Mila 18 - Leon Uris [80]
He remembered being displayed by Flora, led into the parlor where she held court, listening to the “ohs” and “ahs” from the waxen-faced people posed about the room. Momma would tussle his hair. Momma would squeeze him. He hated that, because she was always nervous when he was around and her fingernails always dug into his flesh.
But summer! That was different! In summer he would get on a big ship with his current “Nana” and cross the ocean to Italy and Poppa. He traveled with Poppa in the red Ferrari, and they went to museums and the opera and to the Riviera. He loved his father deeply. He did not think he loved his mother. He cried and Poppa cried when summer was over and he had to return to America to school. Flora took Alphonse’s pleas to keep the boy as a personal vendetta against her “motherliness.”
And so Chris was kept in America nine months of the year. A veteran Atlantic traveler by the age of twelve, he was also an habitué of fashionable schools with names that all sounded like either Exeter or Briarwood.
He was a very quiet boy and a determined student. His true character was formed by teachers who taught in a day when political liberalism, sense of social conscience, and ideals were not frowned upon. He loved Poppa more than anyone in the world—but somehow, Italy was always a playland.
He read Lincoln and Paine and Jefferson. He completely identified himself as an American. He did not like the way the rich people treated poor people in Italy.
The American dream—the American ideal—became the guidepost in his life.
When he was old enough, Chris overlooked Poppa’s weakness for women, and often a new mistress formed a threesome on their travels in the summer. And as he grew older he began to see his father’s human frailties. Poppa was vain. Poppa was a snob. Poppa was unmoved by the poverty in Naples. Poppa guarded the iniquities of the class system.
Poppa was a Fascist.
Chris did not know what it meant at first, but each year it came more and more into focus and it rubbed against the grain of his American education.
Poppa would get a little drunk and talk about Benito Mussolini returning them to the glory of ancient Rome. Chris knew Mussolini—a pompous ass—but he never said anything to his father about that. The Italian people were warm and kind and they liked to sing and eat and drink and strut and believe they were great lovers. Years of privation as a second-rate power had allowed evil men to perpetrate the hoax of fascism upon them.
Chris was seventeen. At the end of the summer he would return to America and begin college.
Poppa was particularly perplexed. “I was hoping that your mother would let you study here. She promises her usual scandal if you don’t return.”
Chris said nothing. He wanted very much to return to America to study.
“I think it is time you and I had a long and serious talk about many things. Although an American education will be satisfactory, it is not really what I hoped for you. Where are you planning to go?”
“Columbia University in New York City.”
“Hmmm. I trust they have a good college in business administration and law. For the next four years you should be preparing yourself to take over our estates. I have only done a so-so job. I count on you to make the De Monti fortunes what they were when your grandfather was alive.”
“Poppa, you don’t understand. I am going to Columbia because of their school of journalism.”
“Journalism? But what good will journalism do you in running the De Monti estate?”
“Journalism is one of the greatest ways to translate your ideals. It is a way to bring truth to the world.”
“What kind of nonsense is this? You are my son. You will take over my duties just as I took them over from my father and his father before him. And while you are about it you will join the Young Student Fascist League in your college. It is important you begin to identify yourself as a good Italian boy.”
“But I don’t believe in fascism.”
Alphonse de Monti shrieked. He ranted angrily at Flora for what she had done to the boy