I was intrigued by the cover that referred to the escape of Mussolini. Francis Deakin in ‘The Brutal Friendship,’ a study of the relationship of Mussolini and Hitler, made him seem, in part, an Italian patriot. What would Eco make of him, I wondered. The blurb emphasised the thriller of Mussolini’s escape.
But….it takes forever to get to Mussolini, a quarter to the book or more, and then that part disappears.
This is the conceit. A nameless millionaire wants to start a newspaper. He hires a team of surplus journalists to do a proof of concept. They are to prepare dummy, uncirculated editions for a year. These specimens will be used to solicit other investors. Who knows, maybe that is the usual practice. None of the team, all writers and editors, know anything about the business side of publishing.
But some of the team are cynical enough to suppose that the dirt they put into the dummy editions might be used for blackmail.
There follows page after page about the media, its evils and manipulation. This lecture is relieved only by a travelogue through the streets of Milan. Oh hum. Not what it says on the back cover. Not why I bought it.
Then one of the journalists comes up with the story of a body double for Mussolini who was substituted for the real man. This is a discovery that is unrelated to the foregoing. It just pops out.
For this reader the book I bought starts there. Knowing nothing about these final days of the Fascist Regime, I found it a plausible speculation. The nub is this. While Mussolini’s face was known to millions through ubiquitous photographs, films, statues, postage stamps, coins, and more, few ever saw him up close in the flesh for more than a second or two apart from the inner circle.
Now add that he had a body double to foil assassinations and to do the boring duty of watching parades. This man might have a considerable resemblance and been at it so long that he came to think of himself as a Mussolini. He would be known to the inner circle.
Add the wear and tear of the last months and years, weight loss, ulcers, narrow escapes, worry, stress and Mussolini’s physical appearance and mental balance would have been altered as well as that of his doppelgänger.
Finally much confusion as the last Fascists flee from the Italian partisans, hoping either to surrender to the Allies, but then they did not go south where the Allies were, or to make it north either to Switzerland or Germany.
Why escape? One, to save his life and perhaps to fight again another day. If Mussolini survived perhaps he could help others in the inner circle and their families. Perhaps a living Mussolini could negotiate for Italy. Perhaps a living Mussolini could be used against the prospect of a communist insurrection in Italy. Once the speculation starts, it has no end. All of this is interesting but there is very little of it, and it is only just that, speculation. None of it is fleshed out.
Much more interesting than another media diatribe or a streetscape of a corner of Milan. Though there are more lectures on the corruption of the media sprinkled throughout. Oh hum.
The Mussolini part disappears from the last third of the book in favour of more recitation of media evils and Italian corruption. Old news not particularly well told. Along the way are some obligatory sex scenes which the author is very poor at rendering. Must have been included to please an editor.
The Número Zero of the title has nothing to do with Mussolini, but is the first edition of the mock newspaper.
In sum: a major disappointment.
I once drove Signor Eco across the Harbour Bridge when he visited Sydney.
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