The Gladiator (5 page)

Read The Gladiator Online

Authors: Harry Turtledove

BOOK: The Gladiator
8.57Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
Gianfranco stuck his thumb up. Carlo stuck his down. That was what you did at The Gladiator. The people who ran the shop hadn't started it. The people who played there did. In the ancient Roman arenas, a raised thumb was a vote for sparing a downed gladiator's life. A lowered one was a vote to finish him off. Somebody who knew that must have done it for a joke the first time. Now everybody did.
“Let's see …” Eduardo pulled out a chart. “Gianfranco beats Carlo in
Rails across Europe
. Gianfranco, that means you play Alfredo next. Carlo, you go down into the losers' bracket, and you play Vittorio.”
“I'll beat him.” Carlo didn't lack confidence. Common sense, sometimes, but never confidence.
“Alfredo?” Gianfranco didn't sound so bold. “He'll be dangerous. He studies the game all the time.” Alfredo was older than Eduardo. He wore a mustache, and it had some white hairs in it. He was out of school, so he didn't have to worry about homework and projects and things. He had a job, but who took jobs seriously? He spent as much time at work as he could
get away with on his hobby, and just about all the time after he got home. He was a fanatic, no two ways about it.
“Hope the dice go your way,” Eduardo said. “If you have enough luck, all the other guy's skill doesn't matter. Might as well be life, eh?”
“Sì.” That was Carlo, still looking for a way to console himself after losing.
“It's a long game,” Gianfranco said. “Most of the time, the dice and the cards even out.”
“Well, in that case you'd better pray, because Alfredo will eat you for lunch like fettuccine,” Carlo said. “I've got to go. Ciao.” He walked out without giving Gianfranco a chance to snap back at him.
“He thought he'd beat you,” Eduardo said.
“I know. He figured I was a kid, so I wouldn't know what I was doing,” Gianfranco said. “I guess I showed him.” Then, cautiously, he asked, “What did Annarita think of the place?” He still didn't want to tell Eduardo she was investigating The Gladiator.
“She seemed interested,” answered the man behind the counter. “She's more political than you are, isn't she?”
Gianfranco knew what that meant—Annarita was asking questions. He just laughed and said, “Well, who isn't?” A lot of the time, not being interested in politics was the safest road to take. If you didn't stick your neck out one way or the other, nobody could say you were on the wrong side.
“She seemed nice, though. She's smart—you can tell,” Eduardo went on.
“Uh-huh,” Gianfranco said. Nobody ever went,
He's smart—you can tell
about him. He got by, and that was about it.
“She really did seem interested,” Eduardo said. “Do you suppose she'll come back and play?”
“I don't know,” Gianfranco said in surprise. “I didn't even think of it.” A few girls did come to The Gladiator. Two or three of them were as good at their games as most of the guys. But it was a small and mostly male world. Some guys who had been regulars stopped coming so often—or at all—when they found a steady girlfriend or got married. Gianfranco thought that was the saddest thing in the world.
“It would be nice if she did,” Eduardo said. “People find out pretty girls come in here, we get more customers. That wouldn't be bad.”
“I guess not.” Gianfranco didn't sound so sure, mostly because he wasn't. One of the reasons he liked coming to The Gladiator was that not so many people knew about the place. The ones who did were crazy the same way he was. They enjoyed belonging to something halfway between a club and a secret society. If a bunch of strangers who didn't know the ropes started coming in, it wouldn't be the same.
Eduardo laughed at him. “I know what the difference between us is. You don't have to worry about paying the rent—that's what.”
“You don't seem to have much trouble,” Gianfranco said. Along with the games and books and miniatures and models The Gladiator sold, it got all the gamers' hourly fees. It had to be doing pretty well—the Galleria del Popolo wasn't a cheap location.
“We manage.” Eduardo knocked on the wood of the countertop. “But that doesn't mean it's easy or anything. And we can always use more people. It's the truth, Gianfranco, whether you like it or not.”
“You just want to indoctrinate them,” Gianfranco said with a sly smile. “You want to turn them all into railroad capitalists or soccer-team capitalists or whatever. By the time you're done, there won't be a proper Communist left in Milan.”
Eduardo looked around in what seemed to Gianfranco to be real alarm. After he decided nobody'd overheard Gianfranco, the clerk relaxed—a little. “If you open your big mouth any wider, you'll fall in and disappear, and that'll be the end of you,” he said. “And it couldn't happen to a nicer guy, either.”
“Oh, give me break,” Gianfranco said. “I was just kidding. You know that—you'd better, all the time and money I spend in this joint.”
“Nobody jokes about capitalists. They're the class enemy,” Eduardo said.
“Carlo and I were joking about them while we played. We aren't the only ones, either. You hear guys like that all the time,” Gianfranco said.
“That's in the game. It's not real in the game, and everybody knows it's not. I was talking with your girlfriend about that.”
“She's not my girlfriend.”
