The Sun and Other Stars (6 page)

The three of them turn around and disappear into the tangled weeds and scrub, as quickly and completely as they appeared. I sit spooked for a minute, the afternoon cicadas screeching around me.

“Who the cazzo was that?” I ask Luca, but he only stares back at me and gives me his mysterious smile.

W
hen I open the door to Martina’s, it sounds like the roar of the sea. The flat-screen is turned up to full volume, with prosecutors and publicists looming like mountains and booming like cannons, each man in the bar trying to overlay his own commentary. Most of them have been here since Sunday night going over the forensics of the Genoa-Venezia match in minute detail. Charon used to call them the “small-souled,” these men who have been blessed or cursed with early pensions from the railroad or sons to run their businesses. They are permanent fixtures at Martina’s, subsisting on a constant drip of coffee and grappa, their days spent doing a dead man’s float over their newspapers, their evenings spent shouting at the flat-screen.

“Do not be sucked into the vestibule of their apathy,” Charon would bellow at us. “Look and pass.” He would pause a moment to allow his voice to travel the length of the aula. “
Look
and
pass.
”

And Casella and I would nearly get sinus infections from holding back our snorting.

“Ciao, tesoro,” Martina says. I take my seat at the bar, and she leans over and kisses me on the cheeks. The flat-screen flashes shots of a few players and managers shading their faces and ducking into doorways, then stock clips of courtrooms.

“What’s all this?”

“You haven’t heard about the scandal?”

“Still?”

“It’s only just begun. They’ve announced that there’s going to be an official investigation. Your papà is beside himself.”

I pick him out in the crowd of men, his face heavy with anxiety.

“Anyway, I’m sorry, tesoro, but they started coming early this morning, and I haven’t managed to cook anything all day. I called Belacqua. He said he would be over with a pizza for you, but that was an hour ago.”

I make the silent calculations in my head. Belacqua’s uncle’s pizzeria is at the other end of the passeggiata. He’ll stop and have one joint down on the rocks, maybe two, and by the time he gets here, the pizza will be cold as stone.

The commercials come on, and someone turns down the volume. This is always a sign of calcio arguments ahead, which you who call it soccer instead of calcio might find hard to keep up with. As long as you understand that this is just an infinitesimal fraction of the pain I suffer having to listen to this cazzate every day.

“It is the ultimate injustice,” Papà thunders. “The
ultimate
injustice. Yuri Fil didn’t leave the field because of match fixing. He left because of his ankle, an old injury from his Kiev Dynamo days. So they are singling him out for having a
disability
? Where is the justice in that?”

“Amazing how those old ankles act up when it’s convenient, isn’t it?”

“And what if he left the field because he wanted no part in the match fixing?” Papà presses. “If he went off because he didn’t want to shoot on a keeper who was going to step aside and let the ball go in no matter what? This is called sportsmanship. This is called integrity. What would be wrong with that?”

“What would be wrong with that? It would show that he knew about the fix. That’s called de facto participation.” Cazzo, how they love their Latin when they’re arguing.

“Well, who’s to say that Genoa wouldn’t have won anyway? After all, that new Venezia keeper is so young he’s still trying to find his
own
balls.”

Everyone laughs.

Waiting for Belacqua to show up with my pizza, I find out more about the scandal than I ever wanted to know: the wiretaps at the hotel, the briefcase of money found in the Venezia manager’s car, and of course, Yuri Fil’s controversial self-substitution only thirteen minutes into the first half. On the surface, it’s the same shouting and waving as on every Sunday night during the season, when they make the weekly reordering of the calcio scarves above the bar—victors and heroes on the left, losers and sons of whores on the right. It’s the same pinching and thrusting of various combinations of fingers, the same insulting of mothers, aunties, first-grade teachers, and ancestors all the way back to the Romans. Only tonight, the room is creaking under the weight of grand abstractions. Integrity. Sportsmanship. Tradition. Honor.

“I don’t
care
about the technicalities!” Papà shouts to the others, wringing his hands as if he’s making patties out of them. “I still say Yuri Fil did the honorable thing.”

