The Sun and Other Stars

by Brigid Pasulka

  Thank you for downloading this Simon & Schuster eBook.

  * * *

  Sign up for our newsletter and receive special offers, access to bonus content, and info on the latest new releases and other great eBooks from Simon & Schuster.

  CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP

  or visit us online to sign up at

  eBookNews.SimonandSchuster.com

  For Kang and Kodos

  In the beginning, God created the Azzurri and the Earth.

  Or at least that’s how Papà used to start the story.

  1982. The genesis of all order in the universe, the Alpha with no Omega in sight, the Tigris-and-Euphrates, the Watson-come-here of all years.

  Anno Domination.

  And if you’re sitting there scratching your head, trying to figure out what the cazzo happened in 1982, you must’ve been either living under a rock or in America—one and the same when it comes to calcio. And that would not be calcio to you, or even football, but “soccer,” or as most people here say it when they’re trying to speak English, SO-chair, with a little roll on the r and a couple of kilograms of reverence in their voices.

  Don’t get me wrong. I’ve got nothing against people who live under rocks, play sports where the clock stops, or otherwise escape, deny, and ignore reality. Believe me, if I could, I’d hide myself under a nice, big rock by the sea, order in a week’s worth of pizza, and shut off my phone. But that is impossibile here, or in-cazz-ibile, as my friend Fede likes to say, because the only way he can expand his vocabulary is by wedging vulgar words into it. In-cazz-ibile to escape, deny, or ignore this fottuto town, this attractive, charming, concentric circle of hell smack in the middle of Liguria, which has conspired to peck at me with a thousand idiotic conversations a day and bury me one obligation at a time.

  But. Before the victory of entropy, before the descent into hell, before the Brazilians dominated every calcio field whether it was theirs or not, before the French pilfered the 1998 World Cup one suspicious call at a time, before the shame of the 2000 Euro Championships (this is still Papà telling the story), there was 1982—a small, glimmering miracle of a year that flared like a match before burning the cazzo out of the fingers that held it. Because not only did the Azzurri win the World Cup that year, the planets also aligned to allow a college art history major from California to meet a butcher’s son from Liguria in the nosebleed seats of Estadio Balaídos in Vigo, Spain, during the first round, a union sanctioned by FIFA and witnessed and consecrated by tens of thousands of half-sober fans.

  And this is where Mamma used to interrupt Papà and break into the story, at the point when she found herself sitting in the row right behind Papà and his friends. Mamma was with some Scottish guys who were staying at the same hostel as she was, and one of them was trying to hit on her. This, of course, annoyed Papà to no end because for Papà, every match is sacred, but talking while the great Dino Zoff was wiping his nose, much less defending against a corner kick, was the equivalent of telling a joke during the consecration. So as much as he tried to block it out, by the second half, the constant flirting, even though it was going on in English—especially because it was going on in English—had really started to squeeze his coils. If they’d been Italian, there would’ve been a simple “Non rompere le palle, tu aborto di puttana,” accompanied by the appropriate hand gestures, and there may have been some additional shouting and mumbling under the breath, but the matter would have been more or less closed. In this case, however, Papà had to think of the correct insult in English, which up to that point he’d passed in school only thanks to his best friend, Silvio, and the Hand of God (which, for those of you who call it soccer and not calcio, is a sharp allusion to an Argentinean soccer player named Maradona that I will not go into right now). Suffice it to say that Papà’s English was terrible, and every time they told us the story, I could practically hear the scolding voice of Charon, the English and classics professor for generations of San Benedettons, and the smack of his ruler ringing in my head.

  “And what are you going to do when you need to speak English someday and Silvio is not there to help you?” Charon would always ask Papà.

  Which was a ridiculous question because besides Papà’s honeymoon, he and Silvio have never passed a day of their lives when they didn’t see each other. And that day at Estadio Balaídos, Silvio was in fact sitting right next to Papà, and Papà consulted with him several times before finally turning around and saying to the Scottish guy, “Do not take my balls with your chat, you abortion of prostitute.”

  “Break!” Silvio hissed.

