The Sun and Other Stars (25 page)

Whenever they’ve mentioned Ukraine, I always think of it as a big gray lump with lots of poor people standing in bread lines. I try to revise the image now to include the Internet.

“So, why is your mother with him?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t understand her. Sometimes I think she must be the stupidest person in the world.”

“I don’t know. I think there’s probably some stiff competition for that.”

She laughs. “I’m sorry, Etto. It must be difficult for you to listen to people complain about their mothers.”

“No, no. It’s fine.”

She looks at me for a minute, and it seems like she wants to say something else. Instead, she sits up. “I must go.”

“I’ll walk you back.”

She hesitates.

“It’s dangerous for you to go walking around up here on your own,” I say. “There are dogs and . . . other things up here. Your brother would kill me if anything happened to you.”

A smile teases at the corner of her mouth. “I don’t know. Maybe it is more dangerous to go walking with you.”

Her boldness catches me off guard, so I act on the instinct of twenty-two mostly girlfriendless years, holding up my palms as if to show that I am unarmed of the usual attractiveness, charm, whatever, that she has found elsewhere in our species.

“Trust me,” I say. “You’ve got nothing to worry about here.”

Shit. I’m such a pignolo.

She smiles. Amused. Like she wants to put me in a jar of chloroform and stick a pin through my thorax. Ah, yes, the elusive Italian pedant. Here he is. And what a fine specimen she’s found.

I follow her up the path to the next terrace. As we walk, the bell towers bang out midnight, and the lights below are snuffed by an invisible hand. I imagine everyone in the town turning in for the night. Papà walking home from Martina’s to an empty house and turning on the television just for the noise. Mamma-Fede rubbing Fede’s hair and telling him what a good boy he is. The Germans and Milanesi drinking their fourth or fifth digestivo along the passeggiata, the waiters clenching their jaws to stifle their yawns.

I try to make the walk last as long as I can by zigzagging across the terraces. We go Indian file in the narrow parts, taking turns leading each other through the ramshackle yards of the lazy good-for-nothings and the neat garden rows of the families of good breeding, as Nonno would say. We lead each other under grape arbors and around cisterns, listening to the swish of our legs through the high grass and the crunch of our shoes on the stones. The walk is easy tonight. There’s no weight pressing down on my back and no steepness rising out of the hill to strike when I least expect it. No, tonight it feels like rising is the most natural thing in the world, like hot-air balloons or the moon or angels on their way back to heaven. It’s as if someone has called a temporary suspension of all the natural laws of the universe. Gravity. Time. The inevitable Friending.

It starts stalking behind us again as we round the path to Signora Malaspina’s villa. As we near the gate, the air pressure plummets. Zhuki punches some buttons on the keypad, the gate swings open, and I feel a sudden pressure in my chest. I hear the collective gasp of the imaginary crowd in anticipation of the final moment when the iron bars rain down like enemy spears, slamming into the ground and separating us on either side.

“Etto. I’ve been thinking.”

Shit, here it is.

“I want to organize a match for Yuri. On Sunday. Not a serious match, but like we used to play in Strilky. It will be a surprise. Maybe it will help him not be so depressed.” She holds one of the buttons on the keypad down, and the gate stays open.

“You think he’s really depressed?”

“You would not be depressed if you were accused of something you did not do? If someone forbid you to do the one thing you love for three months?”

“If you put it that way.”

“The worst part is that his suspension is also for his position on the Ukrainian national team, so he will miss playing in the World Cup qualifier in September.”

“Ukraine is still in the running?”

She gives me a soft elbow to the stomach. “So. What do you think? Can you find ten or fifteen people in the town who would like to play with us on Sunday afternoon?”

“I think I could find five hundred.”

She laughs. “Better start with fifteen.”

“Done.”

“Thank you, Etto. I really appreciate it.” She flashes one more blinding smile my way, turns, and hustles to the front door as if she’s running onto the field for a substitution.

W
hen I wake up in the morning, my stomach starts to hurt thinking about what I’ve promised. I feel something being ripped away from me in slow motion, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. The truth is, I don’t want to share any of it. Not with Papà or anyone else. I don’t want to share the camaraderie or the boundaries of light, the inside jokes or the stupid calcio experiments. I don’t want Yuri to dole out his advice to anyone but me. I don’t want anybody to see the determination in Zhuki’s eyes or the sweat catching in the dark hairs at her temples, flat and inky like a drawing. But most of all, I don’t want to share the part of myself that runs across the field after a fottuto calcio ball, my arms and legs flailing, completely free.

Papà is already setting up the banco when I go down. I put on an apron and go into the front walk-in for the cold cuts.

“So why don’t you set up any of those crazy things in the case anymore?” Papà asks, his head still ducked into the banco, arranging, always arranging.

“I thought you didn’t like them.”

“I don’t. But the kids seem to. Especially those German kids. Who knows? Maybe it brings the mothers and nannies in like you said.”

