The Sun and Other Stars (27 page)

Claudia laughs so loudly that Sima looks up from her phone.

“Why is that so funny?” Fede demands.

“Are you kidding? That’s the funniest thing I’ve ever heard. You actually think any girl is going to take you seriously, Fede?
You?
Husband material? Really?”

Fede looks at her blankly, goes to say something, then changes his mind. He pushes his chair back, counts out a few coins, and leaves them rattling on the table.

“Oh, come on, Fede, you’re not going to leave over that, are you?”

“Lighten up. She was just kidding.”

But I look over at Claudia, her arms locked across her chest, and I know we are a long way from kidding.

“Hey, if you can dish it out, you should be able to take it,” Claudia says.

I watch Fede walking away down the passeggiata, and suddenly I feel sorry for him. There’s something heavy in his shoulders and the flatness of his gait, his perfect muscles like ballast, weighing him down.

I stand up.

“Let him be, Etto.”

“Yeah, just let him be. He’ll be back.”

“Spoiled baby. He’s only doing it for attention anyway.”

I catch up with Fede on the molo. He’s slumped on a bench like Pete the Comb Man when he’s on one of his drinking binges, and I sit down next to him, the points on my cheeks where Zhuki kissed me still sparking in the darkness.

“You okay?”

He shrugs.

“What was that about?”

He shrugs again.

“You didn’t have to skip the match today, you know.”

“I know.”

“And I’m sorry for being such a stronzo.”

“I know.”

The clouds are blocking the moon tonight, and the sky and sea melt together. I spot the swag of a cruise ship parked on the horizon, and it looks like it’s hovering in empty space.

“There’s something between you and Claudia, isn’t there?”

“Why do you say that?”

“There is, isn’t there?”

“Not anymore.”

“There
was
?”

“We hooked up.”

“What? When?”

“Ages ago.”

“Shit. How?”

“I don’t know. How does anything like that happen? It was the night of Luca’s funeral. She found me on the rocks with a bottle of whiskey, and I didn’t feel like going to bed. So she stayed up with me. Just talking at first.”

“Shit. Does Casella know?”

“Nobody knows. Her. Now you.”

“Shit. And then what happened?”

“You know you say ‘shit’ a lot.” He gives me a look of concern, then shrugs. “I don’t know. I just couldn’t follow through.”

“With the sex?”

He smiles at this, his eyebrow cocked in amusement. “No, Etto, not with the sex. With the other stuff. She came to me the next day, talking about what did it mean to me and what did I want, and relationship this and relationship that.”

“And?”

“Cazzo, my mind was already so messed up thinking about Luca. I don’t know exactly what I said. I guess not what she wanted to hear. And then a couple of weeks later, she started going out with Casella.”

“And now? Do you still . . . ?”

“What do you think?”

“But she treats you like garbage. Come to think of it, you treat
her
like garbage.”

Fede looks me full in the face, and in the darkness, his skin looks as black as the sea.

“Etto,” he says, “if you start to look for logic in these things, you’re really fucked.”

*   *   *

By the time I get home, the apartment is dark, and I sneak in as quietly as I can. The alarm chirps, and I toe off my shoes.

“Etto, is that you?”

“You’re still awake, Papà?”

I come to the top of the stairs and find him sitting on the sofa in the dark with a drink in his hand. He’s staring off into space, his cheeks striped by the faint moonlight through the shutters.

“Etto, come here for a minute.”

I sit down in one of the chairs.

“You’re pretty good friends with that sister of Yuri’s, aren’t you?”

“Zhuki.”

“Zhuki,” he repeats. “She seems like a very nice girl. Everyone who’s talked to her says they like her.”

I have no idea where this is going. “She is.”

Papà takes a drink. “You know, Etto, I told your mamma if she wanted to live in California, I would move there for her.”

“You? In California?” I try to imagine it. I only went there once when Luca and I were about twelve, and all I remember was that everyone was blond and they smiled all the time as if no one ever had problems or got sick or died. I wonder if things would have turned out differently for us there.

“It seems ridiculous, doesn’t it?” Papà continues. “But the point is, I would have made it work somehow.
We
would have made it work somehow.”

I still have no idea what he’s getting at. “I guess it’s lucky she wanted to live here.”