  “What?”

  “Do not break my balls.”

  “Do not break my balls with your chat, you abortion of prostitute,” Papà repeated to the Scottish guy, but with less conviction than the first time because by then, he’d gotten a glimpse of Mamma, tanned and smiling and twenty years old, the lines at the corners of her eyes swooping skyward from years of squinting into the California sun. Which is how I like to think of her now.

  Anyway, Mamma, the Scottish guys, and Papà’s friends immediately started laughing at Papà’s English, and nearly set off an international incident when they were shushed by the Spaniards in the row in front of them, who were shushed by the Peruvians in front of them, who were shushed by the Cameroonese or Cameroonians or whatever in front of them, who were shushed by the Poles in front of them. In the end, Papà’s entire section was so distracted, they ended up missing the Azzurri’s goal completely, and the Italian fans had no choice but to blame themselves for lack of focus when the Cameroonians scored the equalizer.

  You’d think this would squeeze Papà’s coils even more. But after that first glimpse of Mamma, Papà—to everyone’s great surprise—ceased to care about the match, the Scottish guys, Dino Zoff, and everyone else in the world. Instead, he pushed Silvio to negotiate a truce between the two rows and a celebratory drink after the match, and he spent the rest of the evening trying to impress Mamma with his English and his ability to hold his liquor, only to be carried back to the beach at midnight, blathering past participles.

  Drink. Drank. Drunk.

  When he woke up the next morning, Papà thought he would never see Mamma again, but when he turned out his pockets, he found a small scrap of a receipt with the name of her hostel scribbled on it. He and Silvio spent hours walking up and down the streets of Vigo looking for it, and more hours waiting for her to come back that night. But it was worth it, because Silvio somehow helped Papà convince Mamma to spend the rest of the week camping out on the beach with them, cooking meals over an open fire and hitching to Barcelona and Madrid once the matches moved there.

  How they managed to communicate at first is one of the divine mysteries of the universe. Silvio says their conversations sounded like the traffic circles in Naples, with cheating-schoolboy English, phrasebook Italian, California Spanish, and bad charades all weaving and blaring and cutting each other off. When there was a pause, it was almost always punctuated by “Te lo spiegherò domani,” or “I will explain it to you tomorrow.” Or next week. Or next month, depending on how complicated the subject was. When Mamma took Papà to see Guernica, newly installed at the Prado, and tried to explain Picasso and the fascists, the murder of the innocents, and the splintered planes, it was such a mess, she had to tell him she would explain it to him next year. And by the time Dino Zoff hoisted the cup for the Azzurri, Mamma and Papà knew there would be a next year. Because Mamma had indeed taken Papà’s palle with her chatting, along with everything else he ever had or wanted.

  When Luca and I were very little, we would demand to hear The Story of 1982 at least once a week instead of Pinocchio or Chupacabra or old Brady Bunch episodes. If we pressed them, they w
ould keep going and tell us about the winter after that, when Mamma quit her college in California and started working as a maid in a ski lodge in Piedmont, and Papà would visit her on her day off every week using various, borrowed rides: the shop Ape one week, Silvio’s Turbo Spyder or Nonno’s 2CV the next. One week, Papà could only arrange a Vespa, and he made it as far as Cortemilia before a sympathetic truck driver took pity on his 150cc engine trying to buzz its way up the mountains, loaded the Vespa and Papà into his truck, and drove them the rest of the way.

  When we didn’t have school the next day, we could convince them to tell us about the following spring, when Papà managed to find Mamma a job in the hills above San Benedetto, preparing vacation homes for absent Germans, and how, by Christmas, she was already taping paper snowflakes to the window of the shop, married to Papà, estranged from her parents, and pregnant with Luca and me.

  Mamma especially loved telling the story, her hands swooping in the air, free like gulls, her homemade bracelets jangling on her tanned wrists. She was like a magpie the way she collected everything in her life on her wrists—a charm bracelet with all of her swim team pins since she was five, an uneven string of shells I made for her in asilo, a length of turquoise fishing net from the beach they camped on in Spain. Mamma was also very good at impersonations, and she would do all the characters in the scene—the Scottish guys and their accents, Papà answering back in English, and Silvio hissing corrections at him.

