Infinite Summer

by Edoardo Nesi

  Cesare looked at him with the eyes of the Beast, then said he couldn’t find the contract because there was no contract. It didn’t exist. Had he forgotten? They had never signed anything. They were friends. They had shaken hands. That was their contract.

  Ivo lowered his eyes and remembered, and then he grew emotional at recalling the days spent in the cramped cubicle, daydreaming with Cesare about how they would build the most beautiful factory in Italy, but then his anger returned at the thought of the pitiful fate of those dreams, and he grew angrier still because, if Vezzosi was telling him the truth, he had just been informed that despite all the disputes and the problems and the nervous breakdowns and the delays and the incompetence and the ineptitude, the factory was pretty much ready. Just as he had hoped and dreamed. Of course, all he was being given now were just the walls and some of the machinery, and with an entirely unacceptable delay, but did he really want to send them away now that they had almost finished? And how long had it been since he had gone to see his building site? What’s going on now, Ivo? Don’t you want it anymore? Really?

  He closed his eyes and tried to regroup, but the memory of the rolls that seemed to chase him as they fell by the dozen was still too vivid, and so he hissed that the fact there was no contract was a sign they were imbeciles, and he was even more of an imbecile because it wasn’t possible to build a factory worth two billion lire and just shake hands on it, just hoping it would all be fine, and then he finally fell silent, his fury finally purged, and immediately regretted having called Cesare and Citarella imbeciles, as he saw them sitting in front of him, rooted to the spot by the fear of being fired.

  It was eight o’ clock in the evening of a cold day of September and there was no sound in the office but the muffled beating of an incessant rain. Then Citarella cleared his throat and spoke.

  — What makes me an imbecile, Ivo? Is it because I trusted you? I trust you and I always will…

  Upon hearing those words, something inside Barrocciai melted, and all that was left of his rage drained off and vanished, and his innate cheerfulness started once again to run freely through his veins. He didn’t want to be angry anymore, but he had to keep his position, so he nodded gravely and told them they could go. He would see them on site the next morning at eight o’clock sharp, to see exactly where they were up to — and if either of them had lied to him, he wouldn’t just be firing them and all the other workers on the spot, but he would also have to close the woolen mill and send home every single one of the fifty people who work there, because it had become dangerous to work there.

  — I want to know the exact day it’ll all be ready. Understood?

  PIRANHAS IN THE AQUARIUM

  THE NEXT MORNING Ivo arrived on site at midday. He had checked with Gabriella: he hadn’t been there for a year and one month, and he wasn’t ready for the sight, which left him literally openmouthed.

  When he began his inspection, flanked by Cesare and followed by an anxious Citarella, Ivo had to make an effort not to smile as he looked into the immensity of the cement basin that would soon become the Olympic swimming pool, or as he measured with giant steps the cavernous immensity of the twin sheds that would house the weaving and the spinning mills, or as he inspected the small adjacent rooms that would house the warpage and darning, or as he greatly appreciated the dimensions and the light of the technical, administrative, and sales offices.

  But when he stepped foot in his immense office, only slightly smaller than a tennis court, Ivo became as excited as a schoolboy and finally allowed himself to smile because, even in the midst of all that dust, his dream had come back to life once again, and he was really building the most beautiful factory in the whole of Italy.

  Reassured, Cesare began to ask questions and Ivo merrily answered all of them, and Pasquale was entranced at seeing those two men giving shape to the future, forcing it to become the one they wanted, creating reality out of a dream. So, he thought, it was possible to change your future instead of waiting for your destiny. Maybe destiny didn’t even exist. Maybe only the future exists.

  — Now though, Cesare, let’s not get lost in all this bullshit, there’s still a lot of work to do!

  — Don’t worry, Ivo, I’ll organize it all…No, Ivo, come on…Please don’t look at me like that…No, don’t laugh…I had a moment of weakness, it’s true, but that’s all in the past.

  Citarella, listening intently, didn’t notice Ivo’s quick wink.

  — And Cesare, tell me…If I’ve understood correctly, everything still needs to be painted. We’re talking about ten thousand square meters…It’s a huge job.

