The Sun and Other Stars (16 page)

O
ne 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-screen, 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.”

“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 talking, 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.