“De Born.”
“Ah, yes, De Born. Now there was a playboy.”
“What is it with women and Dutchmen?”
“It must be their windmills.” Another chuckle.
“Aha. So, that De Born who warms the bench now for Genoa is related?”
“His son.”
“Ah . . . sì, sì . . . he must have passed on his father’s fine memories from San Benedetto.”
Mystery solved.
Martina comes back with plate after plate, and I bolt down the food as fast as she can put it in front of me. A dish of olives. Trofie with pesto. Fish in some kind of orange-colored sauce. Nello watches me eat for a few minutes, then tries again.
“Be careful you don’t ruin your girlish figure there, Etto.”
“That’s enough out of you, Nello,” Martina chides.
“What did I say? I didn’t say anything. I’m merely looking out for his health.”
“Don’t think I won’t ban you.”
Martina leans across the bar and puts an apple fritter in front of me. “Etto, you’re quiet tonight. Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Fine. Maybe a little tired.”
“Well, make sure you get some sleep tonight.” She reaches over and ruffles my hair.
I wish I could tell her all about Zhuki. I really do. But I know she would tell Papà or at least Silvio. Instead I sit on the turf in front of Luca’s headstone, my fingers plucking out a few blades of grass that are already tall enough to threaten the neat edges of the stone.
“So, what do you think my chances are?”
Luca’s photo smiles back at me, his mouth pinching into a dimple at the corner.
“I borrowed your shorts and cleats today. I hope you don’t mind.”
I dig a cigarette out of my pocket and sit still for a minute, listening to the sounds of the hill.
“I know. I shouldn’t lie to Papà. You would never lie to him like this.”
And I swear I see his little shoulders shrugging under his jersey like he used to do whenever he scored a goal. Each time he did it, it caught me off guard. It was the simplest and humblest gesture possible, as if to say, “And so it is.” I stare at his face, forever the fresh face of a twenty-year-old. I think this is one of the things that bothers me the most—that I’m already two years older than he’ll ever be, and life will keep piling up on me until I’m an old, bitter man looking at an exuberant kid who bears no resemblance to me at all. Maybe that’s exactly what Mamma was scared of—life moving on. The year she was depressed, I would come home from the liceo in Albenga, sit on the end of the bed, and recount every detail of my day. I would turn off the TV and open the shutters, tell her stupid jokes, and put on her favorite songs. In my mind, I guess I figured if I kept chucking life rings at her, she would eventually have to grab one. But maybe it was too much—too much clanging of the everyday world being let in, too many mundane thoughts and ordinary churnings returning to her own body. She put it off for almost a year by staying in bed and submerging herself in the endless television programs, but she had to know it couldn’t last forever. Maybe when she looked out onto the flat sea, she saw the permanent solution—a field more fallow than the comforter of her bed or the flat screen of the television, where Luca’s memory would never be plowed under and replanted with everyday life.
Shit. I wish I could stop myself. Stop trying to get inside her head. Sometimes I really hate myself for going over and over it. It’s pointless anyway. I mean, if I never knew something as basic as the fact that she was capable of ending a life, what did I really know about her at all?
I hear them rustling through the vegetation on the next terrace. I stub out the cigarette and jump to my feet.
“Look at who is here to play calcio!” Yuri shouts.
Zhuki, Yuri, and Little Yuri are all wearing the yellow-and-blue jerseys of the Ukrainian national team with the name “Fil” perched over the number on the back. Ihor and Mykola are in the green-and-white horizontal stripes of Celtic, Yuri’s last team. Zhuki walks right past me without a word.
“I see you have proper shoes today,” Yuri announces. “Good! We bring you jersey, too. To make it official.”
A handful of green-and-white material is thrown in my direction. Zhuki says something in Ukrainian and everyone laughs.
“She say, it is green and white,” Yuri translates. “For hope and faith. When you do not have ability.”
I steal a glance at her. She has only the smallest glint in her eye, but my mind has already begun to magnify it.
“Joke,” Yuri says, slapping me on the back. “It is only joke.”
