A Will and a Way

An article signed by Pier Franco Quaglieni, entitled “Thus a nephew-in-law betrayed the memory of Pannunzio”, has lately appeared in Il Giornale of April 16, 2022, recounting the story of how the library of Mario Pannunzio was blown away from the Pannunzio Centre — incidentally chaired by Quaglieni himself — and ended up being owned by the Italian Chamber of Deputies. To be sure, Quaglieni himself admits that the Chamber of Deputies is in itself a worthy final destination for such a legacy, but he also claims that the will of Pannunzio’s Hungarian wife, Mary (Maria) Malina, was to donate her husband’s library and documents to the Pannunzio Centre. It did not take him long to discover that the executor of the deceased’s legacy was a nephew of her’s of Hungarian descent, and thus a nephew-in-law of Pannunzio, named Stefano Tatai, a twelve-time Italian Champion and international Master of chess. And he, apparently, was the one who, in disregard of his aunt’s last will, decided to sell his uncle’s library and documents to the Italian Chamber of Deputies. Curiously enough, neither all Pannunzio’s friends, nor Mary, ever said anything to him about Tatai, that Quaglieni saw, at the time of his own university studies, only once “at a tavern in the Prati rione of Rome”. Tatai, who fled Hungary as a refugee in 1956, very much relied upon the help of Mary and Mario Pannunzio in dealing with the needs of his being a chess professional in Italy. And thus Quaglieni writes: “It would be interesting to know what Tatai got in return and if other Italian hands were behind him”. And yet the lack of a question mark does suggest the awareness that the answer may never come.