The Sun and Other Stars

by Brigid Pasulka

  “What?”

  “He said he met this friend online. What does that even mean? How do you become friends with someone you’ve never been in the same room with, much less make plans to go around the world with them?”

  “How long is he going to be away?”

  “This contract is for six months, but who knows?” He looks at his shoes and shakes his head again, like he’s trying to puzzle it out. “Boh. I guess he never liked the slaughtering part.” He says this matter-of-fact, but when he looks up, I can see the terror in his eyes, the fear that he’s going to lose Jimmy for good.

  Papà and Jimmy’s papà move the carcasses into the back walk-in and hook them—the full vitello, the nose swinging ten centimeters from the floor, and the side of beef.

  “Pass me a pan, Etto, will you?” Papà says.

  I bring him the pan and he puts it under the nose of the vitello. There’s nothing more to do, but Jimmy’s papà is still standing around looking lost.

  “Don’t worry,” Papà tells him. “He will soon realize that he never had it so good as when he was at home, surrounded by his family, working in the security of the family business. He will be back. Mark my words, he will be back.” I know this speech is more for me than for Jimmy’s papà, and I’m sure when Nonno finds out about this, I will get one of his special stories about the girl who worked for her parents’ restaurant, left them in the lurch, and lived unhappily ever after.

  “I hope you’re right, Carlo.” Jimmy’s papà reaches over and puts a hand on my shoulder. “Anyway, you are lucky to have such a good and loyal son.”

  * * *

  For the rest of the week, I do what I need to do in order not to be missed. I open and close the shop on time. I eat at Martina’s and try not to seem rushed. I answer Fede’s SMS-es and meet him and the rest of them at Camilla’s a couple of times. But I wake up every morning knowing that I am only waiting for the sun to set and darkness to fall, for my eyes to take in the sight of her running back and forth across that floodlit field.

  I think I’m making progress. Each day I record the angle of her mouth curling up at the corner and the number of words she speaks to me.

  “You sure were a hit with the paparazzi.” Eight words.

  “Don’t feel bad a six-year-old blocked it. Little Yuri isn’t a normal six-year-old.” Thirteen words.

  “I was wondering if you would mind bringing us a girello and a few steaks tomorrow?” Sixteen words. Yes, I know a meat order shouldn’t count, but I’ll take what I can get.

  Every morning, I hide their order under the piles of vacuum-packed cuts in the front walk-in, and every night, I sneak into the shop, pack it into a cooler, and tote it up the hill.

  “How much do we owe you?” Zhuki asks me.

  I shrug, as if my father and I are gentlemen butchers and money is of no consequence. “You have a conto. We can settle up before you leave.” And I can’t look at her, so I look at my shoes and pretend I’m working a stone out of the ground. “When are you leaving anyway?”

  “I don’t know. Now Yuri is talking about staying longer.”

  “Really?” I find another imaginary stone to work at. “Don’t you want to get back to Genoa?”

  She shrugs. “It’s not like I have anyone waiting for me. Yuri, Mykola, and Ihor, they are my friends. Wherever they are, that’s where I’m happy.”

  Yuri comes across the field toward us, clapping his hands. “Enough chat, enough chat. Back to work. Back to work.”

  From my first day on the field, Yuri and Mykola have approached me like a mental patient, their calcio experiments like deprogramming, as if this is my last chance at rejoining the normal, productive, calcio-loving society. They teach me all the things I should have learned on this field ten years ago. How to kick with the laces for power, the inside of the foot for accuracy, and the outside for spin. They teach me how to read the keeper and bait the defenders. And they make me practice. Practice, practice, and more practice. Attacking, defending, passing, shooting, running, and more running. I feel like the fottuto Karate Kid.

  “I thought you said calcio was going to be fun,” I say, clutching my knees and trying to spit the weakness out of my body.

  “Ah, for you, maybe is not fun yet. Your body have much to learn. But when your body know what to do, your head will stop thinking he know everything, and when head stop thinking he know everything, you will see that calcio, it is simplest and most beautiful game in whole world.”

