The Sun and Other Stars (18 page)

“I’m the king of the world!” I shout. “The king of the world!”

I laugh. The echo fades and a sober silence sets in. I dig the pencil out of my back pocket and wrap my fingers around it. It feels gigantic, like when the nuns first taught us how to write our names back in asilo. I roll it around between my fingers and stare up at the vast, blank space. I look back and forth from the poster to the smooth ceiling, and I plot out the first of the nine central panels in my head. I’ve decided to start with the last one, suspended over Charon’s desk at the front of the aula.
The Drunkenness of Noah.

I haven’t drawn anything in two years. My hand shakes as it follows the curve of Noah’s back and thigh as he lies slumped on the ground. I draw and redraw the pockets in the cloth as it falls and bunches beneath him. I try to copy his sons’ young muscles as they stand around pointing, deciding what to do. It takes me all night just to get the basic outline down, and trust me, it’s no masterpiece. The sons end up looking like a bunch of bickering women with curlers piled on their heads, and the lines of the drapery are a mess—smudged and wobbly, some of them feathering out into false ends like a frayed wire after several attempts to get the curve right. Michelangelo himself would have thrown me out onto the stones of the piazza with all his other assistants. But I have a strange feeling of satisfaction, and as I look down the clean, white arch, I can see the other panels emerging from the plaster on their own.

I will give her a resting place as beautiful as the tombs of the Roman emperors or the popes in the Renaissance. Not some flat, anonymous stone in a nondescript cemetery next to dead relatives in a country she never loved. But here, surrounded by her favorite painting and overlooking the sea. And, Mamma, wherever you are out there, you will finally see how much I loved you, and how much you threw away.

I
know, I know. You are probably shaking your head, thinking, what kind of deficiente thinks he will be able to paint a copy of the Sistine Chapel on the ceiling of a classroom? What kind of arrogant stronzo? What kind of naive child? Believe me, it’s nothing I don’t ask myself as I walk down the hill in the early morning light. Papà is already leaving for Martina’s.

“Where have you been all night?”

“Out with Fede.”

“I thought you and Fede had an argument.”

“Who told you that?”

“Nobody has to tell me anything. I am your father. I know what you are thinking before you even think it.” He looks at his watch. “When you and Jimmy are finished unloading the truck, send him over to Martina’s. I need to talk to him about the July orders. And of course, if you hear anything about Yuri Fil, anything at all . . .”

“I know, Papà.”

“Try to get it out of that niece of Signora Malaspina if you see her.”

“Yes, Papà.”

I go upstairs and change my clothes, make myself a coffee, and bring it down to the shop. I drink it staring at the portraits on the wall—my bisnonno, Nonno, and Papà, lined up like a firing squad. I grip an imaginary cigarette between my lips and shut my eyes beneath an imaginary blindfold. Pow. I slump against the banco, and the imaginary cigarette falls to the floor.

My phone lights up. Fede, from the beach, ten meters away.

HEY, STRONZO. YOU LOOK LIKE HELL.

This is Fede’s way of apologizing.

YOUR AUNTIE.

And that is mine.

The wall phone rings just before eight. It’s Papà, calling from Martina’s.

“Did you forget what I said about Jimmy?”

“Jimmy didn’t come.”

“Didn’t come?”

“He must be running late.”

“Running late? When is the last time that happened?”

“I’m sure he’ll be here.”

“Make sure you send him over.” Click.

My mind stays up on the hill and in the aula all morning. The only time I come to is when someone asks if I’ve heard anything about Yuri, and when Papà calls every hour on the hour to see if Jimmy has shown up yet.

“Not yet. Maybe you should call his papà?”

“Yes, maybe.”

The wall phone rings again at noon. “He hasn’t come yet, Papà.”

“Hello?”

“Hello?”

“Hello, is this the macelleria?” She says it in Italian, but her accent is unmistakable.

“Yes.”

“Etto?”

“Yes.”

“There is a problem at the villa today,” she says in English. “Paparazzi. We cannot come down to the shops. Can you bring the meat to us? To the villa?”

“Of course. At your service.” At your service. I sound like a fottuto eunuch.

