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PARTISAN REVIEW
totalitarian History. They believe in Fortune, and in the proposition that
life is above all a private affair. One person tries his luck at being a
conqueror, the other at selling fruit. They both can fail. The essential
thing is not to be a downright devil, like Hitler. Or an obscene fool,
like Brusadelli.
Giulio Brusadelli resembles Graziani in one respect. He, too, has
been brought to his ruin by egomania. A seventy-four-year-old Milanese
cotton industrialist and stock-jobber, Brusadelli is one of Italy's two
hundred billionaires (there are forty of them in Calabria alone, Italy's
most disinherited region). In 1931, he got into trouble with the regime
for stock-jobbing, but was finally acquitted, a stroke of luck for which
he gave all the credit to Saint Rita, to whose tomb he had hastened to
make a pilgrimage. Apparently, he never forgave fascism for the scare,
since it has been affirmed that, in 1943, he put a hundred million lire
at the disposal of the generals who were plotting against Mussolini. The
offer was declined because, as a general put it, "what we need right now
is not money," meaning that what was needed was the courage to go
ahead.
In 1935, Brusadelli had married a 22-year-old
girl
by the name of
Anna, and all went well with him until he got caught in the fierce
struggle between the "bears" and the "bulls" which has been going on
at the Milan Stock Exchange since 1945. Brusadelli was one of the most
prominent "bears." Last October, the "bulls" got him: he lost a billion
lire. This he couldn't stand, more as a matter of principle, obviously,
than on account of the money itself, since his fortune is evaluated at
about thirty billion. He consulted with his lawyer and did something
desperate. He asked for the legal annulment of the transaction which
was at the origin of the loss, under pretext that he had been tricked into
it by his wife working with his enemies. In order to deprive
him
of his
clearmindedness, Brusadelli claimed, the woman had used the most irre–
sistible means at her disposal against him: her sexual charms. Young
Anna was a sexual monster, a witch, and a vampire, said the legal com–
plaint.
As
circumstantial evidence, Brusadelli submitted to the judge
a minute description of the different kinds of sexual labors to which he
had been forced to submit, plus a batch of photographs and a pile of
obscene books that were supposedly used in the process of getting the
last ounce of free will out of his aging body.
The judge had almost conceded Brusadelli his point when the news–
papers got hold of the story. The scandal was terrific. Few men had
ever been as ill advised as this plutocrat. For three years, Italians had
been muttering about the Milanese billionaires and speculators, who
