Asimov's SF, February 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "If you know history, my dad says, you know the name Speer."

  "He was a Nazi?"

  "Of course."

  "Why does that make you a Nazi?"

  "Jesus, Brad,” he said. “You're dense."

  I was silent.

  "Because you're related?” I said at last. “You're the same Speer he was?"

  "Shit, yes. Distant cousins...."

  I didn't say anything after that. It had been fifteen years since the war had ended, and here was a kid my own age who was still living it. The Speer kids were as American as you could get—nothing German about them, let alone Nazi—and here was Keith afraid of what someone would think.

  The Speer boys left on Sunday to return to their monastery, and I went back to playing with my friends from school—Carlo, Maurizio, and Gianluca—boys I felt I understood better than I understood Keith. Fantasies aside, Keith made no sense to me—shooting a .22 at his brother's face, ringing doorbells and running, stealing things for no reason, talking about girls in the grossest ways, being the worst possible ambassador from America, and feeling much more uneasy about an old war than my village friends did, though they had relatives who'd lost arms and legs and eyes in that war and many of their aunts wore black—because they'd lost their husbands in the war.

  Later, the next year, I'd be playing in the olive groves below our house with those friends and a fourth, Armando Muraro, whose mother was German, and two other boys we didn't really know. One of those boys, frustrated at losing a game, would get mad at Muraro and call him a “Nazi.” Muraro would cry. He would cry hard. But that day hadn't happened yet. The events at the long-abandoned German hospital in the next cove hadn't happened either, so I hadn't yet learned that an old war could reach beyond death to children born after its official end.

  * * * *

  The next time I saw Keith, Bobby was with him. Their dad had bought them bows and arrows, and they wanted to go shoot them somewhere. Since my parents didn't know about the .22 and cigarettes—or the doorbell ringing—my dad, who was a good guy, said, “Sure, Brad, you can have a bow and arrows, too. Where are you going to shoot?"

  "Keith wants to go to the cove between here and San Terenzo."

  Had I known what was going to happen, I'd have said instead, “The cove with the old German hospital.” But had I known, I also wouldn't have gone.

  "Okay. But I want you and Keith—and anyone else who's going—to check in beforehand."

  When we were ready, there were four of us. Keith, me, a friend of Keith's from the monastery school, and an Italian kid I'd just gotten to know. His name was Marco, and he was from Vecchia Erici, the old part of the fishing village, the alleys of fishermen and seamstresses—in other words, the working class. How I knew him when I was in the scuola media—with the sons of “professionals,” the middle and upper classes—and not the scuola tecnica, where he was, where the blue-collar kids went after they graduated from elementary school, was a simple story. I'd always liked fishing—you sometimes do when you're a Navy brat—so I often fished on the wharf or on the rocks by the passeggiata, that waterfront walkway where young couples appeared at sunset and strolled peacefully while old people sat on the benches and enjoyed watching them. Sometimes our teacher, Professore Brigola, who taught us most of our subjects, was a hunchback and had a lisp—and was so kind we thought he was a saint reincarnated—would fish there too, and so we'd fish together. Even at my age I knew—we all did—that he did this so that his students could talk to him if they wanted to. He didn't do it for himself, in other words; he didn't do it because he was lonely. Rumor was that he loved a woman in San Terenzo, one he had met during the war, and that she had either died in that war or would not marry him because he was a hunchback; and that, either way, he could not have her. So he must have longed for love, but that didn't mean he was lonely. He'd been born a hunchback and it had only gotten worse. The villagers liked him, admired him, and felt from him the same soul we all felt; and, though he had to return each night to his apartment, where he did live alone, he didn't feel sorry for himself. He wasn't like that. He loved his students, and he wanted to be there for them whether in school or out; and I sometimes think that he sat there fishing, waiting for them, because he heard a ticking clock—one that told him he wouldn't live as long as most people, so he should be down there talking to his boys whenever he could, before the ticking stopped. Hunchbacks don't live long in any country, and this was a long time ago. Twenty years later, when I was married and had kids of my own, I would go back to that village to find him, to give him a gift—a book of stories I'd written about that village—and thank him for his kindness; but he had died years before, as we'd all known he would.