She wants a whole rabbit, a whole chicken, six steaks, a kilo of ground beef, and six hundred grams of prosciutto, unsliced. I go upstairs and get my rucksack, pack up the order, and start taking apart the banco early. As soon as the last customer is gone, I flip the sign and lock the door, step out onto the passeggiata, and pull the floodgate down. The sun is blinding today, bouncing off the waves, and with no breeze, the hot air stays trapped against the land. I weave through the crammed streets and try to stay in the shade of the awnings and the mandarin trees. As I walk, I feel conspicuous, as if everyone is watching me from their windows and they know exactly where I’m headed.

On Via Partigiani, the Mangona brothers go by in a blur.

“Ride with us, Etto!” one of them shouts as they pass.

“Tomorrow!” I shout back.

“It’s always tomorrow,” and they both laugh.

Sometimes I wonder if Luca and I would have been as close as the Mangona brothers if I’d stuck with calcio. Maybe I should have tried. Maybe at least I would have had more stories about him instead of this awful blank slate of the last five years of his life.

I trudge on under the weight of the rucksack, past Nonno and Nonna’s path, past Mino’s house and the field, the sun now pounding away at me like a spike being driven into the ground. My back is soaked and my legs are tired, but I fight the hill every step, and I push myself as fast as I can go so the Ukrainians will not have lukewarm rabbit and sticky prosciutto. As Papà always says, we are judged on the condition of the meat when it comes out of the package and not only when it goes in.

At the villa, there are four black cars with tinted windows parked on the access road alongside the iron fence. There’s no movement as I walk past the cars, but when I near the gate, I can hear the muffled slamming of doors. The villa rises in front of me with its columns, balconies, and arbors, and as the creeping shadows in my peripheral vision make their way toward me, I try to focus on the front door.

Shit. Stay calm. Keep your hands visible. They are only paparazzi. Then again, maybe it was a lie to protect me. Maybe they are really mafia coming to collect a debt, and I am the collateral damage. Maybe in a few minutes, I will be nothing more than pieces scattered along the road, a few bits of hair and trace that the crime channel will reassemble into a suspenseful, hour-long forensic elegy in my memory. Blessed are the contents of his stomach and the DNA results, blessed the identifiable tool marks from the custom-made nunchucks they used on his face.

The front door of the villa sweeps open, slowly and dramatically. Behind me, I can feel the shadows closing in, the rapid-fire of the camera shutters like lizards flicking their tongues.

“Out of the way,” and they press their lenses through the bars of the gate.

It’s not Zhuki drifting toward me but the woman on the cell phone who came into the shop. She’s wearing a gold bikini and a long, white robe as thin as a spider’s web. Tatiana the Showgirl. Yuri Fil’s wife. I don’t know where she came from, if she’s originally Russian or Ukrainian or what. All I know—all anyone knows—is that she started out as a humble showgirl, a simple vehicle to deliver breasts to the masses, and has graduated to become a calcio player’s wife, one of the sequined blondes floating through the tabloid pages, haunting VIP access areas at the stadiums and dimly lit parties at night. Once in a while I’ll see her in a WAG roundup or an interview, but whatever clichéd musings she might have are immediately eclipsed by her giant and mesmerizing breasts.

She smiles and reaches her hand through the bars as I take the packages out of the rucksack. But like the Austrian girl, she isn’t smiling
at
me, only over my head, her gold breasts like hovering Ufos, hypnotizing me. She holds out a hundred-euro note, dangling it in front of my face, and I freeze.

“Take,” I hear her say, in English, through her clenched smile.

“Oh, no, no, signora. You have a conto at the shop.”

“Take. You. Euro.”

“But we do not accept tips, signora.”

“Euro! Take!” she hisses, and her gold breasts suddenly look menacing.

I take the bill and slip it into my pocket with as little fanfare as possible, my face burning, the shutters still firing around me.

“Oh! Oh! Paparazzi! Paparazzi!” she exclaims, even though they have been less than a meter from her the entire time. A look of alarm crosses her face, and she covers her collarbone with her hand, knocking her knees in a fake Marilyn Monroe. My eyes finally break from the spell of the gold breasts and are drawn upward to the veranda, and there is Zhuki, laughing at the whole scene, or maybe just at me. I let my hand flap free from the pocket of my jeans in an almost imperceptible wave, and she lifts her hand slightly from the railing before turning and disappearing behind the roofline. It’s only then I realize that Tatiana the Showgirl has gone back into the house as well. The door of the villa closes with the quiet precision of a German car door, and the paparazzi stop taking pictures and leave my side, drifting back to their black sedans. The heat closes in around me, and I come to.

