“Right. I need to find some shade.”
Yuri looks out over the crowd and rubs his hands together. “Now . . . what we will do with so many men?”
Mykola says something, and Ihor laughs.
“What did he say?”
“He says maybe we can do some running and then the few men not dead from a heart attack can play the match,” Zhuki says.
“Where is your father, Etto?”
“I don’t know,” I lie.
“Ah, I see him. Over there.” He reaches a hand up to wave, and the crowd immediately goes silent, turning in our direction like plants to the sun.
Yuri is embarrassed, but he steps up to speak.
“Thank you,” he says in Italian. “Thank you for coming. I am very happy so much people come to play the beautiful game. But is very many people. We must divide team. So, who wants to play first, you stay on field. Other men, go to side.”
There is silence across the terrace. No one moves. Yuri suddenly looks nervous, and Mykola and Ihor say something behind me. I feel a poke in my back.
“Etto,” Zhuki whispers. “Help him.” She pushes me forward.
“Okay. Um . . . if everyone could listen to me for a minute?” I say. “Please.”
The crowd stays quiet, all except Nello, who steps forward, his arms crossed. “Listen to you? And just who put you in charge?”
“What do you mean?”
“Who put you in charge? What gives you the right?”
“I’ll tell you what gives him the right.” Papà steps up next to me. “Because his father leases this field. His brother is buried in this field. And he does all the mowing and cleaning up here. Who invited you anyway? I know I didn’t.” Nello grumbles, shuffling off to the side, and Papà continues. “Okay, we’re going to do nine on nine. Mangona brothers, you’re with me. Guido and Bocca, you go with Etto.” Papà picks four old guys and gives me four, and the Ukrainians split up, Zhuki and Mykola on my team, Yuri and Ihor on Papà’s. “Everybody else, start forming your teams. We play fifteen minutes at a time, each team rotating out to let the next team in. Score accumulates.”
There’s chaos for several minutes as everyone scrambles to get on the best team, and then more chaos when someone realizes there are no lines drawn on the field, and the discarded sweatshirts and warm-up pants have to be stretched along the sidelines.
“Okay,” Papà says. “We are ready. Signor Fil, would you do us the honor?”
Everyone looks to Yuri, who’s hovering over one of the beat-up calcio balls and batting at it with his toes. He balances his foot lightly on top of the ball, then does some quick maneuver so it magically ends up in his hands. He rotates it slowly, smiling to himself as if in a trance, as if he is back in Strilky, holding the old ball and picking out the constellations.
“Ready, Yuri?” I say.
He looks up at me and grins. He puts the ball in the center of the field, pats his chest to find the whistle, and looks around at the men one last time.
Bwwweeeeeeet!
The field quickly disintegrates until it looks like the passeggiata during Ferragosto, or the universe after the big bang. But cazzo if I have ever seen a group of men play so passionately. Men with grown children and bad backs attempting Maradona’s evasions, Ronaldinho’s elastico, Totti’s spoon shot, and Cristiano Ronaldo’s Oscar-worthy grimacing and playacting. Pretty soon, between the fake injuries and the real ones, the field starts to look like Monte Cassino, fallen bodies everywhere, the Mangona brothers chugging around lost without their bicycles.
“Over here, Etto,” Zhuki shouts, but my foot has already read the field and sent the ball in her direction. I feel myself charging ahead, passing on instinct and leaping over bodies to receive the pass. After a solid month of training with the Ukrainians, the cords in my body have strengthened, and my veins are wide open, delivering rushes of oxygen. Today, I don’t need upside-down sunglasses to keep me from looking at my feet. I don’t need an iPod to clear my head or a string to tell me where my teammates are. My body somehow knows.
“Pass it here! Pass it here!” Papà calls out. He’s the last old guy standing. One of the Mangona brothers flicks it to him, and he weaves down the field, the ball moving ahead of his feet as if by magnetic force.
“Run, Carlo! Forza! Dai!” Nonno shouts from the sidelines, and then, “Tackle him, Etto, tackle him!”
I give him some trouble, but Papà manages to deliver it directly in front of Yuri, who shoots, faking Bocca out.
“Goooooooooooooooooool! Gooooooooooooooooooooooooooool!”
The sidelines go wild with cheering and shouting, people sticking out their tongues, rocking imaginary babies, and pointing to the stars. Papà charges toward Yuri, the intense concentration of his face breaking into a grin, and Yuri hooks him with his arm and wraps him into a hug.
The whistle blows and we run off the field, Papà sucked toward one side, a thousand hands patting me in the other direction.
“Good job, Etto,” Bocca says.
“Yeah, nice passes out there.”
Vanni Fucci decides to join the next round after all, and Yuri’s off the field, so there’s no one to keep up with him. All the men can do is throw themselves into his path, like revolutionaries in front of an advancing tank. He racks up the score, and the next eighteen men exchange. And the next. And the next. No one wants to go home. Because this is nothing like watching calcio matches or pregame shows or postgame analysis. This is not the calcio market or the calcio variety spectaculars, or the reality shows with the wives and girlfriends of calcio.
This is pure calcio.
