The Sun and Other Stars

by Brigid Pasulka

  “Well, I hope you are better butcher than calcio player,” Yuri says. “You know what your problem is?”

  “I can’t play calcio?”

  “You must look up. I tell you before. You are always looking at feet. Feet are only tool. Match is up here.” He taps his heart.

  But I’m only half listening. I’m too busy watching Zhuki stomp toward the terrace wall, only slowing down to hook her jacket from the ground as she passes the sideline. Yuri Fil shouts something after her, and she shouts something back.

  He laughs. “You have pissed her off very much. I don’t see her play like this since Ukraine. But no problem. In few weeks, she will only score five goals on you and not nine. In few weeks, you will play better, you will see.”

  “I’m sorry, Signor Fil, but I just retired.”

  “Yuri. Call me Yuri. And do not be afraid. We say in Ukraine, bottom of mountain is most difficult. I and Mykola, my trainer, we are here for two more weeks, and in two weeks, we can make you a champion calcio player. Promise. Not Serie A, but maybe Serie C1 or C2. . . .”

  “I’m sorry, Signor Fil, I can find you five hundred men in this town who would cut off their arms to play with you, but I’m afraid it won’t be me.”

  Yuri scoops his son onto his shoulders. He grips Little Yuri’s calves, and Little Yuri hugs the top of his head. Ihor and Mykola go to the four corners to collect the floodlights.

  “Ah, but I know we will see you again,” he says. “Because you are man. And you will not let the woman win.” He looks toward the spot where his sister disappeared into the darkness and he raises his eyebrows. “Especially not that one.”

  The field goes dark, and the bells from the churches on the hill ring eleven o’clock, each one in turn. Ihor shouts something, and Yuri looks at his watch and starts walking toward the back of the terrace.

  “Tomorrow night,” he calls over his shoulder. “Ten o’clock. And please—do not tell nobody. Nobody.”

  Once they are gone, I lie down next to Luca, the fresh-cut grass pricking my skin.

  “How about that, eh, Luca?”

  He grins back at me.

  “And the girl?”

  Another grin.

  “Zhuki.” I say it again in my head. Zhuki. Zhuki-Zhuki-Zhuki-Zhuki. If you say it fast over and over, it sounds like a circus, like one of those dances that involves a lot of hopping around before collapsing into your partner’s arms. But if you say it slowly and quietly, sul serio, it’s like the waves foaming up on the beach in the winter.

  I go down to the shop early on Monday morning, and I can feel Papà, Nonno, and my bisnonno watching me from the wall as I pull in the crates of bread and clean linens from the passeggiata and take the grinder out. Papà is a perfectionist about everything, but especially about his sausage. He won’t get one of the electric grinders because he insists the meat tastes better if he uses the same hand crank my nonno and bisnonno used.

  I fit the blade and the plate in place and look up at the pantheon of calcio players over the grinding counter, who smile down from their frames and give a benediction to every sausage, soppressata, and kilo of ground beef that comes out of this place. I try to conjure Zhuki out of her brother’s face. The features are unmistakable—the narrow nose with the bump at the bridge, the full cheeks and the thick, dark eyelashes, like reeds circling a pond. I can feel the tight muscles at her waist. I can see her rounded hips floating in front of me up the steps at Le Rocce, the pinch of her eyes as they slam shut against me, and the grimace as she gives the ball a kick.

  Once I finish clamping the grinder in place, I go out to the back alley, pull up a crate and light a cigarette. I close my eyes and lean back against the cool stones of the building, replaying the events of the past two nights, one a nightmare, the other a dream.

  “Et-to.” A deep voice echoes in the alley. “Et-to, this is your conscience talking.”

  I trace it to the pile of empty boxes stacked up behind Chicca’s shop. “Fede, if that’s you back there, I’m going to beat the shit out of you.” I peek around and there he is, his knees drawn up to his chin, a grin on his face, stupid like an owl.

  “What do you want, Fede?”

  “Why didn’t you answer me yesterday? I SMS-ed you fifty times.”

  “You SMS-ed me three times. What happened, the girl didn’t work out and you were calling for a backup?”

