The Sun and Other Stars (30 page)

“This is cool, Etto. Thanks for bringing me here.”

I wait at the end of the corridor, in front of Charon’s door. My heart pounds as she reaches for the handle.

“What’s in here?”

I let her open the door herself, and she stands frozen in the doorway, her eyes darting around the room, taking it in. At first there’s almost a look of fear on her face, like I’ve been in here flaying my victims and sewing their skin into suits. She mutters a few words in Ukrainian and walks slowly around the edges of the table towers, her head flipped toward the ceiling in the same contortion I’ve held for the past two months.

“You know,” I say, like some fottuto tour guide, “by the time he was finished, Michelangelo’s eyes were so warped, he couldn’t read a book unless he held it above his head and looked up.”

“
You
did all this, Etto?” she says, and she starts to climb.

“It’s stupid, I know. And I’m probably never going to finish it. I don’t even know why I started in the first place . . .”

“Everyone is here. Look. There’s Fede. And Franco . . . Martina . . . Tatiana . . . your papà . . .”

I climb up after her. “You recognize them?”

“They’re really good, Etto. They look like they do in real life.” She stares at the panel of Papà kicking me out of the shop. She screws up her face and breaks into a laugh. “Is that
you
?”

Her eyes are so bright, but I don’t look away. I feel her reaching for the front of my shirt, only this time instead of a push, I feel a pull. I put my hands on her waist, and it feels like we’re floating on the sea, the wooden table like the deck of a ship buoying us up, sent to right my listing life.

I know, I know. You are used to my generation’s compulsion to report everything we do the instant we do it, and I can hear you over there saying,
enough
with the fottuto metaphors—what
happene
d
? And especially if you are American and obsessed with keeping tallies and statistics on every aspect of your life, you will probably even want to know what base I got to and if I “scored.”

And I will answer you as I would answer Fede or Bocca or any of them:

It’s none of your fottuto business.

But if it were . . . if it were, I would tell you that there is nothing to compare to the touch of another human being. The bridging of a synapse. A spark of life.

W
hen I wake up on Sunday morning, there’s a low buzzing inside my veins, like the home-strung power lines that zigzag between the houses toward the top of the hill. I hear the distant sound of The Band coming closer, and I get up, open the shutters, and poke my head into the morning air. The Band is a bunch of guys mostly Papà’s age who go out in the streets and play whenever they feel like it. Sometimes it’s for the religious holidays or to serenade someone for a birthday or a new baby, but most of the time, there’s no reason at all. Once a summer at the height of the season, when the tourists are packed into every closet and storage room, they do an early morning march-by at full blast. Just to remind everyone who owns the town.

I watch the tops of their heads as they pass by below. Claudia’s papà is one of the main organizers, so Casella’s been drafted into The Band, and sure enough, I spot his trumpet and his ponytail in the back of the line.

“Looking good,” I shout.

“Hey, Etto!” Claudia’s papà answers. “Say hello to my new son-in-law.”

Casella lifts his head and gives a sleepy grin. He puts the trumpet to his mouth and blows a note that lasts until the end of the vico.

I walk up the hill to pick up Nonna for church, and I don’t feel the incline at all. It’s like I’m still floating next to the ceiling of the aula, and as I sit in the courtyard of the church, my body fires off celebratory sparks. The doors are flung open to the warm sunshine, and as they cycle through the Holy, Holy, Holy, the Our Father, and the rest of it, I make up my own prayers.

“Shit. Thank you, God. I don’t deserve her, but . . . shit. Thank you. Thank you. That’s all. Thank you. And sorry for the cursing.”

The last song plays, and everyone exits, squinting as the sun hits their eyes.

“Congratulations,” I tell Casella, and he smiles sheepishly. Claudia thrusts her hand in my face, the diamond sticking up like a lollipop.

“Can you believe it, Etto? Can you believe he finally did it? He even got down on his knee, just like in the movies. . . .”

But I’m only half listening to Claudia, because behind her, Zhuki is coming down the stairs with the nonne. She smiles at me, and my face must register it like a mirror because Claudia interrupts herself and turns around to look.

“Ah, I’ve heard the rumor that Etto has a girlfriend, but I didn’t quite believe it,” she says.

“She’s not really my girlfriend.”

“Whatever, Etto.”

