The Sun and Other Stars (4 page)

“Yeah,” he says. “Two minutes to eight.”

“Thanks for the blade.”

“No problem. You coming by Camilla’s tonight?”

“We’ll see.”

I jog back. Chicca is still outside, watching as a pair of German grandparents and their charge paw over the inflatable turtles and crocodiles leaning against the wall. It’s hard to believe that sixty years ago they were clicking around our streets in jackboots, cocking weapons in the faces of our grandparents. Sometimes I want to stop one of them and ask, whatever happened to the dream of a pasteurized and homogenized gene pool? Whatever happened to the government awards for reproducing humorless Aryans at factory capacity? The single cruelty they are capable of these days is bringing only children into the world, their one aspiration to be inoffensive and organized, their only Blitzkrieg to come here for the same three weeks of vacation every year, stay in the same rental apartments, and sit on the same bagni under the same umbrellas, generation after generation after generation in limbo, until the four horsemen of the apocalypse politely ask them to pack up and go home.

“Thanks, Chicca.”

“No problem.”

I put the band saw blade on the grinding counter, come up front, and slip behind the banco. The rest of the day is predictable. First a steady stream of German mothers buying sausages and cold cuts for their efficiency kitchens. Then the nonne on their way back from church. Then the local mothers and children, trying to beat back the endless summer boredom with routine. Regina Salveggio was in our class at the liceo until she dropped out to marry Beppe, and her kids bang through the front door and run straight for the calf’s head, pressing their grubby little hands and faces against the glass.

“Moo-ooo,” the boy brat says, and the girl brat follows.

“Moo-ooo.”

Regina laughs. “They’re so curious about everything at this age. They’re like little sponges. I hope they’ll turn out to be as smart as their father.”

“You mean Beppe?”

“Of course I mean Beppe.” She laughs like it’s a joke. “I’ll tell him you said that, Etto.”

“Well, it looks like they’re already bilingual.”

“Moo-ooo. Moo-ooo,” the little brats continue, practically French-kissing the glass, as if the fottuto calf is suddenly going to start carrying his end of the conversation. “Moo-ooo . . .”

“Oh, you’re so funny, Etto.”

“So what will it be, Regina?” I ask. “Two hundred grams of prosciutto?”

“Yes, and four chicken breasts, no bone, no skin.”

No bone, no skin. Not much of a happy homemaker, are you, Regina? I wrap it up and write it down in the notebook we keep under the register.

“Do you want to carry the package, tesoro?” Regina asks the girl brat. The boy brat whispers something in her ear, and the girl brat lets out a yelp.

“Antonio Riccardo, what did you say to your sister?”

But instead of backing down, the boy brat extends his arm, pointing it at my crotch. “I said,
that’s
the man who chopped the cow’s head off,” and the girl hides behind Regina’s legs and peeks out at me in fear.

I give her a friendly little smile and a wave, and I crouch down to her level. Her eyes widen. “Actually, your brother is wrong,” I say. “The cows arrive on a truck already dead, and then I chop the carcasses into little bits!”

The boy brat laughs, swinging his arm around and around. The girl brat’s mouth gapes open slightly, silent for a moment before letting out the wail of an ambulance.

“Thanks a lot, Etto,” Regina says, snatching the package from me and scooping up the howling girl in the other arm. “I’ll call you at four in the morning when she wakes up with a nightmare.”

“No problem, Regina. Anytime. Tell Beppe I said ciao.”

The rest of the morning is busy, and all the conversations blend together.

“Take off the skin.”

“Beautiful day, isn’t it?”

“Slice it thin, please.”

“He always was a cheapskate, though.”

“Three . . . no, four.”

“She’ll never get married.”

“They haven’t talked to each other since the fifties.”

“Well, you know, she wasn’t at Mass this morning.”

The bachelors are always the last to come in, just before the afternoon break. Nicola Nicolini orders two fillets and has me trim some of the meat off to make them into perfect circles.

“New girlfriend, eh, Nicola?”

He turns red and pretends to be searching inside his purse, man bag, whatever, mumbling that they are both for him, and something about being an eternal bachelor, blah, blah, blah, and we should come next door for dinner sometime. One of these days, I’m going to put him out of his misery and tell him that everyone knows he’s gay. That doesn’t he realize he lives on the other side of our fottuto wall, and besides, we have the ever-vigilant nonne to alert us and everyone else in San Benedetto whenever he brings a man home?

