La Femme Fascista — Excerpt.
“…Curses an Orientalist who guides a General to the weak spot in an Eastern woman’s heart…” — Mahmoud Darwish
INTRODUCTION
Smoke and Ashes
I weighed up the pros and cons of writing this book and realised that even though writing it makes me deeply uncomfortable; what each story within a story reveals is important enough to share. We imagine the face of Fascism to be that of Adolf Hitler, his infamous Nazi cronies or somewhat less so that of Benito Mussolini. These figures we know of because the atrocities they carried out have been carefully studied and justice was served in important ways by way of judicial trials, reparations and amendments which are meant to serve as an important historical lesson for humanity as a whole. Although it wasn’t really the case, in particular not for Italy.
When we dare to interrogate social and political phenomena more carefully and thoroughly, the uncomfortable fact is that Italian Fascism went untried for political convenience and for the preservation of Italian nationalism. Powerful Fascist dynasties continue to exist today in the 21st century in such a way that the ideology continues to mould every level of Italian society, both private and public, as it sees fit for its own needs and purposes. As the daughter of genocide survivors, it will take time to write about Fascism with the sensation of a heavy weight in the pit of my stomach, having encountered the utter darkness that Fascism yields and to reveal that I loved the grandson of a voluntary Waffen SS officer and the son of a former Italian Fascist soldier. The relationship tore me apart.
I have already lost this person in whom I saw so much repressed humanity. I write about him as fairly and with as much affection as I can without absolving him of his wilful role in the preservation, maintenance and continuation of Fascism with all the benefits of hindsight. I have nothing to lose with writing this but perhaps humanity has something to gain. The pain must have been for something. If Fascism wasn’t such a robust and attractive form of power for some then I would refrain from intimate detail and bold statements but the evident and proven too many times magnitude of Fascism’s evil warrants disclosure and fully bold unflinching criticism.
La Femme Fascista — December 2018
A few months prior to all this, during the early summer, I met with Italo. Like so many of the entitled men I came across in Italy he was unable to overcome his resentment that I hadn’t dated him, furthermore that I had in fact chosen to date his best friend and so he made it abundantly clear that he didn’t have the time. I felt a tinge of guilt and even shame while sitting opposite him outside the bookshop cafe asking for help. Italo could obviously see the problems with much more retrospection and clarity but he certainly wasn’t offering to help my relationship in any way. He sat straight faced, peering at me through his vintage sunglasses with an air of superiority which made me feel uncomfortable. I told him about what had been going on and how I was worried about Hell On Earth’s drinking, his strange behaviour and how confused I was. “People say that the only woman for him is his sister.” he told me. How bad could it be? I asked myself. Something must have been lost in translation. I could never have imagined what the root of the problem was nor how serious Italo was being when he made that statement.
We continued our relationship through to the end of that year. September, October, November, December. Things weren’t easy; much of the time we spent together and outside of that was enveloped in the difficulties which came with his drinking. But we were seeing each other regularly and in late November, my 29th birthday came along. I organised a dinner at Convivium with all my girlfriends, mostly from BasicNet and then spent much of the night in Azimut which was a small club on the same block. Hell On Earth was giving a speech at an architectural conference in Rome that evening and so couldn’t make it. When we met the next day, he walked into my flat with a cake and a large, flat package wrapped up with a bow. I wasn’t expecting such a big present nor the cake and my heart melted. I carefully opened the present which was surrounded with bubble wrap. It was a 3D antique map of Italy carved in wood 100 years before I was born. “A special souvenir, for R’s curiosities collection, from her grand tour in the lands of the south xxxxxxx M”. I had no idea what to do with it but it was a gift which sort of grew on me, much like Hell On Earth himself. We were so different in so many ways with such different but converging tastes, experiences, lifestyle that things so often didn’t immediately make sense. The map has travelled around with me to here. Afraid of bringing it back myself in case I damaged it, I asked him to keep it and send it to me once I’d settled back in London. It stayed inside the box until I moved to Fulham. Now it sits perfectly in the living room, illuminated by the warm light of the shade beneath it and receives many compliments.
