My Italian Uncle

des Memoires d'Anatole Noziere



Ray Yusi, of an ancient Italian family, married my father's sister Betty for love; though probably he wouldn't have if she hadn't converted to Roman Catholicism beforehand and promised to have as many children as she could--but that is mere speculation. What is certain is that he loved my aunt Betty and the five children they had together as maybe only those of Latin extraction really ever do. Uncle Ray was ugly (rather like John XXIII--though his children were beautiful), wonderfully ebullient, and smart: an architectural engineer, polyglot, well and widely read in history and the arts. My grandfather, his father-in-law, though vastly inferior to him, despised him.