Our team is on again. Yuri and Papà have spent the time off the field planning a defense, and for the first ten minutes, we do nothing but go back and forth. I don’t know if it’s the adrenaline or all the training, but I’m not tired at all. Zhuki passes to me and I slip around Ihor somehow. One of the Mangona brothers comes at me from the side, and I slide, kicking the ball hard at the goal, the net absorbing it like an amoeba.
“Gooooooooooooooooooooool! Gol! Gol! Gol! Gol! Gol! Gol! Gol!”
The crowd cheers. I can feel the grass burn along the side of my leg, and I roll over onto my back. Zhuki comes by and pulls me up off the ground, and it gives me the momentum I need for the last few minutes. I pass to Zhuki, and she scores another goal. Yuri calls time, and I jog to the sidelines for the next exchange.
“Amazing, Etto!”
“Where’d you learn to play like that?”
“Didn’t you used to be asthmatic?”
“You’re really delivering the meat this afternoon, eh, Etto?”
“Eh.”
Zhuki has been sucked into the crowd farther down the sideline and quickly surrounded by a group of nonne, who are no doubt telling her the dangers to one’s womanhood that can occur with all that exertion. They’ve got her trapped pretty well, but if she wants to get away, she shows no sign. We cycle in three more times. The sun goes down behind the terraces, and the air turns grainy and gray. Over five hours we’ve played, twenty mini-halves in all. I have no idea what the score is when Yuri finally calls the match, but you can feel the disappointment in the air, everyone shuffling around, reluctant to go home. They stand around talking and smoking restorative cigarettes, the red ash like traffic lights in the twilight. I find Zhuki in the milling crowd, talking with Bocca and Silvio.
“I was just telling Zhuki that a bunch of us are going down to Camilla’s,” Bocca says.
“You should come,” I say, hoping Fede won’t be there.
“I can’t. I have to prepare Little Yuri and Principessa for bed.”
“Can’t Yuri do that?”
“I promised Little Yuri I would read to him tonight. But we’ll be at the beach tomorrow. Will you meet us?”
“After I close the shop.”
“Until tomorrow, then.” And all of a sudden, she stretches up and kisses me on the cheeks. It’s not a romantic kiss. It’s the same kiss Martina gives me ove
r the bar, the same kiss I obediently give to the nonne whenever they manage to trap me within arm’s length. All the same, it’s a kiss.
“Tomorrow,” I mumble like some kind of deficiente, and I watch her walk off toward the back of the terrace.
“That looked friendly,” Bocca says, and I shrug like it’s no big deal.
I survey the field to see if anyone else saw her do it, and I spot Papà, standing alone on the sideline, staring at me. He holds my gaze for only a second before jerking his head and looking away. I wish I could tell how long he’s been watching and what he’s thinking. Mamma always joked that he only ever showed three emotions—happy, angry, and hungry—and the burden fell to her to interpret everything in between. She would tell us exactly why he was angry, and precisely how long we had to be quiet until he cooled down. She would tell us when he was too preoccupied with a problem to hear our school stories. And she would let us know when he was proud of us.
The knots of men unravel. Bocca and I head toward the path, joining the slow procession down the hill, the faces and voices of my neighbors appearing and disappearing as we pass.
At Camilla’s, Fede and the rest of them are sitting around a table outside.
“If it isn’t the Azzurri,” Claudia says. We pull over two more plastic chairs and everyone makes room. “How was the match?”
“Etto scored a goal.”
“I don’t believe it.”
And Bocca starts recapping the match, alternating between Vanni’s and Yuri’s best moves and the stumbling old guys trying to vindicate their childhood calcio dreams. When he gets to my goal, he describes it in excruciating detail, and he makes me show the burn on my leg. The entire time, Fede is staring into his beer, and I try to puzzle out his face to see if he’s pissed at me, or if he’s worried that I am pissed at him.
“Why didn’t you play today, Fede?” Claudia asks.
Fede shrugs and takes a long drink.
Camilla comes outside with another tray of beers. “I heard about the match, Etto. How was it?”
“Good. How’s the empire building?”
“Good. Busy.”
“Claudia says you’re taking Internet classes to get a hotel license now.”
“Trying to. How’s the shop?”
“Euh.”
She smiles. I’ve always liked Camilla. She knows exactly what she wants to do in life and doesn’t let anyone tell her differently. I think her parents wanted her to turn out a little more like Claudia—find a husband, take over the family restaurant, that sort of thing.
“Why don’t you stop working for a minute and sit with us?” Claudia says. “Casella, tell her.”
“Camilla, your sister wants me to tell you to stop working for a minute and sit with us.”
“Why don’t you get up on her shoulder, Casella?” Fede says. “Polly want a cracker? Polly want a cracker?”
“Shut up, Fede,” Claudia says. “He was kidding.”
“Polly want a cracker?” Bocca laughs.
“At least Casella knows how to keep a woman happy,” Claudia says.
“Ah, yes, the grand theory of love. Always do what Claudia wants.”
“Oh, and what’s your theory, Fede? Quantity over quality?”
“Not anymore. I’m taking a break.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it.”
“Believe it,” Fede says. “Who knows? Maybe one of these days, I’ll even start looking for Mrs. Fede.”
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.”
When 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.
The Sun and Other Stars Page 23