  — Yes, and actually, Ivo, it’s a big problem. You just can’t find people who can do it properly anymore.

  — I know, I know…We’re going to have to get someone in who is really good at painting, not one of those amateurs who are always hanging about around us…Have you thought of anyone?

  — Yes, Ivo. There is one guy who’s very good. His name is Cicisbei. I’ll call him right away.

  It was only then that Pasquale, entirely devoid of any sense of humor, exhausted by the sleepless night he had spent watching Maria sleep soundly, innocent and oblivious to the tragedy that was threatening to send them all back to Ariano Irpino to twiddle their thumbs for all eternity, managed a weak murmur of protest.

  — Pardon? Ivo, Cesare, excuse me, who’s this Cicisbei guy? I’m sorry, but…I mean, painting is…I paint, don’t I? Because I’m good, I’m not an amateur.

  Ivo hugged him and rubbed his knuckles hard into his head, shouting, “Come here, come here!” and Cesare leaned in to squeeze Citarella’s balls, and in the confusion they all fell to the floor in the dust and rolled about laughing.

  Then Ivo invited them all to lunch at the city’s finest restaurant, the one with piranhas in the aquarium, regardless of what they were wearing, “because no one should ever be ashamed of what they wear to work, and they should be proud of it, for fuck’s sake!”

  He took Citarella by the arm, sat him in the Pagoda, and set off at top speed with the roof down, Barry White blaring from the speakers. Moreno Barbugli, Franchino di Oste, and Claudione all got in the Alfetta with Cesare, Claudino followed them on his Piaggio Ciao. They shared two trays of spaghetti allo scoglio and an enormous fritto di lisca, all washed down with bottles of Vernaccia di San Gimignano, which at one point seemed to take on the effect of strobe lighting, given the speed at which they were arriving full and ice cold, and leaving empty and still ice cold.

  It was almost four o’clock when they left, a hot September sun was shining on the city, and Ivo gave everyone the rest of the day off.

  BEAUTIFUL

  THE FIRST TIME VITTORIO SAW HER was at the end of his first day of high school, and she took his breath away. He froze, dropped his schoolbag, and murmured to himself.

  — You are so beautiful…

  Who knows what her name was, what kind of music she liked, who had shown her how to dress like that! She was wearing Camperos boots which were admirably greased with seal fat to achieve the perfect shade of brown, Levi’s 501s so expertly faded as to reveal the white warp lines in the still-bright indigo of the denim, a lambswool sweater with Greek frets on the collar that peeped out from under the shearling coat, a dark-blue woolen beanie hat, and a nylon canvas Invicta backpack with white-and-pink stripes, and she was hugging a friend, laughing loudly and seeming perfectly happy.

  For a moment it seemed that her gaze had come to rest on him, and Vittorio swallowed hard. It wasn’t possible. Why should she look at him? He was wearing his old loden overcoat buttoned up wrong, flannel trousers, black penny loafers, a white shirt, and a brown lambswool cardigan; his curls were messy and sweaty after his run to get out of the school before anyone else. He looked at himself: a boy who had suddenly grown up, still dressed by his mommy.

  He stared at that girl as she walked away arm in arm with her friend, and didn’t take his eyes off her until she turned the corner and disappeared, taking wit
h her all the beauty of the world. To regain his composure, Vittorio had to stumble into a bar, sink a Fanta, change a thousand-lire note for ten hundred-lire coins, and take refuge in the small room in the back to play Space Invaders.

  He walked home in a daze, paying no attention to the buses that roared past him, and when he arrived home, he was surprised to find his father sitting at the table, waiting for him.

  Cesare Vezzosi was in an excellent mood. He was joking with Arianna and pinching her bottom every time she came near him. Vittorio’s first thought was that they must have made love that night and now they wanted to somehow remember it, celebrate it, making allusions that may have seemed subtle to them but were to him painfully clear and very, very embarrassing.

