Book of Obituaries

by Ann Wroe

  The way of life I and my friends had chosen was but a means to attain social advancement and respectability. We didn’t consider ourselves criminals.

  In his campaign of denial Mr Bonanno relied on what he called “my tradition”, a phrase often used by the mafiosi. He denied that he had dealt in drugs because “my tradition” outlawed them. He had nothing to do with prostitution because it was against “my honour”. And so on. He sued the publishers of a paperback edition of A Man of Honor for depicting him on the cover as “a cheap gangster”.

  Pressed for a description of himself Mr Bonanno offered “venture capitalist”: indeed, much money from his criminal activities was used to set up orthodox businesses such as hotels. He called his group of gangs “the commission” and he was “chairman”. In another flight of fancyhe said his work was like running a state. He had to maintain internal order and to conduct diplomatic relations with other leaders. Despite the self-flattery, there was an element of truth in it. Mr Bonanno was a dictator with absolute power over his subjects. Japan’s tolerated gangsters, the Yakuza, have been compared to the Bonanno empire. But they have never gained the same sort of immunity, perhaps because Japan is a more rigid society.

  The Mafia remains a sore in Italy. It has corrupted sections of Italian politics. Judges and priests, among others, brave enough to stand up to it have been murdered. That, however, is not how the Mafia has often been portrayed in books and films about its American branch. The most famous is Mario Puzo’s romantic novel The Godfather, said to have been based on Mr Bonanno. Unlike its characters, real mafiosi are just as likely to be podgy and their women plain, and to have never uttered a witticism in their lives. The Sopranos, an American television series, continues the theme of fictional mafiosi.

  Joseph Bonanno may have been the first Mafia godfather to die naturally. But he did not feel that he had been well treated by America. He said he resented being “hounded” by the FBI. Newspapers and television had been disrespectful. It was hurtful to be known as “Joe Bananas”. Despite his dedicated work as chairman of the “commission”, he had once had to disappear for two years for fear of ending up in a double coffin. Unlike other fathers he had been unable to enjoy watching his three children growing up in a quiet rural suburbia. He had had a precarious life. The heart bleeds.

  Habib Bourguiba

  Habib Ben Ali Bourguiba, successor to Hannibal, died on April 6th 2000, aged 96

  At his palace in Tunis Habib Bourguiba liked to show visitors portraits of four men from North Africa he most admired. They were Hannibal, perhaps the greatest of military commanders, St Augustine, who was born in what is now Algeria, Jugurtha, a king who stood up to the Romans, and Ibn Khaldun, who changed the way of writing history. Above these portraits was a larger one, of Mr Bourguiba. Modesty was never his problem. And, indeed, if you put aside the more absurd, and nasty, aspects of his life, there remained great accomplishments. He may not be remembered as a saint, or even as “the mighty warrior” described in the Tunisian constitution, but he did things that were, in their own way, remarkable.

  Soon after he had won independence from France, he abolished polygamy, legalised abortion, allowed women to contract their own marriages, sue for divorce, and marry non-Muslims, a liberation of women that today remains unmatched in the Arab world. Within a decade of independence, two thirds of Tunisians were literate, up from a third in colonial times. He created a modern, largely secular state, which attracted investors.

  Tunisia remained formally Islamic, but with much of the dogma dumped. Mr Bourguiba sought to end fasting during Ramadan. His ransacking of religious trusts had echoes of Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries. Tunisia was the only Arab state without a minister for Islamic affairs. He was anti-colonial, but, he insisted, not anti-western; time has made his foreign policies look visionary. He advocated recognition of Israel at a time when most Arab nations still sought its extinction. Tunisia boycotted the Arab League. Yet, seemingly charitably, he gave Yasser Arafat and his Palestinians sanctuary when they were driven from Lebanon in 1982 and looked a spent force.

  Habib Bourguiba was a French-trained lawyer. Back in the 1930s he first became prominent in independence politics. The French knew a troublemaker when they saw one and Mr Bourguiba spent some 12 years in French jails, in the Sahara and on the Brittany island of Groix. Nevertheless, he said he admired the French, even while fighting them. During the second world war, when most Tunisian nationalists supported the German−Italian axis, Mr Bourguiba declined to reject the French, even when in 1942 the Germans let him out of his French prison. By then America had entered the war and the Germans were faltering in Russia. It looked likely that the French would be the future negotiators.

