THE DUKE OF AOSTA

THE DUKE OF AOSTA

Every law firm ends up accumulating curiosities attached to old (and sometimes long gone- and forgotten) clients – sometimes just dusty old documents which have long since lost their relevance but for some obscure reason, never thrown away – but not infrequently, other items as well, especially if the partners have any sort of inclination to hoard.

The late CK Friedlander was more than an obsessive hoarder – he was a human magpie, to the extent that his office presented us with a nightmare when he died. But the effects of his obsession spread far beyond the four walls of his own office.

I had always been fascinated by some of the stuff lying in the old strong-rooms leading off from the Estates Department at our firm. Most of it had been carefully wrapped, sealed and labelled as belonging to various deceased estates. But every now and then you could discern mysterious unlabelled bags, packages, boxes and the like, covered with dust, forgotten in a corner, or fallen behind a shelf, lying for years undisturbed in the cool and quiet of a corner which seldom saw life of any kind.

Old tables, chairs, walking sticks (I kid you not), a wooden crate of whiskey – 12 years old when sold, but that must have been 50 years ago – old handbags, biscuit tins overflowing with sad pieces of costume jewellery which must once have adorned the limbs of some lady, who, whether she be genuine or pretentious, it was clear that the jewellery was of no real value. No end of junk which must once have meant something to someone.

Of course, there was  - still is – the fascinating tale of the collection of original Enslin oil paintings, the inheritance of a lost and once forbidden love, all the dramatis personae long departed: but I will leave the story of the Enslins for another time.

These things invite curious attention. Whose are they? What are they? How long have they been there? Why has no-one come for them? – And if anyone ever did, how would we know what they were looking for, and how could they prove that those things belonged to them?

Of all this dubious treasure, the thing which aroused my greatest curiosity was a dusty old packet which I came across in an ancient unlocked safe, while rummaging around one afternoon in 1991. It was heavy, wrapped up with duck-tape, unlabelled. I could hear some heavy metal items clanking around as I moved it. It cried out to be opened.

Four or five old handguns tumbled out of the bag: an old starting gun (CK had been a member of an athletics club, and had spent most Saturday mornings of his life with Danie Craven at Coetzenberg, assessing the young athletes on the field); an unremarkable old Browning .25 which was very common in the post-war years; an ancient Webley revolver; an old gas pistol – and a Beretta 9mm short, completely gold plated, with pearl handgrips and a gold coat of arms embossed with the letter “A” in the grip.

The Beretta, plated in gold like that, looked like a gangster’s gun. I could find no serial numbers, no markings whatsoever. I wasn’t even sure if it really was a 9mm, but it looked like it to me.

I asked around, and Blanche Portnoi in our estates department said that she thought it might belong to an “Estate Roy” which had been wound up years before. None of the members of the family remained in South Africa. She was unable to throw any further light on the matter. I pestered CK about that gun several times – I suppose I was really hoping that he would become exasperated and say, “Oh for heaven’s sake – take it” but of course he had no right to do that, I had no right to even wish for it, and in reality neither of us was that kind of person, even if it had been legal to give it away like that!

However, I did go back to that safe from time to time to take the weapon out, dismantle it, reassemble it, put it back into its packet – it held a kind of fascination for me, I couldn’t shake it off. I continued to raise it with CK from time to time, and eventually he conceded to let me get the thing valued by a weapons expert, a retired policeman who we sometimes used for that sort of thing. 

One morning after completing other duties, I put the weapon into my briefcase and walked over to that gentleman’s shop. He grunted quietly as he turned the gun over in his massive, calloused hands – in those hands it looked like a child’s toy. He was as puzzled by the absence of markings as we had been back at our office. It was untraceable. Blanche Portnoi’s guess about it belonging to “Estate Roy”, and her memory, were all we had to go on. The gentleman valued the weapon at a few hundred rand.

But my fascination remained. I had a friend who worked for Somchem, in their experimental weapons division out at the site of the dynamite factory in Somerset West. We spent many Sunday mornings out on the shooting range, sometimes shooting conventional firearms, sometimes experimenting with special ammunition, or barrels, or handgrips, or firing into artificial gel which was designed to imitate the effects of human flesh. Sometimes I was so nervous about the stuff we were shooting that by the time I pulled the trigger, I was already dripping with perspiration.

