Legacy of Sorrows

by Roberto Buonaccorsi

  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.’

  As Sergio got up to leave the embarrassed Mayor said, ‘Sergio, please sit down and co-operate. This is a serious business. We have to make sure that we don’t have any fascists in our midst spreading their poisonous doctrine.’ Sergio’s face showed the anger he felt before he replied, ‘So let’s be serious then. You have brought me here to find out if I was a fascist during the war. Yes, I was for a time, but so were most of you in this room. I even remember going to a fascist rally in Lucca with you Umberto to hear Mussolini speak, and how taken you were with him. I remember that you joined the fascist party the next day.’ The Mayor shifted in his seat uncomfortably. Sergio carried on speaking, ‘I was an aide to Mussolini. Nothing more and nothing less. I was like a servant in a king’s palace and was never part of his entourage or was ever taken into his confidence. What more can I say? You may as well interrogate every soldier who served in the army, or every police officer, or every civil servant. They were as complicit as I was.’

  Silence greeted his remarks as the committee members looked at each other as if searching for inspiration. The Mayor cleared his throat before coming to his feet and saying, ‘we thank you for your attendance here today Sergio, and I think you have satisfied us all as to your role in fascism. You may leave.’ Sergio looked at the citizens committee with open disdain, ‘If I come or go, I do so of my own free will, and not at your command. We fought a war to establish that right.’

  Sergio got up and made for the door. He stopped before opening it, turned round and said, ‘One more thing before I leave. I have heard the rumours about me going around the town and I want this to be very clear to all of you here. I know nothing about secret papers or briefcases. All I can tell you about is the colour of his shoe polish, or the type of shaving soap he used.’ He turned once again and left the room.


  He worked hard to avoid being tarnished by his fascist background. He appeared to everyone in the town as being apolitical, however in his deepest self he knew he would never change. The Police had interviewed him on a few occasions over the briefcase’s disappearance, and once, even Churchill’s staff had spoken to him. The great man was on a painting holiday in Lake Garda and had sent his staff out to try to find the letters. Sergio had always denied any knowledge of its whereabouts and eventually he was left in peace.

  To Sergio the fascist ideology was deeply imbedded in his heart. It aggrieved him when he heard of Nazism and Fascism being compared as if they were identical ideologies. Yes, Hitler in the early days had been influenced by Italian fascism, but it was in Sergio’s eyes a different creed. Nazism was a racist and anti-Semitic philosophy that had openly murdered millions of innocent people in pursuit of its aim. Fascism on the other hand was a return to the glory of the old Roman state and its grandeur. It had been used by Mussolini to bring unity to a disparate people. Sergio remembered that Mussolini had often said in private that Garibaldi had made a united Italy but that he had made a united people. The symbols and salute used by fascists were Roman and Mussolini’s Blackshirts were fashioned in Cohorts, Centuries, and Legions, just like the armies of old. Jews were involved at the highest level in the party and even Mussolini’s mistress was a Jewess, proving that the Duce, in Sergio’s eyes, was not a racist or anti-Semitic.

  Mussolini had come to power as prime minister at the invitation of the King of Italy who was still head of state in Italy. Not like Hitler who had assumed all power in Germany. Mussolini had also accepted the motion of the Fascist Council of Ministers in 1943 that had voted to take his powers way from him, forcing him the next day to see the King to discuss the way ahead. The King had imprisoned him, and he remained that way until Hitler had him rescued him in a daring raid on his mountain top prison. Hitler had then set up a Republican puppet state in the North of Italy at Lake Garda with Mussolini as its titular head. It became the rallying point for Italian fascists from all over Italy; however, it proved to be the end of independent action for Mussolini. He was guarded by SS guards at his villa and not Italians, and even his domestic staff at his home was German.

  In discussions with others, Sergio always made the point that after the war there were no Italians convicted of war crimes, and that it was the Nazi’s and not the fascists who built and ran the concentration camps that had led to the Holocaust. In Sergio’s eyes, Mussolini’s biggest mistake that led to his downfall was his involvement and later subservience to Hitler.

  After the war, he never discussed his beliefs with anyone, not even his wife. He instead waited until the day Italy was not threatened by Communism and unfortunately, that day never came around during his lifetime.

  Chapter 3

  June 22nd 1965

  Angelo Corti was a thankful man, his life was in his eyes very good. He had worked hard to build this life ever since arriving from Italy in 1948 to make Scotland his home and he was content. He was 53 years old and in good health. He was a big man with a temper to match and even in his middle age, it didn’t do to cross him too often. He had a loving wife and a strong son who all worked alongside him in his Glasgow ice cream business and the future looked rosy. However, today he felt uneasy, a sense of caution overtook him as a voice from his past caught up with him.

  Angelo walked across the room to a walnut cabinet in the corner and opening one of the doors took out a bottle of grappa. He poured himself a drink and walked back to his seat. He sat down with a heavy sigh and took a sip from his glass. Memories of his past life in Italy came flooding back to his mind, events that he had forgotten about, or if truth were told, he had tried hard to forget. He closed his eyes and once again heard the charismatic voice of Mussolini holding the adoring crowd gathered below him, in his hand. He heard their response as they cried out ‘Duce, Duce, Duce’ and Mussolini standing on a balcony with his hands on his hips and sporting a jutting jaw, basking in the adulation of the crowd. He also remembered the part he played in this theatre of dreams, and how it had all started.