  He had no interest whatsoever in that part of their lives, and wanted to know nothing about it. He would have preferred to have nineteenth-century parents, old and serious and asexual, but more than anything he wished to have an ugly and insignificant mother, so he wouldn’t always have to pretend not to hear when his school friends whispered that Vittorio’s mom was seriously, seriously hot on those rare occasions in which Arianna went to pick him up from school.

  He couldn’t have known, or even suspected, that Cesare and Arianna had just made love, and on the very table where he was about to be served his lunch, their passion reaching its height the very moment Vittorio had rung the doorbell because he still hadn’t been entrusted with the house keys.

  It had happened all of a sudden, when Cesare had for once returned home in a good mood and was enflamed at the sight of his wife walking toward him and apologizing profusely because the lunch wasn’t ready, wrapped in an overly tight apron that outlined her toned, slim figure, her hair scraped back in the Amazonian ponytail he had always liked so much, her cheeks still red with the worry of being late with tortellini.

  He kissed and touched her all over, and she, who was not expecting it, melted like an ice cream and they ended up on the kitchen table, screwing intensely, going at it hard, like lovers, wrapped in a concentrated silence that was broken only by their moans, gripped by a fierce desire for one another they hadn’t felt in such a long time.

  When they sat around the table and Cesare started to suck noisily at his broth, Vittorio couldn’t bring himself not to say anything, as he usually did, and so he very respectfully asked his father to please stop that incredibly ill-mannered way of eating.

  Cesare stared at him. If he hadn’t made love just a few minutes earlier, and with such results, he would have been furious to hear himself admonished in his own house by a boy just out of short trousers. But serene as he was, he decided to smile and proclaim himself very proud of being made the way he was: with all of his virtues — he looked at Arianna, who turned red and immediately lowered her gaze — and all of his defects, and he turned to face Vittorio, who was taken aback by the look his father gave him, and waited in vain for even the briefest smile to appear on his face.

  After the last gurgling spoonful cleared away the last tortellino along with the last drop of broth — to mock Vittorio’s plea, he had indulged in a veritable Brandenburg concerto for broth and spoon, featuring gurgles, gargling, exultant swallowing, followed by the slapping of the tongue against the palate, and, by way of conclusion, a warm, satisfied, cetacean vent — Cesare rested his spoon on the table and announced that the moment had arrived for his only male son to learn two or three important things about life. Arianna froze, watching him with her mouth open, terrified he wanted to talk about sex.

  —The first thing you need to know, dear Vittorio, is that the world does not live in peace. America and Russia are in the middle of the Cold War, as they call it, which isn’t really war but isn’t peace either, because they are actually spying on one another and have nuclear missiles pointed at their cities.

  — No, Cesare, I’m sorry but they aren’t their cities. Otherwise the boy won’t understand. Explain that Russia has them pointed at American cities, and America at the cities in Russia…

  Her husband’s eyes darkened, and Arianna turned to go back in the kitchen, a smile on her lips, unable to resist the temptation.

  — I was saying, Vittorio, that we are living through a break in history. To put it in tennis terms, these years are nothing more than a change of sides while we wait for World War II to start up again, or perhaps even World War III. Except this time it’ll be an atomic war, and we will all die. Those Russian shits, you’ve got to know this, have hundreds of missiles with nuclear warheads pointed at our beautiful Western cities filled with art and history and culture, and all that bastard of a Russian premier has to do is press a button to set them off and destroy everything, killing millions of us and canceling all of our culture and traditions.

  Arianna called out from the kitchen.

  — Cesare, tell him about the Americans, too…

  A disgusted grimace spread over Vezzosi’s face, and for a moment he looked like a wolf — Mánagarmr, Vittorio thought, the terrible wolf from Edda, which he had just finished reading: the monster that eats the dead and who, on the day of Ragnarok, will devour the Moon.

  — Arianna, please, you concentrate on the washing up, I’m talking to our son. Always remember this, Vittorio, even if we aren’t Americans, we Italians will always be allies of the Americans, and thank God we are, because Americans also have hundreds of missiles pointed at Russian cities, which are all cold, miserable, and really ugly…

  — Moscow isn’t ugly at all, Vittorio, don’t listen to him, and neither is St. Petersburg. They are wonderful cities! When you finally start reading Tolstoy, instead of all that science fiction, you’ll discover that too!