It was inevitable that sooner or later I would steal the Beretta and take it to him for his opinion. We sat in his lounge in Milnerton, the pieces spread out on his coffee table. Eventually, by holding the chassis of the slide at an angle to the light, we could see where the serial number had been covered with gold plating. We picked out a number which CK’s old expert couldn’t find. 

Then we checked the firearms catalogues.

We verified that it was a Beretta 9mm short, manufactured at the original Beretta works in Italy in 1939 – but none of them were ever produced with pearl hand-grips or gold plating!

And there, at least for that time, the trail ran dead. I put it back into its packaging, back into the safe, and moved on.

Then some years later, I got a letter from a Mr Roy, of Dallas, Texas. He wanted to know if we had his dad’s gun. Suddenly my fascination came alive again.

Sure, we’ve got it, I wrote back – but there has to be a story behind that gun, and I’m not letting it go till you tell me the story. He obliged. 

His father had been an officer in the South African forces in North Africa during World War 2. There had been a manoeuvre to capture an Italian battalion, probably during the Battle of El Alamein. They surrounded the Italians, moving between the dunes, took them by surprise, and persuaded them to surrender without a shot being fired.

The captured battalion were taken back to the South African base just before lunch. It was all terribly civilised. The South African officers invited the Italian officers to join them for lunch in the officers’ mess, which they did.

Despite the fact that the Italians were prisoners – during the course of the war thousands of Italians were captured and brought back to South Africa to serve out their wartime imprisonment – many lasting friendships were struck between South Africans and Italians arising out of this bit of history, and many marriages took place between the two nations.

Mr Roy’s father had been placed in charge of one particular Italian officer – he was an Italian nobleman, the Duke of Aosta. 

As an officer and a nobleman, he was allowed to carry his own personalised weapons. He had two Beretta 9mm shorts, gold plated, with pearl handles, which he carried, cowboy style, one on each side of his belt. They were of course taken from him upon capture, but they were kept in safekeeping for his eventual release one day.

However, such was the friendship which grew between the prisoner and the Roy family that when the time came for his release, the duke made a present of the guns to Roy’s father. That father kept them all his life, but the son could only find one of them on his father’s death, and this he had auctioned at Sotheby’s in London – not for “a few hundred rand”, as our expert had judged them to be worth, but for about fifteen thousand Pounds!

But there were relatives who insisted that the gun was part of a set – and eventually, he resolved to write to us. I took photos of the weapon (heaven knows where they are now), arrangements were made, and at least one item from that dusty hoard had finally found its owner …..

The gun was duly shipped off to it's rightful owner, bringing this strange puzzle to a conclusion.

And then in 2008 Simone and I took a holiday in Plettenberg Bay,  and in the course of our stay we did the usual things like trying out the local restaurants. One of these was Enrico’s Ristorante, out on Keurboom’s Beach, about 5 kilometres along the coastal road to Port Elizabeth.

The owner (as I would find out soon enough) was one Enrico Iacopini.

As we were about to leave, I noticed what appeared to be an old metal street name sign, stuck onto a glass window at the front of the restaurant. The legend, “Via Aosta” practically leaped out at me from the old sign. On an impulse, I asked the waiter, half-jokingly, whether there really was an Enrico who owned the place.

He confirmed that there was, and I asked if I could meet him, and lo and behold, out came a stocky little man to shake my hand.

“You’re Enrico?”

“Sure”

I’m pretty sure he thought I was going to complain about something

“That sign … where did you get it?”

“Oh, that … it comes from my home town in Northern Italy. That was my family home”

“You lived in Aosta?”

"Sure” he said.

“One night, we came home from drinking somewhere, and God knows why but I stole the sign. Many years later when I came to South Africa I found it with my things, so I put it up there to make the place feel a little bit like home”

I have subsequently discovered (acknowledgements to Google and Wikipedia) that there is a royal lineage of Dukes of Aosta: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_of_Aosta.