Shit. If Papà sees this, he’s going to kill me, bury me, and then resurrect me, just so he can kill me a second time. For not telling him in the first place. For not calling over to Martina’s and letting him make the delivery. For taking a tip from Tatiana the Showgirl. And for other reasons he’ll make up with the shovel in his hands. Shit.

“Ehi!” I shout to the last of the photographers as he’s about to get into one of the cars. “I’m not going to be in the tabloids or anything, am I?”

And the guy gives me a look like I’m the biggest deficiente he’s ever met, rolls his eyes, ducks into the car, and slams the door.

T
he next morning, I’m still lying in bed when I hear the truck pull into the alley and shut off abruptly. Usually, Jimmy lets it idle while he smokes a cigarette and waits for me. When I get down to the shop, Papà is there—not with Jimmy but with Jimmy’s papà, who I haven’t seen in at least a couple of years.

“Sorry about the mix-up yesterday, Etto. It’s been a stressful week.”

“Where’s Jimmy?”

“He didn’t say anything to you?”

Papà looks at me intently.

“Nothing. Why? What happened?”

Jimmy’s papà shakes his head and sighs. “He’s left us.”

“What do you mean, left?”

“I mean, he came down to breakfast on Friday morning and told his mother and me it was going to be his last day of work. He said he and his friend have gotten themselves jobs.”

“Doing what?”

“Who knows. He’s calling himself a consultant. Some company based in America. He said they have conventions to sell video games all over the world, and he and this friend will be going to them and doing demonstrations.”

“That’s going to be their job?” Papà says. “To play video games?”

“That’s what he said . . . I know. What kind of job is that?”

“And where is he going to live?” Papà asks.

“I asked him that, too. I said, if these jobs are all over the world, where are you going to live, and you know what he said?”

“What?”

“Hotels. One night here, one night there. Who would want that? Can you imagine waking up in a different bed every morning only to spend all day in a hall with no windows, staring at a screen? Why would he want to do that when he could be out in the sunshine and the fresh air, working on the land?”

“It sounds fishy to me,” Papà says. “Do you want me to have Silvio investigate it?”

“I don’t know. He showed us the contract, and it looked legitimate enough. Signed. Notarized. Heat stamped. I didn’t even know he had any friends besides me and his mother. In fact, I asked him, and you know what he said?”

“What?”

“He said he met this friend online. What does that even
mean
? How do you become friends with someone you’ve never been in the same room with, much less make plans to go around the world with them?”

“How long is he going to be away?”

“This contract is for six months, but who knows?” He looks at his shoes and shakes his head again, like he’s trying to puzzle it out. “Boh. I guess he never liked the slaughtering part.” He says this matter-of-fact, but when he looks up, I can see the terror in his eyes, the fear that he’s going to lose Jimmy for good.

Papà and Jimmy’s papà move the carcasses into the back walk-in and hook them—the full vitello, the nose swinging ten centimeters from the floor, and the side of beef.

“Pass me a pan, Etto, will you?” Papà says.

I bring him the pan and he puts it under the nose of the vitello. There’s nothing more to do, but Jimmy’s papà is still standing around looking lost.

“Don’t worry,” Papà tells him. “He will soon realize that he never had it so good as when he was at home, surrounded by his family, working in the security of the family business. He will be back. Mark my words, he will be back.” I know this speech is more for me than for Jimmy’s papà, and I’m sure when Nonno finds out about this, I will get one of his special stories about the girl who worked for her parents’ restaurant, left them in the lurch, and lived unhappily ever after.

“I hope you’re right, Carlo.” Jimmy’s papà reaches over and puts a hand on my shoulder. “Anyway, you are lucky to have such a good and loyal son.”

*   *   *

For the rest of the week, I do what I need to do in order not to be missed. I open and close the shop on time. I eat at Martina’s and try not to seem rushed. I answer Fede’s SMS-es and meet him and the rest of them at Camilla’s a couple of times. But I wake up every morning knowing that I am only waiting for the sun to set and darkness to fall, for my eyes to take in the sight of her running back and forth across that floodlit field.

