The Sun and Other Stars (28 page)

“Martina, wait up.” But she either doesn’t hear me or doesn’t want to.

I finally catch up to her at the gates of Bagni Liguria. The bagni are empty at night, the chaises and umbrellas neatly stacked to the side. “Wait up, Martina. You’re faster than half the men.”

She stops, and we let the people on the passeggiata stream around us.

“Go back and finish your dinner, Etto. I left the rest of it in the kitchen.”

“Martina, you don’t have to cook dinner for us anymore. Really. We can fend for ourselves.”

She laughs. “You think I’m this upset about cooking a couple of extra plates every night? God, I need to be around women more.”

“What is it, then?”

“It’s that bastard-of-a-cafone-of-a-husband of mine again.”

I flinch. I can’t remember the last time I heard Martina curse. “What did he do?”

“Took out another loan in my name. Fifty thousand euros this time.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?”

“Nobody ever asks.”

“What does he need fifty thousand euros for anyway?”

Martina sighs. “His sister told me a few months ago he was buying a house in the Caribbean with that puttana from Calabria. I remember thinking at the time, ‘Where’s he going to get the money for that?’ I’m so stupid.”

“But he can’t do that. He’s not even your husband anymore.”

“Technically, he still is.” And I realize that I know next to nothing about Martina, that she’s never burdened me with any of this.

“What are you going to do?” I ask.

“Take it. What else can I do? Hope he pays it back someday.”

“What do you mean, ‘take it’? You shouldn’t have to take it. We’ll get Silvio to investigate. We’ll have Dura and the other guys from Naples call their friends and chase him down. We’re here for you, Martina. Anything you need.”

She laughs, shakes her head, and turns to the sea. The waves are calm near the shore, but there are depth charges of spray exploding about twenty meters out.

“You know what I need, Etto? A life. I really need a life.”

*   *   *

I’m not in the business of getting lives for people or I would get myself one. But what I can give her is a small piece of a ceiling in a defunct liceo in Berlusconi’s Italy. What I can give her is my full attention and concentration as I paint her into the third panel.
The Sacrifice of Martina.
I draw her first, a background figure, standing in the kitchen and putting another pot on the stove. I put a nimbus around her head and make the kitchen glow. Over the next few nights, I start adding figures—Papà with his finger in the air and Signor Cato staring into the screen of the computer. I paint a flat-screen in the corner and swap in the bar for the altar, the calcio scarves waving above it, almost horizontal, as if in a fierce storm. I work on it every night after dinner, holding the faces of my neighbors in my head as I climb the hill.

“Why are you staring at me?” Nello growls one night at the bar.

“I’m not staring at you.” But I’ve been staring at everyone lately, at their worry lines and their laugh lines, their hollowed eyes and swollen jowls, their expressions and gestures and the hundred ways they slump in their chairs, occasionally lobbing remarks over their shoulders and listening for the detonations.

“Yes, you were,” Nello insists. “You know I’m straight, right? Hey, everybody! Get this! Etto’s trying to flirt with me.”

His cackle seals his fate. I vow to save him for
The Last Judgment.
I’ll paint him cowering in the boat on the River Styx, being whacked by Charon’s oar, just as he whacks poor Pia in this life.

I
t doesn’t take long before the Ukrainians are absorbed into San Benedetto like long-lost cousins, and I start to dream about crowds, about living in communes and spectating at calcio matches in two-tiered stadiums, about being wedged between the Germans and Milanesi on the passeggiata or trapped in airplanes, cruise ships, and shopping malls. In each dream, I find myself pawing through people, searching for someone or something that remains just out of my sight.

When I go down to the shop on Tuesday morning, Papà, Nonno, and Jimmy’s papà are already standing around and talking about Jimmy, who’s apparently playing his video games in Japan now.

“He says he is practically a celebrity there,” Jimmy’s papà is saying. “People ask to have their picture taken with him, and when he walks down the street, everyone turns to look. He says everything there is half the size. Women the size of dolls. Hotel rooms as small as a coffin. And so clean. He says it is so clean you could eat off the streets.”

I can tell by how Jimmy’s papà talks that he’s secretly proud to have a son so worldly, but whenever Jimmy’s name comes up, Papà and Nonno get nervous looks, as if they expect me to evaporate on the spot.

“In a month or so, you will be able to break down an entire vitello by yourself,” Papà says as encouragement. “It will be a day to celebrate.”

“Yes,” Nonno adds. “A butcher never forgets his first vitello.”

While we work, I sneak glances at the front window, trying to catch the very moment Zhuki emerges from the crush of people on the passeggiata and crosses to the beach. I know Papà is doing the same, parting the bead curtain every ten minutes or so, pretending to ask Nonno some question he already knows the answer to.

By one o’clock, all that’s left of the hindsaddle is spread over the back table, and the vacuum-pack machine is running at full blast, the rifle shot and hiss at the end of each cycle setting the rhythm.