  In 1956 Tunisia was granted independence, with the Bey of Tunis as head of state and Mr Bourguiba as his prime minister. But Mr Bourguiba, who styled himself as the first independent leader of his country since Hannibal, was disinclined to share power. One year after independence he abolished the monarchy and became president. His Tunisia was a one-party state. Opponents were cruelly swept aside. Rival independence leaders were either hounded into exile or humiliated in show trials. Mr Bourguiba spat in public at ministers he sought to discipline. In 1961, Tunisian agents

  murdered a former comrade of Mr Bourguiba, Salah Ben Youssef, in Frankfurt.

  Statues began popping up. His birthday, August 3rd, became Tunisia’s national day. Streets were named after him. He had a mausoleum built of white marble and decorated with gold leaf. In 1975 he had parliament declare him president for life. Some people thought he was losing his mind. Tunisians were astonished when he said on television that he had only one testicle.

  This fascinating disclosure was naturally much discussed by Tunisians. The mighty warrior had one son, by his first wife, Mathilde Lorrain, but other women were also important in his life. In 1961 he divorced Mathilde, after she had imbued him with her ideas of equality for women, apparently because Tunisians considered that a true patriot would not have a French spouse. His second wife, Wassila Ben Ammar, became a power behind the throne. Officials said she bugged cabinet meetings, and decided who should be a minister. For the first time in the Arab world, a photo of the first lady began to appear alongside that of her husband. Mr Bourguiba divorced her in 1986, and he was looked after by his niece, Saida Sassi.But by then Tunis’s Camelot was unravelling. The judiciary, the press, the trade unions, which had all tasted freedom in the early years of the republic, had been shackled. Bread-riots were becoming frequent. Crushing Islamists was becoming an obsession. Mr Bourguiba was demanding mass executions after bombings in the tourist resorts of Sousse and Monastir.

  In the end, Mr Bourguiba was better treated than he had treated his rivals. The coup was medical: on November 6th 1987, the prime minister, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, gathered a council of seven doctors who pronounced Mr Bourguiba senile and incompetent. For the next 13 years until his death he was under house arrest, his visitors mainly restricted to relations. If he sought a change of scenery he could visit his mausoleum, with the words engraved on the door, “Liberator of women, builder of modern Tunisia”.

  Donald Bradman

  Sir Donald George Bradman, the greatest batsman, died on February 25th 2001, aged 92

  Looking at a picture of Donald Bradman in his heyday, perhaps the first thing you notice is that he is not wearing the armour that makes cricketers these days resemble Hannibal Lecter. Cricket seemed less brutal then; it still retained some of its flavour of a summer’s game “invented by the English to give themselves some concept of eternity”, as an anonymous wit put it. Would Sir Donald, as he subsequently became, have done so well in modern conditions, creating records that are unlikely ever to be beaten? No one knows, and to take sides can lead to a bar-room quarrel. But it is reasonable to say, under the journalist’s protection of fair comment, that he would have had a tougher time of it, as indeed he did during the great bodyline bowling epic.

  Cricket historians
tend to hasten over this episode as being unworthy of the game. But it has persisted in public memory, if only because it is a drama easy to understand without needing to know the more arcane aspects of the game. Here was young Bradman, aged 24 and already a batting phenomenon feared wherever cricket was played, which in those days was at least all of the British empire. He was the weapon with which Australia looked forward to crushing the English team on its visit in 1932–33.

  The English captain, Douglas Jardine, though, was equally determined to humiliate the Australians. Whether he called them “the convicts” has never been confirmed. It would have been in character. As the Australians sneeringly observed, he was a toff. Jardine decided to use a tactic called “leg theory”. Despite its fancy name, in essence this amounted to sending down a very fast ball aimed at the batsman. Trying to avoid the missile, the batsman would fumble and deliver a catch to a nearby fielder.

