Legacy of Sorrows (21 page)

Sergio had never told anyone, not even his family, of his involvement with Mussolini, that he was his personal aide. They thought he was merely a Blackshirt in the Rome Cohort and they had no idea how close he was to the Duce. They knew he believed in fascism, but then, before the war, most of Italy did. His family would question him why he had returned home at this time; however, he was prepared for that. He would tell them that like many other Italians, he had become disillusioned with Mussolini and now that the war was nearing its end, he had decided to come home to be with his family and to forget that he was ever fooled by fascism.

Some other people boarded the bus, shouting at the top of their voices, ‘The partisans have just caught Mussolini. It was on the radio.' Sergio was stunned. How could this have happened, he thought. Mussolini a prisoner of the communists. His whole world had been swept away with the thought of the Duce being held a prisoner of the partisans.

‘Let's all drink to the brave comrades who caught that murdering bastard' one of them said, as he pulled a bottle of grappa from a bag at his feet. Everyone on the bus took a drink from the bottle before passing it on. When it was handed to him, Sergio took the bottle and held it to his lips without drinking from it. He fixed a smile on his face and clapped his hands in time to the singing that had started. When the other passengers sang the partisan anthem
Bella Ciao
, he joined in with them even though his heart was breaking.

‘He was dressed in a German Army overcoat;' said one of the new passengers to no one in particular. ‘A partisan brigade under Count Bellini Delle Stelle stopped a German convoy near Lake Como heading for home; they searched it for escaping Italians. They saw one soldier wearing a German overcoat with Italian red striped Generals trousers hiding in the back of a truck, and when they checked him out, they found our beloved Duce. The Germans didn't want to give him up, but they were given the choice of surrendering him at once and being allowed free passage home, or fighting their way out and perhaps dying in the attempt. They soon saw sense.' They all laughed at this before giving out another chorus of
Bella Ciao
. Sergio sat out the remainder of the journey in a stunned silence. He just couldn't comprehend an Italy, or indeed a world, without Mussolini.

After about an hour, the bus reached Borgo a Mozzano, Sergio got off, holding the briefcase close to him. He walked along the familiar streets for a few minutes before he saw in front of him the curved outline of the Devil's Bridge.

His family had told him the story of how it was built. In the eleventh century, the townspeople had tried to build the bridge themselves, but were stopped by bad weather. The Devil volunteered to finish it for them if they would give him the soul of the first person to cross it. The townspeople agreed. The next morning they sent a pig out first to cross the bridge. The Devil was thwarted and the town had their bridge.

He walked onto the narrow bridge, stood in its centre, and gazed upwards to the wooded hillside beyond to get his bearings. Over many years, the steep hillside had grown denser with vegetation and trees. He had first come here as a little boy playing with his friends and he was familiar with the area. The sun was now at its highest in the sky and the glare from it filled the surrounding countryside bringing the colours of the leaves and shrubbery all around to life.

Shielding his eyes from it he eventually saw what he was looking for, a large oak tree standing on its own just set off to the right of the bridge on the crest of the hill. Still holding the briefcase, he made his way up the hillside in the general direction of the tree. He found the steep incline testing, especially as he now felt very tired and hungry. The branches from the trees whipped against him and the thick undergrowth impeded his progress. He stopped and watched a family of rabbits scurry away to his left. How lucky they are, he thought, they don't know the whole world has gone mad. He had always enjoyed listening to the birds up here singing in the trees, but today their songs went unnoticed.

After some twenty minutes of walking, he reached the tree and sat down on the grass resting his back against it. He spent some time looking around to make sure he was alone before he opened the briefcase and reverently took out one of the tightly packaged papers.

He read the first one, a letter from Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of Great Britain to his most Gracious Excellency Benito Mussolini, Duce of the Italian Fascist Party and First Duce of the Italian Empire.

Downing Street
1st June 1940

My Dear Duce,

In continuation of my last letter to you, and after consultation with others in power, I am now in the position to offer you new lands to add to the growing Italian Empire. These lands were former colonies of the French, however with France itself now an occupied territory their ownership can be easily transferred to Italy.

I have also spoken to His Majesty King George and have some agreement with him that he would be willing to resign, as reigning Monarch in favour of the Duke of Windsor, who as we all know would be more acceptable to Herr Hitler. His majesty feels that he would be willing to abdicate if it was the catalyst needed to placate him. The Duke, who is a man of right wing views, is well known to be open to the Nazi philosophy.

All that remains to be done is for you to mediate on our behalf with Herr Hitler and to persuade him that it would not be in the best interests of our two great nations to attempt to invade our sovereign domain. Influence him to understand that the cost in men, machinery and money would be too great a price for him to pay at this time and that he should delay invasion until Germany and her allies have consolidated their present gains. This will give us the breathing space we so desperately need at this time. I also urge you Duce not to enter this conflict, but to stay neutral, as General Franco has already done, and I can assure you that in the long term it will prove to be the best policy for Italy.

Please be assured of my undying friendship.

Yours faithfully,

Winston

Sergio was amazed at what he had read. Now he understood that if these letters fell into the hands of the Communists they would never see the light of day. The Communists would try to conceal the fact that Mussolini was not the mad Dictator they made him out to be, but a great political leader who had influenced world events and was a benign influence on Hitler.