In early December of 2018, I got back from a highly stressful trip to London and the boiler in my flat had broken down, probably from not being used for a week and it being so cold. I felt drained, cold and alone. All the people I knew in Turin were already with their families, preparing to celebrate Christmas. I didn’t ask Hell On Earth for help with the boiler because I didn’t want to seem dependent or needy and wanted to find a solution myself. I almost always felt guilty asking him for help even though it was a totally reasonable thing to do. Not only that, I often felt like I needed a pretence to see him as though I was getting in between him and something more important than me. I thought that I hadn’t asked for help because I frankly didn’t receive it, but now that I look back, it was one of the very very few times I told him that I was not okay. After trying to contact him many times while feeling down I always found some other way to feel better. I suppose for someone who sought alcohol to feel better alongside the fact that everyone around him also drank, it wouldn’t necessarily register or it was very difficult for him to register what it was that I needed. By the time he’d call back I didn’t want to talk to him about anything that was happening with me anymore, which was an exhausting thing to have to explain on top of everything else.
“Are you angry with me?”
“Ciao, don’t worry about me… I’ll feel better in no time x”
“so sorry for abruptly closing the call but a students entered the office”
“….. I really don’t feel well and you’re not doing anything to help so I’d prefer to take some space”
“But just let me know how to help” “Would you join tomorrow evening for a dinner with my sister?”
“?”
“Well, the the sense that we go to dinner, you, me, my sister?” “
“I really don’t feel well and you’re not doing anything to help. So I’d prefer to take some space” There are three significant parts to this message”
“Ok, apologies for bothering.”
“You can’t even ask me how I am..?”
“I asked how to help but got no reply”
“…when someone is feeling terrible it’s difficult enough to work out how to help oneself, let alone advise on how someone can help… you didn’t even try anything!”
“I just feel that you want to create a distance and this makes me very sad”
“Maybe I do! When I feel terrible, I do. But you’re not supposed to push me even further away!”
Tomorrow evening was too late, I wanted to see him now. Was that too much to ask? For him to call or drive ten short minutes to see me? When I had asked to meet at short notice in the past, usually it would be met with a negative response particularly when his sister was around. It was in fact impossible to see him when his sister was around. So it didn’t seem smart opening myself up to being vulnerable, to allow someone to so easily kick me while I was down, to willingly face the humiliation of rejection when all I needed and wanted to be able to ask for was a hug. It also bothered me that he was in fact so frequently the one creating distance. He would often abruptly end our calls in various circumstances. It didn’t seem unreasonable to me to ask a student to wait but so much of the time it was clear that I was not the priority unless I was standing right in front of him and he was sober and even then, when the cravings kicked in I was certainly not a priority but someone who needed to be moved out of the way. Every part of his life was a means to a drink — except me. Yet somehow through this conversation, I was accused of creating distance. I was so often trying to bridge the gap and solve the problems, but what did he care? Did it really make him “very sad”, the distance? Or was it just another manipulation, a part of his self-victimisation? Why did he invite me to meet his sister on that particular evening and not before? These are the never ending questions… Apparently, the best he could do was offer for us to have dinner together with his sister the next evening.
I didn’t even know she was in town but she’d flown over from Boston for the weekend to attend their mother’s birthday. I agreed to the dinner thinking it might help take my mind off things and I was curious to finally meet his sister who he kept saying he was so close to. He picked me up from my flat and we arrived early at Da Michele on Piazza Vittorio. A very traditional restaurant which seemed to have been operational for a long time though I had never eaten there. We walked past the large outdoor seating area into the restaurant which had a beautiful frescoed ceiling, went upstairs to sit by the window overlooking the square and I began telling him about London. It felt good to be close to him again.
Within a few minutes his sister came up the stairs, approached our table and held out her hand. I offered her a kiss on each cheek as per Italian tradition. She was sort of striking, formal and the opposite of him in many ways. Tall, slim and very pale with short pin-straight blond hair, cold, piercing blue eyes with pencil thin brows and a fixed, plastic smile. I sat opposite Hell On Earth while she sat in between to my left and I felt like our date had been interrupted. She sat with her back very upright and gave off a dominant, masculine energy though when she began to speak, she seemed to over compensate with a peculiar high pitched tone. It was clear that she thought very highly of herself, very proud, at least that’s what she tried to project. Her valuable aryan features had clearly served her well but she was by no means beautiful. In contrast to Hell On Earth she looked very well-rested, perky and rather care-free.