  Papà would interrupt and tell his version, and they would laugh and talk over each other, weaving the story together with the language they had created during those first weeks in Spain, the language our friends used to make fun of and Charon had christened “La Lingua Bastarda,” but that was only because he was jealous that Luca and I spoke better English than him.

  “Better English than he.” Mamma had a good impersonation of Charon, too, which she would reprise every time he gave it to our nerves at school. “Hhhhhonestly, Etto, a-what are you a-going to do-a when you need to speak-a English e don’t-a have your mamma to help-a you?”

  And Luca and I would have tears in our eyes we were laughing so hard, Luca’s magic calcio feet kicking the table legs, my voice hitting the falsetto octave that is the enemy of every mid-pubescent boy in the world.

  “You shouldn’t talk about their professors like that, Maddy,” Papà would say sternly, the white, untanned lines between his eyebrows disappearing into the creases. “Professors are to be respected.”

  But Mamma was already bent from laughing and could only manage to wave him away.

  That was probably the thing I loved most about Mamma. She didn’t live by shoulds and shouldn’ts, and she didn’t try to paper over the world with fake rules. No, if there were any rules Mamma lived by, it was the natural order of the universe—food chains and tides, the brushstrokes in paintings, the armature of birds and buildings, and the psychology of why people do what they do. And if there was one single rule she lived by, it was “Puro vivere.” Simply, to live. And even that one, she ended up breaking in the end.

  Martina keeps the Missing poster of Mamma in the front window of her bar. It’s yellowed from the sun and rippled from the damp of the sea, turning Mamma into a shimmering mirage, an angel in a wetsuit, her hair slicked behind her ears, her face backlit and glowing.

  Tomorrow it will be exactly a year—two since Luca’s accident—and while everyone else has moved on, for me it feels like two dark shadows stalking behind me. Wherever I go, they follow. Whatever I do, they’re there. I can’t hide from them or outrun them. It’s only when I flick my head to have a good look that they disappear, like someone playing a trick.

  “You’re late,” Mino growls as soon as I open the door to Martina’s. He’s hovering in his usual spot, keeping track of everyone who comes and goes. “It’s almost the half.”

  “Ciao, Mino.”

  “Your degenerate friends are standing over there in front of the windows.”

  “Thanks.”

  I slip in next to Fede and try to follow the ball on the flat-screen.

  “Ehi. About time, Etto,” Fede says. He puts me in a headlock and gives my hair a rub, his eyes still riveted to the screen.

  The bar is filled with smoke, noise, hot air, and the stink of humanity, everyone oriented around the flat-screen like zombie yogis doing a sun salutation. Sky Sport, the true magnetic north. Calcio, the one true religion. At least if you ask anyone else in this country. If you ask me, it’s Kabuki for Europeans. One big, six-continent, multi-billion-euro charade, all so people can pretend the reason their lives are shit is because someone won a match or didn’t. It’s even worse here than in other places. In the big cities, at least people actually have lives between the matches, and there are only two teams to root for. In Turin, you are either for Torino or Juventus; in Milan, for Inter or Milan; in Rome, for Roma or Lazio. And depending on your allegiances, once a week you either sip imported beers with your university friends or put on your brass knuckles and your best Mussolini scowl and turn whichever bar into a smoldering wreckage. Maybe even shed some blood depending on who gives the order and how thick their chin is. Anyway, it only lasts a few hours, and you’re done for the week.

  But here in San Benedetto? The matches are the only thing happening, and thanks to cheap satellite TV, a steady stream of migrants from the south, and our GPS coordinates in the middle of fottuto nowhere, everyone is for a different team: Roma, Lazio, Inter, Milan, Torino, Juve, Genoa, Sampdoria, Fiorentina, Bologna, Bari, Palermo, Napoli, Parma, Udinese, the scarves hanging like a line of dirty laundry across the top shelf behind the bar. All day Saturday and Sunday and sometimes Wednesday, there’s a constant babble of matches at Martina’s, of coaches giving postgame eulogies, young guys in ten-thousand-euro suits and wet hair droning on about teamwork, and women who could be showgirls straining the buttons of their shirts as they make predictions about the World Cup in Germany next year.

