LITMIR.BIZ

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missed a night. A few days before he died, he bought a recording of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, which he listened to “with joy.”

      Mussolini declares that his son was a “fascista nato e vissuto.” That is, he was born a Fascist and lived the life of a Fascist. “All that I have done or will do,” says Mussolini, “is nothing compared with what you have done.” He says that he will one day meet Bruno in the family crypt, to sleep beside him the sleep without end. But first, victory—victory in the war. So that sacrifices of people like him will not be in vain.

      This is a highly sentimental, indeed mawkish book—operatic, hyperbolic. Whatever our judgment or taste, however, perhaps a father, even a dictator, can be forgiven his reaction to a child’s death, whatever that reaction is. The book is dedicated to little Marina. She was one and a half when her father died. At six, she would be orphaned. Gina Mussolini drowned in a boating accident on Lake Como. This was in May 1946. She was in the company of British officers—apparently friends of hers—which led to gossip. In any event, Marina was taken in and raised by the countess, Edda Ciano. Romano cites this as proof that his elder sister was not estranged from the Mussolinis. It may well be that Edda had a particular appreciation of Marina’s tragic situation.

      Romano is the next child, born in 1927—nine years after his predecessor. He was 17 when his father died. The last time he saw him, he (Romano) was playing the piano. He was picking out melodies from The Merry Widow. As it happens, Hitler loved this operetta. It may well have been his favorite work of art, surpassing even Wagner. Hitler saw it countless times. He bestowed awards on the composer, Lehár, personally. At any rate, Mussolini embraced his son and said, “Ciao, Romano. Keep playing.”

      He did, becoming a jazz pianist. For a while, he played under a pseudonym, Romano Full. But he soon discovered that his real name was a draw, not a repellent. He formed the Romano Mussolini Trio, and also the Romano Mussolini All Stars. He played with many of the greats of the day, including Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, and Dizzy Gillespie.

      He married Maria Scicolone, the sister of Sophia Loren, Italy’s most famous actress, and one of the most famous actresses of the entire century. They had two daughters. Romano writes, “I admit that I have always been a vagabond, even at the cost of being a terrible husband, or, at the least, a husband deserving of criticism.” He left Maria for an actress named Carla Puccini. They had a daughter, who bears the name of her paternal grandmother, Rachele. Later, Romano and Carla married. Maria Scicolone, long after her divorce from Romano, wrote a book called “At the Duce’s Table: Unknown Recipes and Tales from the House of Mussolini.” (As you may have gathered, the Mussolinis are a book-writing crew. For one thing, Mussolini books are big sellers in Italy.) The book is dedicated “To Donna Rachele, with a daughter’s love.”

      In the main, Romano contented himself with music, not politics or history, until his last years. Then he wrote two books. One of them is My Father il Duce. It is from this that I have been quoting. The book is affectionate, meandering, and whitewashing. Romano’s father never wanted the world war, you see, and had a secret plan to end it. “At times he seemed to live more for others than for himself,” Romano writes. More than once, he mentions the men of the Fascist Grand Council who voted against his father on that pivotal day in July 1943. Why, a Hitler or Stalin would have had them killed forthwith. See how benign Mussolini was in simply going to the king’s palace and allowing himself to be arrested?

      Romano has a point there, of course. It may be faint praise to call a man better than Hitler or Stalin. But, in the dictator business, as in other businesses, one sometimes grades on a curve. Furthermore, one can learn things from Romano Mussolini, as we have seen. He died in 2006, age 78.

      He had a younger sister, Anna Maria, the last Mussolini child. She was born in 1929. And she led what most people describe as a sad life. Anna Maria was the least “public” of the Mussolinis. As a child, she was stricken by polio, and this ailment recurred. Through treatment, Vittorio tells us, she was able to return to “semi-normality.” After the war, she worked as a radio host, using a pseudonym. When her real identity was discovered, there was a controversy, and she left, or was driven out. In 1960, she married. Her husband was Giuseppe Negri, an actor and television personality. Stage name, Nando Pucci Negri. They had two children, a daughter named Silvia and another daughter named after Anna Maria’s sister, Edda. Anna Maria died in 1968, when she was 38 years old.

      Both of her daughters ran for office, and won—not grand offices, but offices all the same. Silvia Negri was elected to the city council of Forlì, where the Mussolini family has roots. Edda Negri was elected mayor of Gemmano, not far away. Later, she ran for parliament, unsuccessfully. She said she was quite proud of her grandfather, and to be his granddaughter. He made some mistakes, she allowed, but did many good things as well. She went so far as to change her name to Mussolini—to Edda Negri Mussolini.

      A much older Mussolini grandchild, Fabrizio Ciano, ran for office, too. This was the third Count Ciano, after Costanzo and Galeazzo. He was twelve when his father was executed, thirteen when his grandfather was killed. He did not make it to parliament. In the early 1990s, he wrote a book with a hard-to-beat title: “Quando il nonno fece fucilare papà,” or, “When Grandpa Had Dad Shot.” The jacket copy explained that Fabrizio had always lived with a “heavy burden”—a statement pretty much impossible to deny.

      When it comes to politics or ideology, all of the Mussolini grandchildren have been “neo-Fascists,” evidently. And it’s sometimes hard to tell the “neo” from the old-fashioned variety.

      Vittorio’s son, Guido, ran for office: He ran for parliament, and for mayor of Rome. He got very few votes in both endeavors. Running for mayor, he said, “We draw inspiration from Mussolini’s principles, but we look to the future.” In his view, “Mussolini’s ideas were 99 percent good, and 1 percent maybe questionable.” After his defeat, he made it clear that his name was not to blame. On the contrary, the Mussolini name “worked in my favor. The Fascists love you, while the others, who aren’t Fascist, have to respect you. It has been a beautiful experience.”

      He led a bid to have Mussolini’s body exhumed and his death “definitively” investigated. (That was Guido’s word, “definitively.”) He did not succeed in this bid. He said, “I’m not looking for anything—not for revenge, not for money, not for anything else. I just want someone to tell me the first name and last name of the person who killed him in such an ignoble way, when they were supposed to hand him over alive to the Americans. Before I die, I want to know whom I must curse.”

      The real politician in the family—after the dictator, of course—is Alessandra: a daughter of Romano and his first wife, Maria Scicolone; a niece of Sophia Loren. Today, she is a member of the European Parliament, and she has been a member of both houses of the Italian parliament: the chamber of deputies and the senate. Mouthy, outrageous, she is one of the most colorful politicians in a country known for colorful politics. Alessandra Mussolini is the Pasionaria of neo-Fascism. And that is the name she uses: not Pasionaria but Mussolini, though she has long been married to a man named Floriani.

      Earlier in her career, she was an actress, singer, and model. She appeared on the cover of Playboy (European editions): “The grit of Grandpa Benito, the sex appeal of Aunt Sophia Loren.” Among the movies in which she appeared was The Assisi Underground, about a priest who rescued Jews during the war. At first, she was cast as one of the Jews. But this caused an uproar—so she was recast as a nun, Sister Beata.

      It was in 1992 that she was first elected to her national parliament. She was 29. Her mother warned her that politics was serious and hard work. She replied that it would be less difficult than her prior work: In the entertainment world, “they don’t care if you’re a good or talented actress, all they want is to see your legs and your breasts. In politics, at least I can say something important and people will believe me.” During her campaign, she defended her grandfather, in various ways. For instance, he was “very modern, one of the first ecologically minded politicians.” Mussolini did not even want “a real tree at Christmas, because it hurt him so much to chop it down.” When she won, she described the victory as “an act of love for my grandfather.”

      While a new parliamentarian,

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