I think I’m making progress. Each day I record the angle of her mouth curling up at the corner and the number of words she speaks to me.

“You sure were a hit with the paparazzi.” Eight words.

“Don’t feel bad a six-year-old blocked it. Little Yuri isn’t a normal six-year-old.” Thirteen words.

“I was wondering if you would mind bringing us a girello and a few steaks tomorrow?” Sixteen words. Yes, I know a meat order shouldn’t count, but I’ll take what I can get.

Every morning, I hide their order under the piles of vacuum-packed cuts in the front walk-in, and every night, I sneak into the shop, pack it into a cooler, and tote it up the hill.

“How much do we owe you?” Zhuki asks me.

I shrug, as if my father and I are gentlemen butchers and money is of no consequence. “You have a conto. We can settle up before you leave.” And I can’t look at her, so I look at my shoes and pretend I’m working a stone out of the ground. “When
are
you leaving anyway?”

“I don’t know. Now Yuri is talking about staying longer.”

“Really?” I find another imaginary stone to work at. “Don’t you want to get back to Genoa?”

She shrugs. “It’s not like I have anyone waiting for me. Yuri, Mykola, and Ihor, they are my friends. Wherever they are, that’s where I’m happy.”

Yuri comes across the field toward us, clapping his hands. “Enough chat, enough chat. Back to work. Back to work.”

From my first day on the field, Yuri and Mykola have approached me like a mental patient, their calcio experiments like deprogramming, as if this is my last chance at rejoining the normal, productive, calcio-loving society. They teach me all the things I should have learned on this field ten years ago. How to kick with the laces for power, the inside of the foot for accuracy, and the outside for spin. They teach me how to read the keeper and bait the defenders. And they make me practice. Practice, practice, and more practice. Attacking, defending, passing, shooting, running, and more running. I feel like the fottuto Karate Kid.

“I thought you said calcio was going to be fun,” I say, clutching my knees and trying to spit the weakness out of my body.

“Ah, for you, maybe is not fun yet. Your body have much to learn. But when your body know what to do, your head will stop thinking he know everything, and when head stop thinking he know everything, you will see that calcio, it is simplest and most beautiful game in whole world.”

On Saturday night, there’s a full moon, and each blade of grass stands out in high relief against the others like an army on the march. I don’t know how the field stays so meticulously mowed, if they’ve hired somebody or what, and to be honest, I don’t care as long as I don’t have to do it. I try different positions for when they come through the hole in the terrace and she catches the first glimpse of me. I sit cross-legged in the middle of the field, then on top of Luca’s headstone, then against it with arms crossed, then apart. Luca is probably laughing his head off.

“Hey, shut up, brother. Some of us actually have to work at it.”

I hear the rustling of the brush and the sputtering of their incomprehensible language, and I recross my arms. When we were twelve, Fede and Luca taught me how to put my fists behind my biceps so they seemed bigger. I look down to check the effect, but the bulges look like air bubbles traveling up a straw. I uncross them and put my hands on the edge of the headstone as if I am a coiled spring, virile and ready for action. I realize the talking has stopped. I hear a click, and one of the floodlights blinds me.

“Shit!” I throw my hands in front of my face to a gale of Ukrainian laughter. Ihor in particular can’t get enough. He does six or seven instant replays, each one with as much fling as he can make his solid arms do, each one with the “Shit!” as high as his voice will go. All to the delight of Yuri, Little Yuri, Mykola, and Zhuki. But you know something, Ihor, and anyone else who’s listening out there? I don’t care if she’s laughing at me. Because at least she’s not scowling anymore.

Yuri bowls the ball at my feet. I try to stop it, but it rolls right past me.

“Shit.”

“Hey. No more of this ‘shit.’” Yuri says. “I am tired of it. From now on, you say, ‘I work on it, Yuri, I work on it.’ Here, I show you how to control ball.” He gets down on the ground, turning and shaping my feet into a position they are somehow incapable of finding on their own. No one would believe it if they saw it, this Serie A calcio player tending to my feet.

“Like this,” he says.

