Corelli's Mandolin by Louis De Bernieres

Author:Louis De Bernieres [Bernieres, Louis De]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780307518217
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2012-10-10T04:00:00+00:00

35 A Pamphlet Distributed on the Island, Entitled with the Fascist Slogan ‘Believe, Fight, and Obey’

Italians! Let us celebrate together the life and achievements of Benito Andrea Amilcare Mussolini, Who from unpromising beginnings has led us to perdition.

In His infancy He was thought to be dumb, but later proved to be incorrigibly garrulous and more full of wind than all the herds of cows that browse the pastures of the Alps. As a boy He blinded captive birds with pins, plucked the feathers of chickens, was deemed uncontrollable, and pinched little girls in school in order to make them cry. He led gangs, started fights, sought quarrels without provocation, and refused to pay up on bets that He lost. At the age of ten He stabbed a boy at supper, and then stabbed someone else shortly after. He let it be known that He was at the top of His class, when He was not, and at the onset of puberty took to visiting the brothel at Farti on Sundays. Amid what clouds of glory did He therefore begin his life!

He committed a rape against a virgin in a stairwell, and when she wept for her honour He reproached her for mounting an insufficient resistance. Misanthropic and eremitic, He was scruffy, ill-mannered, unemployable, and only went out after dark. How splendidly did He continue to develop His talents!

As a schoolteacher He was known as ‘the tyrant’ but could not control His classes. He took to alcohol and cards, undertook an adulterous affair with the wife of a soldier who was away on duty, stabbed her, and acquired a knuckleduster. In order to escape from His debtors, His affairs, and military service, He fled to Switzerland, where He declined to work. Instead He began to beg with menaces, and upon being arrested as a vagabond, protested to the police that He hated other tramps, and therefore could not be one of them. In this He displayed the gift for reasoned oratory which has since become so well known to us.

He went to work for a wine merchant, but was sacked for drinking all the stock. His official version of this story is that He was at the time having meetings with Lenin, who professed the profoundest admiration of His qualities. In 1904 He began to encourage Italian soldiers to desert the Army, which was entirely consistent with His later demand (with which all of us are presently familiar), that all deserters must be shot.

He moved to Paris, where He earned a living by telling fortunes. He affected an interest in philosophy, and has more recently disclosed that He studied at Geneva and Zürich Universities. This is of course true, even though there is no record of His attendance or enrolment. It is also true that He did not abandon his mother to a death in penury, or His father to imprisonment. As we all know, the DUCE believes His own propaganda, and so, therefore, do we.

He took another teaching post and was sacked after one year for holding riotous parties in cemeteries.

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