He realised that these letters were invaluable to the right and the left wing parties and could, after the war, influence the result of local and national elections. He put the letter back in the briefcase and was about to close it when he noticed a smaller bundle tied separately. He took it out and opened it. It consisted of photographs of Mussolini taken in private with various people. He recognised some of the faces: one was of the Duke of Windsor sitting with Mussolini at a dinner table in Rome. The Duke had his right arm raised in the fascist salute and a glass of wine in the other. Another photo was of Churchill, also taken in Rome. Churchill was standing alone with both his hands around a bust of Mussolini, kissing it. Another photo showed Mussolini and Churchill standing together, cigars in their left hands and their right arms raised in the fascist salute. There were probably another twenty photos in the package.

He put the photos back into the briefcase, and pulled from his overcoat a large piece of oilcloth. Hoping that this would protect the letters from the effects of the elements, he wrapped the briefcase tightly in it. He looked around at a heavy boulder sitting on the ground about three feet from the tree, and moved over beside it. Placing his feet against it and shoving a little, he moved the boulder over to reveal a hole about two feet wide and about three feet deep. He placed the briefcase in the hole, and moving over to the other side of it, repeated the process with his feet until the boulder was pushed back in place.

As a young boy, he had dug the hole and used it, as a hiding place for the special things he wanted kept secret from prying eyes. It was the perfect hiding place for the briefcase. He had added the boulder in his late teens as an extra precaution. He was certain that no one would ever find the briefcase and its contents by accident, and he had never told a living soul of this place. Sergio was the type of man who would never divulge a secret or a confidence. He had a high moral code and was known as a man who never gossiped or spread stories about others.

He sat down again with his back against the oak tree and relaxed a little. He felt exhausted and hungry. He had not eaten a proper meal all day; this coupled with the drama of the last few hours had left him feeling drained. He thought about what he had heard about Mussolini's capture. Should it be true that he had fallen into the hands of the partisans and not the Allies then he would most certainly be shot. What should he then do with the briefcase? Sergio thought for a few moments more before coming to his decision. He would keep the briefcase hidden and tell no one of its existence until he felt the time was right, just as the Duce had requested. He wearily got up, walked slowly down the hillside onto the Devil's Bridge, and stood in the centre of it gazing down onto the swiftly flowing Serchio River. He thought of the many people over the centuries that had stood in this same spot, looking down at the river, wondering how they were going to survive their particular war. Nothing has changed, he thought, only the faces. We still have our senseless wars and senseless killings, nothing changes and never will.

The next day he heard that the partisans had shot Mussolini and hung his battered body from an Esso garage hoarding in Milan. The crowd that had gathered to see the dead Duce of the Italian Empire hanging upside down like a lump of meat erupted in fury. They beat his body with anything they could get their hands on and cursed his name. They tore the clothes from his back, leaving him with only his red striped trousers on. They spat on him and his mistress. A man wearing the feathered hat of the Bersalglieri Regiment lifted a little boy up high enough so that he could urinate on Mussolini's face. One woman, who had lost her husband and three sons in the war, fired a pistol four times into his corpse, shouting at him, 'you killed all my loved ones you bastard. Here's a bullet for each one.' The crown laughed at this empty gesture.

Mussolini's mistress, Clara Petacci, and six other men who had been his high-ranking officials in the fascist government shared the same fate as him. One partisan, for the sake of modesty, tied a rope around Clara Petacci's skirt to stop it from falling around her waist.

All around Milan fascist emblems, statues and busts of Mussolini were pulled down and destroyed. Fascist flags, identity cards and literature were burned in the streets fuelling large bonfires around the town. People joined hands and danced around the flames.

The prostitutes who had serviced the German army barracks in the city were rounded up by the partisans and abused by the local women. Most of them were shot by firing squads, although some of them escaped this fate. They were spared being shot only because they had prostituted themselves to feed their children and were not considered real professionals who did it for financial gain or voluntary collaboration. These women had their heads shaved as a sign of their collusion with the enemy. The locals would spit at them and call them
puttane
as they walked past. Some of the women felt they would have been better off being shot rather than being subjected to this abuse and being ostracised by the local population.

Reprisals against the fascists, or suspected fascists gained momentum in the North of Italy. By the time the madness had subsided, it was estimated that between twenty to thirty thousand people had been murdered. The Allies did not intervene to stop the slaughter.

The next day he learned that Hitler had killed himself and that the official surrender of the German Military in Italy would take place on 2nd May 1945, signalling that the end of the war in the rest of Europe was only a matter of a few days away.

In Borgo a Mozzano the news that the Germans had surrendered and that the war had officially ended was greeted with wild jubilation. Street parties took place all over the town and lasted until the small hours of the morning. The town council, who had been ardent fascists were taken into custody, imprisoned for a while and eventually released. They were advised to leave the town and to make their home elsewhere. A new communist town council was elected very quickly and Sergio watched without comment as the fascist emblems on the walls of the town hall were removed by stonemasons using hammer and chisel. He also didn't comment as the fascist street names were changed to more seemingly patriotic ones. Before long, there was no sign in the town that there had ever been a fascist state in Italy. As be observed the transformation, Sergio was amazed at the number of communist townspeople Borgo a Mozzano apparently always had.

After the war and the resulting witch hunt for fascists, Sergio was asked to attend a meeting of the Committee for Democracy, a group of prominent citizens set up with the intention of clearing out, in a peaceful manner, any last fascists from their midst. The leader of the group was the newly elected mayor of the town, Umberto Collini who was well known to Sergio from their school days together. The meeting took place in a small room at the rear of the town hall.

Sergio entered the room and was asked to sit in a chair in the middle of the floor facing a top table of committee members. The Mayor opened the meeting by asking Sergio to state his name. Sergio laughed out aloud before saying, 'If you have brought me here to ask stupid things like my name then you can all fuck off. I went to school with most of you here, so let's be real.'