Star of Stone

by Pierdomenico Baccalario

  Harvey rubs his cheek, where he can still feel the sting left by the bag’s rough canvas. “Sounds like a good idea,” he grumbles.

  “To learn how to dodge them, you need to understand your body’s natural balance. Legs, arms, shoulders, torso, neck. And there’s only one way to do that.” Olympia bends down and picks up a rope from the floor. She hands it to Harvey. “Start jumping,” she orders him.

  The boy grabs it, disappointed. “No gloves?”

  “No gloves. Just a hundred jumps done well. Then push-ups, chin-ups and another hundred jumps. When you’re done, we’ll see if you’re still standing. You do know how to jump rope, don’t you?”

  Harvey positions the rope behind his ankles, whirls it over his head and jumps over it with an awkward hop. “I can learn.”

  Olympia looks at him with a critical eye. “You got friends, Harvey?”

  He doesn’t stop jumping. “Some. Why?”

  “Just curious.”

  2

  THE SONG

  “MIGHT I KNOW WHERE IT IS YOU’RE GOING, LOOKING SO UNPRESENTABLE?” Linda Melodia asks Elettra right outside the front door of the Domus Quintilia hotel. She leans on her broom and peers at her niece with a critical eye.

  “What’s wrong?” the girl asks with a groan. A cascade of raven-black hair falls over her dark, dark eyes. She wears a close-fitting white ski jacket, gray slacks and a pair of black and purple sneakers.

  “Your shoes,” Linda remarks, pointing at them with the tip of her broom.

  One after the other, Elettra raises her feet, which are clad in brightly colored Asics. “They’re gorgeous!” she protests.

  “They’re filthy. What’s that on the heels? Mud?”

  “Auntie! How could anyone avoid the mud on the streets? The snow just melted.”

  “A well-dressed young lady always wears clean shoes.”

  “Well, I’m not a well-dressed young lady, then!”

  “If your mother—”

  “Could see me right now, I know! Whatever! Auntie, I’ve really got to go.” Elettra rises up on her tiptoes, gives her aunt a kiss and darts out the front door.

  Elettra walks across Piazza in Piscinula and from there reaches Viale Trastevere, where she gets onto tram number 3. The trip doesn’t last long. Once she gets off at her stop, she looks up at the rooftops, searching for the eleven little pyramids of the facade of Santa Maria dell’Orto Church. She goes over to the entrance and checks the time. It’s four o’clock sharp.

  Sheng is waiting for her between two white pillars. Black hair in a pageboy cut, mysteriously blue eyes, a shiny silk sports coat worn with jeans and gym shoes. “Man, I’m sorry. This is my dad’s jacket,” he says, greeting her.

  “It isn’t exactly … um, fitting for the occasion,” the girl remarks, giving him a quick hug.

  “I don’t think anybody will complain,” Sheng says, leading the way into the church. “In fact, I don’t think anybody’s even here.”

  The church is dark and freezing cold, but strangely intimate. The two friends press up against each other and head toward the altar. Between the rows of pews, resting on a metal stand, is a black wood coffin.

  There are no flowers. And no people, with the exception of a woman in the front row, a tiny woman wearing a hat with a peacock feather and a gray sheepskin jacket, which make her look like a giant turtledove. It’s Ilda, the owner of the newsstand in Largo Argentina.

  Elettra and Sheng sit down beside her. They smile at each other and clasp hands. “I’m sorry …,” the woman says in a feeble voice. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  The priest looks at them from the little doorway of the sacristy, coughs and then goes to change. The smell of incense begins to waft through the silent air. The loudspeaker crackles and then begins to fill the church with warbling, melancholy music.

  “Maybe we should’ve brought a flower … or something …,” Elettra whispers, suddenly overcome with sadness. The sound of shuffling footsteps makes her turn around. The gypsy woman from Via della Gatta has arrived, too. She’s wearing a gold earring that glimmers through her hair. She rests two stolen flowers on the coffin and hides herself away in the back of the church, in the shadows.

  Then a man walks in. It’s the waiter from the Caffè Greco. He didn’t want to miss Professor Alfred Van Der Berger’s funeral.