  — But what has that got to do with anything? What’s the matter with Tolstoy? What are you saying, Arianna? What’s the matter with you? You know absolutely nothing! They were beautiful at the time of the tsars, those cities, yes, but now they are shitholes! The Communists have destroyed the lot! They burned the churches and the cathedrals and built barracks on the ruins! And St. Petersburg doesn’t even exist anymore: they call it Stalingrad, or Leningrad, I don’t know. Something grad. But Arianna, please, I’m telling you for the last time, don’t interrupt me. If you interrupt me again, I’m leaving.

  — Okay, I’m sorry.

  — Your mother is a bit of a Communist, Vittorio.

  — Not even slightly, Vittorio. Don’t listen to him.

  — Well, as I was saying, the Americans are pointing their missiles too…Of course, what else are they supposed to do? Just sit there and get blown to bits by the reds? The president can fire them at any moment, but the Americans would never do it first, remember that. Because we’re the good guys, understand?

  — We also live in a democracy, while in Russia there is a dictatorship! That needs to be said too!

  Cesare stood up.

  — I’ve been interrupted again, and I’m off. I said it and I’m doing it. Vittorio, remember, you must always be on America’s side! And remember that in life, the West is always better than the East, and the North is always better than the South!

  — But Dad, that depends on where you are, doesn’t it?

  — No! The West ends in California! Then there is the Pacific and the international date line, and then China, and with China the East starts again. California is the limit of the civilized world! And now, goodbye to you all!

  — Oh, come on, Cesare, said Arianna, looking in from the kitchen, with a wet apron and a bowl in her hand, a half smile painted onto her soft mouth. Please, stay a bit longer: go on, finish your speech…

  — I said I would go, Arianna, and I will.

  — Dad, wait. Please. I knew about the Cold War, and I’ve actually just been reading a science fiction short story that deals with it. Can I tell you about it?

  — Of course, said Arianna. She sat at the dinner table, lit a cigarette, and said to her husband, “Come on, stay a bit longer. I’ll clear up later, okay?”

  Cesare sat down again and watched her inhale and blow the s
moke out gracefully. He had never smoked in his life, and he couldn’t bear smoke, but he had always liked seeing his wife with a cigarette in her hand, and never had a problem with her smoking in the house. He had never told her, but he found the simple, perfect gesture with which she smoked highly arousing, and admirably free from the usual vulgarity and inelegance displayed by smokers. Arianna never sucked in her cheeks as she inhaled, or puffed them out in that ridiculous fashion as if there was so much smoke inside them as to exert a pressure. She had never given in to one of those demonic exhalations of smoke through the nose, or while she spoke, and he never saw her with the cigarette in her mouth and her eyes half shut like a poker player, because when Arianna smoked, she never did anything else. She just sat and serenely dedicated herself to the consumption of nicotine and the simultaneous chewing of peppermint gum to rid her breath of the smell of tobacco. She softly blew the smoke away, always toward the ceiling and far from anyone sitting near her, and never allowed it to stagnate around her mouth. She always put the cigarette out well before it was finished, just past halfway, to avoid looking like a woman desperate to take another drag; and when she put it out in the ashtray, always with the same single, rapid gesture, the cigarette butt immediately stopped smoking.

  — It’s the story of an American soldier…Well, first you need to know that at the beginning of the story, the Russians have destroyed New York and Boston and Washington and Los Angeles in a nuclear attack, and no one in the US government or army has survived…The president is dead, the vice president is dead, the head of the armed forces is dead…All of them, dead. The only military man to survive is an old general, who must be accompanied to a top secret base in the mountains from which he can fire hundreds of nuclear missiles at the Soviet Union, and there is just one soldier escorting him, okay?

  Arianna nodded.

  — On their journey through the mountains by Jeep, the soldier starts to think that he is not sure about what he should do, okay? That is, should he take revenge for his country and the millions of dead by sending the same death upon his enemy, or —