“Have you heard about the Genoa-Venezia scandal?” he asks, as if talking about calcio is going to camouflage the flames.

“Let me guess . . . steroids?”

“Match fixing.”

“What’s new?”

There’s been a scandal every couple of years now for as long as I can remember—match fixing, steroids, horse tranquilizers, cocaine smuggling, fake passports to dodge the foreign-player quotas, Rolexes magically appearing on every referee’s wrist. It’s the same old story every time. It’ll be analyzed and overanalyzed for a couple of weeks in the media—especially if it’s not Berlusconi’s team—until finally the players involved will appear, heads hanging, making the obligatory and televised act of contrition and asking for absolution from the fans. When they’re ready to move on, the media will cauterize the whole thing by giving it a nickname, and then everyone will forget about it until the next scandal breaks, when they’ll get excited by the gushing blood all over again.

“I don’t know, Etto,” Nicola Nicolini continues. “It looks pretty bad this time. They’ve been at it all morning over at Martina’s.”

“Let me guess. My papà’s leading the charge.”

“He looked like he was about to lose his straps.”

Figures. I’m sure he’ll use it as an excuse not to come into the shop at all today. In the past two years, we’ve created an entire branch of science out of living together but not living together, like if we circulate in some provisional reality, the permanent one doesn’t have a chance to harden into place. Like if we aren’t in the same room together, we can still pretend nothing is missing, and we don’t see the gaps we’ve been cursed to illuminate for each other.

He finally appears ten minutes before close, out of breath, clutching his precious
Gazzetta dello Sport.

“Have you heard the news?” he pants.

“Ciao, Papà.”

“Yes, yes. Ciao, ciao. Have you heard?”

Papà looks almost the same as he did twenty-five years ago. Still the same sturdy torso, the same heavy hands and thick crew cut he had in his photos from military service and our team pictures when he coached us in chickadees. Only in the past two years has it been shot through with gray—small, silver wounds at his temples and in the back of his head.

“The scandal?”

“The mistaken scandal. The only real scandal is that they are tarnishing the image of Yuri Fil. Can you believe they are trying to blame him for match fixing and conspiracy now? Because he left the field with a bum ankle! Incredible!”

“Well, how do you know he wasn’t in on it?”

My father gasps. “How do I know he wasn’t in on it? Maradona!” This is the strongest word Papà ever uses, both a blessing and a curse, same as the man himself was. “No, he did not do it! Yuri Fil is an innocent man! I would bet my life on it! They are only using him as a scapegoat or for some other scheme!”

He throws up his hands in exasperation, and the
Gazzetta dello Sport
falls to the floor, a pink spot on the clean, white linoleum. He bends over to pick it up, and when he comes up, his face is red, like someone has turned off a spigot in his neck. He tucks the paper under his arm and stares at me with his bulging eyes, shaking his head, as if he can’t believe we’re related.

“How do I know?” he says again. “Really, Etto . . .”

Luca would never have blasphemed Yuri Fil. If Luca was here—not that Papà would’ve ever allowed him to waste a minute behind the banco—but if Luca was still alive, they would’ve stood around for hours, dissecting the entire affair, taking turns at proving Yuri Fil’s innocence in a hundred different ways.

Papà squints at the glass and pokes a finger at the plastic sack keeping cold in the back of the case. “Who’s that for?”

“Pia.”

“Make sure she pays cash.”

“She always does.”

“Good. I’m not subsidizing that stronzo of a husband of hers. And what’s this?” Papà stabs another finger at the glass.

“Those are shish kebabs.”

“Not those.
This.
”

“It’s a tribute to the new pope. I thought the Germans and the nonne would like it.”

“Take it out.”

“But, Papà . . .”

“It’s disrespectful. Take it out. Your bisnonno and your nonno and I did not build a dignified business in order for you to turn it into a joke.” He gestures to the portraits on the wall behind him, as if that gives him a majority. “And while you’re at it, take those shish kebabs out of there and redo them. It looks like they were made by the home for the blind. Honestly!”

“But I was just about to close up.”

“Redo them. And how many times do I have to tell you to put on a hairnet?”