I turn around and change into the jersey so she will not see my chicken-carcass chest.
“And these are for you also.” Yuri holds up what looks like two pieces of coal in the moonlight, but when I get closer, I see they are those clip-on sun lenses the old Germans wear, the kind that flip up and down on your glasses.
“What are those for?”
“For you.”
“To block out the glare from the moonlight?”
He holds out his hand.
“What?”
“Your glasses.”
I reluctantly hand them over. Luca and Fede used to tell me I looked like a turtle without my glasses, one of those old ones that live on the Galapagos. I always feel incredibly vulnerable when they’re not on my face, like at any moment, anyone could jump out of the bushes, crush them, rob me, and leave me for dead. Yuri Fil and his trainer hunch over the glasses muttering, and when I get them back, the dark lenses are clipped to the bottom instead of the top, flipped out at ninety-degree angles.
“What are these? Ukrainian sunglasses?” I laugh.
“So you will look up,” Yuri explains. “So you will not want to keep eyes low to ground.”
They set up the floodlights and the match starts. Everyone scatters, leaving the goals open. Yuri, Little Yuri, Ihor, and Mykola are all whooping and shoving each other as they play. Zhuki and I are the only serious ones, Zhuki because she wants to prove she can kick my culo again, and me because I’m trying to prove that I don’t always get my culo kicked by girls. The clip-on lenses do help. I don’t look down at all. Partly because it’s dark down there, but also because I want to stay ultra-attentive to who’s running at me and avoid any collisions that would jam the lenses into my sockets, scoop out my eyeballs, and serve them up like hors d’oeuvres. It takes all my concentration to worry about this, to think about my feet and the ball, to stay in the light of the field, and to not get distracted by all the people around me, real and imaginary—Zhuki ahead of me, Luca in the ground, Mamma in the sea below, and Papà sitting in my head, yelling everything he used to yell at me from the sidelines.
Give it to Luca!
Don’t jog. Explode!
Ah, come on, Etto!
For God’s sake, open your eyes!
I run so hard, my glasses fog up, and my hair feels like a poof of reddish-brown smoke above my head. My stomach, lungs, spleen, whatever’s in there, tighten, every organ squeezed to half its size, and the tracks of sweat are running in torrents down my back. The other men strip off their shirts, but I keep mine on. Now that Ihor and Mykola are not letting Zhuki run over me, Team Fil has only scored five against us, and Mykola has scored one for our side. Zhuki kicks the ball out of bounds. It gets caught in the brush on the next terrace, and Ihor runs after it. I put my hands on my knees, trying to cough up the phlegm weighing me down. Yuri jogs over to me.
“You must quit smoking.”
“How do you know I smoke?”
He hunches over and pretends to cough up a lung, then stands up laughing.
“Very funny,” I say.
“Aha! And this is another thing we must teach you. Have fun! Like you say before. Today you look like animal who run away from hunter. Like you be eaten if you lose.” He reaches over and rubs my head. “Have fun!” he repeats. “Calcio is not so serious.”
The whole time he’s tal
king, all I can think is, non me ne frega, Yuri Fil. I don’t care if I get better at calcio or not. The only reason I’m showing up here is to prove to your sister that I am not a vampire and a stronzo, and possibly, just possibly, to get back at my father, neither of which requires me to be good at calcio.
“Etto!” Ihor shouts from the sideline, and the ball comes sailing into the light. Yuri jumps up in front of me and snags it with his chest, letting it roll down his body before flicking it away. I go after it, but he traps it and dribbles circles around me, keeping it away from the desperate stabs of my toes. And I don’t know exactly what happens next, but somehow the ball ends up behind him, and I wind up on the ground. Little Yuri dribbles it to our unguarded goal and puts it in.
“Gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool!”
Yuri sweeps Little Yuri up on his shoulders and circles the field, shouting, Little Yuri riding his papà like a bull, whipping an imaginary lasso in circles around his head. I lie down in the grass, flat on my back, trying to recover the collapsed sections of my lungs.
