini himself...
...Giacomo was quite famous once, they tell me...
...There is just the bar and the castle...
...Neither the castle nor any other building with Mussolini connections is open to the public, though last summer the postCommunist town council reluctantly agreed to open the peasant house he was born is to visitors.(Precisely when it is open remains a mystery to most of us...
...There was also a small clinic, constructed with American aid...
...This, I thought, was a good sign...
...Unlike the tourism of the Holocaust, the tourism of Fascism is not encouraged...
...The Cato Institute and a former special assis- clinic served children suffering from porchrant to President Reagan...
...I am nerissima," she says proudly...
...He wears a tight leather jacket with tassels, tight stretchy semi-see-through trousers (which fail to conceal the thong he wears underneath...
...One of these is to combat the evil eye...
...He has three versions of these: red, white, and black...
...Every time he sees me talking to her I see him in the background slicing his neck with the forefinger of his right hand-his knife hand no doubt- chewing away and grinning...
...Law Thi Hta, Burma I t wasn't much by Western standards: a clearing in the dense foliage with a half dozen wood and bamboo buildings, covered by thatched roofs...
...But this is the village of Predappio, in the Romagua, a twohour drive south from Bolo~a or east from Florence, where the Fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, was born and is buried...
...Enthused Jacobson, "If the hospital lasts through the dry season, we'll build it up...
...Her name was Guisi which rhymes, not with juicy, as it would in English, but with Uzi, as in Uzi submachine gun...
...Because he couldn't afford the gas bill...
...Female admirers, such as Sir Winston Churchill's wife, Clementine, always mentioned his eyes when asked to explain the fascination oflI Duce...
...E Luif" ("It's Him...
...On winter nights the fairy lights around the entrance to the bar remind me of a safe haven in a land of evil...
...So Predappio is both Fascist Bethlehem and Fascist Golgotha...
...tially deadly diarrhea, adults with typhoid, and anyone who stepped on a landmine...
...Why did Hitler commit suicide...
...The castle--a gift to II Duce from the people of his native Romagna soon after he had come to power in the near bloodless coup of 1922- is perched 18 hairpin bends up above the village where the great plains of Northern Italy end and the Apennine mountains, which run the length of most of Italy, start...
...For all his sins Mussolini did not NICHOLAS FARRELL is an English writer living in PredaDpio , Italy...
...Marina, who has hair on her forearms, tells me not to shave and says: '3Zou're not exactly Brad Pitt, Nicola...
...But in winter it is a lonely, eerie place...
...I am looking forward to Giusi coming to my house with her mop and bucket...
...There is just the bar and the castle...
...Imagine, for example, saying to a German woman, any woman for that matter: "You have the eyes of Hitler...
...Nowadays he plays the bars for $75 a night and a bowl of pasta--like this one...
...The}, are a great bunch of people-not at all what you would imagine a Fascist to be like...
...They never speak, these t w o - not even when his act finally draws to a close at about 2 a.m...
...Inside, it was a different story as this Latin lover version of Elvis Presley belted out his most unnightingale-like repertoire...
...More than too,ooo Karen now live in refugee camps in Thailand, many just across the narrow Moi river...
...And Mussolini was nowhere near as bad as Hitler...
...Burma, now officially Myanmar, is an international tragedy...
...The beatings, the castor oil, the censorship, the abolition of democracy, the fatal alliance with Hitler, the war, the millions dead...
...Gone are the days of bands and orchestras...
...wind which rips tiles and television aerials offroofs...
...and he packs up his computerized orchestra and the two blondes into his big white transit van complete with curtains over the windows...
...But this was a Tuesday night in spring and the bar was packed...
...Look, Nicola, if you want to be mio ragazzo, you must do as I say...
...Giacomo--E Lui...
...Electricity- was unknown in the village and the only running water was located in the river...
...Other singers who come to the bar on other nights allow members of the audience to sing karaoke, but not Giacomo...
...I do not dance...
...She did not slap my face or walk away...
...Everyone insists on me, L'Inglese, singing, I have become reasonable at "Come on Baby Light My Fire" by the Doors...
...He is much too egotistical to give someone else the chance to steal the show...
...The bar is hardly big enough to swing a cat in, but while Giacomo sings, sporadic dancing breaks out...
...It reassures me that they are so easily ruffled...
...To us...
...And so is the weather...
...Who knows what weird and wonderful things Giacomo gets into inside his van...