  “What’s the score?” I ask. Not because I care, but because once in a while you have to fake interest in calcio or risk being called a finocchio. A fairy.

  Fede keeps his eyes on the screen, tapping his words out like a telegraph. “One–nothing. Venezia. Yuri Fil. Injured and off. Ankle. Something.”

  Yuri Fil is Papà’s favorite player, a thirty-two-year-old, two-footed Ukrainian striker who split the first ten years of his career between Kiev, Glasgow, and Tottenham, wherever that is, and who was traded to Genoa only at the beginning of this season. I look over at Papà, who’s sitting at the bar between Silvio and Nonno, all three of them looking stricken. Nonno only comes down the hill for the big matches, and this is definitely one of them, the kind they put all the cardiologists on call for. It’s the thirty-eighth and final week of the season. All the teams’ fates for next year have been sealed except for Genoa. And since Genoa is only a hundred kilometers away, guys like Papà and Silvio and Nonno, the poor saps who grew up without cable channels and twenty-four-hour calcio coverage, the ones who were born here, who will die here, who will come back and haunt the place, they are all for Genoa—the Griffins—who have not had a prayer of moving up to Serie A in at least a decade.

  Until tonight.

  If only they can win this one match.

  The clock ticks toward the half, Genoa still losing, Yuri Fil out for good. On the flat-screen, the stadium is all colors, chants, songs, and flares, banners waving and smoke rising from the stands, but in the bar, it’s silent, white despair coating every face. The usual clever banter, the tactical analysis, even the vulgar and personal insults against the referees, some of them containing the only glimmers of our national creativity since the Renaissance—all of that is over. No one dares to speak for fear of rupturing the collective concentration.

  Finally, just before the half ends, the announcer’s voice rises, and grunts and gutturals leap up from the crowd.

  “Oh!”

  “Sì!”

  “Euh!”

  And then:

  �
��Goooooooooooooooooooollllllllllllll!!! Gol! Gol! Gol! Gol! Gol! Gol! Gol! Goooooooooooooooooooooooool!!!!!!”

  The room explodes. I duck out of the way of Fede, who’s bear-hugging everyone he can get his paws on. Grown men jump up and down, screaming like Japanese schoolgirls, slapping fives over my head.

  “Gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

  The dance-party music pumps through the flat-screen, shaking the walls, the deafening roar rising and falling again and again as they show the replay.

  “Gol! Gol! Gol! Gol! Gol! Gol! Gol! Goooooooooooooool! Gol! Gol! Gol! Gol! Gol! Gol! Gol! Goooooooooooooooool!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

  Finally, after ten or fifteen replays, the commercials come on, and Martina turns the volume down. The room fills with chatter and relief, and Fede defaults into scanning for girls, his eyes in constant motion since puberty. You’ve got to admire his persistence. I’ve given up. I look over toward the bar. Papà, Nonno, and Silvio have their heads together in a heated discussion, and Martina gives me a little wave from behind the tap. She raises her eyebrows at me and mimes eating, and I gesture over my shoulder to tell her I already ate. Luca and I used to have this when we were young, before he went off to the academy. We could hold a conversation clear across the room with the smallest twitches of our faces and hands.

  “Etto. Oosten to Etto. Etto, come in please. It is Ooston.”

  “It’s ‘Houston,’ Fede. H. Hhhhouston. Learn English.”

  “Fine,” Fede says. “Hhhhouston. Whatever. Who’s that girl in the denim jacket over there?”

  “That’s Sima’s little sister, you pedophile.”

  “That’s my little sister, you pedophile,” Sima repeats without looking up from her phone. The usual group is here tonight—Sima, Claudia and Casella, Bocca—everyone except Aristone, who’s still off at university.

  “Really. How old is she now?”