“You must get rid of this laziness, Etto.” Yuri stands over me, smiling, Little Yuri’s face rising up over his papà’s like a great, two-headed calcio monster. “You will never make Serie A if you are always laying on ground taking naps.”
The rest of them gather around, and it feels like I’m looking up from a deathbed at their faces, Mykola’s thin and gaunt, Ihor’s like one of those great Soviet ironworker statues. And then there is Zhuki, her face rising like the moon, her cheeks made slightly pouchy by gravity, her eyes resisting and opening like blooms. I see the smallest twitch at the side of her mouth, and it crumbles the darkness of her face, like weeds breaking through the concrete. I hear the shush of Ukrainian, and I know the night is over.
“We must go. Tatiana wait for us,” Yuri says, pulling me up off the ground. “Maybe paparazzi are sleep now.”
“There are paparazzi?”
“Only one tonight. He came from Rome in the afternoon. A little guy, skinny, with six senses. No matter what, he always know where we are. It is strange, very strange.”
“How did you leave the villa?”
“Oh, we know how to systemize the paparazzi. Easy. I tell Tatiana, wear the bikini and go on balcony. Then we go out back door. It is my hope, this little paparazzo, he will not be here for long time. Many people say Ilary will be have Totti’s baby.” He scoops a pregnant belly out of the air in front of his own flat stomach. “If is true, all paparazzi will be in Rome from this weekend. If we are lucky, they will be marry and there will be wedding. Then paparazzi will be in Rome whole summer, and everybody will forget about stupid Ukrainian striker.”
Zhuki says something to Little Yuri, takes his hand, and heads toward the path. “Ciao,” she throws over her shoulder in my direction, and I lap it up.
“Ciao!”
Yuri heads toward one of the floodlights. “We will see you again tomorrow. Same time.”
“We’ll see.” I try not to sound too eager. “I’m not sure if I can.”
“Ah, but I am sure,” Yuri says, laughing. “I am sure we see you tomorrow.”
The floodlights go off. I hear the rustling as they climb up to the next terrace, and suddenly, I’m alone again. I sit down next to Luca and light a cigarette.
“Did you hear that? She said ‘ciao.’ Clearly to me. She wouldn’t have been saying it to anyone else. And that smirk.” I twist around, and the photo stares back at me, cold and unblinking.
I rest my back against the stone as I listen to the midnight bells and watch the lights blink out across the hill. I catch a flicker of light coming through the row of cypresses. Shit. I must have left one of the lights on in the aula the other night. I heave myself up from the grass and push through the second line of cypresses that divides the field from the liceo. I fumble with the keys and pop each of the three locks in turn.
“Anybody there?” I call into the corridor, and my own nervous laugh echoes back to me.
When I was little, I was always the last to get ready for bed, and when we watched movies together on a Friday or Saturday night, sometimes I was too scared to go upstairs on the commercials to brush my teeth or put on my pajamas. So Mamma started a system, calling to me at regular intervals from her seat on the sofa, like the pinging of a submarine.
“Are you there?”
“I’m here!”
“Are you there?”
“Here!”
“Are you there?”
“Here!”
She would keep it up for as long as I was away, until I was safely tucked next to her on the sofa again.
I walk down the corridor, past the rows of class portraits, white with dust, shrinking with each graduation year. Nonno had forty or fifty classmates filling the frame, dressed smartly in jackets and skinny ties. Papà’s is down to twenty-five, squeezed into tight sweaters and flared pants. In my class, there were only eight of us fourth-years in the classical program, only six in the class below. I guess we should have known it was coming, but the closing of the liceo caught everyone off guard. They posted the letter from the regional education office in August, right before our fifth and final year was supposed to start. The letter said it would be temporary, one year, maybe two, until they could figure out the funding to open it back up. For the rest of the week, everyone was red-faced and waving their arms around, planning strikes and tax boycotts, but in the end, they just shrugged their shoulders and forgot about it. That’s how everything happens in this fottuto country—depth charges of outrage and then apathy stretching as far as the eye can see.