  On Saturday night, there’s a full moon, and each blade of grass stands out in high relief against the others like an army on the march. I don’t know how the field stays so meticulously mowed, if they’ve hired somebody or what, and to be honest, I don’t care as long as I don’t have to do it. I try different positions for when they come through the hole in the terrace and she catches the first glimpse of me. I sit cross-legged in the middle of the field, then on top of Luca’s headstone, then against it with arms crossed, then apart. Luca is probably laughing his head off.

  “Hey, shut up, brother. Some of us actually have to work at it.”

  I hear the rustling of the brush and the sputtering of their incomprehensible language, and I recross my arms. When we were twelve, Fede and Luca taught me how to put my fists behind my biceps so they seemed bigger. I look down to check the effect, but the bulges look like air bubbles traveling up a straw. I uncross them and put my hands on the edge of the headstone as if I am a coiled spring, virile and ready for action. I realize the talking has stopped. I hear a click, and one of the floodlights blinds me.

  “Shit!” I throw my hands in front of my face to a gale of Ukrainian laughter. Ihor in particular can’t get enough. He does six or seven instant replays, each one with as much fling as he can make his solid arms do, each one with the “Shit!” as high as his voice will go. All to the delight of Yuri, Little Yuri, Mykola, and Zhuki. But you know something, Ihor, and anyone else who’s listening out there? I don’t care if she’s laughing at me. Because at least she’s not scowling anymore.

  Yuri bowls the ball at my feet. I try to stop it, but it rolls right past me.

  “Shit.”

  “Hey. No more of this ‘shit.’” Yuri says. “I am tired of it. From now on, you say, ‘I work on it, Yuri, I work on it.’ Here, I show you how to control ball.” He gets down on the ground, turning and shaping my feet into a position they are somehow incapable of finding on their own. No one would believe it if they saw it, this Serie A calcio player tending to my feet.

  “Like this,” he says.

  It’s then I notice a little girl hiding behind Zhuki’s legs. She’s wearing a baseball cap with blond curls frothing around her face, and she peeks around to see what Yuri’s doing.

  “Well, hello, hello, Principessa,” Yuri says.

  “What’s her name?”

  “Principessa. My wife, she wanted Italian name, not Ukrainian or Russian. She think if she have Italian name, she will have easier life.”

  “Well, it’s not exactly an Italian name. . . .” I say. Shit. Maybe the fottuto French are right, naming their entire population off an approved list of ten names. Who the cazzo names their kid Princess?

  “I told him that when she was born,” Zhuki says, and she nudges her brother with her foot. “But he does not listen.”

  “Not important,” Yuri says, standing up. “Only thing is important is that you never saw Principessa here. We have much trouble sneaking away from villa with her.”

  “Because of the paparazzi?”

  “No, no. The paparazzi went to Rome last night,” Yuri says. He stands up and opens his arms to the sky. “Thank you, Er Pupone and Ilary. Just as I imagined. She will have baby, and he is Catholic mamma’s boy, so there will be wedding. Story about handsome Roman striker much more interesting than story about old Ukrainian striker. I must telephone to the Little Golden Boy and say, ‘Thank you that you are so handsome and Ilary is a blonde. You save my family from paparazzi.’” Yuri laughs.

&n
bsp; “Why did you have to sneak out, then?”

  “Aha, because we take Principessa with us tonight. Tatiana, she worry that if girl play calcio, she turn into boy. Or lesbian. Like my sister.”

  Zhuki shoves him hard, and he loses his balance.

  “I am only joking. Only joking.”

  Mykola shouts something in Ukrainian from the other side of the field, and the last of the floodlights goes on. Zhuki and Yuri laugh.

  “What did he say?”

  “He say, ‘And God make the light!’” Yuri rubs his hands together. “So! You are ready?”

  “What torture do you have planned for me tonight?”

  “Torture? Being with us is torture?” Zhuki smiles. God, I love those teeth. Small and rounded, like milk teeth, but they might as well be fangs for all the destructive power they carry.

  “Etto, I tell you, tonight is big night,” Yuri says. “For you, and for the world. Tonight, we teach you—an Italian man—to throw away the catenaccio.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The catenaccio. This silly game of defense you Italians play that makes the boring scores and pisses off rest of world. You know why they play the catenaccio, the Italian teams?”

  “Why?”

  He nods to Little Yuri, who dutifully clamps his hands over his ears.

