The entire villa goes dark again, and there’s a great boom of fireworks from the pier. I turn toward the sea in time to see the red and blue flashes of man-made lightning, the embers like stars sinking toward the horizon, the cheers fading in the distance as I stand up and start back down the hill.
Every morning I hear a sound in my subconscious just before the alarm goes off. It can be anything—a gunshot, an old-fashioned phone ringing, someone laughing, a door slamming. Maybe it’s just a coincidence, or maybe it’s my mind trying to distract me and delay the moment that always comes—the moment when I realize they’re both gone.
On Tuesday morning, I wake up to a great crash of thunder, but when I listen for the rain, there are only the voices of my neighbors floating up from the vico, and Jimmy’s truck idling in the alley. I go to the top of the stairs that separate my bedroom from the rest of our apartment like the crow’s nest on a pirate ship.
“Papà?” I call down.
Nothing.
I pull on a pair of Luca’s jeans and go downstairs. Right after Mamma died, Martina came in and helped Papà clear out all her things, and Nicola Nicolini offered to redecorate our entire apartment for free. Restart from the top and all that. I think Papà must have planted him upright in the middle of the living room and said, “Make it look like no family ever lived here.” There are no photos and no clutter. Only clean surfaces, squared corners, tasteful shades of tan and brown, and a few carefully chosen, perfectly quirky accessories, none of which have anything to do with us.
I get the rubber envelope of small bills and coins from the top drawer of the credenza and go down to the alley. Jimmy is sitting on the bumper, having a smoke.
“Ciao, Jimmy.”
“Ciao.”
I’ve known Jimmy since he was a kid in the passenger seat keeping his papà company on deliveries, but I don’t really know that much about him. I know their farm is somewhere north of Turin and that he plays a lot of video games, but that’s about it. I’m not even sure what his real name is. I don’t think it’s Giacomo or anything close to Jimmy, but Jimmy’s all he’s ever answered to.
“Sorry to make you wait, Jimmy.”
He shrugs. “Not like I have anything better to do.”
I open the back door while Jimmy reaches into the cab and kills the engine. After Luca died, Papà added an alarm to our apartment and floodgates and two extra locks to the shop. Not cheap floodgates, either, but top-of-the-line like they have in Venice, as if somebody had kidnapped Luca or washed him away in the middle of the night and might come back for the rest of us.
Jimmy and I slide the calf carcass off the plastic and carry it into the walk-in. It’s a big one, and I bang my hands against the door frame. Shit.
“So did you see the match on Sunday?” Jimmy asks.
“Part of it.”
“People must have been out of their heads here.”
“Yeah.”
“Your papà, especially.”
“I don’t think he’s slept since Sunday.”
Jimmy laughs and changes the subject to video games. It’s all he ever talks about. I picture his room back on the farm as a floating mangrove of cords, screens, consoles, and hand controllers. He tells me about an advance download he got of FIFA 2006, then starts taking me through the plotline of this crazy Japanese one where all the monsters have made-up English names like Tramplefrost and Curlybeard, Swinetooth and Dragonsnout, and all I can say is, “Ah . . . sì, sì,” like the old men, by which of course I mean, “Jimmy, you’re such a loser. Why don’t you get a life?”
We get the calf and the side of beef hung up and bring in the chickens, new roosters, rabbits, and non-EU-sanctified eggs some neighbor of his sells us. By the time we’re finished, we’re both sweating, and Jimmy stands next to the grinding counter, runs his hand through his hair, and looks at his shoes like he wants to say something deep. He got the same look both times we reopened the shop after the funerals, and I wonder if by chance he remembered that yesterday was the anniversary.
“Until next week, then,” I say, to save him the awkwardness.
He looks up at me, startled. “Yeah . . . next week.”