  “You wish. I just wanted to make sure you were still alive.”

  “Well, I’m fine.”

  “I mean, I’ve seen a lot of drunk people in my life, but you . . . cazzo, there was nothing left of you but the stink.”

  “Well, you can see I’m fine.”

  “I mean, you were loaded like a donkey . . .”

  “I get it, Fede.”

  “Sbronzo, disfatto, ubriaco marcio . . .”

  “Enough, Fede! I get it.” I stamp out the cigarette. Fede stands up and follows me back into the shop. I can already tell he’s in one of his lost-puppy moods, when he desperately wants to talk about his feelings but instead follows you around, getting underfoot until you ask him what’s wrong. Well, forget it. If you can’t tell people your feelings, not my problem.

  He wanders around the shop, touching everything like a deficiente—the beaded curtain, the top of the case, the register. He leans against the banco and crosses his arms.

  “Thanks a lot, Fede. Now I have to clean it again.”

  He shrugs off the glass. I get the cleaner and the paper towels and start wiping away at the imaginary smudges. Fede crosses the room and reaches a hand up to the portraits on the wall.

  “Cazzo, Fede, would you stop touching everything.”

  Fede grins, sweeping his arms like a fottuto showgirl. “Someday, eh, Etto? Someday . . . this will all be yours.”

  “Hooray.”

  He sits down on the stool behind the register, hunching his broad back and swinging his legs, his muscles unable to relax, popping out above his knees and at the backs of his arms.

  “Okay, Fede. Fine. What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, you have your constipated face on, and you’ve been following me around like a puppy.”

  He stares at me. I stare back. I can hear a little German kid whining in front of Chicca’s shop, his mamma’s voice counting, rising with the numbers. Eins . . . zwei . . . drei . . .

  “Did you hear Bocca got busted by Jacopo’s mamma yesterday morning?” he says.

  “I told you it would happen one of these days.”

  Fede stares at his feet and hooks them over the rung of the stool. I remember when Mamma worked the cash register, and how she never sat down. She was always greeting people at the door, bending down to talk to the kids, and sending them on their way with a “Bye-bye! See you tomorrow!” It was so different from how she’d thought her life would turn out, nothing to do with art history or California or the people she’d spent the first twenty years with.

  “Apparently, Jacopo’s mamma brought the maintenance guy in at six in the morning to take a look at the air-conditioning, and Bocca and that girl—how was she called?—were just snoozing away, naked like their mothers made them.”

  “I told you it would happen.”

  I go into the front walk-in and carry the two buckets of scrap back to the grinding counter. Papà premixes the right proportion of veal to beef to fat for each of the sausages he makes, and he labels the buckets with masking tape and a thick black marker so I don’t mess it up. Fede follows me. Sometimes I wonder why he’s so dead set on hanging around me all the time. Sure, when Luca was around, we would all go out together, but it wasn’t until after Luca died that he started to seek me out on his own. Maybe he misses Luca and I’m some kind of surrogate. Maybe he feels guilty about loaning him the motorcycle, and telling himself he’s looking after me helps him get to sleep at night.

  Fede leans against the band saw table.

  “Not the smartest idea to lean against a band saw, F
ede.”

  He shrugs but doesn’t move. I wipe down the grinding counter and scrub my hands before feeding the scrap into the maw of the machine. I turn the crank, and the pink squiggles fall into a loose pile on the counter.

  “Cazzo, what is it, Fede?”

  He looks up at me with those pathetic eyes and runs his hand through his hair. When he’s eighty, he will still have that hair.

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t know . . . it’s just so . . . I don’t know . . . depressing sometimes.”

  “What’s depressing?”

  “The whole thing.”

  “What do you mean, the whole thing?”

  “I don’t know, maybe depressing’s not the right word. Maybe boring is more like it. I mean, it’s not even a challenge anymore.”

  “Wait, by the whole thing, you mean sleeping with girls, Fede? You’re telling me that’s depressing?”

  “I know it sounds crazy.” He stuffs his hands into his pockets.