As soon as she’d arrived I noticed that his posture had changed and he’d hunched his back and shoulders inward towards his chest from the comfortable, confident position he had been in while he was talking to me only a few moments earlier. He had adopted the same semi-foetal composure which he had at the breakfast table in his countryside house, as though someone had or was going to kick him in the gut. I felt the impulse to be closer to Hell On Earth but there was a very clear wedge between us. As we looked at the menus, his sister turned to me and asked; “Is there anything you don’t eat?” “No, I eat everything except pork.” When the waiter arrived she ordered a plate of pork sausages and truffled eggs both of which she insisted on sharing with Hell On Earth. I ordered tajarin con tartufo and Hell On Earth ordered pizza quattro formaggi. When the food arrived I watched as they both shared their pork sausages, somewhat bemused if not confused but mostly far too tired and overstimulated to immediately process what was happening. I did not expect any of this.
“I hate this city” his sister declared. “The people here aren’t nice.” I had just made it through a year in Turin, and I was quite unsure as to why she hated her own city so much. She went on to explain that she moved to Boston as a student to escape the fact that the man she had loved for 10 years didn’t love her back. This man happened to be Italo’s older brother so I knew the context. The son of their late father’s good friend and neighbour had rejected her. “I can’t believe I let him treat me like that.” she said. I was confused as to why she was talking about a non-relationship from 20 years ago. She obviously felt very hard done by in a great many number of ways. She went on to say that Italo had been invited to dinner at their country home over the summer with his south American girlfriend. I was surprised that Italo’s girlfriend received an invitation to a dinner but Hell On Earth hadn’t invited me. Apparently Italo had said something so disrespectful about women while his girlfriend was in the bathroom that his sister’s husband, Arnaldo, was tempted to tell his date but apparently didn’t. It was emblematic of the kind of moral judgment he was all too happy to formulate and mete out except when it came to his wife sponsoring mistreatment of women she found threatening — anyone who loved her brother.
I tried to change the subject but she went on to talk about how their maternal uncle is inappropriate with young women. I had walked past him briefly while he was walking around the grounds with a wheelbarrow and said “ciao”. He didn’t seem particularly interested in me nor unpleasant. His sister mentioned that their uncle is a Francophone. “I can speak to him in French.” I put forward something about myself trying to find a way into a monologue which I definitely wasn’t a part of. Hell On Earth had shown me around their uncle’s workshop. All aspects of visiting Hell On Earth’s flat in the city and his countryside home were resounding amalgamations of all the things I didn’t have and it always sort of dwarfed me. A home, a community, a family, an uncle, or an uncle whose workshop I could walk into and explore or make something in. I felt like an outsider peering in at people, places and things which I would never be able to relate to experiencing. I was simply a visitor, a temporary guest but I was used to it. “You don’t need to meet him.” his sister snapped back. That sent a very clear message that I was not welcome at that table nor anywhere near them, neither in Turin nor in Italy and she would make that clear in as many ways as she possibly could. I suppose having the woman who her brother adored in what she clearly considered her space was too much. At the same time, it fit perfectly with his need to drink; something which I didn’t want him to do while around me and his sister was sure to indulge him with. I later asked him if she had ever suggested that he invite me to their house during the summer break and he said no. She didn’t want to meet me while there were other people around but with this dinner there was no one else to bear witness to what she was doing and saying.
The conversation then descended in to nitpicking my Hell On Earth’s past decisions. His sister took the opportunity of me not feeling well to demonstrate the full force of her control over Hell On Earth by choosing to humiliate him. She went on to highlight his flaws and what she thought was wrong with him. One thing that seems clear to me about love is that it becomes very true that you love someone because of their flaws and that was how I chose to pursue my love for the person in front of me, so it didn’t change that.
“You’re so smart” she began. “You were always the smart one. Why didn’t you move to America?” she demanded. “I was a young man with a child.” he mumbled in Italian looking down at the table as though ashamed. He’d foregone his PhD at MIT once he knew he’d be having a child, opting to stay in Italy instead. My mind drifted to his son who he loved very much. Why was she bringing up something which had happened 14 years ago? It bothered her on a fundamental level that her brother had unexpectedly had a child, therefore didn’t join her in Boston and it was clear that she was never going to let it go. The content of the conversation didn’t seem to shock Hell On Earth either so it must have been a recurring issue between them. It was sort of like peering through the looking glass. Fascists have such disregard for your existence that unless you are useful to them in some way, they can literally pretend as though you are not there. That vacillating sensation of disappearing or being disappeared, discarded as invisible or perhaps sometimes present by an abusive person was not unfamiliar to me at all. In fact it was something which frequently occurred during my childhood so I suppose it didn’t immediately shock me, either. “My dream,” she continued, “Is for my brother to live 15 minutes away from me, so we can see each other all the time.” while he looked far from enthralled. “We know two siblings just like that. You could have moved to Boston with Alessia.” Alessia was the mother of Hell On Earth’s child who didn’t want to move to the States and who he’d left a long time ago at his sister’s behest. The other implication being that he shouldn’t be with me, either. “If I ever move back to Turin, it will be for my brother.” asserting and affirming that he would never leave even though he so desperately wanted to leave “the city of lucky losers” as he put it, unless it was to be with her. “Well if you really want to move somewhere I suppose you make it happen.” was all I could add with more self-awareness and responsibility for my decisions than the two much older people I was dining with. It didn’t seem obvious at all that he even really wanted to move to the States to be with his sister.