It’s then I notice a little girl hiding behind Zhuki’s legs. She’s wearing a baseball cap with blond curls frothing around her face, and she peeks around to see what Yuri’s doing.

“Well, hello, hello, Principessa,” Yuri says.

“What’s her name?”

“Principessa. My wife, she wanted Italian name, not Ukrainian or Russian. She think if she have Italian name, she will have easier life.”

“Well, it’s not exactly an Italian name. . . .” I say. Shit. Maybe the fottuto French are right, naming their entire population off an approved list of ten names. Who the cazzo names their kid Princess?

“I told him that when she was born,” Zhuki says, and she nudges her brother with her foot. “But he does not listen.”

“Not important,” Yuri says, standing up. “Only thing is important is that you never saw Principessa here. We have much trouble sneaking away from villa with her.”

“Because of the paparazzi?”

“No, no. The paparazzi went to Rome last night,” Yuri says. He stands up and opens his arms to the sky. “Thank you, Er Pupone and Ilary. Just as I imagined. She will have baby, and he is Catholic mamma’s boy, so there will be wedding. Story about handsome Roman striker much more interesting than story about old Ukrainian striker. I must telephone to the Little Golden Boy and say, ‘Thank you that you are so handsome and Ilary is a blonde. You save my family from paparazzi.’” Yuri laughs.

“Why did you have to sneak out, then?”

“Aha, because we take Principessa with us tonight. Tatiana, she worry that if girl play calcio, she turn into boy. Or lesbian. Like my sister.”

Zhuki shoves him hard, and he loses his balance.

“I am only joking. Only joking.”

Mykola shouts something in Ukrainian from the other side of the field, and the last of the floodlights goes on. Zhuki and Yuri laugh.

“What did he say?”

“He say, ‘And God make the light!’” Yuri rubs his hands together. “So! You are ready?”

“What torture do you have planned for me tonight?”

“Torture? Being with us is torture?” Zhuki smiles. God, I love those teeth. Small and rounded, like milk teeth, but they might as well be fangs for all the destructive power they carry.

“Etto, I tell you, tonight is big night,” Yuri says. “For you, and for the world. Tonight, we teach you—an Italian man—to throw away the catenaccio.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The catenaccio. This silly game of defense you Italians play that makes the boring scores and pisses off rest of world. You know why they play the catenaccio, the Italian teams?”

“Why?”

He nods to Little Yuri, who dutifully clamps his hands over his ears.

“Because they are pants shitters! Because they scared. They think there is limited number of goals in season, and they scared other team take them all. So they try to lock the door. But tonight we say, no afraid, no afraid! Enough of the catenaccio! Attack! Attack! Attack!”

“And how exactly are we going to do that?”

Zhuki says something to Little Yuri, and he sprints over to their pile of things on the sideline and comes back with a bag. Zhuki smiles as she hands it to me.

“What’s this?”

“It’s for hockey,” she says. “Here.” It’s a goalie’s helmet, and she helps me slip it over my head. I can feel her fingers brushing against the back of my neck. I think she could have asked me to put on a pink ballet thing that was two sizes too small and I would’ve let her do it.

“Ready?” Yuri says.

“For what?”

And cazzo if he doesn’t kick the ball straight into my stomach, so hard that it doubles me over and bounces out of bounds.

“Shit! What did you do that for?”

“No ‘shit,’ remember? And do not worry. We are professionals. When we are finish, you will no be scared of nothing. There will be no catenaccio inside of you. All will be left is attack.”

He lines the ball up again, and I fold my arms across my stomach. “Wait! Wait! Let’s at least talk about this.”

“No talk. No wait. Trust me. Zhuki, say him.”

“It’s fine. He did the same to me when I was ten.”

“And look how good she play now.” I look over at Zhuki. There’s no way out of this without having to cash in the chips of my manhood. “Come on,” Yuri says again. “No afraid.”

I stand up to my full height. Wham.

“Now open your eyes this time. You have mask. Come on. No afraid.”

Wham! Wham! Wham! Wham! He hits every one right in the stomach. After about the tenth one, I stop flinching. After five more, the sting is gone, and after another five, I wonder if I should undergo psychoanalysis or something because it actually starts to feel good. Wham! Wham! Wham! Wham!