The Sun and Other Stars

by Brigid Pasulka

  “What?”

  “Away.”

  He goes behind the banco, tears off some paper, and grabs a couple of markers. “I need you to pack up the food from the festa for lunch. Anything that’s still good. Make some sandwiches if you have to. I’ll send Casella to drive it over. Figure about forty men.”

  “Forty?”

  “Forty.”

  * * *

  Papà starts leaving me in the shop alone almost every morning again, and the only evidence he’s been here at all is the tabloids he leaves open on top of the banco. They start in on Tatiana and Yuri’s breakup immediately, hammering away at the one hard clod of truth until it pulverizes into a dust cloud of lies—reports that Tatiana left Yuri for another showgirl, pictures of Zhuki identified as Yuri’s new girlfriend, and ridiculous quotes from their mother’s boyfriend back in Ukraine. Gente calls it the “Ukrainian Circus,” and makes it a regular feature, giving it a split screen with photos of Tatiana on one side and Yuri on the other. Tatiana and Vanni behind the darkened windows of Vanni’s Maserati vs. Yuri and Zhuki and the kids at a mall in the suburbs of Genoa. Vanni carrying Tatiana’s purse as she cuts the line at a nightclub in Milan vs. Yuri and Zhuki and the kids at the aquarium.

  In every picture, Zhuki is flinching from the camera flash, pulling Little Yuri and Principessa toward her like baby birds under her wing. But there’s nothing about Chicago. Nothing about America. Who knows? Maybe it was just a lie she made up for me.

  Now that Martina is gone, Papà and I have to cook for ourselves, mostly sandwiches or boxed pasta with jarred sauce. Once in a while we answer the knock on the shared door and have dinner with Guido and Nicola Nicolini. Guido’s parents have cut off all contact with him, and there’s a somberness in his eyes now that dulls the flash of metal around his neck and wrists. A bunch of sad bachelors we are. Me the saddest of them all. At least Guido and Nicola Nicolini have each other, and Papà has Silvio and the other regulars from Martina’s, who have started spending their evenings sitting under the makeshift tarps, drinking from their own bottles. I try to escape to the aula, but the last time I was there, it was the night with Zhuki, and now, the long room echoes like a crypt.

  That’s another thing they forget to tell you about grief, that every loss you feel after the first is not added but multiplied, like what they tell you in school about drinking and taking drugs at the same time. And after squaring so many fractions and fractions of fractions, you find out you’ve used up your lifetime allotment of both pain and joy, and all that’s left is an emotional flatline and the deep conviction that you will never, ever try anything with the potential to intoxicate you again.

  The new calcio season starts the last week in August, Genoa faced with the uphill climb from the bottom of the league tables. The men listen to the matches on the radio as they work on Martina’s, just like they used to back in the old days, when their weekends were spent taking turns on each other’s home improvement projects. They lay the brick and nail the boards to the rise and fall of the crowd, only stopping when the announcer’s voice accelerates, still as statues, trowels or hammers in hand.

  The retired guys make steady progress all week, but it’s on the weekends that you can see the real leaps and bounds. The brick walls start to edge out the plastic sheeting, and the windows are installed. The new wooden floor is pounded into place, and paving stones are laid for an outdoor patio. Dura, who everyone used to dismiss as just another immigrant from Naples, becomes both the supervisor and—most people believe—the supplier, mysterious stacks of brick and bags of mortar appearing on the passeggiata in the middle of the night.

  In the meantime, the world keeps churning out tragedy. A thousand pilgrims die in a stampede, and a hurricane in America wipes out an entire city. The old men all mutter, ah . . . sì, sì, it could be worse, it could be much worse, and the box of donations Father Marco set up for Martina’s gets a new sign on it.

  Sending money to America. Has the whole world turned over on its axis?

  The first week of September, two letters arrive at the shop. One is a postcard from Martina.

  I am okay. Not sure when I will be back. Kisses.

  The postcard is from somewhere in Sweden, with a swooping shoreline the same shape as ours, only covered in pine trees and wooden huts. Papà nails it to the wall of the bar.

  “Sweden? Why would she go to Sweden?”

  “Why not?”