In the end, we were taken in by the schools in Albenga, the classical and scientific students to the liceo, the hospitality students to the institute. The teachers, who once seemed to us an indivisible unit, were unceremoniously disbanded. Charon had qualified for retirement eons ago, so he moved back in with his mamma in Rome, and Professoressa Gazzolo went to Milan, where to the torment of every boy at school, she had a muscly boyfriend with a Ferrari. Et tu, Professoressa Gazzolo? The rest of our teachers went directly from their vacations to jobs teaching other delinquents in other backwaters of the empire, with no interruption in pay.
I walk past the bathrooms and more classrooms, down to Charon’s aula at the end of the corridor. I stop at the doorway and reach up to touch the frame, where someone in some previous class had scratched a message with a sharp knife or a pen nib.
“Abandon all hope, you who enter here . . .”
And for the first time I notice that the quote has been finished, only the second part isn’t carved in the jagged gouges of some high school kid. It’s written in sharp pencil, in the restrained loops that once crowded out the margins of my essays. Charon always wrote in pencil, he told us, in order to emphasize the permanence and infallibility of words themselves.
“. . . for you have lost the gift of understanding.”
I read the words again and I can’t help laughing, imagining old Charon up on a chair, vandalizing his own doorway for a joke only he would get. It was hard to see Charon doing anything for a joke. He had wispy white hair that looked like it was leaping away from his skull in sheer terror, and he was so old, he talked about ancient Rome with the same affection the other teachers had for their childhoods in the sixties and seventies. I think the other teachers were even a little scared of him. None of them were allowed to use his chalk, his chair, his books, or his aula. Pete the Comb Man could go in there to clean and do maintenance, but no one else.
I open the door and it’s dark. My brain, my logic, whatever, tells me it must have been the reflection of the moon I saw, bouncing off the windows, but something else inside nags at me. I sit down in my old seat. For four years, we begged Charon to change us out of alphabetical order. For four years, we stared at Sima’s bra straps and Claudia’s smashed culo that miraculously re-formed when she stood up, and we made the same joke of kneeling on our seats, pretending Aristone’s head was too big for us to see past t
o the chalkboard. For four years, every time we had a test, we would take turns whistling softly from the second row until Charon looked up from his book with those burning embers of his eyes and said, plainly and calmly, “Stop it.”
I let the silence sink into me.
“Mamma, are you there?”
My own voice echoes down from the vaulted ceiling.
“Did you see me tonight, running around out there? I’ll bet you couldn’t believe it.”
No answer.
“You would like her,” I continue. “She’s not like Luca’s floozies. Remember that one who stalked him all the way from Milan? She was a masterpiece, eh?”
If I could have only one thing back, it would be her voice. The way she put the accent on the wrong syllable in Italian or amputated all her g’s in English, and the mix of both that only the four of us could ever completely comprehend. She and Luca are probably up there right now, floating around, laughing and talking in La Lingua Bastarda. Sometimes if I think about it too hard, I feel like a chump. I thought we were a team, I really did. Me and Mamma. Papà and Luca. That’s how it was supposed to be. When we followed Luca to his matches on the weekends, Papà would go to the stadium at the first light of dawn. He could spend the whole morning there, talking to coaches and scouts and scrutinizing Luca as he trained. Mamma and I would spend those mornings at one of the art museums. That was our thing. Mamma used to be as passionate about art as Papà is about calcio. It was the reason she came to Europe in the first place, because she said she was tired of learning art history from slides, and tired of being in California, where there was nothing older than she was.
She could make any museum interesting, even when I was a kid. She would take me around to each sculpture or painting as if she was introducing me to old friends. She taught me how to tell the difference between a Greek statue and a Roman one and how to crack the code of the Dutch still lifes. She told me endless stories about the sculptors who had a competition to the death over some commission, or the painter who was stone blind but chose colors by tasting them. When I got tired, she would hide behind some old caesar’s bust and make him talk to me as I passed, or she would attach us to a tour and pretend I didn’t speak Italian or English, translating everything to me in some babbling, made-up ape language while I nodded my head and tried to keep from laughing.
The Sun and Other Stars Page 14