“The more fool you,” Eduardo said, which flustered Gianfranco. The clerk went on, “As long as you know you're only being capitalists in a game, everything's fine. Games are just pretend.”
“Not just,” Gianfranco said. “That's what makes your games so good—they feel real.”
“Sure they do, but they aren't,” Eduardo said. “What happens if you go out into Milan and try to act like a capitalist? The Security Police arrest you, that's what. You want to see what a camp's like from the inside?”
“No!” Gianfranco said, which was the only possible answer to that question. But he couldn't help adding, “I've done too much studying for the game. Sometimes I think what they had back then worked better than what we've got now. The elevator in our building's been out of whack for years, and how come? 'Cause nobody cares enough to fix it.”
“If I were a spy, you just convicted yourself,” Eduardo said. “For heaven's sake, be careful how you talk. I don't want to
lose
customers, especially when I know they'll never come back.”
Gianfranco played back his own words in his head. He winced. “Grazie, Eduardo. You're right. I was dumb.”
“Dumb doesn't begin to cover it.” Eduardo shook his head. “In here, it's a game. Out there”—his gesture covered the world beyond The Gladiator's door—“it's for real. Don't forget it.”
He was urgent enough to impress Gianfranco, who said, “I won't.” But then he couldn't help putting in, “You know what?”
“What?” Eduardo sounded like somebody holding on to his patience with both hands.
“This stuff with working with prices and raising money works really well in the game,” Gianfranco said. “How come it
wouldn't
work for real?”
Even more patiently, Eduardo answered, “Because the game has its rules, and the outside world has different ones. The Party sets the outside rules,
sì
? And they're whatever the Party says they are, sì?”
“Well, sure,” Gianfranco said. “But isn't the Party missing a trick? If it changed the real rules so they were more like the ones in the game, I bet a lot of people would get rich. And what's so bad about that?”
“I ought to throw you out of here and lock the door in your face,” Eduardo said. “You're smart when it comes to the game,
maybe, but you're not so smart when it comes to the real world. The Party does what
it
wants. If we're lucky—if we're real lucky—it doesn't pay any attention to what a bunch of gamers in a crazy little shop are thinking. You got that?”
“Sì, Eduardo. Capisco.” Gianfranco yielded more to the clerk's vehemence than to his argument. He thought the argument was weak. But Eduardo seemed ready to punch him in the nose if he tried talking back.
“Bene. You'd better understand, you miserable little—” Sure as blazes, Eduardo was breathing hard. He was ready for any kind of trouble, all right. Gianfranco couldn't quite see
why
he was getting so excited, but he was. Eduardo wagged a finger at him in a way his own father couldn't have. “You going to do anything dumb?”
“No, Eduardo.” Gianfranco didn't want to rattle the clerk's cage. If Eduardo and the other people at The Gladiator did lock him out, he would … He shook his head. He didn't know what he would do then.
“Bene,” Eduardo said. “Maybe you're not so dumb. Not
quite
so dumb, anyhow. Why don't you get out of here for now? Or do you have some other scheme for giving me gray hair before my time?”
“I hope not,” Gianfranco said.
“So do I, kid. You better believe it,” Eduardo told him. “In that case, beat it.” Gianfranco did. Yes, no matter what, he wanted to stay in good with the people here. Next to the games at The Gladiator, the real world was a pretty dull place.
Annarita didn't know what to think about The Gladiator. She didn't say anything at supper—she didn't want to talk where Gianfranco and his family could overhear. She just listened while her father chatted about a couple of patients he'd seen. He never named names, but his stories were interesting anyway. Then Signor Mazzilli went on—and on—about some policy decision that wouldn't mean much either way. Annarita thought he was a bore, but she tried not to show it. The Crosettis and Mazzillis had to live together, so getting along was better than arguing all the time.
After she helped her mother with the dishes, though, she hunted up her father, who was reading a medical journal. “Can I ask you something?” she said.
“Why not?” He put down the journal. “This new procedure sounds wonderful, but it's so complicated and expensive that no one will use it more than once every five years. What's on your mind?”
She told him about visiting The Gladiator. “I don't know what I should say to the Young Socialists' League,” she finished.
“Are they hurting anybody?” her father asked. He looked as if he ought to smoke a pipe, but he didn't. He said he'd seen too many cases of mouth cancer to want one of his own.
“Hurting anybody? No.” Annarita shook her head. “But they're ideologically unsound.”
“And so? I'm ideologically unsound, too. Most people are, one way or another,” her father said. “Most of the time, it doesn't matter. You learn to keep quiet about it when you're not with people you can trust—and you learn not to trust too many people. Or it's about something so silly that you can talk about it and it doesn't count, even if you are sailing against the wind. So what's The Gladiator doing that's so awful?”
“They're selling games that make capitalism look good,” Annarita answered.