  “Listen, Fede, I’ve got work to do, so if you just came by to brag . . .”

  “That’s not it at all.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “I don’t know . . . I mean . . . every time, it’s the same thing. The same stupid lines, the same stupid moves. I feel like I’ve got to live up to some imagined something in her head, and she feels like she’s got to pull out these ninja moves that she’s seen in some movie or learned from some other guy . . .”

  “That’s what’s bothering you? Fede, there are whole continents of men who are doing it with girls who learned on you first.”

  “That’s not what I’m saying.”

  “Cazzo, what are you saying, then?”

  “Forget it. You don’t understand.”

  “I don’t understand. . . . Look. I’m crying for you, Fede. Really. I’m crying into my fottuto pillow every night for you and how much sex you get, and how it’s not even a challenge anymore. Yes, that’s the saddest story I’ve ever heard, having to sleep with all these too-willing girls who will leave town in ten days. Tragic. Utterly tragic.”

  Fede shakes his head and starts for the door, his hands stuffed into his pockets, his shoulders hunched like I’m the one who’s wronged him.

  “Forget it,” he says. “I’m sorry I said anything. Next time I’ll just keep it to myself.”

  “Don’t try to make me feel guilty, Fede. You’re the one who ditched me the other night.”

  “You know what, Etto? Vaffanculo,” he says, and his sturdy chin gives me a poke from across the room.

  “Vaffanculo yourself.”

  He lets the door slam behind him, and I watch him cross the passeggiata to Bagni Liguria. Like I’m supposed to feel bad when he’s the one who packed me into a car just so he could get rid of me and stay with some girl that now he’s complaining about. I go over it in my head as I grind the sausage, getting more annoyed with Fede with each turn of the crank.

  Papà comes in just as I’m finishing. He’s out of breath, as if he’s run all the way from Martina’s.

  “Have you heard?” he gasps.

  “About what?”

  “They think Yuri Fil is in San Benedetto! Yuri Fil! In San Benedetto!”

  “Who’s Yuri Fil?”

  “What do you mean, who is Yuri Fil?” He points to the photo on the wall. “This is Yuri Fil.”

  “Oh.”

  “Oh. Yes. Etto, listen to me carefully. If you hear anything, you must call immediately.”

  “Sure.”

  “Not just ‘sure.’ I mean it. Immediately. It is imperative. Anything at all, call me. Imperative.”

  “You don’t have a phone.”

  Papà throws up his hands. “Just call me on Silvio’s. Or Martina’s. Or anyone else’s. Everyone is over at Martina’s already.”

  “Fine.”

  “Imperative,” he says, stabbing a finger in the air—just like Nonno—before he hurries out the door.

  “Imperative,” I mock. “Imperative!” But my insides twist as I say it, and I get a whiff of the meat in my hands. The smell of death. It starts as a subtle sweetness hidden behind the earthy, metallic scent, encouraging you to breathe more deeply. Only when you do, that’s when the acidity uncoils and strikes. You can work for months at a time without smelling it, until you convince yourself that your job is the same as selling books or cell phones or neckties. Papà will even tell himself he’s doing something noble. Nourishing families around their dinner tables. Feeding the world. Only once in a while does it really strike you that you are, in fact, peddling flesh. Flesh chopped off an animal’s bones and ripped from their sinews, flesh that every second is going more rancid.

  All day long, I try to breathe through my mouth. The flow of customers starts as soon as I open the front door, and all anyone wants to talk about is Yuri Fil. But as I think about Zhuki surrounded by the gossips and vultures and vampires, my stomach churns, and this strange protectiveness surfaces inside me, an inexplicable desire to hide her away or punch someone out for her.

  “Hey, Etto, have you heard the news?”

  “What news?”

  “There’s a rumor Yuri Fil is staying in Signora Malaspina’s villa.”

  “Who?”

  “Yuri Fil.”

  “The calcio player?” I raise my eyebrows convincingly.

  “Yes, from Genoa. The Ukrainian.”

  “He’s in San Benedetto, you say?”

  “That’s what I’ve heard. He’s brought his entire family. You haven’t seen him, have you? He hasn’t come by for any meat or anything, has he?”