“Yes. She seemed to like it here anyway.” He runs his hand over the bristles of his hair and exhales. “I don’t know, Etto. I don’t know. I guess what I’m trying to say is, whatever happens, we’re okay, right? I mean, I know it’s been a little rough lately, but you and me, we’re okay?”

“Of course, Papà.”

“I only want what’s best for you, Etto.”

“I know, Papà.”

He clears his throat and takes another drink.

“You played good tonight.”

“Thanks.”

“
Very
good.”

“Thanks, Papà. You did, too.”

W
hen I come down to the shop in the morning, Papà is already back at the grinding counter, stuffing sausages from the last of the ground scrap, a job that is a lot easier to do with four hands than two.

“Do you want me to help you, Papà?”

“It’s okay. I’m almost finished.”

He won’t look at me, as if he’s embarrassed about saying those things last night. Or maybe nervous, like I’ve finally seen through the cracks in his defense, and now he has to wait to see how I’m going to use it. I don’t know. I guess I feel the same way.

He leaves as soon as he’s finished, and the rest of the morning is slow. Jimmy’s papà won’t be here until tomorrow, and there’s nothing left to break down, chop apart, or grind up. Outside it’s almost too hot to breathe, much less cook, so the customers are down to a slow trickle. I spend the morning reorganizing the shelves behind the banco, rooting out the crumpled bags, markers, boxes of spices, and old receipts. As I work, I listen to the sounds of the beach and try in vain to pick out her voice.

At twelve thirty, I close up and go upstairs. I dig around in the back of the wardrobe for my trunks and put them on, but they look like something a little kid would wear, with orange crabs floating in blue life rings. I pull on a pair of Luca’s shorts and some of his flip-flops.

“You’re dressed for the party today,” Mimmo says as I stand at the entrance hut, scanning the beach. “Unfortunately, the party’s already migrating.” He points to the scrum of men surrounding Yuri, slowly moving toward us. Papà is there at Yuri’s side, and Zhuki is hurrying behind, hastily packing up Little Yuri and Principessa, putting on T-shirts and making them rinse their feet under the spigot.

“Ciao,” she says. “You’re just in time. We’ve decided to hold practice today.” She’s wobbling a little, loaded down with a giant beach bag and a kid on each hand.

“Do you want me to take the bag for you?”

“I can get it.”

I reach for it, and I instantly regret it. It’s got to be twenty kilos.

“What do you have in here—a third kid?”

“I can get it if it’s too heavy.”

“I’m joking. It’s fine.”

But only looking at the hill makes my lungs wheeze and my back hurt. If I have to talk the whole way up, I’m done for.

“So, tell me another story about Ukraine,” I say.

“What about?”

“I don’t know.” I spot Mykola and Ihor walking up ahead. “How does Yuri know Mykola and Ihor?” And I silently hope it’s a long and convoluted story.

“He met Mykola at the academy,” she says. “Strilky was too far, and our family was poor, so sometimes Yuri would spend the holidays with Mykola’s family. Mykola’s surname is Shevchenko. You know it?”

“No.”

“Oh, it is very famous in Ukraine. He has a cousin in the Premier League, and his father was one of the great gymnasts, traveling the world and training with foreigners. At the academy, they were still using the old ways, so Mykola and his father were always telling Yuri what the foreign calcio players did—eat this way, tie your shoes this way, train this way, run on this part of your foot, don’t let the other boys make psychological games with you. . . .”

“Why didn’t Mykola end up playing for a team?”

“Ach. It is a sad story. Both of them were going to be signed by Kiev Dynamo. But then Mykola, he injured his knee. He tried to rehabilitate it, but his career was finished. When Yuri signed the contract with Dynamo alone, he wrote Mykola in as his trainer. Almost for a joke. But Yuri was so good, they accepted this condition. Each time he was transferred, Mykola was always in the contract. Now he is like family.”

“And Ihor?”

“Ihor is the biggest boy we knew from school. So when Tatiana said, everyone I know has a bodyguard, we need a bodyguard, Yuri looked this boy up, and he was only working in a factory, so he agreed. And now Ihor is part of the family, too.”

“Strange family.”

“All families are strange.”