  Angelo was 25 years old in 1937 and had been a member of the Rome Cohort of the Blackshirts. He had travelled down from Tuscany to join them out of his devotion to the Duce himself, and he worked with great zeal to establish himself as a worthy follower of fascism. Eventually he was promoted to the Moschettieri Del Duce, Mussolini’s personal bodyguard and it was there that he met Sergio Rossi. Initially they became friendly because their home villages were only a few miles apart. Sergio in Borgo a Mozzano and he in Coreglia, but through the hot summer of 1937 they became firm friends.

  Sergio was eventually given the opportunity to be the personal aide to the Duce and understandably, his free time was at a premium; however, they still managed to meet on his day off for a glass of wine at one of the many Café’s in the area and discuss the events of the day. All through the war, they had kept in touch with each other and when Sergio invited Angelo to his wedding as his best man, he gladly accepted.

  When the war eventually finished they frequently met up with each other in Lucca and when Angelo immigrated to Scotland they kept in touch by letter, but regrettably, they never met again. Now, unexpectedly, Sergio’s wife Maria had phoned to say that he was dying of cancer and he had expressed a wish to see his old comrade again. ‘Come quickly Angelo’ said Maria, ‘He doesn’t have long.’

  He remembered Maria with fondness and thought back again to their wedding day in Rome and the arrival of Mussolini who had unexpectedly come to join the wedding celebration as an ordinary guest.

  As a sign of respect for Sergio, the Duce had come with a wedding present, a cut glass decanter with the fascist emblem near the top inlaid with gold leaf. Underneath this, also inlaid in gold leaf was an outline bust of Il Duce himself.

  Mussolini had been dressed in a white suit and spats and Angelo remembered him soaking up the adulation of the other wedding guests as they went wild with joy at the sight of him.

  Angelo took another sip of his grappa and savoured the experience as the strong liqueur slipped easily down his throat.

  He once again reflected on the life he had made for himself here in Scotland. No one knew, not even his son, that he had not only been a Blackshirt in the prestigious Rome Cohort, but had also been one of Mussolini’s personal bodyguard, a member of the Moschettieri Del Duce, the Musketeers, the elite Cohort that had taken an oath of allegiance to the Duce and had sworn to protect him with their own lives if need be. Their cap badge was a silver skull with crossed swords and they had proudly carried Mussolini’s personal standard as their own. They had distinctive black uniforms and specialised black weapons.

  He reflected that the rifle used to kill the American President Kennedy two years ago was the special Moschettieri issue 6.5mm Carcano, one of only two hundred made exclusively for them. How Kennedy’s assassin Lee Harvey Oswald’s claim to have bought this rare valuable rifle through a mail order catalogue was always beyond his understanding. What a mail order company was doing with this rare rifle on their shelves was indeed another mystery.

  If the history of his past life became general knowledge in Scotland then he was finished, his business would be ruined and his family disgraced. Memories of the war were still fresh in many people’s minds and when he was asked what his role was, he had always passed off his war years to inquisitive questioning as a farmer in the Tuscan hills who watched from a distance the passage of hostilities.

  He wondered if Sergio had ever told anyone of his own closeness to Mussolini. Angelo thought for a few minutes before deciding that even if Sergio had told his family about himself, which was unlikely, he was certain that he would never have told them anything about his closest friend without first asking his permission. Angelo also realised that Sergio was perhaps the most secretive man he had ever known and there was no one he trusted more with confidential information.. He visibly relaxed and finished off the rest of his grappa b
efore reaching for the phone to make his arrangements to visit Italy.

  The plane landed smoothly at Pisa airport and Angelo, with a smile on his face, thanked the flight staff before descending the metal stairway to the tarmac. He had never flown before and the experience was one that had felt both exhilarating and terrifying. He walked alongside the other passengers into the terminal building, towards passport control. He was thankful that he had the foresight to apply for a new passport the year before at the Italian consulate in Glasgow or he would not have been able to leave the U.K. He had thought about applying for British nationality, but he felt guilty enough at leaving Italy behind when he had immigrated without losing his Italian identity. Angelo was still in his deepest heart of hearts very Italian. He lived the lifestyle of an Italian, the food he ate was Italian, and the music he listened to was Italian.

  Even his wife Elizabeth, who was a small redhead of Scottish Irish descent, preferred the Italian way of life and the Italian culture to her own Scottish background. He had met her in Lucca at the end of the war in a military hospital where she was working as a nurse. They had struck up an immediate friendship and had started dating. Eventually they decided to get married and move to Scotland to start a new life there. At first, he worked as a hospital porter in the Glasgow Infirmary until he was offered a job by a fellow Italian who was the manager of an ice cream company. Angelo worked hard and learned his trade well. Eventually he started his own Ice cream business in the city’s east end not too far from Celtic Park football ground. The business was soon well established and Angelo took great pride in the fact that he supplied ice cream for the majority of Italian café’s that were a common sight in the city. He was also very proud that Corti’s ice cream was a byword for quality in the city.