“Try the eggs with the red wine.” she said to Hell On Earth having finished the plate of pork sausages. I was surprised that she was encouraging him to drink. He declined, explaining that he wouldn’t be drinking that evening and a part of me was relieved. It was pretty clear that this was a game, or even a test of “it’s either me or her”. A game/test which I hadn’t even realised that I had become a participant of nor did I want to be a part of. After the meal I ordered a digestivo with his sister. What was I thinking? It was one of those familiar mechanisms of an attempt at appeasement. I looked at the little glass of dark brown sugary liquid sitting on the table. “I don’t know why you find quitting alcohol so difficult”, she directed at him with her awkward forced American twang. “I stopped drinking twice when I was pregnant while everyone around me was drinking.” She looked very smug and smiled. “Cheers!” she said, raising her glass while mocking Hell On Earth. I half-raised my glass and put it back on the table. His only response was a feeble; “Well, you’re an anorexic.” I realised that I’d made a huge mistake. In my attempt to appease his sister I had gone against my own principles. I hadn’t recognised how much courage it took for him to sit through that meal without drinking while she paid him backhanded compliments followed by scathing criticism. I wanted to reach over and hold him.
We finished up our meal and she waited at the door while I stood with Hell On Earth as he paid the bill. Finally, a moment alone and I wondered if it would bother her if I kissed him. We walked out of the restaurant and he put my arm through his to stay warm. His sister began explaining that she needed to see the family pharmacist in the morning. She needed contraceptive pills in order to prevent the acne she’d suffered from since she was a teenager. Again, a little too much information, you could argue. “Maybe you could check the opening time on Googlemaps.”, I suggested because it didn’t seem to have occurred to her to do that instead of insisting her brother do it. Despite everything that had just happened he seemed to be tied to her by an invisible leash. We didn’t walk very far together before she made her way to the hotel in Pizaa Carlina, remarking that Hell On Earth’s son always orders the most expensive things on the menu; “I’m sure he’s ordered something for dinner! Sea urchins or something expensive..!!” I wondered what sea urchins tasted like. Hell On Earth dropped me off at my flat. I mulled over the dinner realising that I had hardly said anything all evening and that something was really wrong. I expected to like his sister since he had always iterated how important she is. He didn’t explain how important she was for his addiction until much later. I worked out what was going on over consecutive conversations with him. Conversations I chose to have, hoping and praying that my honesty would bring us closer while risking losing him altogether.
One afternoon we went for a coffee on via Po. I met him on one of the corners near his office and when I saw him from a distance I thought about how nice he looked with his black beanie on, oblivious to the fact that I’d already spotted him. He was proudly carrying a bag of tinned beans to start his diet. I had planned to speak to him, I had told him I needed to speak to him about something important and suddenly I was having doubts about disrupting his sudden burst of positivity. Why did I feel so responsible for all of this? Looking back now, of course it was entirely unfair for him to draw me into a relationship knowing that we would inevitably come across the same problems he’d faced with regards to his sister and every one of his past relationships, especially given what he would to me do once I brought it up. Was it all a pre-planned walk through the motions? Hadn’t they both hurt enough people already? There have been many times when I’ve thought that this is just the sadistic game they’ve agreed to play between them while they remain betrothed to each other. His sister’s constant complaints about her husband’s ineptitude confirmed this on some level.