  “Because they are pants shitters! Because they scared. They think there is limited number of goals in season, and they scared other team take them all. So they try to lock the door. But tonight we say, no afraid, no afraid! Enough of the catenaccio! Attack! Attack! Attack!”

  “And how exactly are we going to do that?”

  Zhuki says something to Little Yuri, and he sprints over to their pile of things on the sideline and comes back with a bag. Zhuki smiles as she hands it to me.

  “What’s this?”

  “It’s for hockey,” she says. “Here.” It’s a goalie’s helmet, and she helps me slip it over my head. I can feel her fingers brushing against the back of my neck. I think she could have asked me to put on a pink ballet thing that was two sizes too small and I would’ve let her do it.

  “Ready?” Yuri says.

  “For what?”

  And cazzo if he doesn’t kick the ball straight into my stomach, so hard that it doubles me over and bounces out of bounds.

  “Shit! What did you do that for?”

  “No ‘shit,’ remember? And do not worry. We are professionals. When we are finish, you will no be scared of nothing. There will be no catenaccio inside of you. All will be left is attack.”

  He lines the ball up again, and I fold my arms across my stomach. “Wait! Wait! Let’s at least talk about this.”

  “No talk. No wait. Trust me. Zhuki, say him.”

  “It’s fine. He did the same to me when I was ten.”

  “And look how good she play now.” I look over at Zhuki. There’s no way out of this without having to cash in the chips of my manhood. “Come on,” Yuri says again. “No afraid.”

  I stand up to my full height. Wham.

  “Now open your eyes this time. You have mask. Come on. No afraid.”

  Wham! Wham! Wham! Wham! He hits every one right in the stomach. After about the tenth one, I stop flinching. After five more, the sting is gone, and after another five, I wonder if I should undergo psychoanalysis or something because it actually starts to feel good. Wham! Wham! Wham! Wham!

  “Now,” Yuri says. “Now you are ready. Now you got nothing to lose, nothing to fear. Say it: Enough of the catenaccio! Attack! Attack! Attack!”

  I look around at the others, but no one else seems to think this is crazy.

  “Enough of the catenaccio. Attack, attack, attack.”

  “Louder!”

  “Enough of the catenaccio! Attack! Attack! Attack!”

  “Louder!”

  He makes me repeat it twice more. I look across the hill, but no lights go on in the houses around us. Up here, you are not your brother’s keeper. Whatever your brother does is none of your fottuto business.

  We fan out across the field. Zhuki kicks off from the center spot, and as I’m chasing after her, I feel stronger than before, actual muscles working beneath the surface, the swamp monster that was trying to share the air in my lungs last week now shrunk to a manageable size. I don’t score any goals, but I can tell I’m making Team Fil work a little harder, their breath and their steps quickening around me. We play almost until midnight, when Principessa is asleep behind Luca’s headstone and Little Yuri is so tired, he starts laughing hysterically and falling down every time he touches the ball.

  “You are coming tomorrow, yes?” Yuri asks.

  Every night I check Zhuki’s face to be sure. “Yes. Tomorrow.”

  “Good.” Yuri slaps me on the back. “Good work tonight. You are improving. Stronger.”

  “Yes,” Zhuki says, “not bad for a butcher’s son. Not bad at all.”

  I know now what it means to lead a double life. To chase after a shouldn’t, with a should dragging like an anchor from your neck. Prince Charles, President Clinton, Prime Minister Berlusconi, I never liked any of you. Really. But I understand you now. Sometimes you just can’t stay away.

  So I save an entire column in the ledger of my conscience before I even commit the individual infractions. Not that a prayer exists that can give me absolution anyway. Me secretly playing calcio with Yuri Fil is worse than if Mamma and Silvio had had an affair, worse than if Luca had gone to play for Juventus. It’s so far beyond the actuarial tables of penance and forgiveness, I know that if I don’t want it to squat in my head for the rest of my life, if I don’t want to drag it around behind me or live in the shadow of its bulk, I must somehow incorporate it. Pretend the lie is simply a part of me. So I pull at it, twist it with logic, thin it with rationalizations, shrink it by comparing it to all the other messed-up things people do these days, and keep working at it until it seems minuscule, a nanofabric that can be knit right into my skin, the lumpiness and itchiness unnoticeable to everyone but me.