  One day after school I was sitting with him, and we were fishing, but not really. We weren't even talking. We were just sitting there, and a boy—rather small and darker than my friends from the scuola media—walked over to us and sat down too with his pole. He nodded, but said nothing, and our teacher said, “Buon giorno, ragazzo,” and the boy nodded again. “Buon giorno, signore,” he answered. There was only one hunchback in the village, our teacher, so the boy certainly knew who he was.

  He wasn't a shy boy. He was simply quiet, in the same way that the fishermen of the village were quiet. In Naples and elsewhere to the south, I'm sure fishermen sang. Maybe on Sardinia they sang, too, but in this village the fishermen, whether on the wharf dumping their catch onto the tables where the fisherwomen could sell them, or on their boats getting things ready for their next trip, or putting the nets away for the day, they were silent. There was a rhythm to what they did—I could feel it—anyone could—and perhaps, I often told myself, this was their singing.

  "What fish are you angling for?” our teacher asked the boy. I'm not sure the boy even had bait, but our teacher was not going to embarrass him.

  "Anything."

  "For ‘anything,'” our teacher said, with that lisp that softened everything, “you should try as many kinds of bait as possible. Would you like to try what I have?"

  The boy nodded, and our teacher handed him a little bucket of bait—cheese, tiny bread balls, and earthworms—reaching behind me to give it to him since I was between them.

  "Thank you,” the boy said.

  We caught nothing, but were happy enough. The afternoon sun—it was after school—caught the waves by the little jetty, but did not blind us when we looked. The brightly colored fishing boats—the ones that had left before dawn and come back in at noon—bobbed in the cove; and the castle, the one that Pisa and Genoa had fought over for centuries, looked down at us. I wondered if the unhappy witch who lived there, spitting at the tourists, could see us and was giving us the evil eye, mal'occhio; but in the late afternoon sun, sitting with two people who seemed to enjoy sitting with me, I didn't really care, and the question wriggled away like a minnow in the waters below us.

  "This time of day,” our teacher said, “isn't the best time to catch fish, of course."

  The boy said nothing.

  "But it is nice to sit here."

  The boy gave a little grunt.

  It felt as if our teacher were waiting for something, though I had no idea what. It wasn't fish. He never caught any, and when he did, he seemed shocked that there should be something on his line. “What in God's name is that?" he would say.

  He was waiting for something, but what? For the boy to talk? That wasn't like him either, to care whether a boy spoke or not during fishing. Silence didn't bother our teacher. Little did. Even when boys were bad in class—using the sign-language that everyone somehow knew to help each other answer oral-exam questions—he usually laughed and simply wagged his finger and went on to the next question.

  "May we know your name?” our teacher asked.

  The boy looked at me, then at him, then at me again, and said, “Marco."

  "Well, Marco, it has been pleasant sitting with you and Brad this afternoon, but I must now go home to grade dictation papers. I hope you and Brad
will use the bait bucket. You may keep it, in fact, if you would like. I have many others."

  What he'd been waiting for, I knew then, was the right moment to leave—the right moment to ask Marco's name, and then to leave us, but in a way that would make us stay and fish together and perhaps talk—an American boy from an officer's family and a Ligurian boy from the dark, old part of town, the kind of kid I didn't know, but should, just as he should know someone like me, but would not if our teacher did not handle his departure perfectly and leave us to become friends for at least an afternoon.

  I also knew that our teacher did not have other buckets, that this bucket, old and battered as it was, was his favorite; but that if he left it with us, we would have to stay.

  * * * *

  Marco and I used up the bait. He caught two bocca d'oro's, and I caught a sparo—all three of them little fish, but pretty enough, shining in the late afternoon light. At least we'd caught something—which does matter to boys even if doesn't matter to their teacher.