Let me be clear. I am
never
putting on a fottuto hairnet, and Papà
knows
that I am never putting on a fottuto hairnet. He’s just using it as leverage so I will fix the shish kebabs and let him run his mouth. He’s shouting from the back now, launching into his speech about the nobility of the profession, the butcher as the guardian of morals in the community, and the fact that an entire line of French kings descended from a butcher. Pretty soon he will be on to how my bisnonno arrived in this town eighty years ago with only his leather roll of knives.

“Are you listening to me, Etto?”

“Yes, Papà. I’m listening.”

I clip the paper hat and cape off the chicken pope and slip the skewer out of its wing, but just to show him that he is not the master of me, I leave the chicken suspended, upright and naked in the case. Papà reappears in the front with the crate of dirty laundry, the newspaper balanced on top.

“I mean it, Etto. Either a hairnet or a haircut. I tell you this every week. And you need to get that field mowed. This weekend. Gubbio says it looks as if it’s been completely abandoned.”

“Gubbio’s exaggerating.”

“Would you just do it without complaining for once, Etto? Maradona, you’re twenty-two! I shouldn’t have to tell you everything. Your brother was living away from home at fifteen.”

Papà rarely invokes my brother, and once it slips out of his mouth, he disappears as quickly as he can.

“Right, and look how that turned out,” I say, once the door is safely closed behind him.

Nonno and my bisnonno both scowl at me from their portraits on the wall.

“I know, I know. I’m a bad son. What’s new?”

I used to think about leaving all this, maybe living on my own or even moving to the city. When Mamma’s sister was here to visit that one time, before she got bogged down with her six kids, she and Mamma talked about me and Luca maybe spending a year in America once we graduated from liceo. There were even a few years when Casella and I talked about enrolling in the animation institute in Milan. But if you live here your whole life, you grow up hearing a steady chatter of people who talk about leaving, who sketch out their big dreams with too many words and sculpt their plans out of the air with grand, sweeping gestures. A few even manage to pack a suitcase and shake the sand of San Benedetto off their feet for a few years. But one way or the other, they always come back, and over the years, I guess that’s inoculated me from becoming another big talker in a long line.

I lock up and cross the passeggiata to Bagni Liguria, shielding my eyes from the sun. Mimmo is manning the entrance hut. It’s not July yet, so there are still a few tags left on the board behind him, a few empty chaises and umbrellas in the grid.

He looks up from his book. “Delivery?”

“Ciacco called it in.”

Mimmo takes the bag from me and trots off to find Ciacco while I stay on the boardwalk and survey the beach. The sun is out in full force, the white sails of the boats poking up out of the waves like shark teeth. There are a few people treading water, their heads floating in the sea. The rest are lying facedown on their chaises, backs burned, arms and feet dangling off the edge in some sort of medieval torture. I hate the bagni. I never go.

Mimmo hovers over one of the chaises in the front row, and Ciacco squirms until he finally raises himself to a sitting position, the rolls of fat rearranging themselves as he digs into the purse hanging around his neck.

“Ehi. Ciao, Etto.” Franco appears in front of the showers with a bucket of crabs and a gaggle of little kids following him around like he’s the magic piper. We used to collect crabs when we were little, too. We’d leave those poor little suckers sloshing around in a thin soup of sand and water until Franco made us dump them back into the sea so they wouldn’t die.

“Ciao, Franco.”

“What brings you here? Delivery?”

“For Ciacco.”

“You should put on your suit. Go for a little swim.”

“Thanks, but I have a delivery up in the hills.”

“Who?”

“Pia.”

He shakes his head the way everyone does when Pia’s name is mentioned. “Ah . . . sì, sì,” he says, by which he means, what a shame, what a shame. “You want me to let Fede know you’re here?”

“That’s okay, he looks busy.”

Franco laughs. “As usual.”

Fede’s on the shore, his tanned back shaped like an arrow pointing to his culo, just in case you missed it in those tight trunks. He’s ankle deep in the surf, flirting with three blond girls, as Bocca leans down from the lifeguard chair, poised to catch the crumbs if they happen to fall from Fede’s table. I hold up two fingers and squish Bocca between them. Poser . . . squish. Fede . . . squish. Blond girls . . . squish, squish, squish. When Luca was around on breaks from the academy, Fede at least had some competition, but now he’s out there completely unchecked, roaming the savannah like on Animal Planet, and all you can do is turn your head at the last second.