  Outside the window, the rooftops of Paris are a flow of dark shingles lining the dormers and round windows of the garrets like chocolate on a frosted cake. A few starlings are perched in the shade of a bow window, snuggling up to each other to warm themselves. Others are whirling through the sky beneath clouds as fluffy as cotton.

  At the back of the classroom, Mistral is staring out at the Seine and the domes of the churches.

  Then the singing teacher’s voice summons her back to the real world. “Miss Blanchard? Are you with us? Or have you set off on another one of your long journeys?” she asks with a snobbish tone reminiscent of schoolmarms from the last century.

  Mistral’s classmates snicker. She snaps out of it at once and smiles, too dreamy to be annoyed. She looks around at the classroom, takes a step forward, does up the top button on her V-neck sweater and asks, so innocently that she almost seems impertinent, “Is it my turn?”

  The singing teacher is sitting at the piano. She’s wearing very heavy rouge, her gray hair is held up in a bun by a big, gaudy hairpin and her full, ruffled black dress seems to have trapped her between the stool and the pedals.

  “Of course it’s your turn, Mistral! It has been for a few minutes now!” She slams her heel down on the parquet floor to make the other pupils stop laughing. “What is your piece this week?”

  Mistral walks over to the piano and hands her some sheet music. “I’ve prepared ‘Woman in Love,’ ma’am, by Barbra Streisand.”

  “American, hmm? Is that all you discovered during your New Year’s vacation in Rome?”

  The other girls instantly fall silent, curious to hear her reply.

  “No, ma’am … Well, actually, there is one thing I discovered.”

  The teacher twirls the top of her stool around a few times until it’s at just the right height, shoves the sheet music down on its stand and asks, without the slightest bit of interest, “And what would that be?”

  “I don’t think I enjoy classical music anymore. Or the violin, either. Mahler, in particular.”

  “Is that why you want to sing American songs?”

  “That’s one reason, yes,” replies Mistral. The teacher doesn’t comment. Not that she could say anything relevant. No one could know what happened in Rome.

  The piano lets out the first chords. The girl takes a deep breath, waits for her cue and then starts singing. Her voice is clear and perfect. None of her classmates are snickering anymore. Outside of the window, on the rooftops sloping down toward the Seine, some birds fly in closer to listen to her.

  “Thirty-one … thirty-one fifty … thirty-two dollars!” says Ermete De Panfilis as he gives the taxi driver the last two coins in his collection of American change.

  The cabbie, who looks like he just got out of prison, doesn’t seem very pleased to have been given all those coins. Without lifting a finger, he waits until the Italian has unloaded the last of his massive suitcases and then peels out through the slush.

  “Hey!” Ermete protests, trying to dodge the splash of dirty water. “How rude!” He looks down at his corduroy slacks, shrugs and moves his luggage to the safety of the sidewalk. Written on the airport tags are the words NEW YORK, JFK. Here he is at his new home: Thirty-fifth Avenue, Jackson Heights, Queens.

  It’s a residential neighborhood. An apartment on the second floor of a little redbrick house with a reassuring look. It’s not far from the former home of a true American legend: Alfred Butts, the inventor of Scrabble, Ermete’s favorite board game.

  Bags and backpacks slung over his shoulder, the engineer finds the right key among the ones given to him by the real estate agency, takes half of his luggage
inside, comes back out, grabs the other half and has just enough time to explore the foyer before his cell phone starts ringing.

  “Hi, Mom!” he answers, stepping over a suitcase. “No. Yes. Of course … I just got here. Just now. Very nice. It’s raining. Pouring. There’s a tornado. No, come on! I was kidding! Yes. No, really … a stupid joke. I know you worry….”

  Ermete sinks down into a comfy sofa, grabs the remote and turns on the television to a channel discussing the upcoming Super Bowl.

  “What’s that? It’s just the TV, Mom. In the U.S. there are televisions everywhere. No. No, you can’t come visit me. There’s no room. Sorry … besides, the trip here is terrible. It’s really, really long. No, even more than that. Even longer.”