I drop the bag as soon as we reach the field, and Principessa and Little Yuri run off. Yuri has gone up to the villa for the SUV, and he dumps a pile of cones and balls in the middle of the field. The men who stopped at their houses along the way are pulling on their socks and cleats.

“Attention!” Yuri shouts, waving his arms in the center of the field. “Attention!” For the next hour, they practice, first in shaky rows, kicking balls back and forth, then in snaking lines and crisscrossing patterns in front of the goal. Yuri has Zhuki demonstrate from the penalty spot, and she hits the same piece of net over and over, the arc of her shot perfect every time. I watch from the sidelines. It’s in-cazz-ibile to me that these men who argue back and forth at Martina’s, too stubborn to listen to anything but their own opinions, are suddenly obeying the staccato of a whistle and following meekly in the steps of a woman half their age.

“Etto, get out here, you lazy bum!”

“Yeah. Get off the sideline before it fuses to your culo!”

“Too late,” I shout back.

Papà takes his turn and misses, and Yuri claps a hand on his shoulder and talks to him for a while, twisting and contorting his body, making Papà repeat a series of kicks at an imaginary ball before allowing him back into the line. Zhuki sits down on the sideline next to me and takes off her cleats.

“Yuri seems to be doing better,” I say.

“Yes. This is exactly what he needed. A very good distraction.”

They stop the drills and organize into a scrimmage, Yuri and Mykola squatting on the other sideline.

“Look up! Look up!”

“Don’t think! Shoot!”

“Read the fake! Read the fake!”

“Attack, attack, attack!”

I’m feeling bold. “So how about coming to Camilla’s with me tonight?”

“Oh, I can’t tonight. Yuri wants to go to the bar, so I must stay at home with Little Yuri and Principessa.”

“What about Tatiana?”

“She went to Milan for the week.”

“For what?”

“She’s going paparazzi hunting.”

“Really?”

“She does this every few weeks. Even when we are in Genoa, she must go to Milan or Rome for shopping and to see her showgirl friends. Genoa is not sophisticated enough for her, she says.” Zhuki laughs. “This from a girl who grew up in Cherkassy.”

“Where?”

“Exactly.”

“So why did you come to San Benedetto, then?” I ask. “You could have gone somewhere exclusive, to one of the Portos—Porto Cervo, Portoferraio, Portofino . . .”

“Yuri does not want to go to the celebrity resorts. Prisons, he calls them. He still does not want to believe he is a celebrity. Even the villa as big as a shopping center, that was a compromise with Tatiana. He does not like us living alone, high up on the hill, always looking down. If it were only his decision, he would stay in a small flat next to the sea.”

“And you?”

She pulls her knees up to her chest and looks at me intently. “I am a lot like my brother.”

*   *   *

When I walk into Martina’s at six, the flat-screen is on Miss Italia nel Mondo, mercifully with the sound off so we don’t have to hear the interview portion and the serious tones these girls have been practicing for a month in the mirror. The noise in the bar is deafening, the same as it always is during the high-summer season, everyone coming to escape the tourists and the heat. Only tonight, it sounds like a hospital ward.

“I think I did something to my ankle.”

“My back feels like someone has been trampolining on it.”

“My back is fine, but my thighs. Porca miseria, my thighs!”

“My calves.”

“My feet.”

“My neck.”

“My culo.”

“I think even my scalp hurts.”

You’d think none of them knew they had a body until today. And after they’ve made a thorough inventory of every muscle and ligament, they go into the endless recaps and heckling. Some of these men could heckle for the Olympics.

“Silvio, I haven’t seen you run that fast since you were trying to chase that rapist down the beach last summer.”

“Ciacco, I haven’t seen you run, period.”

“Only from his wife,” someone says, and everyone laughs.

“You should get your wife out there on Sunday.”

“They were talking about it.”

“What do you mean?”

“All the wives. They were talking about making a picnic of it next week.”

“A picnic? This is a serious match, not a picnic.”

“What’s the matter? You don’t want any witnesses to your weak dribbling?”

“Perhaps you didn’t notice, but I scored a goal on Sunday.”

“I’d be surprised if you didn’t. You never pass . . .”

“We’ll see who scores the goals next week.”

“We’ll see.”