Zhuki comes over to us. She’s wearing a blue skirt, and I try to think back and remember if she was wearing a skirt the other times I saw her at church.

“Ciao.”

“Ciao.”

“How is it going?” she asks.

“Claudia and Casella just got engaged.”

Claudia thrusts the ring in Zhuki’s face.

“Beautiful,” Zhuki says. “Congratulations.”

I watch her as she asks all the polite questions about when the wedding will be and how Casella asked her. Claudia talks on and on, Casella clinging to her side, the nonne stopping to congratulate them. But Zhuki is the only one in focus for me, everyone else blurring around her.

“Are you going to the match this afternoon?” Casella asks me.

“Of course. Are you?”

“Sure.”

“You’re going?” Claudia says.

“Why not?”

And Claudia starts talking again, something about her mother and the wedding, but it must be at a different frequency that only brides can hear, because all I sense is the same low buzzing in my veins as when I woke up.

*   *   *

After dinner, Nonno, Nonna, Papà, and I drive to the field in the 2CV. We pull up through the service road, and Nonno and I meet gales of laughter as we unload two large jugs from the back, sloshing with icy lemonade.

“Ah, but you had to buy those lemons didn’t you, Caccia?”

Cruel.

If I live eight hundred years, I will never believe how many people have come up to the field on a Sunday afternoon. Not only the regulars from Martina’s but even people like Signor Cavalcanti, who has enough money to buy himself a nice Serie B team, and Benito, the other butcher, exiled for decades by his own arrogance. Even the students home from university for the summer, who usually want nothing to do with these backward old men. They are all out there on the field, chasing a fottuto calcio ball.

While the first match runs, the women unpack blankets and picnic lunches. Tatiana is among them, standing expressionless in her dark glasses and capris, only clapping with her fingertips when Yuri or Vanni scores a goal, as if she’s too good to cheer for amateurs.

But I have to say, for amateurs, they’re starting to look pretty good out there. The first day, each man tried to be his own superstar, his own Ronaldo, his own Eusébio. But with a full week of practice, they are passing foot to foot, and their bodies have begun to remember the formations of their youth. Today they have enough breath not only to run up and down the field without falling down but to scream out directives and encouragements to their teammates.

“Go, Franco!”

“Take the shot, Gubbio!”

“Faster! Faster!” the Mangona brothers shout. Tired of running, they’ve declared themselves both the official coaches and referees, and they ride up and down the sidelines on their mountain bikes, shouting at men twice their age.

“Come on, Padre! Get him!”

Vanni Fucci runs down the field, hotly pursued by Father Marco, who has the passion for the game if not the talent. Vanni pulls out his fanciest footwork, and Father Marco ends up in a heap in Vanni’s wake as Vanni cruises easily to the goal. And even though it’s Vanni, I can hardly believe my eyes when he circles back toward Father Marco, waving his figs in the air.

“Peck at this!” he shouts at Father Marco, who tries to laugh it off as the other men help him off the ground.

The crowd along the sidelines is hushed, except for Tatiana, who’s laughing her fottuto head off. The Mangona brothers stop their bicycles and consult, one whispering, the other shaking his head. Finally, they both look up at Vanni.

“Foul!”

“What?” Vanni stops in his tracks.

“Foul!”

“For what?”

“For being an arrogant stronzo.” One of them pulls a yellow card from his pocket and thrusts it in Vanni’s direction.

“That’s not a foul!” Vanni shouts. “You show me the rule book. That is not a foul! Yuri, are you going to stand there and let this happen? This is ridiculous.”

But Yuri only laughs. He’s on the sidelines with Papà, enjoying the show.

“Your papà seems like he’s having a good time,” Fede says. He sits down next to me and unwraps one of his mamma’s sandwiches.

“I know. I think for Papà, it’s a little like having Luca back.”

“That doesn’t bother you?” he mumbles through a big bite of sandwich.

I look over at Papà and Yuri, heads together, talking strategy. “He’s happy.”

“You want a sandwich?” Fede asks. “My mamma made them.”

“Later maybe.”

“Did you hear about Claudia and Casella?” he asks, and he takes another bite.

“Yeah. You okay?”

He shrugs. I watch him finish the sandwich in silence. He wipes his fingers on the paper and crumples it into a ball.

The whistle blows.