  When the bait was gone—our fish dangling from strings in our hands—Marco tried to give me the bucket.

  "No, you should keep it.” I started to add, “I already have one,” but I knew how that might, if he were sensitive, sound: I, the middle school kid, have more than you. Instead I said: “You heard him say it. He wants you to have it."

  Marco nodded, and that was that. We were friends, just as our teacher had planned.

  The day Keith and his friend from the monastery school—another American, but a civilian—appeared at our house with their bows and arrows—and I had mine, bought the day before at our monthly trip to the PX in Livorno—Marco appeared suddenly at our villetta's door, too, fishing pole in hand.

  "Will you be fishing today?” he asked me in Italian.

  "No,” I answered. “I'm going with an American friend to shoot bows and arrows."

  Keith and his friend had walked over and were standing beside me. Keith didn't like it when I spoke Italian, and he was staring at Marco. We were about to go in to see my father—to hear his “rules” before we headed to the cove—and Keith, annoyed that we might get a long lecture, wanted to get going.

  "Marco,” I said in Italian, “this is my American friend, Keith.” Keith's Italian was terrible, and so was Bobby's. For some reason the monks weren't making them learn it—or maybe they were trying and the Speer boys were refusing.

  Keith scowled and said, “His name's Marco?"

  "Yes."

  "So, Marco...” Keith said to him in English, not at all friendly, and for a moment Keith and Marco stared at each other. Keith obviously didn't want Marco around. We were getting ready for an adventure, Keith was in charge, and he didn't want someone who could speak only Italian tagging along.

  But when I looked at Marco's face, I saw no hostility—the kind Keith's eyes had. I saw simply a look that said Marco recognized the kind of boy Keith was; that boys like Keith were much more common in Marco's world than in mine; and that if this was the kind of boy Keith—my American friend—was, so be it. The world was what it was, and when you were from Vecchia Erici, you accepted it.

  "Vuoi venire con noi? Ho due archi e molte freccie,” I said to Marco. Do you want to come with us? I've got two bows and extra arrows. Had Keith been able to understand it, it would have made him mad; but I said it.

  "Come no!” Marco answered—"Of course!"—and this surprised me, though it shouldn't have. He might have to accept that the world was full of boys like Keith, but that didn't mean he had to be intimidated.

  "He's coming with us,” I said in English.

  "No way!” Keith said.

  "You've got a friend. Marco's mine."

  "Where did you find him? He looks Sicilian."

  "We went fishing with our teacher.” That was a lie. It implied that Marco was in my class at school, and that he was not, as Keith would put it, a “peasant.” But I wasn't going to give Keith what he wanted.

  "Why would you go fishing with your teacher? He's got a lisp. What a fag."

  I didn't say anything. I knew that arguing with Keith was hopeless, and that if Keith got angry and loud enough, my dad might appear and tell us we couldn't go.

  I just stood there waiting, thinking about our teacher and how he waited, too, not trying to push things into happening.

  "Ah, hell. He can come if you want him to, but he'd better not fuck things up."

  I gave Marco one of my bows and a quiver of arrows—all new—and the four of us went in to see my father in the living room.

  "Who's this?” my dad asked.

  "Marco, a friend from the village."

  "Well ... Please tell Marco that I don't know enough Italian to say what I'm about to say in Italian, but that you can translate, Brad."

  When I'd told Marco, my father looked at all of us, took a breath, and began:

  "Boys, you can go to that cove, but you've got to follow these rules. If you don't and I find out later, you'll all be grounded. Keith's dad will back me up on this, I'm sure."

  We waited. Keith looked ready to blow, so we were looking at him as much as we were my father.

  "Find a place that's safe for shooting. Make sure there's a hill or cliff behind it so your arrows stop there. Make a line—a line you'll all shoot from—and no shooting if anyone's over that line, if anyone's between you and the targets. You've got paper targets, right? No one shoots if anyone's walking toward the targets, checking them, changing them. And no shooting at anything other than the targets—I don't care how tempting a tree or a shack or a wagon looks. Got it?"