  “No, I haven’t heard anything.”

  At this point, they lean over the banco conspiratorially. “You would tell me if you had, wouldn’t you?”

  “Of course,” I tell them all, holding up three fingers in a Scout pledge. But what I’m really swearing is an oath to Zhuki, that as long as she’s in this town, I will never let her or her family’s name dissolve on my tongue. I will never sacrifice her to the circle of chairs at Martina’s or let her be dissected by the dull blades of the gossips.

  I should have been an actor. I fool even Chicca.

  “You hear anything about this Ukrainian guy everyone keeps talking about?” Chicca asks me as we puff away at our cigarettes.

  “Nope. You?”

  “What would I hear? I’m stuck in this shop all day.” She shakes her head. “Let’s just hope he’ll be good for business.”

  One of the things you’ll find out when you lose somebody close to you is how complex a network of wires and cables you’ve built from your life to theirs. When Luca went off to the academy in Milan, our lines fell into disrepair and disuse one by one, but when Mamma died, the whole network came crashing down in one terrible storm. It took months for my brain to learn that there was no connection on the other side, and it kept spontaneously sending out impulses every time I thought of the smallest anecdote to tell her or the most minuscule piece of gossip to spread. By the time I remembered that there was no one on the other end, it would be too late, and I would have to watch all those impulses go down the line, fizzling and crackling into a void.

  Strangely, it’s not as much of a problem when your life is going badly, because there are any number of people in the world who are happy to step in and listen to you gripe and complain. But you learn the hard way that there are precious few you can share the good things with. The hopeful feelings. The lucky turns. The invitation to play calcio from the brother of a girl you never thought you’d see again. And since you have no way to transmit these bits of good news outward, the only option left is to swallow them like a chicken would—a pebble here, a stone there, grinding against each other in your stomach until even the good things become a reminder of all that’s gone wrong.

  I don’t feel like going to Martina’s on Monday night, but if I skip dinner, it will look suspicious. They will start talking, and the thing will never end.

  “You’re late,” Martina says. On the flat-scree
n, there’s a cycling race on mute that no one but the Mangona brothers is paying any attention to. “I was about to send someone after you.”

  “Sorry.”

  She smiles and ruffles my hair. “I’ve got fish for you today.” She sweeps past Signor Cato and disappears into the small kitchen.

  Nello’s sneering at me from down the bar, like he’s bored with drinking and he’s going to try to pick on me the first chance he gets. Unfortunately, Martina doesn’t believe in banning people, even Nello, so he’s been allowed back in after only a week’s exile, though carefully assigned a seat far away from Papà.

  “You look like shit, Etto,” he starts.

  “Thank you.”

  “Why don’t you get some sun once in a while?”

  “Don’t you know? We half-Americans are allergic to it.”

  “Ah, ah. Very funny.”

  I glance over at Papà and the other men and eavesdrop on their conversation. They’re still talking about Yuri Fil, but this time, it makes me squirm in my seat.

  “But if he is in fact here, why would he choose San Benedetto of all places?”

  “Why not San Benedetto? Let’s not forget—San Benedetto is the last place on earth that is simple and pure, and those Italian fishermen, they really know how to, you know, live.”

  Everyone laughs.

  “I grant you, it’s not a bad place to live, but it’s not pedigreed like in the old days. It’s not as if we have models and actresses mincing down the passeggiata anymore.”

  “Or Playboy Bunnies. Don’t forget the Playboy Bunnies.” There’s some chuckling.

  “Exactly. Why would he come here? To ordinary little San Benedetto.”

  “Doesn’t anyone remember?” Signor Cato calls from the alcove, and everyone turns in his direction. His eyes are still scanning a screen full of tabloid headlines. “Don’t you remember?” Signor Cato repeats. “Right after Martin Malaspina left Signora Malaspina, she had that long romance with the Dutch calcio player.”

  “That Van-der-Basten-velt-huisen-elftal guy?”

  Everyone laughs.

  “The other one. Ajax versus Liverpool. The fog game. Walked off the field because he thought the game was over.”