Split by Bremer Alida

Author:Bremer, Alida
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Amazon Crossing
Published: 2024-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

18

That evening, Salvatore Torchio ventured a glance in the mirror. He had gotten fat. A double chin quivered beneath this face, and his stomach could no longer be concealed under his shirt and belt. Perhaps it really was time to start swimming; his daughter was constantly pestering him about it. But he rejected the idea outright; he would be laughed off the beach if he tried going for a swim in Split in his shape. Swimming was the preserve of the slender, it seemed—those who didn’t even need the exercise.

If the Torchios didn’t have any special guests coming, they tended to dine with their closest family, which also included Salvatore’s sister and her Croatian husband, who was more enthusiastic about Mussolini than any Italian he knew, with the unfortunate exception of his sons. Salvatore was worried about the two of them. They got along very well with their uncle, although generally they didn’t give a fig about the Croats, Serbs, or any other Slavs.

This brother-in-law who was so popular with the Torchio sons was good friends with the lawyer Ante Pavelić, a Croatian nationalist and revolutionary who was currently in Italy under Mussolini’s protection. Salvatore Torchio did not allow any conversation about Pavelić at his table. Angelo and Domenico often ignored this ban. Another Croatian revolutionary was also banned from dinner table talk: the Bolshevik Josip Broz—Tito—who had disappeared to Russia as a communist leader and was stirring up trouble, who knows where. Maybe in Spain? The brother-in-law hated him. Luckily, Signor Torchio’s sons weren’t interested in Tito, and the brother-in-law was polite enough to respect the dinnertime rules. Certainly, Signor Torchio still hoped that his sons would abandon their youthful enthusiasm, but the more power Mussolini gained in Italy, the weaker this hope became. What excited Domenico and Angelo most was all the technology and weapons, aircraft and bombs, fast cars and guns, the superiority of Italian culture, the old Rome and the new Italy.

Salvatore loved his children, though at times they scared him. He stroked his stomach and thought about how a cigar would be quite the thing right now. And a glass of Maraschino. This murder was really rather unsettling.

That evening he wanted to dine alone with Angelo and Domenico. That was unusual, as the two young men knew full well, hence the scowls during lunch when their father proposed it. They would be served, unusually, in the smoking salon, and father and sons would enjoy some conversation in peace, just the gentlemen.

If he had raised them with a less liberal approach, would they now have more respect for their father? Would they be less obsessed with futurism, fascism, and the “Latin race”? They knew that he was suspicious of these new fashions. He thought of reading them the most impressive sections of The Divine Comedy if they started going on again about that dreadful writer Marinetti, whose name was on everyone’s lips in Italy. Or that even more dreadful poet d’Annunzio, who had in 1919 made a fool of himself with his theatrical “conquest” of the city of Fiume.

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