First day back after giving this space over to my mortally uncoiled father, Wilfrid Thomas Mooney (1920-1987), whose wartime letters to my mother posted here last week and the week before garnered the type of attention we, the living, would die for.

This week, I am again absenting myself – and all filial bonds – to focus on Maria Cattaneo, an 80-year-old woman born in Milan on April 29, 1945, near Piazzale Loreto, where, that very same day, the bullet-riddled corpse of Benito Mussolini, who dismantled democracy through executive fiat and state-sanctioned terror, was hung upside down at an Esso station, and battered to a pulp by a frenzied crowd of civilians and anti-fascist partisans.

Was the crowd wrong? Its violent retribution was raw and spontaneous, a mob’s fury against a tyrant. The battering and mutilation – one woman fired bullets into Mussolini’s body for each of her murdered sons – was a venting of collective trauma after more than twenty years of privation and paramilitary terror. The year before, Mussolini's regime executed 15 partisans at the same Piazzale. Their bodies were left on display for a month. To invert the humiliation, Mussolini was strung up at the exact spot. The Americans took him down after lunch.

Speaking of lunch, Mussolini’s favourite was chopped garlic in olive oil and lemon juice, which he ate from large bowls. He largely abstained from alcohol, though he enjoyed an occasional frappe of strawberry sherbet, Chianti wine, and Angostura bitters. He restricted coffee imports. He drank barley coffee and hibiscus tea imported from the Italian colonies. He viewed cafés as potential hotbeds of dissent. He campaigned against pasta.

But this is not today’s subject. Tomorrow, four generations of the Cattaneo family will gather at Maria’s apartment on Via Bernardino Luini to celebrate the feast day of San Biagio, the patron saint of people with things stuck in their throats.

What sticks in your throat these days? No matter. This is Biagio’s story, set in early 4th-century Armenia, around the time its Kingdom became the world’s first Christian state. One day, Biagio, while being led to prison by a group of heavily armed squadristi, crossed paths with a desperate mother whose five-year-old son, Liam, wearing the Arsacid equivalent of a blue knitted beanie with floppy white bunny ears (a pointed Phrygian cap), was choking to death on a fishbone. Liam’s mother threw herself at Biagio’s manacled feet, imploring his help. Biagio placed his hand, which was also in irons, on Liam’s throat. As he prayed to God, the boy coughed, and the bone instantly shot out of his mouth and into the jugulars of Biagio’s three captors.

English- and French-speaking people call him Saint Blaise. Some say he is the healer of all wild beasts. A version of his story was first told in the 13th century by Jacobus de Voragine, the Archbishop of Genoa, in *Legenda Aurea (Golden Legend)* – the second most popular book in medieval Europe.

Risotto for primo piatto, with Lombardy saffron from the new fields in nearby Como. Cassoeula secondo, maybe with polenta, maybe with an arugula salad. Maria’s brother Carlo long ago drank everything in the cellar, so Aldo, her youngest sister’s son, will bring wine. Franciacorta for the first courses. Soave or Pinot Grigio from Alto Adige for those who don’t drink sparkling wine. She will drink two glasses. A young Valtellina red for the stew. She will drink one glass. She won’t eat the stew – just the thought, the fat, the cabbage, the entrails, the foot, the tail, the ear, the rind, the snout, gives her reflux. Better a small serving of vegetables with love than a fattened calf with hatred. Proverbs. Does she believe in Santo Biagio? Does she believe in miracles? Does she believe in anything? Did she ever? While at university, she wore mini-skirts.

Carlo, her brother, back then, wore his hair long, past his shoulders, and read Gramsci, and listened to Leonard Cohen. Today, he has dandruff, votes Lega and drives a Jeep Avenger. He once worked as a baker in Minneap...