He goes out the back, and I smell the smoke of another cigarette before the diesel engine rumbles alive. It’s still only seven fifteen, so I leave the fluorescents off and work by the light of the front window. I turn on the television in back and flip it to one of the morning shows just for the noise. We keep it in the corner of the grinding counter with a white pillowcase over it to protect it from the grist and splatter, but I usually leave the pillowcase on just so I don’t have to look at the news anchor on Rai Uno and her botched Botox job that makes her look like she won the SuperEnalotto. Instead of her this morning, though, there’s the voice of the homelier one—the real news correspondent they save for serious stories—talking on and on about Sunday’s Genoa-Venezia match. That’s all everybody talked about all day yesterday, and probably all they’ll talk about for the rest of the fottuto summer. Serie A, blah, blah, blah. Who cares?
Next door, Chicca rolls up her security gate in one yank, and it sounds like thunder. I put on my apron, wash my hands, and start setting up the banco. If I ever get my eyes gouged out, I can probably set up the banco blind without even smudging the glass. I get the trays from the back for the chicken, the rabbit, and the shish kebabs. The rest goes right on the marble. Meat, splat, card in front of it. Ossibuchi, punta di petto, spezzatino, tacchino, spalla, polpa magra, polpa mista, reale, braciole, lonza, carré con osso. Splat, splat, splat, splat. Then the cold cuts in their own case: Parma ham, salame, prosciutto cotto and crudo, mortadella, and coppa. Papà is a perfectionist, so I must account for every quarter kilo on the inventory and make sure that every surface is as immaculate as the Virgin.
The first knock of the morning plinks against the window, the start of the procession of nonne on their way to Mass. Nonne, nonne, nonne, and more nonne. This is what sociologists call the aging of Europe, and Liguria’s demographics are the most top-heavy of them all, crammed full of nonne, nobody stupid or naive enough to bring more babies into this world. They clutch each other’s arms, crossing the front windows so slowly, you can see the gossip gathering in clouds above their heads. If I ever get that wrinkled and infirm, I think I’ll spare everyone and just stay home, but the nonne take to the streets every morning without fail. After all, they’re in training. They must have strong backs to prop up the 80 percent of us who have stopped hedging our bets with God. They must develop stamina to withstand the barrage of hip-hop music and American movies, and military discipline to protect themselves and their grandchildren against the Muslims and their bombs, even though if you ask me, it’s the Buddhists and their ninja levitation shit we should really be worried about.
Kneel.
Sit.
Stand.
Kneel.
Sit.
Stand.
Uno.
Due.
Hup!
And as the world crumbles around them despite their aerobics, they must have the patience to say the 777 trillion rosaries necessary to pray the hundreds of billions of fallen souls out of purgatory.
“Ciao,” the nonne mouth as they pass by the window.
“Ciao,” I mouth back. I have to wave to each and every one of them every single day or they will talk about me on the church steps and complain to Papà that my hair is too long to be serving food. Mamma used to be friends with all of them, but they never talk about her anymore. After Luca died, it was like a soft fog creeping in, gradually obliterating him from the stories people told, but after Mamma, it was like a door slamming shut. Sure, there were the respectable visits right after, when everyone would come and pat our hands and drop off plates of food, but even then, they always came in pairs and hurried away spooked, like if they looked Death or Suffering or Heartache directly in the eye, it might be contagious. This is another thing you will discover if you lose someone close to you—if you ever want to
go out in public again, you’ll have to learn how to treat your grief like a goiter or a great big boil. You’ll have to learn how to camouflage it and tuck it away so as not to scare the living.
“Ciao,” another group of nonne mouth through the window.
“Ciao.” I put on my fake smile.
When I’m finished setting up the banco, I have a good twenty minutes left, so I get a pair of scissors and tear a sheet of paper off the roll. I pull out the stool and sit in front of the ghost television. The anchorwoman with the botched Botox job is back, babbling on and on about somebody bombing the cazzo out of something somewhere, which is apparently not serious news anymore.
“Deficiente,” I hiss at her shadow, shifting and darkening through the pillowcase.