“We’re on,” he says, and he gives the crumpled paper to his mamma, along with a kiss on the cheek, before he sprints onto the field.

Fede’s team is playing Papà’s, and I watch as the old guys and the young guys blur into the same, universal age of boys playing calcio. Each time they manage to string four or five passes together all the men throw up their hands and shout, “Ole!” I look at the nonne, still gossiping, oblivious to the match, the babies being passed around, the mothers restraining the toddlers from running straight to their papás on the field. And for some reason, all I can think about is Martin Malaspina. And Mr. Malaspina, I don’t even know if you’re still in the movie business, if you’re in India or Hollywood or Timbuktu, but if only you could see this, you would wonder why you left, and you would reproclaim this town as the last place on earth that is simple and pure, where a patchwork of heaving picnic blankets sanctifies the ground, calcio stars are brought down from on high, and those San Benedettons, well, they really know how to, you know, live.

“We’re on next, Etto.” Zhuki pulls up her socks and double knots her cleats, and the Mangona brothers call out a two-minute warning.

On the field, Yuri passes to Papà, who fakes out Fede and scores a goal. I watch Papà jump up and down, shouting and slapping fives with everyone on his team. When he comes to Yuri, he pulls him into a hug, his bear paws pounding against Yuri’s back.

“Good shot, Papà! Good shot!” I shout. And maybe I’m a bad son for even thinking this, much less saying it, but I think it’s the first time in two years, or maybe in my life, that I don’t resent him. The first time I’ve felt completely free.

T
he rest of the days until Ferragosto go by in a blur. When I’m with Zhuki, it feels like I’m tumbling through space, nothing under my control. In the afternoons, we wander around the hill paths with the restless Germans, from the public olive oil mill all the way to the harbor, and as far up as the village Nonna was originally from, where from twelve thirty to four thirty, the streets are abandoned and there’s not a single shutter open. Places I haven’t been in years.

Now that Tatiana is back from Milan, Zhuki leaves the kids at home and comes to the bar with Yuri, Mykola, and Ihor, and she quickly becomes part of the Ferragosto festa planning committee. She and Martina pore over their lists at the bar, organizing the food, while Yuri and Papà work out the calcio tournament and Silvio takes care of everything else. Once a night, the entire bar stops for an update on the progress and to deal with the daily crises. Only in the past few days, Signor Buonconte has said they can’t use his land. The festa has been held there ever since I can remember, and it’s the perfect setting—a wide field between two torrents. But with no rain, he’s afraid of the grass catching fire.

“We’ll have it on the calcio field, then,” Silvio says.

“What about the risk of fire? All those shrubs and trees?”

“We’ll start soaking the ground today. Etto, can you manage that?”

“Isn’t there a watering ban?”

“We’ll have Gubbio declare an exception . . . Gubbio!” Silvio shouts over to the card tables.

“Yes?”

“We need an exception to the water ban. For the festa.”

“Fine with me.” And Gubbio raises his hand, giving the benediction of the comune.

“You’re going to have the semifinals for the calcio tournament on Friday afternoon, then?” Martina asks.

“And Saturday morning.”

“Until when?”

“Three o’clock.”

“Three o’clock? How are we supposed to set up in time?”

“We’ll have plenty of lifeguards to help.”

“Can’t we end earlier? Yuri? Carlo?”

“I don’t think so. We have fifteen teams now.” Papà pulls out a piece of paper and consults with Yuri. “Make that sixteen. The only way we can end earlier is if we start at six in the morning.”

This idea is immediately and vociferously vetoed throughout the room, and Martina sighs.

“Don’t worry,” Silvio reassures her. “It’ll all come together. It always does.”

He’s right. Every year, they start with nothing, and somehow the festa materializes. The bar and restaurant owners along the passeggiata loan chairs and tables, and the bagni owners donate sections of boardwalk and lifeguards to help with the setting up and taking down. Guido sends the backup sound system from Le Rocce, and the Turks who run the Truck Show pack up the bouncing castle for the kids and bring by a couple of generators. Sandro’s furniture shop loans out their truck. Father Marco saves up the candle stubs that have burned too low for the holders and hands over the church kitchen to the nonne for two weeks so they can roll enough trofie to stuff the freezer. The villas on the hill loan their grills and what’s left of their gardens after the drought. No one trusts the Standa to provide anything but the paper products and plastic cups, which they do with a loud proclamation in their front window testifying to their sponsorship. For the rest of the food, they circulate a list around the smaller shops. There’s always competition among the bakers—whose rolls, focaccia, and pastries will be featured. Papà gets the list first and signs up to contribute the sausages, leaving the chicken to Benito. Hollywood chicken, Papà calls it, because who knows what’s in those puffy breasts?