My phone lights up. Zhuki this time.

WE’RE AT THE BEACH.

I HAVE TO FINISH UP IN THE SHOP.

COME OVER WHEN YOU’RE FINISHED.

Papà seems to read my mind. “It’s all right, Etto. You’ve done enough for today. You can go.”

“Are you sure?”

“Sure. Go.”

Mimmo is sitting inside the entrance hut, reading. The beach is mobbed, the umbrellas cluttered with wet swimsuits flung across their backs. Yuri is sitting on a chaise in the front row, surrounded by a group of men, most of them in street clothes.

“I don’t see any deliveries in your hand today, Etto,” Mimmo says.

“Not today.”

He wags his eyebrows at me. “She’s over there.”

“Thanks.”

The sand shifts as I step down from the boardwalk. I feel like I’m walking in slow motion and everyone is staring at me, like my skin is transparent and they can see the folds in my brain and the blood pumping through my arteries.

I find Zhuki knee deep in the water, holding Principessa’s hand while Little Yuri and a couple of other boys jump into the crests of the waves as they roll in. I stop at the edge of the dry sand, just out of reach of the bubbling surf.

“Ciao.”

She turns around, squinting. “Ciao.”

The sun is heavy on my forehead. I wish I’d brought a pair of sunglasses, a hat, something to block it. A monster wave comes in, washing over my feet, eroding the sand beneath them and knocking me off balance. Zhuki laughs. I look up, and there are her eyes pulling me forward.

She picks Principessa up and goes out to where the boys are. The water splashes around my ankles, and I look down at my feet, pale and glowing, distorted by the water. I imagine the flecks of Mamma’s skin cells swirling around with the bits of seaweed and sand. One drunken winter night, I finally pressed Fede into telling me where they’d found her body. He said it was concealed in the sand and murkiness between the piers, and the divers had to unhook her from the pipes that lie flush on the sea floor. I don’t even know what those pipes are for. Fede said she’d taken one of the hooks from the shop and attached it to her weight belt. I look up at the chair. Fede is watching me, and he smiles and gives me a thumbs-up. My stomach churns.

“Are you okay?” Zhuki calls back to me.

“Fine. Why?” I try to force myself to relax. What is it they tell you when you’re seasick? Look out at the horizon, as far as you can until you forget the sickness and get your balance back. So I look out at Whale Island rising like a rocky wart from the smooth skin of the sea and let my eyes float to the horizon. It doesn’t help. I still have the awful feeling in the pit of my stomach that if I make any sudden moves, the equilibrium of the sea will be upset and Mamma’s bloated body will come floating up from the bottom.

Zhuki wades farther out, Principessa clinging to her shoulder. She jumps with every wave, shouting with the boys. I shuffle my feet until the water is up to my calves and the waves splash at the edges of Luca’s shorts.

I stop. I can’t do it.

Zhuki turns around and motions again for me to follow, but I shake my head. They jump into a few more waves before the whole group turns around and comes back toward me in slow motion, Zhuki’s legs fighting the water. I can hear her explaining the tides in both Ukrainian and Italian, how the sun and the moon pull the water up and down. Like getting in and out of a bathtub, she says. She sets Principessa down on the sand and turns her attention to Little Yuri, who’s pulling at her arm.

“I told Little Yuri we would jump off the molo. Do you want to come?”

“No, no,” I say, trying to play it cool. “No jumping for me.”

“I’ll save you if you drown.” She makes a little diving motion with her hand, and I force a laugh.

“I don’t feel like the beach today. How about a hike?”

She looks at Principessa and Little Yuri. “I don’t know. I think Little Yuri and Principessa want to stay on the beach for now.”

“I didn’t mean Little Yuri and Principessa. I meant you.”

“But who will watch them?”

“Their parents?”

She pulls at the bottom of her suit and runs her fingers through her hair. She studies my face, and I try to erase the fear and anxiety.

“Wait here,” she says.

She goes over to Yuri, parting the crowd, Little Yuri and the other boys following behind. She sets Principessa down on the chaise, and they talk in Ukrainian while the men wait patiently. Finally, she emerges from the crowd.

“Okay,” she says. “Let’s go.”

“Let’s go.”

I stick my legs under the spigot as Zhuki rinses off under the shower. She slips on her shorts and her T-shirt, waves to Mimmo and Franco and a few others, and in a minute we’re alone on the passeggiata.

“So,” she says, “a hike. Where to?”

“Up?”

“Where else?”

*   *   *

We end up on a bench in the English gardens overlooking the harbor. They were planted a century ago by women who carried parasols and jumped into the sea fully clothed. You can see half the hill and the town from here, as well as the harbor on the back side, the boats lined up and tucked away.

“You are so lucky to live here,” she says.

“I guess.”

“What do you mean, ‘I guess’? Look at this.”

“Well, it’s not bad if you come here for a few months and you don’t know all the stuff that goes on, but after a while it gets tiring, you know, everyone knowing your business all the time. Sometimes it’s like you can’t sneeze in the morning and not hear about it later in the afternoon.”