  Ermete turns up the volume on the TV and checks out the bedroom, the bathroom, the kitchen, the fridge. Which is empty.

  “Sure I’ve got friends, Mom. Sure. I’ll call them. I won’t be all alone. Don’t worry. Great. Okay. Bye. Yeah. Bye.” The engineer hangs up and tosses his cell phone onto the cushions on the sofa. Then he takes out the phone book and looks up the name Miller.

  There are ten pages of Millers.

  “Maybe it’s not a good idea to call Harvey right now….”

  Ermete goes over to the window and looks outside. There’s nobody on the street. “Besides, it isn’t safe to use the phone for important messages,” he continues, talking to himself, as if he were playing a part in a spy movie. “There are better ways to communicate in New York.”

  He reaches into his bag and takes out the most prized possession in his movie collection: Ghost Dog by Jim Jarmusch. The story of a mafia hit man who receives orders from his bosses by way of carrier pigeon.

  Ermete places the movie on an empty bookshelf in his new American apartment. Then he looks around. The television is still showing the game. He pulls a padded parcel out of his travel bag. He unwraps it with the utmost care until he finds himself holding a round mirror set in a bronze frame.

  He rests it on the sofa and picks up the phone book again.

  “Pet shops …,” he murmurs, thumbing through the pages.

  3

  THE CROW

  THE NEON LIGHTS IN THE GYM SEEM TO QUIVER AGAINST THE darkness looming outside. Harvey is sitting on a wooden bench, almost unable to move. His muscles are aching. He rests his head back wearily against the wall and closes his eyes.

  “First week?” a voice asks him, making him start. It’s a guy wearing a hooded sweatshirt. Michael. He sits down next to Harvey and holds out his hand.

  “Yeah.” He smiles. “And I’m beat.”

  “This is nothing, believe me. Just wait until your next lessons.”

  “I can’t believe it could get any more exhausting than this.”

  Michael laughs. “That’s because you’ve never tried running around carrying a punching bag on your shoulders.”

  “You kidding?”

  “Nope.”

  The two stare at the ring. Olympia’s wearing a pair of boxing gloves and is about to fight one of her students, elbows raised and gloves held right in front of her nose. At the gong, they start circling around each other. The man throws a halfhearted punch, and then another one, but he seems intimidated by the idea of hitting his female trainer.

  She urges him on, telling him to swing harder. And faster.

  “That’s it!” she says. Then she quickly pummels him with three, four blows that make him stagger backward, stunned and aching.

  “Way to go!” cheers Harvey.

  Michael smiles. “He didn’t even see it coming.”

  Olympia dances around the ring, only the tips of her feet touching the ground. She dodges the blows, blocks them with her gloves, moves her torso with the litheness of a snake. All the while, she keeps talking, egging on her student. A big, round clock hanging on the wall shows the seconds ticking by one by one.

  “When you’re in there,” Michael explains, pointing at the ring, “it’s the longest minute of your whole life.”

  Harvey nods. Then one of Olympia’s punches hits the man square in the jaw. They hear the soft thud of his mouth guard hitting the ground.

  “Ow!” Harvey groans, massaging his own jaw. “What a wallop!”

  “She barely touched him,” Michael remarks. “But she let him know how she could hit him if he keeps defending himself like that.”

  Confused, Harvey looks at the man in the ring, who’s wobbling around like a bowling pin.

  “Trust me. He’s fine,” Michael insists. “You only really get hurt when they hit this,” he says, pointing to his nose, which is sticking out from the hood of his sweatshirt. “If your opponent breaks your nasal septum during a match, you lose. In fact, some trainers will break yours before letting you fight in a tournament.”

  Harvey shakes his head as a shiver of imagined pain runs down his spine. “I want my nose to stay in one piece. I don’t want to fight. I just want to learn to defend myself.”

  “That’s what I thought, too, when I signed up. And then …” Michael nods toward Olympia. The match is over and the woman’s climbing out of the ring.

  “And then what?”

  Michael rests his hands on his knees and pushes himself up to his feet. “And then Olympia told me, ‘Living doesn’t mean staying in one piece. It means fighting.’ ”

  “How we doing, Harvey Miller?” the trainer asks, walking over to him. “I see you met Michael.” She holds out her wrists, asking him to unlace her gloves.