They start to plan, ignoring even the swimsuit competition flashing behind them, and before long, there’s a league of twelve teams, complete with a double-elimination tournament on the weekend of Ferragosto, even uniforms that Signor Cavalcanti is going to try to get for cheap from his brother-in-law in La Spezia.

Martina comes out of the kitchen and plunks two bowls of trofie with pesto on the bar in front of me.

“If you want it, Carlo, it’s over here,” she calls to Papà. “I’m not going to be your waitress today.”

Papà stands up slowly and makes his way over to the bar. He sits down next to me and gives me a look of mock alarm. Martina makes another trip to the kitchen and brings back a rack of clean glasses, which she bangs on the bar and starts putting away with violence.

“Martina?” Papà asks. “Martina, is everything okay?”

But she doesn’t look up, so I try.

“Martina? Is something wrong?”

She only thins her lips and shakes her head. The door opens, letting in the passing noise from the passeggiata, and I feel the sea air skittering up my back like the first time Zhuki stepped into the bar. I turn to look, just as everyone else does.

“Buona sera.” Yuri’s standing in the doorway, flanked by Ihor and Mykola. The entire bar falls silent. I think you could’ve heard a baby crying on the other side of the world.

“Buona sera,” Papà finally says.

“Buona sera!” the entire bar echoes in unison, like some fottuto elementary school class.

“We come to see if anybody need medical attention.”

The whole bar laughs, but it feels forced, everyone on their best behavior.

“Do you mind if we have a drink with you?” Yuri asks.

“Not at all, not at all.” And there’s a deafening scraping and banging of chairs as fifty men try to make room for them at their tables.

Mykola and Ihor choose a table, but Yuri walks over to the bar.

“Ciao, Etto. Ciao, Carlo.”

“Ciao.”

He nods to the flat-screen. “Miss Italia?”

“Miss Italia nel Mondo.”

“What’s the difference?”

A few words. That’s all it takes to open the room again and resume the chatter.

“It means some Italian guy had a fling on vacation and these are the babies,” Farinata starts. “They’re not even Italian.”

“Who cares, Farinata? They’re in bikinis.”

“What I want to know is how that stumpy Maradona is going to reach any of their heads to put on the crown.”

“They’ll give him a stepladder.”

“Maybe the Hand of God will come down for him again.”

“I will say that Rome diet is working for him.”

“Cocaine?”

“I thought that was the Milan diet.”

“That’s heroin.”

“Who put him on television anyway? Let him rest in peace.”

“It was the only way to make Paolo Bonolis look taller.”

“That’s not Paolo Bonolis. It’s Carlo Conti.”

“Same thing. What happened to that guy anyway? It’s like he got locked inside the tanning bed.”

“Black makes him look taller.” They laugh. The same old jokes, but tonight a strange, new feeling overcomes me. The feeling that I might someday want to be a part of this.

The girls on the screen stay on mute, their mouths gasping like fish when the winner is announced. They do their best fake hugging and I’m-so-happy-for-you faces, and Maradona does in fact have to get on the points of his feet to crown the Filipino one.

“Yuri, would you like a drink?” Papà asks.

“Get them some of that homemade grappa,” someone shouts.

“Good idea. Grappa, Martina.”

“
Please,
” Martina answers.

“Please,” Yuri says.

“Ah, don’t mind her,” Nello says from down the bar, lowering his voice to a stage whisper. “Menopause.”

Martina looks up and down the bar. She wipes her hands on her apron, unties it behind her and throws it on the counter. “Arrange yourselves. Make sure you lock up when you leave.” She heads for the door.

“Uh-oh. Now you’ve done it.”

“She’s just making a point. She’ll be back.”

“Talk about hot tempered.”

“Her mother was just like that.”

Papà looks at me, then Yuri, then the door. He eases himself off the stool.

“I’ll go, Papà.”

I head for the molo. I don’t know if it’s the molo or the sea that draws people to it, that invites them to stand along the railings and fling their unhappiness into the waves. If they drew samples and counted the emotional distress like they counted the bacteria in the harbors or the cocaine residue in the Po, the beaches would be closed all summer. I pick out Martina’s sloppy bun among the short, hairdresser perms of the Germans and the salon styles of the Milanesi.