  “Why would she leave at all? She had it good here.”

  “Good? We treated her like an indentured servant.”

  “We treated her like family.”

  The second letter is from Yuri, and Papà places it carefully in the bottom of the lacquered box that Nicola Nicolini insisted on for the top of the credenza.

  Dear Carlo and Etto,

  Thank you for everything you do for me and my family. Someday we will return to San Benedetto and play calcio match together.

  Yuri

  There is nothing from Zhuki.

  Anyway, I’m so busy, I hardly think of her.

  Only a couple of times.

  A minute.

  I miss her, and I wish Mamma and Luca were here to tell me how to get her back. I lie awake in bed at night, trying to make Mamma answer me. Are you there? Are you there? Are you there? I dig in the bottom drawer of the wardrobe, feeling around in the piles of socks until I find the loop of fishing line. It’s twisted and faded, the knot frayed at the ends. I make a double loop and slide it over my hand.

  Are you there?

  But there’s still no answer, so left to my own devices, I do what any other sad loser would do. I paint her on a ceiling. The Creation of Zhuki. I dress her in her silky calcio shorts and cleats, and paint myself on the ground like Adam, conked out and swooning, my hand resting on the side where the rib has gone missing. Not a pain or a scar, exactly, but a soft spot. Unprotected. Vulnerable. Zhuki is in the middle of the panel, turned toward an impassive Yuri, clasping her hands and begging her brother to return to San Benedetto immediately. It’s pure fantasy, I know. No better than the Dungeons and Dragons nerds behind their locked bedroom doors, painting steel bras onto tiny medieval maidens, trying to conjure up the real thing.

  “You’ve heard nothing from her?” Fede and I are sitting at the bar at Camilla’s.

  “Radio silence.”

  It’s only me and Fede now. Bocca is working at the Truck Show almost every night, Claudia and Casella spend all their time planning the wedding, and Sima and Aristone have gone back to university. Since Ferragosto, Fede wants to spend every night at Camilla’s. At first I thought he was drinking away his sorrows over Claudia getting engaged, but then I started to notice his eyes tracking Camilla around the bar. And she makes him wait for it, but eventually she’ll come over and talk with us. At the beginning of the night, she spreads her attention evenly, but as it progresses, she starts to laugh more loudly at Fede’s jokes and hardly takes her eyes off him. Fede’s in the middle of telling her his grand plans to own his own bagni someday when I slip out the door, making sure it doesn’t slam behind me.

  I stand in the cool sea air, leaning against the railing of the passeggiata and looking up at the terraces. Back to the beginning, I guess. And that’s when I see it—a passing flicker somewhere in the vicinity of the villa. At first I don’t believe it, and I have to redraw the contours of the hill to make sure that it’s not a jet or a satellite or a figment of my imagination. But there’s no doubt. The windows are lit. Three or four of them. I start running toward them up the hill, my legs pumping like pistons, all my muscles clicking into place. It seems to take no time at all before I’m standing in front of the iron gate.

  It wasn’t a mirage. The lights in the villa are burning brightly. I fix my hair, look into the security camera, and press the button.

  Another light comes on in the second floor. I buzz again.

  “Etto, is that you?”

  Shit.

  “Etto, what are you doing here?” It’s the
voice of Signora Malaspina’s niece.

  “Sorry. I thought the Ukrainians were here.”

  “They’ve been gone for three weeks. Don’t you even read the tabloids?”

  “I thought they might be back.”

  “To San Benedetto? No, no. They’re in Genoa now. You want to come in, Etto?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Hey, maybe I’ll have a party up here next weekend. Would you come, Etto?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Tell everybody, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  The intercom goes dead. Shit. Very funny, God. Is that what you do all day, just sit up there laughing at us?

  My phone lights up.

  HEY, WHERE’D YOU GO?

  DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT.

  I imagine him down there, chatting with Camilla, both of them grateful that I’ve left them alone. It’s only a matter of time now before Fede goes the way of Casella, and we start having bullshit conversations. Maybe the four of them will start to double-date, and Casella and Fede will eventually become brothers-in-law. Maybe in sixty years this whole town will be filled with ghosts and people I used to be close to. I light a cigarette, my head a thick fog as I stumble toward the field. The losses multiply inside me, opening holes like rat-a-tat-tat guns, the darkness spreading like a thick puddle.