I decide to do the new German pope today. I cut out the tall hat and the cape, poking the scissors into the middle of each and cutting out crosses like superhero logos. I string the chicken in the case so it stands up on its legs, then wrap the cape around its chicken shoulders, balance the hat on top, and tuck a skewer into its wing. If I had more time, I would soak and bend the skewer into a shepherd’s crook or take some red plastic wrap and make those Prada shoes. Maybe even give him a paper Sancho Panza to keep him company, the way he’s been riding around in the popemobile for the past two months, shaking his staff at windmills and calling Europe back to the faith.
Good luck with that.
I clean up the scraps of paper and snap off the television, cutting the anchor off midsentence. I go out onto the passeggiata and light a cigarette. The sky is clear and the sea a deep blue, painted especially for the tourists.
“Ciao, Etto.” Chicca is dragging her display racks outside, the sand buckets and crab nets wobbling and banging together.
“Ciao, Chicca.”
“Some match on Sunday, eh?”
“Yeah. Some match.”
“I saw your papà this morning on his way to Martina’s. He looks like he hasn’t slept in two days.”
“I know. Genoa in Serie A. It’s like Christmas for him.”
Across the passeggiata at Bagni Liguria, Franco and Mimmo are already outside in their swimsuits and bare feet, sweeping the boardwalks clean and unlocking the cabanas. They’re the same age as Papà, both from the south, both perennially half clothed and almost preternaturally calm and kind. They say Franco’s father was a mafia kingpin in Napoli, and his house growing up was decorated in frescoes and leafed in gold. They say he renounced his father’s life and hitchhiked to San Benedetto with only the clothes on his back. But he never tells any stories from before he came here, as if this is where his real life started. Franco waves to me across the passeggiata.
“Ehi, Etto.” His dog lifts his head from his paws and looks me up and down.
“Ciao, Franco.”
“Just saw your papà this morning. He said to remind you about the band saw blade.”
Shit. Papà has been bugging me about it for a week. I stamp out my cigarette. “Chicca, could you . . . ?”
She waves me on. I jog over to Casella and his papà’s shop in my apron, dodging through the pedestrian traffic. The door’s open even though the sign says Closed.
“Anyone here?” I call to the back of the shop. I edge through the tall, narrow shelves to the counter, the trays of nuts and bolts rattling as I pass.
“Etto, is that you?” Casella calls, a faraway echo.
“Yes.”
“One minute.”
Eventually he appears in a T-shirt and a pair of cargo shorts, his hair tied back, thick like a mop. Claudia likes it that way. Claudia, Claudia, Claudia. Casella and I used to be best friends before Claudia, as close as Papà and Silvio. When we were in liceo, they would call us Troll 1 and Troll 2, like those dolls you rub between your hands until their hair stands up like a flame, mine burned orangish-brown by the sun, Casella’s bleached white-hot.
“Sorry,” he says. “I was in the back room trying to make some space.”
Casella says “sorry” all the time now. Claudia’s conditioned him. It’s become a blanket apology for his existence, an evolutionary adaptation that he will pass on to his children. Like sea anemones curl up or sharks attack when they see blood, his children will say “sorry.” His grandchildren. Their children. And that’s how his lineage will manage to survive—obediently and apologetically. He balances on one foot and reaches behind the counter.
“The blade, right?” he says. “Your papà called yesterday.” He hands me the blade, folded over on itself and pinched with a thick rubber band.
“Thanks.”
He stares at me, and I stare back at him.
“How’s your papà?” he asks.
“Fine. You know, still wetting himself over Genoa.”
“Aren’t they all. And your nonna?”
“You know, the same. No worse. Your parents?”
He shrugs. “They’re fine. They’re in Friuli this week.”
“Visiting your aunt?”
“Uh-huh.”
This is the curse of the drifting friendship, to be close enough to know all the people and details in each other’s lives, but not close enough to really care. I wonder how many more times in our lives we will have this bullshit conversation instead of talking about why we only have bullshit conversations anymore.
“Lots of tourists already, eh?”
“Yesterday was pretty busy.”
“Just wait until Ferragosto.”
“I know, eh?”
He glances back at the storeroom door.
“I better go,” I say.
“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.�
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“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 Sun and Other Stars Page 3