  After Martina’s every night, I go up to the aula. I don’t have the nerve yet to fill in the first panel with paint, so I start on the second. This time, I use a giant sheet of paper from the roll and measure out a meticulous grid of squares to match the smaller grid I’ve drawn on the poster. After that, it’s a simple matter of multiplication and diligent copying. When I’m finished with the drawing, I tack the paper onto the ceiling and poke along the lines with a pushpin, then rub charcoal into the holes until it creates a perfect dotted outline.

  I look up at the results. It’s probably the hardest panel of the nine. The most complicated. The Deluge. Forty days and forty nights cooped up with your family in an ark. No wonder Noah got trashed on vat wine when it was all over. These days they would make a reality show out of it, each person driven slowly insane by their loved ones and jumping overboard. I darken the lines on the island and the bank before starting in on the people. There are maybe a hundred figures in the picture, some of the true deficienti cowering under a sheet, trying not to get wet, the rest realizing the threat and panicking to save themselves, scrambling up rocks and trees and the side of the ark, holding bundles of belongings above their heads, a few even trying to tread water or pile into a rowboat. Every man for himself. Every man doomed.

  At ten o’clock I go outside and wait for the Ukrainians. I sit on the fifth-year bench, looking down onto the town. The bench used to sit at the entrance of the liceo, but my first year, the fifth-year boys clustered around it and dragged the whole thing ten meters, concrete base and all, right to where the terrace drops off. I remember they were so fottuto pleased with themselves. On breaks, seven or eight of them would squeeze onto the bench and look down on San Benedetto like Romulus looking down on the city of Rome, victors over their brothers, masters of all, the world laid out submissively at their feet. What a joke. Now when I see those same fifth-years on the street, they’re just like the rest of us, living at home and working for our papàs or
our papàs’ friends.

  I watch the lights and the people in the town, small as crumbs, filling in the meticulous rows of restaurant tables along the passeggiata, a few crawling along the empty beach. I imagine a giant tsunami coiling up on the horizon and roiling over all of it, like the one in Indonesia last Christmas, wiping out the entire population and scrubbing the town clean. The water would build and climb steadily up the hill, terrace by terrace, and Charon’s aula would be released from its foundation, floating up on the waters to the level of Signora Malaspina’s villa. I would be trapped in the aula for days, forced to eat splinters of wood and plaster chips to survive. Eventually, the water would recede, and somehow Zhuki and I would be the only survivors, stumbling out of our respective arks into the embrace of a rainbow, vowing immediately to start the civilization over from scratch. None of the cazzate of modern society. Just the two of us. Purely for the good of the world.

  Over the past week, I’ve found out that the Ukrainians are not a punctual people, but tonight they’re so late, I worry they won’t come at all. They told me they have a friend from Genoa staying for a few days. Maybe he does not play calcio. Finally at ten-thirty, I see the bright, white beacon of a cell phone sweeping through the brush. This time the voices are in Italian. Ah yes, the friend from Genoa.

  And can you even guess who the “friend from Genoa” is?

  Vanni Fucci.

  Vanni Fottuto Fucci. The other star striker who plays for Genoa, who represented the Azzurri in the last World Cup, and no doubt will again for the next one in Germany. Vanni Fottuto Fucci, Armani underwear model, Playgirl centerfold, and the man who has the panties of all the women on the continent hooked to his eyelid, so when he blinks a half second too long, four hundred million thongs, bikinis, and even granny pants simultaneously drop to the floor. Vanni Fottuto Fucci, the bastard who for an hour and a half of emotional injury time makes me look like a stumbling idiot in front of Zhuki and, with his crossovers and his foot stalls and his fancy drag-backs, even manages to tangle the feet of the great Yuri Fil.

  Oh, he has all the moves—the flaunted familiarity with her family, the shameless use of Little Yuri as a prop of his tenderness, and the pathological urge to take his shirt off. When he pulls it up over his head and reveals a set of tortoiseshell abs, it feels like a bandage being ripped off my skin. They say he has a painting of himself as a centaur hanging above his bed for all his conquests to see. Could it be any worse? Vanni Fucci staying in Signora Malaspina’s villa, steps away from Zhuki’s bedroom door.