“Are they?” Whatever her father had expected, that plainly wasn't it. “How do they think they can get away with that?” he asked. Annarita told him how Eduardo had explained it to her. Her father clicked his tongue between his teeth. “This fellow should have been either a Jesuit or a lawyer. Does he think the Security Police will let him get away with a story like that?”
“The government tolerates the Church. Why wouldn't it put up with something like this?” Annarita asked.
“It tolerates the Church because the Church has been around for almost 2,100 years. The Church is big and powerful, even if it doesn't have any divisions. The Russians let religion breathe, and they don't usually put up with anything.” Her father looked unhappy. “A shop that's been open two years at the most just doesn't have that kind of clout. If this Eduardo can't see that, he needs to get his eyes examined.”
“Do you suppose somebody's going to start a company or sell stock or exploit his workers because of The Gladiator?” Annarita asked. Those were things capitalists did. She knew that much, if not much more.
“With the laws the way they are now, I'm not sure you
could
start a company. I'm pretty sure you can't sell stock,” her father answered. “You'd have to be crazy to try, wouldn't you? Who'd want to stick his neck out that way?”
“What am I supposed to tell the League?” That was Annarita's real worry.
“Well, it depends,” her father said. “Do you want to get these people in trouble? If you do, I bet you can.”
“But I don't, not really. Most of them are like Gianfranco—a bunch of guys who don't get out much sitting around rolling dice and talking,” Annarita said. That made her father laugh. She went on, “What could be more harmless, really?”
She thought he would say nothing could. Instead, he looked thoughtful. “Well, I don't know,” he said. “When the Bolsheviks started out, they were just a bunch of guys who didn't get out much sitting around drinking coffee and talking. And look what happened on account of that.”
“You think a revolution—I mean, a counterrevolution—could start at The Gladiator?” If Annarita sounded astonished, she had a good reason—she was.
“Stranger things have happened,” Dr. Crosetti said.
“Is that so? Name two,” she told him.
He laughed again, and wagged a finger at her. He always said that when somebody claimed something stranger had happened. Annarita enjoyed shooting him with one of his own arrows. “What am I going to do with you?” he asked, not without admiration.
“When I was little, you'd say you would sell me to the gypsies,” she said. “Is that out?”
“I'm afraid so,” her father answered. “If I tried it now, they'd really buy you, and that wouldn't be good.”
Gypsies still did odd jobs in the countryside, and sometimes
in the city. When they saw a chance, they ran con games or just stole. Not even more than a hundred years of Party rule had turned them into good collectivized citizens. Annarita didn't know how they dodged the Security Police so well, but they did.
“Who's on the committee with you?” her father asked. “Will anybody else go to see The Gladiator in person?”
“Ludovico Pagliarone and Maria Tenace,” Annarita answered. “No, I don't think they'll go, not unless one of them knows somebody who plays there.”
“Will they listen to you because you were on the spot?”
“Maybe Ludovico will. Maria …” Annarita sighed. “Maria will just say to call the place reactionary without even thinking. She always does things like that. If there's any chance it might be bad, she wants to get rid of it.”
“More Communist than Stalin,” her father murmured.
“What?” For a second, Annarita didn't get it.
Dr. Crosetti explained: “Back in the old days, they would say, ‘More Catholic than the Pope,' or sometimes, ‘More royal than the king.' They used to say that in France a lot. Only one king there, not a lot of them the way there were in Italy before unification. But we still need a phrase like that for somebody who goes along with authority because it
is
authority.”
“Where did you find these things?” Annarita said. “I bet you were looking in places where you shouldn't have.”
“And so? Who doesn't?” Her father held up a hand before she could answer. “I'll tell you who—people like your Maria, that's who. They go through life with blinkers on, the way carriage horses used to.”
“You have to be careful when you come out with things like that,” Annarita said slowly.
“Well, of course!” her father said. “That's part of growing up, learning how to be careful. I don't think you're going to inform on me.”
“I should hope not!” Annarita said. In school, they taught about children who informed on their parents or older siblings. The lessons made those kids out to be heroes. Annarita didn't know anybody who thought they really were. No matter what the state did for you after you blabbed, it couldn't give you back your family. And chances were none of the people to whom you informed would ever trust you after that, either. They had to know you would betray anybody at all, even them.
“Good,” her father said now, as if he hadn't expected anything else—and no doubt he hadn't. “You can talk to Ludovico, then. Maybe between the two of you, you'll outyell this other girl, and nothing will happen. Sometimes what doesn't happen is as important as what does, you know?”
Annarita hadn't thought about that. It kept cropping up in odd moments when she should have been thinking about her homework for the rest of the night.
 