“And
I
still say that Yuri Fil refusing to play is an admission of guilt,” Nello says. “That means he knew about the fix and didn’t say a word.”

“And what about everyone else? Are you telling me no one else on that team knew?”

Gubbio, the mayor, shrugs. “I don’t see why it’s such a big affair anyway. Genoa needed the win. Venezia didn’t. And so Genoa should get the win. For Venezia to lose the game is the honorable thing to do.”

“If it’s so honorable, why do they need a briefcase full of money?”

“A quarter of a million euros in calcio these days is nothing. A gratuity. A tip.”

“Aha, you see? That is exactly the problem,” Sordello chimes in from one of the card tables. Sordello’s cousin is a second-string midfielder on some Serie C2 team in the south, and he tries to slip in his pedigree wherever he can. “I was talking with my cousin about this a couple of weeks ago, and he agrees with me—calcio has drifted into complete anarchy. A ship without a pilot, a whorehouse where ultras can turn stadiums upside down, players change allegiance every season and will do anything for fame or money. Where is the love of the game, I ask you? The old guys would be
ashamed
if they could see what has become of calcio in this country. And where is the leadership to right the ship? The teams are all run by tyrant businessmen, by a bunch of bossy peasant clowns.”

“Ah, but if only it were the individuals.” Mimmo takes his turn, and everyone faces him. “It’s the
system.
It’s this unchecked capitalism eroding everything. Money, the root of all evil.”

“Eh, eh, eh . . . I’m surprised you’re not handing out leaflets, Mimmo.”

“I’m having them printed,” he says, and continues, “Look at the financial doping of calcio, the corruption in the government, the breakup of the family, this tabloid-reality-television nonsense—it’s all related, and there wasn’t any of it back in the old days when a calcio player made the same as his brother in the factory, and they played purely for the love of the game.”

There is a general murmuring of agreement around the bar. “Ah . . . sì, sì . . .”

My phone lights up. Fede again.

WE’RE AT CAMILLA’S. COME ON OVER.

I’M AT MARTINA’S.

WELL, EAT AND GET OVER HERE.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Farinata’s voice booms as he rises slowly from his stool in the corner. He’s the oldest fascist in town, and people call him Il Duce, which I think secretly pleases him. “It’s not the money. It’s not the system. It’s not the lack of leadership. It’s the
foreigners.
Think about it. We didn’t have any scandals until the foreign players started pouring in. 1980. Liam Brady. That’s where it all began and ended. And so goes calcio, there goes Italy.”

“Euh. Come on!” Papà waves him away. “Are you joking? Liam Brady was squeaky clean. A sportsman and a gentleman. A bella figura if ever there was one!”

“Here, here!”

“And 1980? 1980 you said? Are you out of your mind? Have you forgotten about Totonero, the scandal of all scandals? Pellegrini, Cacciatori, Albertosi, Paolo Rossi!” Papà counts them off on his fingers. “You hear any foreign names in there?”

“Hey, leave Paolo Rossi out of it. He did his six goals of penance during the ’82 World Cup.”

“Ah . . . sì, sì . . .” everyone murmurs again.

The door opens and the scarves flutter above the bar. Signor Cato in the corner reaches for his hair as if for an imaginary hat, his eyes never leaving the computer screen. After his wife died, Mamma and Martina tried to keep him busy by making him take those computer classes for old people. Now he spends every day dredging the Internet for the trash of the world.

Belacqua sets the cold pizza down on the counter.

“It’s about time,” Martina says. She goes to the kitchen and comes back with a plate, a fork, a knife, and a napkin, still fighting the losing battle of trying to civilize us.

“Hey, boss.” Belacqua grins and sits down on the stool next to me. “Sorry the pizza’s a little cold.”

“Have a nice smoke?”

“How do you know I smoked?”

“You’re reeking of it.”

“A guy’s got to rest. What’s that Aristotle said, ‘the soul that rests becomes wise’?”

“You must be a fottuto genius, then.”

He grins. “So, what’s all the commotion here?”

