Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer.
I don’t remember Nonno singing to me as a child, but he sang to me as an adult. He sang about Mussolini. He sang from his kitchen chair with his oxygen mask at the side of his face, tubes from his nose, wearing his navy dressing gown, sunglasses and Nonno hat. It was an anthem he’d learnt as an adolescent, living in Soveria Manelli, a small farming village in Calabria, at Italy’s toe.
The song was rich and powerful. He became full of life and inspiration when he sang the Mussolini anthem. He told me it was sung by the masses when Mussolini came to visit their village. The people wore red, wore flags and cheered for their icon. My Nonno sang loudly. He had a wonderful, deep singing voice. He would bellow this song, of which I can only remember the tune and the way “Mussolini” was expressed with clarity and pride. Nonno would explode into life, this song being the climax of this boyhood story, and then he would retreat. He would fall back into his chair and back into the world of his kitchen table in Thornbury. This is where he sat, where he wheezed and where he coughed. This is where he struggled and moaned and where he would violently clear his throat before he spat into his jar.
According to Nonno, after the “bastardi” killed Mussolini, he was “cut open”. In describing the autopsy, Nonno would pretend to open his guts like he was gutting a pig. He’d then profess, “Inside Mussolini, theya found double brains”. Nonno would make sure we all knew, “Mussolini was a very smart man”.
My cousins and I heard the same Mussolini stories when we visited Nonno in the months before he passed.
When he repeated these stories to my step cousin, Adrian, he was entertained and laughed. When the story was told to my cousin Vanessa, she was horrified. Horrified that her Nonno adored a man that was demonised in her year 12 history class.
The stories have helped me understand. They’ve helped me understand the husband and father my Nonno had been. For my Nonna, my mother and her siblings, Nonno’s household had been a traumatic regime.
My Nonna is a profound woman. She feels alive from green smoothies made in her Vitamix. She doesn’t make lasagna and her friends at the Lalor bowls club call her Joan. She’s a champion bowler.
When my Nonna Gianna took her children away from the regime, there was one point when they lived in a house infested with cat sized rats. They lived in a flimsy cottage on a run down farm in Koo Wee Rup, Victoria’s asparagus country.
When they were living at this farm, my Nonno asked whether my Nonna was embarrassed. They had lived like kings in a double story terrace on Nicholson Street, Fitzroy, a few blocks down from St Brigid’s church and school. My Nonna makes sure we all understand that she and her children were living with rats and they were happy.