 
Gianfranco opened his algebra book with all the enthusiasm of someone answering the midnight knock on the door that had to be the Security Police. As far as he was concerned, their jails and cellars held no terrors worse than the problems at the end of each chapter.
He groaned when he got a look at these. They'd driven him crazy in middle school. Here they were again, harder and more complicated than ever. Train A leaves so much time and so many kilometers behind Train B. It travels so many kilometers an hour
faster than Train B, though. At what time will it catch up? Or sometimes, how far will each train go before A catches B?
They weren't always trains. Sometimes they were planes or cars or ships. But they were trains in the first question.
And, because they were trains, Gianfranco's panic dissolved like morning mist under the sun. This was a problem right out of
Rails across Europe
. There, it involved squares on the board and dice rolls instead of kilometers and hours, but so what? He figured those things out while he was playing. Why couldn't he do it for schoolwork?
Because it's no fun when it's schoolwork
, he thought. How could it not be fun, though, if it had to do with trains? He tried the problem and got an answer that seemed reasonable. On to the next.
The next problem had to do with cars. When Gianfranco first looked at it, it made no more sense than Annarita's Russian—less, because everybody picked up a little Russian, like it or not. Then he pretended the cars were trains. All of a sudden, it didn't seem so hard. He got to work. Again, the answer he came up with seemed reasonable.
There was a difference, though, between being reasonable and being right. He took the problems to his father, who was smoking a cigarette and reading the newspaper. “Can you check these for me?” he asked.
“I don't know. What are you doing?” his father asked. Gianfranco explained. His father sucked in smoke. The coal on the cigarette glowed red. People said you were healthier if you quit smoking, but nobody ever told you how. His father shook his head and spread his hands. “Sorry,
ragazzo
. I remember going down the drain on these myself. Maybe you're right, maybe
you're wrong, maybe you're crazy. I can't tell you one way or the other. I wish I could.”
“I'll find out in class tomorrow.” Gianfranco didn't look forward to that. But he still thought he had a chance of being right, and that didn't happen every day in algebra. “Let me go back and do some more.”
“Sure, go ahead. Pick up as much of that stuff as you can—it won't hurt you,” his father said indulgently. “But you can do all right without it, too. Look at me.” He stubbed out the cigarette, then thumped his chest with his right fist.
“Thanks anyway, Papa.” Gianfranco retreated in a hurry. He didn't want to spend the rest of his life going to an office and doing nothing the way his old man did. Yes, his father had a medium-fancy title. He'd got it not because he was especially smart but because he never made enemies. But it still amounted to not very much. He'd said himself that they could train a monkey to do his job.
So what
do
you want to do, then?
Gianfranco asked himself. He knew the answer—he wanted to run a railroad. How did you go about learning to do that? Figuring out when trains would come in probably
was
part of it.
Gianfranco muttered to himself, pretending airplanes were trains—very fast trains. His trouble was, he didn't just want to run a railroad that had already been operating for 250 years. He wanted to start one and build it up from scratch, the way he did in the board game. How could you do that when it wasn't the nineteenth century any more?
He sighed. You couldn't. He was no big brain like Annarita, but he could see as much. What did that leave him? Two things occurred to him—working at the railroad the way it was
now or starting some other kind of business and running it as if it were a nineteenth-century railroad.
He could almost hear Eduardo yelling at him. He could hear the midnight knock on the door, too, and the Security Police screaming that he was a capitalist jackal as they hauled him off to jail. Or maybe they wouldn't bother waiting till midnight. Maybe they would just grab him at his business and take him away. For a crime as bad as capitalism, why would they waste time being sneaky?
But the way things were now, people just went through the motions. Gianfranco's father wasn't the only one. He was normal, pretty much. Everybody knew how things went. People made jokes about it. You heard things like,
We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us
. That was why you had to wait years for a TV set or a car. That was why crews had to come out to repair repairs half the time. That was why the elevator here hadn't worked for so long, and might never again.
The people owned the means of production. They did here, they did in the Soviet Union, they did in Canada and Brazil, they did everywhere. What could be fairer than that? It kept things equal, didn't it? Gianfranco nodded to himself. He'd learned his lessons well, even if he didn't realize it just then.
 
 
Maria Tenace had a face like a clenched fist. “I say we condemn the reactionaries.” Her voice said she wasn't going to take no for an answer. “They're trying to corrupt people. The authorities need to make an example of them.”

Other books

The Anathema by Rawlins, Zachary
Lure by Alaska Angelini
James Munkers by Lindsey Little
Wyatt by Fisher-Davis, Susan
Linda Castle by Territorial Bride
The Thread by Hislop, Victoria
Practical Jean by Trevor Cole