“Eh. Calcio, what else?”

“All I’m saying”—Farinata is shouting now—“is that the calcio scandals are only the symptom of an
epidemic.
I don’t care if you’re talking about Liam Brady or fucking Ian Rush and his fucking baked beans and pudding or these damn Moroccans selling their coconuts on the beach!”

“Farinata!” Martina shouts. “Language!”

He waves her away.

“Don’t you wave me away, Farinata! I’m warning you!”

“Calma, calma, everyone,” Nicola Nicolini says, holding up his manicured hands, his ten-gazillion-euro watch glinting in the light. “It’s only calcio. No reason to string anyone upside down in the gas station.”

“I’ll bet
he’d
like to be strung upside down,” Signor Cavalcanti says under his breath. “That finocchio.” Laughter ripples down the bar.

But Farinata keeps going. Once he gets onto his fascist shit, he can’t be stopped. “You people are in a constant state of denial.
First
they took over the stadiums,
then
they started working in our streets and our piazzas,
now
they’re buying up businesses and diluting the gene pool! Don’t you see?”

“If we’re still producing people like you, Farinata, maybe we should be trying to dilute the gene pool.” The bar shakes again with laughter.

“That’s it . . . keep on laughing. You’ll see. You’ll see. It’s not their homeland so why should they care what happens to it? And once it stops resembling the Italy we know, the Italy our children and grandchildren know, our young people will stop caring what happens to it, too. And if we, the leadership”—here, half the bar snorts—“aren’t the tiniest bit vigilant, one day we’re all going to be sitting around here drinking Turkish coffee and bowing to Mecca, and Serie A will be nothing more than a fucking third-world, dirt-and-chicken-fence calcio league.”

“Farinata!” Martina shouts, but he ignores her.

“Fari!” a voice from the corner booms. This time, everyone turns in the direction of the computer alcove. Signor Cato’s skin is almost transparent, his face glowing as brightly as the monitor. He glares at the offender across the room, one bushy, white eyebrow cocked above his eye. Like all the other old guys who fought in the resistance during the war, Signor Cato is afforded a long list of liberties, including but not limited to drinking wine in the mornings, calling middle-aged men by their diminutives, and being listened to when he wants to say something. Which should not be underrated.

“Fari,” he says again, his voice coming from the depth of all his years. “No one wants to hear your fascist cazzate.”

Farinata holds his palms out in his best martyr pose. “Look, all I’m saying is that everyone in this room saw Luca play. It was a miracle. A vision. But even at the academy, Luca was third-string behind a Brazilian and an African. And every day, good Italian boys like Luca grow up admiring the Paolo Rossis and the Dino Zoffs, rooting for the Azzurri, dreaming of playing for a Serie A team, and then? Third-string.”

The room goes silent once Luca’s name is invoked, and everyone turns toward Papà to see his reaction.

“I’ll thank you to keep my son’s name out of your mouth,” Papà says calmly, but then again, he always sounds calm when he’s about to explode.

“Carlo’s right,” Nello calls out from the corner. “That was a bad example, Farinata. Luca was half
American.
”

Papà’s chair vibrates against the floor as he stands up, and before anyone can do anything, he grabs Nello by the collar. They both go down, grunting and pushing, punching and kicking, Papà delivering a head butt squarely in Nello’s gut, Nello baring his teeth and pulling Papà’s forearm like a turkey leg toward his gaping mouth. Pretty soon, everyone in the bar is on their feet, and all I can see is a tangled, writhing ball of limbs, the chairs jumping as they slam into them.

“Whoa . . . fight . . .” Belacqua says.

“Stop it! Stop it!” Martina shouts, and I feel her grip on my arm. Which is funny, actually, because the last thing I would do is get involved in this. And Signor Cato is apparently thinking the same thing because he throws up his hands and turns his attention back to the computer.

Finally, Silvio and the others manage to pull Papà and Nello off each other, and they both end up sitting on the floor like little children, legs spread, huffing and panting, faces covered in sweat and dirt.

“Nello, get out,” Martina says, her entire body pointing the way to the door.