  For some reason, I don’t think as much about the night Luca died as I do the morning Mamma came into my room. There was something definitive and final about Luca’s death. That was how he always was. He never waffled, never maybed himself to death like I do. If he wanted a girl, he went after her. If he kicked a ball, he followed through. If he jumped off the molo, he did the biggest cannonball anyone had ever seen.

  But with Mamma, it seems if I just keep thinking about it, I can still save her. So I constantly replay the same few minutes, fast-forwarding and rewinding, stopping at crucial places and zooming in. I try to see the shadow of the weight belt around her waist. I wonder if she had the hook already or did she go downstairs afterward to get it? Why didn’t I hear her rummaging in the shop? Why didn’t I see anything in her face or feel anything strange in the way she ruffled my hair? Why couldn’t I see it? Why couldn’t Papà? Maybe we were all blind in those days. Maybe Mamma wasn’t consciously choosing between death and life or between Luca and me. Maybe after Luca, she was just stumbling around in disbelief like the rest of us. Maybe she just had her eyes closed.

  “Lucky bastard,” I tell Luca. “You don’t have to go through any of these mind games anymore. Any of this earthly bullshit.”

  I pick up the ball from his grave. It’s lost some air in only the past couple of weeks. I set it up on the penalty spot, drop back, and kick it as hard as I can. Thump. Swish. Gol. I chase it, set it up again, drop back, and kick. Thump. Swish. Gol.

  “Mwah-ha-ha-ha-ha.” I hear Fede’s voice before I see the flashlight through the foliage. He does his fake sinister laugh, crashing through the brush like fottuto King Kong.

  “Etto, are you up here?”

  “No.”

  I keep kicking, my foot and my heart hardening into stone. Fede breaks through the line of cypresses. “There you are. Why’d you run off like that? You got a hot date with a sheep up here or something?”

  “Baaaa,” I say, and I drop the ball on the ground and keep kicking. Thump. Swish. Gol. Thump. Swish. Gol. An entire season’s worth of penalty shots, and yet it seems like it’s never enough. I ignore Fede, and he watches me for a while.

  “I don’t get it,” he finally says. “If you’re so upset, why don’t you go after her?”

  “What makes you think I’m upset?”

  “It’s pretty obvious. Ask anyone. You haven’t been the same at all since the Ukrainians left. The nonne are worried sick about you.”

  “Oh, so everybody’s talking about me now, eh?” Thump. Swish. Gol. “Cazzo, what I wouldn’t give to live someplace normal, where everyone would just stay out of my business and leave me the fuck alone.”

  “Go live in some high-rise in Milan then if you want.”

  “Maybe I will.”

  “Might as well dig yourself a spot next to Luca while you’re at it.”

  I stop and back off the ball. “What did you say?”

  “You heard me.”

  “Vaffanculo, Fede. That was over the line.”

  “It was a metaphor, Etto. A metaphor.”

  Thump. Swish. Gol. “Ah, so now you know about metaphors, eh? Where’d they teach you that—hotel school?”

  I run after the ball and set it up again. Fede only stares at me, not saying a word. Maybe I’ve insulted him enough to make him go away. Thump. This time, the ball goes sailing over the goal.

  “Shit.”

  I run after it and set it up again. I back off it to make another shot, and do you know what that stronzo does? He snatches the ball off the ground and holds it above his head.

  “Give me the ball,” I say.

  “Not until you talk to me.”

  “Give me the ball, Fede.”

  “No.” He’s got about ten centimeters on me. “Not until you tell me why you always have to expect the worst from people.”

  “You don’t think after all that’s happened I’m entitled to expect the worst?”

  “Come on. You were already like that a long time before Luca died. Do you know how much it bothered him how jealous you were of him?”

  “I was never jealous of him.”

  “Yes you were. It really hurt him, you know.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He was my best friend for fifteen years, Etto. You seem to block that out. Like you’re the only one who misses him.”