“This is our second Ferragosto in Italy, and I still don’t understand what it is,” Zhuki says. We’re sharing one of the chaises at the beach, watching the action. It’s so hot out today, even Tatiana is here, lying on the chaise next to us in her bikini and heels, yapping on the phone.

“What do you mean, what is it?”

“I mean, what’s it for?” Her head turns to follow the crowd of young boys being led out to the molo by Yuri and Ihor. There are probably twenty of them, and they climb up the stairs and spread themselves out along the concrete ledge, far enough apart not to conk their heads together as they jump. Yuri gives the signal, and they spring off one by one down the line, each bobbing up in a wreath of white foam. The tourists applaud, and the waiters step out onto the passeggiata in their long aprons.

“What’s it for? Boh. For August fifteenth. For the holiday. For summer vacation.”

“That’s it?”

“Maybe before it was religious. Or Communist. Come to think of it, it used to be one of the ‘festivals of unity,’ but the Communists must’ve run out of money to throw it.”

“You have a lot of Communists here?” She looks alarmed.

“All over Italy.”

“
Really
?”

“But they’re not real Communists. They’re not out there murdering or collectivizing or anything. They don’t even get elected that often.”

“Then what do they do?”

“They hold festas.”

“Will there be any Communists at this festa?”

“Franco and Mimmo.”

“Franco and Mimmo are Communists?”

Franco is patrolling the edge of the water, his fingertips absentmindedly rubbing up and down the corrugation of his ribs, feeling the scar that runs up his side like a seam. Zhuki eyes him uneasily. On the other chaise, Tatiana’s conversation is becoming more shrill.

“I’m surprised Tatiana is here today,” I say.

“There must be a paparazzo around. I think she calls them herself sometimes.”

“Who’s she talking to on the phone anyway?”

“Her mother.”

“What do they talk about so . . . violently?”

Zhuki shrugs. “Clothes. Gossip. Should she get plastic surgery? Why is Ilary Blasi getting more publicity than she did when she was pregnant?”

“Has she always been like that?”

“Not so bad as she is now. But I told my brother in the beginning she was not a good match for him. It was a terrible argument we had. The worst ever. I think he saw problems, too, but he did not want to say.”

“Why did he marry her, then?”

She sighs and rolls her eyes. “This is a question for a man, not a woman.”

“Zhuki!” Yuri is back on the sand, dripping, tapping the face of his watch. His gestures are so graceful, everything he wears or touches somehow looks like he’s advertising it—watches, baseball caps, even the biodegradable shampoo he squirts on his palm as he sticks Little Yuri and Principessa under the showers.

“I should go,” she says. “Yuri wants to eat and take a nap before the elimination rounds this afternoon.”

“He’s really taking this seriously.”

“He always takes calcio seriously.”

“What about ‘Have fun’ and ‘It is only a game’?”

She laughs. “That was only for you.”

*   *   *

Three or four hours later we’re up on the field for the semifinals. Only three or four hours. But I can tell immediately that something has changed in the time between. Zhuki’s face is clouded and dark, and she won’t look at me. When we start to play, she runs cautiously around the field, quickly passing the ball away whenever it comes to her.

“Shoot it, Zhuki, shoot it!” I shout, but she only passes it off.

By the half, they are winning, 2–0, and I have no choice but to take over.

“Come on, Luca,” I say. “Can you help a guy out down here?” And I know you will never believe this, but I swear, he does. Through the second half, it feels like my feet are acting on their own, reciting moves I’ve never practiced, my breath washing through me as easily as the wind. I evade. I dribble. I dodge. I bewilder. I score two goals, and we end up winning 3–2, locking us safely into Saturday’s brackets.

Zhuki is upset, though. I can tell. I follow her off the field, but she’s walking too fast.

“Hey.” Fede intercepts me and slaps me on the back. “I never knew you could play calcio like that.”