  “I’m exhausted.” Harvey smiles.

  “But …?”

  “But happy.”

  The gloves drop to the floor and Michael picks them up. Olympia massages her fingers.

  “You sure taught him a lesson!” Harvey exclaims, pointing at the guy in the ring.

  “We didn’t really hit each other. Still, he’s got to learn to keep his defenses up. His concentration isn’t the greatest and he’s always lowering his guard. You lower your guard even once and … bam! You were asking for it.”

  “Got it,” Harvey remarks, heading toward the locker rooms with her.

  “Well, am I going to see you again, Miller?”

  He nods. “I think so.”

  “Then starting next time, it’ll be forty bucks. Three times a week, otherwise it’s like you aren’t coming at all. Plus, you need to do exercises at home. A little bit every night. The first two days you work out, and the third you put on the gloves. Then we’ll see how do you. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  The days pass. And the weeks.

  Every time she walks out of the Domus Quintilia, Elettra notices the gypsy woman, who’s moved from begging in Via della Gatta to begging in Piazza in Piscinula.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked her the first time, taking her a hot coffee.

  The gypsy smiled. “I’m keeping watch,” she replied.

  Every week Elettra collects all the tips from the hotel’s guests and finds a way to get them to the woman without her knowing where the money came from.

  This is how they look out for each other.

  For Sheng, who has extended his stay, the months spent on cultural exchange in Rome are a sort of war. Catapulted into a family with three girls who are younger than him and completely hysterical, the Chinese boy often shuts the door to his room, where he practices his written Italian and studies. Stars, mythology, history … there’s nothing that doesn’t fascinate him. At night, he pulls his wooden top out from under the bed and turns it over and over in his fingers.

  Staring at it, mesmerized, he thinks back to what the professor said. “What difference does it make which road you follow as you seek the truth?” he murmurs like a prayer, closing his eyes. “Such a great secret is not to be reached by a single path.”

  His nights are tormented by unstoppable dreams filled with terrifying animals. One time there were hunters tracking down a huge, ferocious bear. Another time he was in a desert riding a wild bull. He dreams of enormous wolves that howl melod
ies of the cold at the moon and whales that dive down to the endless depths of the ocean, seeking out the past in ancient underwater ruins.

  In February, his father returns to Rome and tells Sheng about the big news at his company. Their cultural exchange program for children is a success, and Mr. See-Young Wan Ho is euphoric, to say the least. Back at home, he’s turned Sheng’s room into an office, where bookings keep pouring in. There are countless parents in Shanghai determined to send their offspring to study with families in cities throughout the West.

  “But we need to check the host families out one by one!” Mr. See-Young Wan Ho explains fervidly. “We need to know exactly what kind of people they are. If we get it wrong, no one will ever trust our agency again!”

  “But I …,” Sheng groans, already guessing that his father is planning on using him as a guinea pig. “I’m not going to travel the globe, skipping from one crazy family to another!”

  Mr. Wan Ho does everything he can to convince his son. “I’m giving you the opportunity to see the world!”

  “But I’m learning Italian,” says Sheng. “I’ve made new friends. I like Rome and I’d like to stay here longer!”

  “We already know everything about Rome!” his father cuts in, determined. “This family’s fine. Now we need to move on to the others. We’re missing Paris, Buenos Aires, New York, Madrid….”

  Sheng sighs. “I can’t promise you anything, Dad,” he says, trying again. Despite everything, he’s showered with open-ended airplane tickets for Johannesburg, New York, Paris and dozens of other places, with notebooks containing the addresses of families to try out and booklets of vouchers for luxury hotels, in case he needs them.

  In Paris, the water in the Seine is the color of well-steeped tea.

  Every Thursday, Mistral attends the private institute for singing, posture and dance lessons, but more and more often she finds herself lost in thought, gazing out the window, following the flight of the pigeons and starlings. She’s discovered that the starlings imitate the sounds of the human world. Some of them mimic honking horns or the noise of the heavy traffic on the outskirts of town.