  The Australians were dismayed as their stars hobbled off the ground wounded. Even their Don was hit. Worse, he wasn’t getting the huge scores he was used to. One time he managed only 13 runs against the English bowling tornado Harold Larwood. The dispute became political. Words were exchanged between the British and Australian cabinets. Eventually things calmed down. Bodyline bowling, it was seriously agreed, was not cricket.

  Less serious people said it had been jolly exciting and welcomed home the victorious Jardine. But new rules ended bodyline. Jardine and Larwood were sacrificed from the English team. Donald Bradman resumed getting impossible scores. Australia won the next six encounters with England. A kind of awe developed around this self-taught batsman from the Australian outback whose very presence on the field depressed England’s finest. Stories of his prowess reached the United States, which also has its favourite bat-and-ball game. An impressed observer on the New York Times wrote, “He simply keeps hitting and running until some sensible person in the stands suggests a spot of tea.”

  His more adulatory fans have suggested that not only was Sir Donald the greatest of cricketers but perhaps the greatest of all sportsmen, a claim that might be disputed by admirers of Pelé and Joe DiMaggio. It is said his exploits may have cheered up

  Australia in the 1930s, when the country was badly hit by the Great Depression. No one wanted its raw materials, and about a quarter of the workforce was jobless. But did families feel less hungry when word came over the radio that their hero had hit another couple of centuries?

  Some who lived then have said this happened, and Sir Donald’s beatification as an inspirational force in time of trouble has been much paraded since his death this week. “Australia’s Churchill,” declared a normally sober cricketing writer. John Howard, the Australian prime minister, simply thanked God for him and ordered a state memorial service. Sir Donald was Mr Howard’s perfect Australian, anti-republican, admirer of royalty and politically a conservative. In every wayexcept his mastery of the bat he seems to have been a fairly ordinary chap. As athletes do, he slowed down while quite young. In 1948, when he was 40, he was dismissed without scoring in his last game against England.

  Sir Donald prospered as a stockbroker and for many years helped to select Australia’s cricket team. He saw cricket developing into the gladiatorial game it is now, with fast bowlers challenging the restrictions brought in to end bodyline. Batsmen, in turn, were seeking more reliable protection than the rulebook. As well as leg pads and gloves, a player these days will wear a helmet with face guard, thigh pad and protection for chest, arms and abdomen. Running at all requires a special effort.

  The game that in the 18th century had featured underarm bowling by players in lace shirts and knickerbockers has sought to keep its audience interested. As bowlers get ever faster, padded suits and strengthened helmets could make cricketers look like American footballers. Players may be wired up to get advice from their trainers. Cricket may move indoors to avoid the weather. Whether Sir Donald would have coped will be argued. The luxury of being remembered is his reward for being the best of his time.

  Robert Brooks and Mickey Spillane

  Robert Brooks and Mickey Spillane, suppliers of fantasies to American males, died on July 16th and July 17th 2006, aged 69 and 88

  ON DAYS like this, the weather sat over Manhattan like a lid on a boiler. But the cab was cool. Mike Hammer jumped in, directed the driver to Midtown, and watched the city slide by.

  He had heard of Mickey Spillane’s death on the TV news as he took a shower. Sad, and hard to believe. Only weeks ago he had seen him in some fishing village in South Carolina, still looking like a street brawler from Elizabeth, New Jersey. Hammer could hear his voice now, a snarl of contempt for the writers who thought his books were repulsive and illiterate. What the hell, they sold. He was maybe the most popular fiction writer ever. A literary type once complained to him that seven of his books were among the ten top sellers of all time. “Lucky I only wrote seven books,” growled Mr Spillane.

  Good answer.

  As the taxi revved and accelerated, Mike Hammer fingered the gun under his jacket. But the streets were quiet.

  He and Spillane went back a long way, ever since Spillane had started banging out his adventures on the trusty Smith Corona. That was 1946, with “I, the Jury”. Two dozen more had followed. The formula was no secret. Plenty of violence – guns, fistfights, gougings, torture, select amputations. Communist villains, just right for the 1950s. Oodles of sexual titillation, with luscious girls instinctively undressing as soon as Hammer appeared. So much sex and so much violence had never been seen before. Hammer was a private dick without hang-ups, as calm and laconically witty when staring down the barrel of a .45 as when urging a female DA to tie up her bathrobe. Every red-blooded American male could identify with him.