“That makes two of us.”

I notice that Zhuki is limping and wincing, headed toward the liceo.

“What’s the matter with Zhuki?” Fede asks.

“I don’t know . . . hey, Zhuki! Wait up!”

I follow her through the cypresses to the fifth-year bench.

“Hey.”

She glances over her shoulder. “Hey,” she says. “Nice goals.”

“Thanks.”

She has one cleat off already, her sock pulled down around her heel. She moves her hand, and there’s a wide, red burn through the concave of her ankle, pinpricked with blood.

“Somebody cleated me.”

“They’re really excited today.”

“I guess.”

We sit in silence for a minute. There’s something about the way she slumps against the bench and clutches her foot that makes me scared to ask, but finally, I do.

“Is everything okay?”

“Not really.”

“What is it?”

“It’s that suka.”

“What?”

“Tatiana. She’s talking about going back to Genoa already.”

“I thought you were planning on staying here through the fall. Through October.”

“That’s what Yuri wanted. And what everyone else wants.”

“So . . . ?”

“You don’t understand. Tatiana is trying very strongly to convince Yuri.”

“So talk to Yuri . . .”

“It’s not that easy. Yuri’s deaf and blind when it comes to Tatiana.”

“Well, if worse comes to worst, you can always stay here on your own.”

“And then what?” She sighs and looks me straight in the eye. “Look, Etto, I like it here.” She sweeps her arm across the view of the sea. “What’s not to like? It’s great for a summer, for a few months. But this is not real life.”

“It’s my real life. It’s a lot of people’s real lives.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to offend you.” She looks down at her foot. There’s some clapping and cheering from the field, shouts of “Over here! Over here!” Then finally, “Gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool!” We listen to the shouting peak and ebb. Zhuki tucks a corkscrew of hair behind her ear.

“Genoa is not so far,” I say. “I could visit you.”

“I don’t know, Etto. And what if Yuri doesn’t stay in Genoa?”

But I don’t get a chance to answer because a bloodcurdling scream fills the air. Zhuki’s face is immediately scribbled away by panic.

“It’s Principessa,” she says, pulling her sock back over her ankle. She runs to the field, cleat in hand, and I follow behind.

“Paparazzi! Paparazzi!” Everyone is shouting in general alarm, every man on the field gathered into a tight cluster around Yuri as Silvio and Papà march toward the cypresses.

“This is the police,” Silvio announces. “Put your hands up. We know you’re back there.”

“Porca puttana, Silvio, this is no time for the
law
,” Gubbio shouts, following them. “Yes, we know you’re back there, you sneaky little mamma’s boy! Grow some palle and come out and face some real men.” But before the three of them reach the edge of the field, the cypresses begin to shake and scream in Italian.

“Stop it, you crazy testa di cazzo! Hey, hey! Ow! Give that back! Give that back, you dumb gorilla! Ow! I will prosecute you, you figlio di puttana! You hear me? Prosecute you! I have witnesses! Do you see? I have witnesses! Ow! What are you doing? Cazzo! What are you
doing
?”

A skinny emo type in skintight jeans and a thin T-shirt lands sprawling on the sideline, as if the cypresses have spit him out. Ihor appears from behind the trees, chewing something. He advances toward the paparazzo, who scrambles away, and it’s only when he’s at a safe distance that he turns around and shouts.

“Fine, you stupid Serie C1 Ukrainian and your damn mafia here. That’s how you want it? Well, you’ll have to read about it in the tabloids, I guess. You’ll find out soon enough though. You’ll find out soon enough.”

“Hey, you twerp,” Nonno answers. “You’re a disgrace to your papà and your papà’s papà and your ancestors all the way back to the slime your family came from.”

Papà raises his eyebrows at me.

“Good one, Nonno.”

Meanwhile, Ihor walks toward the pack of men, and it parts for him like a splitting amoeba, revealing Yuri with Principessa wrapped around his legs. Vanni Fucci is on one side, cowering, and Little Yuri is on the other, crossing his arms defiantly.

“What did he say?” Yuri asks. “What did he say?”

Ihor spits something into his fist. He holds it up and places it in Yuri’s upturned palm. It’s a tiny, blue plastic memory card, mauled almost beyond recognition.

“But what did he say?” Yuri says again. “What did he say?”