We ordered our coffees and went upstairs to sit on one of the sofas. I sat very close to him and said that I was afraid that what I was about to say could mean risking losing him. He encouraged me to tell him what I was thinking and that he respected my honesty. I explained that his sister was bullying him and his dependency on alcohol allows her to keep him under her control. He at least admitted that all his exes had had the exact same observation and concerns, but he didn’t seem too keen to even think about it. He agreed to discuss things with his therapist. I knew that he was juggling many things at the same time; he was trying to get tenured, he was trying to get fit and healthy, he was trying to be a good father, he was struggling with alcohol and he had an abusive sister.
The next time I saw Hell On Earth at my flat, he walked in from the rain dishevelled and seemed very different. He seemed like an empty vessel. Unsure of which version of him I was going to get, we sat down and had a tea. I asked him if he’d spoken to his therapist about what I’d mentioned and with a straight face he said he had; “My therapist said that she and her brother also have a very close relationship”. He was using his therapist and his therapy sessions to silence my concerns. As a non-Italian speaker I didn’t have access to such resources at the time so his exercise of power in what was already an incredibly imbalanced dynamic was clear. To be honest, it would be difficult for pretty much anyone to match the excess of resources which he had available to him.
Now upset, I reiterated my points. I declared that his sister would never allow him to love anyone other than her and demanded to know what he had told her about me. I knew that something horrible had been occurring. “What did you tell her about me?” “Everything” he said in his usual rather annoying utilisation of absolutes. The first few weeks of us blissfully dating in Spring flashed before my eyes. We were walking down via Po and he told me that he tells his sister everything. I should have read the signs. “You told her when we started sleeping together?” “Yes.” “Did you tell her what it was like?” “Yes.” He had given his pathologically sick voyeur sister access to the most intimate parts of me, my life, who I was and our relationship. Even though I was breaking inside I told him that for me he was perfect and that his sister has always been jealous of him. He was devastatingly handsome, smart and had come along just two years after her to carry the all-important family name. “Maybe….” is all that he could muster in response. He admitted that his son’s mother had said the same things. So this wasn’t news to him and he had been drinking to cope since he was 15. “Your sister is obsessed with you.” I told him it was beyond weird, and without me even asking he mumbled; “Nothing happened between us.” I was truly horrified and completely aghast. It was becoming clear and became increasingly explicitly clear that the control his sister was asserting on him was authoritarian, dictatorial, totalitarian, and even paternalistic. What had she done to him? He had told me that he was like his mother while his sister was like their late father, who was indeed a Fascist and she did indeed embody all the attributes of a thorough, grade A Fascist.
“I owe her” he said. “Owe who what?” I asked. “She commissioned my architectural project. She allowed me to build her house in Boston.” I was appalled. I’ve had my fair share of dealings with my older siblings. I’ve asked to borrow small amounts of cash from them and never given it back which I admittedly feel perhaps lightly unfairly entitled to as the youngest, very cute sibling. But I never once felt or was made to feel like I owed them anything. Not only that, my brother had a child in his early 20s and left our family to dedicate himself to his wife and children for 10 years. I didn’t see him for 10 years but now that he is back in my life I wouldn’t dream of questioning his decision to prioritise his precious child, nor any of the circumstances around that. Hell On Earth’s sister’s behaviour and words were beyond perverse. At the same time I was becoming suspicious of his therapist who was prescribing him anti-depressants which he was taking with alcohol. Not to mention that his GP was a raging alcoholic.
Even though he had already physically hurt me while drunk, I never imagined that Hell On Earth would behave in this manner. Feeling the shock of being gaslit by someone I loved and trusted after he told me it was safe to be honest, I told him to get out of my flat and he refused, planting himself on one of my kitchen chairs while I held my stomach, squatted down on the floor by the kitchen counter. Maybe he wasn’t used to being the one told to leave. He eventually excused himself; that he had to get back to work on the project in the bar under his house. I looked at him deep in the eyes and touched his face gently but couldn’t find him. “Why is it so hard to get to you?” I asked while he looked back at me blankly. He left in to the night declaring that he’s “totally happy”.
Things from that point on descended into chaos even though I was trying to hold it all together. In the end, he did indeed push me away and punish me multiple times for my honesty and for confronting something which he was not prepared to. His enmeshed relationship with his sister was the defining issue behind his drinking and it would take a lot of time and a lot of pain before realising that I would not be able to win this battle. Fascists are not always, if not infrequently blatantly abusive. It is cumulative, micro-doses of abuse so you can’t be too outraged at once. But retrospectively, you can put all the pieces together and the message is crystal clear.