  “Damn right,” thought Mike Hammer.

  Only an hour ago he had been tied to a chair, blood on his face, while some gonzo had forced a sodium pentothal injection into his resisting arm. Now he was on his way to meet a man who had information. He was taking no chances. They were meeting at a joint called Hooters, on the fairly good side of town. “Delightfully Tacky, Yet Unrefined”, the billboard said. He could deal with that. And if things got hot, there were no rules of engagement for private cops like him.

  The place was alive with frat boys. Bleached wood lined the walls, with college pennants. The Christmas lights were on, though it was July. And everywhere strolled the most amazing girls, with cantilevered breasts beneath their T-shirts and orange hot-pants as tight as dammit. They wore cowboy hats, wide smiles and tans that evidently went all over.

  He found a table and, to calm himself down, read the promotional literature. The whole Hooters idea, he learned, had been an adolescent fantasy in which six men in 1983 had tried to recreate in Clearwater, Florida, the dream restaurants of their youth. The money ran out, and Robert Brooks had rescued them. Without him, this Paradise would never have reached New York.

  Mr Brooks had been a self-made man, raised on a hardscrabble tobacco farm in South Carolina. He had stacked up his fortune in the food business in Atlanta. After he took Hooters over, in the

  mid-1980s, the company boomed: 435 restaurants, soaring profits (of which Mr Brooks gave much to charity), a casino, a pro golf tour, a NASCAR racing series, an airline. Hell, thought Mike Hammer, he could have flown back to Newark on Hooters Air, with two beautiful Hooters girls attending to make sure his seatbelt was securely fastened. A crying shame it had stopped commercial flights after three years.

  A man sat down at his table, cradling a beer. “Quite a place,” he said.

  “Damn right.”

  “You know Brooks was a Methodist? Didn’t know what ‘Hooters’ meant?”

  “You don’t say.”

  “Used to bring ministers to his restaurants, to show them how wholesome it was. And how you could never go wrong with good food, cold beer and pretty girls.”

  Wholesomely, a waitress approached him. Her orange crotch was on a level with his chin, and her legs went on and on. “What�
��ll you have?” she asked him.

  “Anything you’ve got, honey.”

  The menu offered a Gourmet Chicken Wing Dinner: 20 wings and a bottle of Dom Perignon. Or an Oyster Roast: “Shuckat your own risk”. He ordered the Chicken Wing Dinner with secret sauce.

  “Breaded or naked?”

  He liked this place.

  When his beer came, in a cold, wet pitcher, he and his mystery companion drank a toast to Bob Brooks. All around them, happy jocks were doing the same. Mike Hammer smiled. Only yesterday he had kicked in a door at the top of a dark staircase, knocked an attacker to the floor, kicked him in the stomach, crunched his teeth one by one and then allowed a beautiful brunette, naked under an evening gown, to leave unmolested by the fire escape. Now he could almost forget that he was still on the job.

  But he did not forget. As he left he slid into his newspaper a Hooters menu, damp but intact. Inside it, courtesy of his mystery companion, lay the recipe for the secret sauce. Adjusting his rod under his ice-cool armpit, he made for the door.

  Rosemary Brown

  Rosemary Isabel Brown, a musical psychic, died on November 16th 2001, aged 85

  Writers about Rosemary Brown have tended to be cautious over her accomplishments. She claimed to have been in touch with Beethoven, Liszt, Chopin and some 20 other composers who had employed her as their contact on earth to receive their latest compositions.

  Many people profess to be psychic, and some make great claims for their discipline. A debate is currently being conducted on the internet about whether globalisation is being driven by “psychic energy”. But such matters, however intriguing, do not usually occupy the public stage. The psychic world tends to be a private one. What is particularly interesting about Mrs Brown is that she suddenly became famous in her native Britain and in the United States.