So I take one of the rabbits and string it up, stretched out and leaping over the ribs like a superhero. And as I’m fussing with the paper cape, I say it as offhandedly as I can.

“I saw Zhuki yesterday. Yuri’s sister. They’re back from Genoa.”

“Oh?”

“She wants to plan a surprise calcio match for Yuri. Sunday afternoon. I thought I’d ask Fede and Bocca. Maybe you could ask Silvio and a couple of others. Not too many. We don’t want to turn it into a circus.”

Papà tries to keep his cool. “No, of course not. We can’t let him think we are a town full of maniac celebrity-chasers. It must be dignified. A few men playing a match.” He says this with as much old-world-butcher gravitas as he can manage, but I can see a flash of the old Papà’s excitement in his eyes—the one who used to play with us in the surf and take us in the walk-in and tell us scary stories. The one who used to make plans for the future. For half an hour, he paces from the banco to the grinding counter to the vacuum-pack machine to the walk-ins, moving and removing things, but not getting any work done.

“I just remembered—I need to get a part for the slicer,” he says finally, pulling his smock off and throwing it on the hook. “Casella’s holding it for me.” He practically runs out of the shop, and I don’t see him for the rest of the morning.

At twelve thirty, I close up and cross to Bagni Liguria with a delivery Mimmo called in. They have the wooden gate shut today for some reason, and when I knock, Franco peeks out of a book-sized door cut into the gate, his gray hair mussed like the wizard in Oz.

“What’s the password?” he asks.

“Tiny swimsuit.”

“Ha-ha. Very funny.” He opens the gate and closes it right behind me.

“So you’ve got security now, eh?”

“We’ve always had security. This is a very exclusive beach.”

“I thought you were a Communist, Franco. I thought Communists didn’t have exclusive anything.”

He laughs. I hand over the bag of sandwiches.

“It’s for the Ukrainians,” he says.

“The Ukrainians?”

“Yuri Fil. Not him, but his sister and the kids. They’ve been here a few hours already. Really nice girl. She invited me to play calcio with them on Sunday. Maybe you want to come?”

My heart sinks, and as I watch Franco take the bag and make his way through the rows of striped chaises and open umbrellas, I realize that the Ukrainians no longer belong to me. Our midnight matches, our inside jokes, our secrets are no more. They belong to my neighbors now. They belong to the rest of the world. Franco’s dog shifts and sighs.

“Etto! Ehi!” I shade my eyes and squint. “Etto! Over here!”

It’s Fede, shouting from the red rescue catamaran. He’s perched on the seat, the oars dragging in the water. Little Yuri and Principessa are sitting in two life rings at his feet, and Zhuki is in the front between the two floats, dangling her feet in the water. She’s in a bikini, but one of those athletic ones like Mamma would wear, her stomach flat, her arms tanned and muscular as she grips the edge of the boat.

“Etto! Ehi!” Fede hooks one of the oars and whistles with his fingers. Zhuki is smiling and shading her eyes, bobbing with the sea.

“Stronzo,” I mutter. Fede takes kids out on the rescue catamaran only if he’s interested in their nannies, and I feel the jealousy surfacing inside me like a great sea monster, unhinging its jaws and clamping down on the boat, tossing Fede into the water.

“Here you go.” Franco hands me the money.

“Thanks.”

“Vieni!” Fede calls. Come here. And Zhuki and Little Yuri start up, too. “Vieni, Etto! Vieni!”

“I think they want you to come out there,” Franco says.

“Well, they’ll be waiting a long time.”

A few of the Germans and Milanesi raise their heads from the chaises to see what the commotion is about, then let them sink back down. Bocca twists around in the lifeguard chair and gives me a slight, cool hand raise. Ihor is watching from the shore, but he doesn’t break a smile. He’s on the job today.

“Vieni!” they shout again.

If I were Chuck Norris or Francesco Totti, I would strip down to my underwear and strut into the surf,
Baywatch
-style, do a perfectly taut crawl out to the rescue boat, and boost myself up on one of the floats. But I haven’t touched the water since Mamma. Not even wading in.

“Forget it,” I say, and I shake my head in their direction.

Fede’s shoulders ripple into motion as he starts rowing back to shore. They hit the sand, and Fede jumps into the water and pulls the wobbling catamaran ashore. Zhuki helps the kids clamber down the floats. If you didn’t know any better, you could mistake them for a young family, and I search for any signs that Fede’s been flirting with Zhuki or that she’s been swallowing his bait.

Zhuki jogs over to me. Her whole body is solid, the tan lines stopping where her calcio shorts and the sleeves of her T-shirt fall. She stands at the bottom of the stairs, pulling at her suit.

“Ciao.”

“Ciao.”

Fede is skulking around near the guard chair. I can almost hear the eyeballs of the mothers and nannies rolling to the edges of their sunglasses to have a look. I wonder if he’ll have the palle to come over here and try to play innocent.

“Where’s Yuri?” I ask her.