...I drink the local red Sangiovese wine, rosso, which the Fascists, naturally, call nero...
...Outside, the beautiful babbling sound of the first nightingales of the year softly pierced the night...
...Yet Predappio is a place of pilgrimage nevertheless...
...E veto...
...E Luil--Gherardelli is one of thousands of singers who make a living touring the bars and restaurants of Italy...
...made a record even...
...General Ne Win seized power in 1962 and, though formally retired, remains the leading power in Rangoon...
...On such days, I return their Roman salute with the sign of the cross which, in Italy, has numerous uses...
...You look for death...
...she asked, as ifI had just unearthed a naughty little secret she had been dying to tell someone...
...goes a favorite joke...
...Maybe my luck would be in tonight...
...It's not like alcoholism at all, I say to myself...
...He is possessed by her...
...M1 this causes the women in the audience, especially the married ones, to cheer hysterically...
...He himself was a mediocre school teacher who found it difficult to control his pupils before he turned his attenlJon to controlling adults...
...The music is provided by a computer...
...Winter had had its say for another year and on Tuesdays, Giacomo--"E Lui...
...Giacomo is 48...
...Gherardelli comes to the bar to sing...
...It is also whispered that not just the color of his hair is fake but also the bulge in those tight semi-see-through trousers of his...
...M eanwhile, two young women, half his age, who travel everywhere with him, dressed in black mini-skirts and little else, dance slightly behind him staring at him as if he is a god...
...But it irritates me that I am known everywhere I go as L'Inglese not Lo Scrittore...
...But some days the guilt about spending so much time with Fascists and listening to what they have to say does get to me...
...You risk death, Inglese...
...And the weather is atrocious: dense fog, rain, mud, snow, and foul In winter it is a lonely, eerie place...
...D.C., where he used to work, than the DouG BANDOW is a senior fellow at the Burmese jungle--could take pride...
...He is 41 like me, but unlike me he is the life and soul of the The American Spectator _9 July~August 20 o o 71 party...
...makes me think these Fascists are no more dangerous than your average pussycat...
...Perhaps she is doing a thesis on this strange creature...
...Without fail he wears pointed snake-skin cowboy boots...
...the castle for jackdaws, pigeons, and assorted types of owl...
...She was flattered...
...gas Jews and to his credit, in Italian eyes, unlike the Fithrer, he was a donnaioIo, a good old-fashioned womanizer, in the great tradition of the Latin lover...
...That would make a change...
...Perhaps it is just that the Italian far right drinks more than the Italian far left...
...Does Fascism, like alcoholism, creep up on you so slowly that before you know it, it is too late...
...Wooden platforms served as beds, operations were performed on bamboo tables, and modern equipment was absent...
...The police advised me not to hang around after the concert that night for my own safety," he explained...
...The trouble is I am worried about how Sergio, a farm laborer who is constantly chewing gum and grinning, will react...
...Preda##io, Italy K een to start offon the right note, I said to the young woman with the big eyes as black as the night: "You have the eyes of Mussolini...
...And so on...
...But 243 people called Law Thi Hta home...
...Needless to say, he is very popular with the women, married or not, who inhabit these mountains...
...Fascism is not what it was and anyway Mussolini and his Fascists did much good, I continue...
...a place of pilgrimage...
...So unlike Hitler, Mussolini is a very popular guy--especially in Predappio...
...In summer, the view from up here is fantastic: on one side the mountains, on the other, the great plain stretching north to Milan and finally away to the Alps, and to the east the Adriatic coast only 3 ~ miles away...
...So ifI make the sign of the cross at them this causes them in turn to touch iron, not wood as we British do, or their 70 July~August 2000 . The American Spectator testicles...
...It makes me think no one believes I am a writer, which I have trouble believing as well...
...Surely most women would be most insulted to be described in such a way...
...The leading democratic figure is Aung San Suu Kyi, daughter of General Aung San, a leading nationalist who was assassinated shortly before Burma won its independence in 1948...
...Me and Giusi were in the UOsteria Rocca delle Caminate, the bar next to the castle which was once Mussolini's summer residence but which has been locked up and empty since the end of the Second World War-like a grand old house haunted by the evil ghost of some long dead member of the family who once did something unspeakable...
...he says...
...To write about Hell, you must, like Dante, so to speak, go to hell...
Vol. 33 • July 2000 • No. 6