  We all nodded, even Keith, even Marco, who hadn't understood a word."Got it,” I said.

  Outside, Keith said, “Yeah, right. Your dad's as candy-assed ‘strack’ as mine is. How do you stand him?"

  I didn't answer. I knew we weren't going to do everything my dad had said—some of the rules were silly—but I liked my dad, even if I wasn't going to say so.

  On the path to the cove, I tried to translate for Marco what my father had said. Marco's eyes rolled at one point when he realized how many rules there were, but he listened, helped me with some of the words, and nodded in that quiet way of his.

  It took us no time at all to get there because it was downhill most of the way. About halfway—among the villettas where Keith and his brother had rung the doorbells so much they barely worked anymore—Keith's brother caught up with us, panting, bow and arrows in his hand, too. I'd never really seen him up this close. He had better things to do usually than hang out with us. He was tall, like his father, and thin and quiet, not at all as loud as Keith, and calmer, more confident—his eyes calculating, aware of everything around him. He had a small scar over his left eye, and a long scar on the back of his hand. Had he gotten them in fights, by rough-housing with Keith, or—at least the one over his eye—from a bad .22 aim?

  Why he wanted to hang out with us that day, I had no idea, but he obviously wasn't embarrassed that he had a kid's bow in his hand. His was bigger than ours and the feathers on the arrows weren't so colorful, but it was still a kid's.

  He was squinting down the path toward the cove, trying to see something, and we let him lead. Keith tried to stay alongside him, but before long was walking with us.

  When we reached the bottom of the hill, where the cove started, the houses disappeared and the cobblestone path became dirt. Bobby was craning his neck looking for something not in the cove, but up between the hills. He said, “There's an old hospital up there. I want to see it."

  None of us answered. Not even Keith.

  * * * *

  I'd seen that hospital, I realized—at a distance anyway—but had forgotten it was in that cove. My father—as we'd driven to La Creccia one Saturday for a tennis party for the officers’ families—had turned off the coast road and onto a gravel one that led up between the hills—"Just out of curiosity,” he'd said. He loved taking side roads, and my mother never minded. We had time.

  The gravel road had stopped at a littl
e garden with a marble statue of a woman, and from there forked in two directions—one north to what looked like a big villa in the hills and the other south to a large building of some kind, much closer and down on the flat. You could see the building from where we sat in the car, and it looked old and abandoned.

  "Who does this land belong to?” my mother asked. She'd probably ask the Contessa Carnevale, too, the next time they had tea at the Villa Carnevale in Romito; but maybe my dad knew.

  "Don't know,” he said. “That building is an old German hospital. Who owns it, I have no idea."

  We turned the car around, and, as we left, I glanced back at the statue. It was a naked woman—a beautiful woman, too—so of course I was interested. She didn't look Greek or Roman; she looked more modern, “Romantic,” as our teacher would say. Her hips weren't as big as classic statues made women's hips, and her thighs were thinner, her arms long and beautiful. This was all very exciting, of course—I was fourteen and statues like her were exciting—but the look on her face killed it. It was sad and wistful, not very exciting at all. Was she from a legend or myth, or was she someone who'd actually lived, someone long dead now? And why was she sad? Why would you want a sad woman greeting everyone on the road to your nice villa?

  There wasn't really any way to cut directly from the dirt path through the olive groves to the hospital. There were old walls—some as old as the Etruscans, people said—littering the orchards, and it was a pain in the ass climbing over them. So, after a couple of minutes of trying, we returned to the dirt path and just walked until we found the gravel road, took it, and finally reached the little garden and the statue.

  I stood staring at her. Her head was gone.

  "You like tits, Brad? She's got nice ones.” It was Keith, of course. “Hey, someone took her head!” He laughed and his brother laughed too. Then they looked at each other, and I knew they'd been here before.

  Someone had indeed taken her head away. It wasn't lying around anywhere that we could see. Why anyone would want the sad-faced head of a statue, I didn't know.