  “Oh, yeah? And what else can you tell me about my brother? My twin brother. Go ahead, Fede, enlighten me.”

  “That he cared about you a lot. That he was always asking me to look out for you. It was the last thing he said every time he went back to the academy. Cazzo, it was the last thing he said.” I make a grab for the ball, but Fede is too quick.

  “Well, I’m a big boy now, Fede. You don’t have to hang out with me out of obligation anymore.”

  “That’s not what I was saying.”

  “Or out of guilt over loaning him the motorcycle.” It’s a low blow. I know.

  I make a grab for the ball, but Fede hides it behind his back. “You know what, Etto? You’re an asshole. And I’m not telling you this to hurt you. I’m telling you this as a friend. A complete asshole. For the past two years, you’ve had the whole fucking town looking out for you, and in return, you’ve been nothing but an asshole to them. And you see it. I know you see it. But you pretend you don’t.”

  “Right, Fede, please tell me what I do and don’t see.”

  “I will. You pretend you don’t see it because then you can pretend you don’t owe them anything.”

  “What am I supposed to owe them?”

  “Yourself, maybe. A little empathy. A little openness. But that scares the shit out of you, doesn’t it?”

  “Right, Fede. You’re lecturing me about relationships.”

  “That’s a cheap shot and you know it.”

  “It’s a true shot.”

  “You know what, Etto? I’m only going to tell you this once, so you better listen up. Other people care about you. And if you want to ignore it or pretend you’re too smart for them, or be cool and emo and sulk and tell yourself that you’re all alone in the world, well, go ahead. Go ahead and lock yourself up and bolt the door and refuse to ever love anyone back. Go ahead and let Zhuki get away and be bitter for the rest of your life. But I want you to remember one thing. It’s your fucking choice. It’s your. Fucking. Choice.”

  He makes a motion to chuck the ball high into the terraces, but he stops himself and sets it on the ground instead. He walks away, his hands in his pockets, then turns around and tosses something at my feet.

  “Bocca’s keys,” he says, and he disappears between the cypresses.

  I dig the key out of the
grass and rub the smooth plastic of the fob between my fingers. I hate it when someone walks away at the end of an argument like that. I hate it when somebody presumes to tell you what’s inside your own head.

  Most of all, I hate it when they’re right.

  Fede’s right. That deficiente is right. I do see it. Martina and her dinners. Silvio trying to negotiate truces every time Papà and I don’t see eye to eye. Even Fede and all his pestering to get me to go out. I do see it. But it’s like my joints are frozen, my actions locked in place.

  I lie on the field for a while, staring up at the moon and the mess of stars, my thoughts pecking at me from head to feet. Charon used to tell us that this is what hell is really like. It isn’t black smoke and eternal fire. It’s not rolling a fottuto boulder up the hill or being torn limb from limb by nine-headed monsters with pointy teeth. No. That hell is for children. Real hell, he said, is a state of perfect consciousness when you realize just what a stronzo you are, to other people and yourself. Real hell is when everything you’ve ever said or done rises to the surface in brilliant Technicolor. If you think about it, that’s a hundred times worse than any of the medieval stuff.

  If you ever fall in love, try not to fall in love with someone from Genoa because there’s no place to park a hulking white American truck, and you’ll end up down by the docks bargaining with some guys loading and unloading container ships at midnight. If you ever fall in love, try not to fall in love with someone from Genoa because you’ll walk farther than you ever thought you could, through warrens of vias and vicos, vicolos and viales, through the city plans of the Greeks, the Etruscans, the Phoenicians, the Ostrogoths, the Byzantines, the Spanish, and the French, hitting dead end after dead end, private courtyard after private door, growing frustrated and tired but no less determined. And when you finally arrive at a real house after hours of staring at an address printed neatly on the corner of an envelope, you will wonder why the cazzo you ever thought this was a good idea.

  The house is at the end of a street named after a saint and guarded by a phalanx of motorinos and recycling bins. A stone griffin perches over the pedestrian gate, and I wonder if Yuri had it installed or if it has always been there. The shutters are closed for the night, but I can see the light seeping through two of them on the second floor. I check my phone. It’s almost two in the fottuto morning. I’m officially a stalker.