She laughs. “Calcio is the same.”

“Really?”

“Sure. The same players and players’ wives moving from Serie A to Premier League to Bundesliga to La Liga. And the paparazzi. They are like the grandmothers in my village, following everyone around, reporting every little thing anyone does.”

“At least they have more interesting things to report on.”

“Ha!”

“You’re telling me you don’t meet any interesting people in calcio?”

“I meet a lot of women like Tatiana. And a lot of men who want to be with someone like Tatiana. And then there are the people who only want to get to know me in order to get access to Yuri.”

“Why do you think I’m here?”

She laughs and gives what I think is supposed to be a playful shove, but it nearly knocks me off the bench. “You didn’t even know who Yuri was.”

“Sure I did.” And I rattle off the statistics I’d heard Papà cite a hundred times before.

“But you didn’t
care
who he was.”

“Not really.”

She smiles. “So . . . do you think you know the business of everyone who lives on this hill?”

“Almost everyone.”

“I will quiz you. Who lives in the house right up there?”

“Which one?”

“The one on the next terrace. The one that looks like Disneyland.”

“That’s the Cavalcantis’ house. You remember Guido, the one who runs Le Rocce?”

“White suit? Lots of girls?”

“That’s him.”

“He makes so much money from the club?”

“No. It’s his father. He went to Milan when he was young, made a lot of money in the stock market, retired at forty, and moved back here.”

“It is such a big house. It looks like it might fall into the sea.”

“People were angry for a while because they tore down an old, classic villa and put that up. But the Cavalcantis, they are very nice people. Not snobs.”

“And this one?”

“Signora Sapia’s. She lives there with her son and his wife.”

“Ah, I know her from church. She’s a very nice lady.”

“Now. She used to be a complete . . . witch.”

“Really?”

“Especially to her daughter-in-law. She didn’t think she was good enough for her son. And then one year she went blind. Suddenly. And now her daughter-in-law is the one to lead her around and do everything for her.”

“What about that one?”

“Signor and Signora Semirami.”

“Anything interesting about them?”

“Where do I start?”

We keep walking up the hill, through the crooked paths and mule tracks that knit together every villa and rustic hut. I listen to her footsteps behind me as they tread over rocks and grass, the percussion changing, but always maintaining the same steady grace. We end up on the field, which even in this drought is green and lush. Zhuki takes the ball from Luca’s grave, slips off her flip-flops, and flings them in the direction of the sidelines.

“Are you in?” she says, and I kick mine off, too.

There are no rules today. No whistles, no experiments, no penalties, no scores, no defense. We run through the soft grass in our bare feet, dodging and weaving, laughing our heads off, scoring goal after goal. Is this what it was like for you, Luca? Did your muscles become liquid, responding to even the slightest bump in the grass? Did you feel like you could run from here to Rome, with leaps and bounds over the tops of the trees?

I score a goal, and I imitate Vanni Fucci, thrusting figs in the air, then falling down on the field in an exaggerated face-plant. Zhuki runs to fetch the ball and dribbles it back.

“Half-time,” she says, and she sits down next to me, leaning back on her arms. I flip over, and I can practically hear Luca hissing at me across the terrace. Kiss her, you idiot, kiss her.

“Etto?”

“Yes?”

“Is the reason you won’t jump from the molo because of your mother?”

“Who told you that?”

“The nonne.”

“Well, the nonne should probably mind their own affairs.”

“Like that will happen.” She laughs. She picks up the ball and twirls it around in her hands. “It is true that she killed herself in the sea? After your brother?”

“What else did the nonne tell you?”

“That she was American.”

“Yeah, she was from California.”

“Did you ever go there?”

“Once. When we were about twelve. She didn’t really get along with her parents so she only went back every few years. They thought she was stupid for staying here. They kept calling it a phase.”

“Even by the time you were twelve?”

“Even by the time we were twelve.”

“And where is her grave?”

“Over there. In California.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know exactly. My papà called her parents up when she . . . when it happened and they . . . well, they said some pretty awful things. They’re both lawyers,” I say, as if this matters. “Anyway, they demanded that he send her back.”

“And your papà did it.”

“I don’t know why. I think he didn’t want to argue.”

“Maybe he felt guilty? Like it was his fault?”

“Maybe.”

She picks up the ball and tosses it to me. I bat it back to her like a volleyball, and we try to keep it up until it drops and we have to start all over again.

“So what was she like?”

I hesitate.

“If you don’t want to talk about her, it’s okay. I’ll stop interrogating you.”

“Actually, it’s kind of nice to talk about her. I’ve just never had to explain her to anyone, that’s all. Everyone I’ve ever known knew her, too.”

Zhuki tosses the ball to me, and I catch it. I lean back into the grass and prop it under my head like a pillow. The sun is white-hot today, the shreds of cloud igniting like tinder as they pass over it.