“Ah, he’s still upset. Vanni came from Genoa today, and they are sitting up on the veranda drinking.”

“And you? Aren’t you worried about the paparazzi here?”

She laughs. “They don’t want a picture of me. Anyway, the paparazzi will stay in Rome for the next six months, examining Ilary’s bump and trying to see if the baby will play offense or defense.”

I look over her shoulder. Fede is chatting with Bocca now. He grabs one of the slats of the guard chair and leans back, flexing his muscles and putting on a show.

“So . . . you know Fede?” I try to ask it like I don’t care.

“We just met. He remembered me from . . . from the night at the disco.”

“Ah, yes, the disco.”

She smiles.

“I’m glad you think it’s funny now,” I say.

“You should have seen your face when I pushed you.”

“You should have seen yours.”

And as if he’s purposely trying to interrupt the moment, Fede wanders over. He’s wearing a pair of loose surfer trunks today.

“Where’s the scorpion?” I say, hoping Zhuki will ask about it, and I will be able to tease him about it, just enough for her to see that he is not for her.

“The scorpion has been retired.”

I snort. “I’ll believe that when I see it.”

“I told Fede about the calcio match tomorrow,” Zhuki says.

“I don’t know, I think there are too many people already. You can come and watch, I guess.”

Fede cocks his head and gives me a strange look.

“Of course he can play,” Zhuki says. “The more we are, the better.”

“I thought you said ten or fifteen.”

Fede furrows his eyebrows at me. “We were just about to take Little Yuri for a jump off the molo,” he says, and it sounds like a challenge. “Do you want to come?”

“I’m not really dressed for it today.”

“We’ll wait while you go upstairs and change.”

“Don’t do me any favors.”

“I’m just trying to help.”

“Fede, you know I’m not jumping from the fottuto molo, and you know exactly why I’m not jumping from the fottuto molo.” I try to say it in as much dialect as I can manage, or at least garble it so Zhuki doesn’t understand.

“Hey, relax.”

“You relax.”

“What’s your problem today?”

“What’s yours?”

“Is everything okay?” Zhuki says.

“I have to go,” I say. “I’ve got some stuff to do.”

“At least stay and watch us jump,” she says.

“Sorry, I have to go.”

I watch the whole thing through the shutters of our living room. Zhuki, Fede, and Little Yuri file out onto the molo and duck through the railing. They hold a quick strategic conference, Zhuki and Fede laughing the whole time.

The summer when I was ten, Mamma and Luca finally convinced me to jump off the molo. I was so scared that Mamma made Franco and Mimmo wade into the water, and she promised to jump in herself and rescue me if I didn’t surface by the count of ten. Mamma had been a lifeguard in California all through high school and part of college, and she was always ready to jump in and save someone. She did the Heimlich on Bocca once when we were little and he choked on a piece of coconut, and one day she hauled in one of Luca’s little summer girlfriends when she swam out too far. Some of the old men used to call her Pamela Anderson and do the slow-motion running thing even though she looked nothing like her. That’s why I didn’t believe Silvio when he said it was an accident.

Anyway, I remember hanging on to that railing like a baby koala, and Mamma having to count to three about five or six times, all the people at the bagni watching us. Finally, I got so nervous, I just wanted it to be over. So I jumped. I wasn’t even listening to Mamma’s count. I think I jumped on two. And it was the scariest fottuto minute of my ten-year-old life. The water closed up around me, and I kept going down and down. I was convinced I was going to sink to the bottom and stay there, and when I finally surfaced, I was gasping for air and trying to clear my eyes with both hands. I remember frantically dog-paddling to the applause from the beach until my toes touched the sand. I remember Mamma scooping me up, wrapping me in a warm towel, and telling me how proud she was.

I spread the slats of the shutters and lean in. Fede, Little Yuri, and Zhuki space themselves out along the edge of the concrete, their arms looped around the railing, their toes hanging off the edge like birds on a wire. I listen to the lapping of the water, the caw of the gulls, and the distant voices shouting along the shore.

Pronti . . .

Attenti . . .

Via!

Splash.

Zhuki and Fede bob to the surface, their hair slicked back, laughing, as Little Yuri steams toward the shore in a determined crawl. Principessa runs squealing toward the stairs to meet them as they come out of the water, and Ihor lumbers behind. I have to squeeze my eyes tight against the jealousy rising inside me, so tight it feels like my eyes are sutured shut, never to open again.

I spend the rest of the afternoon alone in the aula. I paint over the first panel, the last panel, whatever. The one of drunken Noah, the penciled faces of Noah and his sons transforming into the faces I know. I take Noah’s place as the drunk sprawled out, spreading like a puddle on the floor, and Zhuki, Fede, and Bocca are the faces standing over me, their eyes bugging out and fingers pointing in horror. The field in the background transforms into the sea, a distant red catamaran bobbing on the waves. I feel like a fool for ever believing she could like me, and I wish I could dive straight into the plaster, leaving nothing but a slick of color in my wake.