We are near the end now, and I know there are many of you who call it soccer and not calcio, who—like I once did—will still try to argue that calcio is not a real sport. How it takes more skill to play baseball or more courage to play American football or how basketball’s high scores and ticking clock are so much more exciting. You complain about the tie games and the vagueness of injury time. You compare the Italians dropping on the field in agony to opera, and laugh about how all the Europeans make it seem as if calcio is a matter of life and death.
It isn’t, of course. It’s much more important than that. It’s a matter of hope.
People dedicate themselves to calcio, season after season, for the same reason they keep getting married even though they’re tripping over their friends’ divorces wherever they go. For the same reason Regina Salveggio is pregnant again with another brat even though she can’t handle the first two. For the same reason the tourists come to San Benedetto every summer even though they go straight back to the same sweaty offices and boring jobs. Because the rim of a calcio stadium, the railing of a baby’s crib, and the line between sky and sea are the few places on earth where the firmament cracks open and shows the hope of the world.
Or maybe just the deep longing for it.
Either way.
Maybe this is why I keep going on the aula even though I know I will never finish. As it turns out, all those annoying thirteen-year-olds who’ve been hanging around are going to be entering high school next year, and enough of them aren’t screwups so that the liceo can reopen. Father Marco says Charon heard the news and can’t wait to get back from Rome and whip them into shape. I would just like to be there for the moment when he walks into his aula for the first time. Will his mouth gape open? Will he finally be speechless? He’ll probably have Pete the Comb Man paint over it immediately. Then again, maybe he won’t.
Papà’s hope is the San Benedetto Calcio League. Papà and I play on the same team now, the San Benedetto Fire, named after Yuri’s team in Chicago, and on Saturday afternoons, I help Papà coach the five-year-olds on our developmental team, as he likes to call it. The San Benedetto Sparks. For three hours a week, he clutches his forehead as he watches them run around the field in a cluster, kicking the ball with their cleats like they’re hacking away at a block of ice.
“Play your position! Play your position! Where are my defenders? Where did my defenders go? That’s it, pass it! Pass it! No, no . . . the other way! The other way!” He shouts with as much passion as when he watches the matches at Martina’s, but whether they win or lose, he buys them ice cream and tells them that one day they will be stars in Serie A. And as assistant coach, I try to pass on all the things Yuri, Mykola, Ihor, and Zhuki taught me. Look up. Keep an eye on your teammates. Don’t be afraid. Shut off your brain once in a while. And for God’s sake, stop playing the catenaccio, this silly game of defense.
Maybe twenty years from now, they’ll know what I mean.
* * *
In June, almost a year from the day I first set eyes on the Ukrainians, the world stops spinning, and six and a half billion people on every continent but America sit paralyzed in front of television sets, watching the World Cup finals. Whatever poverty, disease, war, scandal, or terrorism plagues their country, it is all forgotten for a few weeks. Because calcio is the panacea, the pill, the tincture, the balm for every ill. In fact, maybe this is why the Americans don’t understand it. Because they already live in the promised land, where hard work is rewarded, people fall in love in sixty minutes minus commercials, and scandals, if they happen at all, are roundly denounced and swiftly punished.
By mid-June, Italy is again mired in them. Match fixing, steroids, illegal recruiting, affairs—all of it this time.
“A bunch of stronzos they are, these Azzurri.”
“If they lose the World Cup this time, they deserve it.”
“All they care about is their bonuses anyway.”
This is what I hear all June as the tourists start to fill the streets. It’s a smaller crowd this year because many of the Germans have decided to stay in their own country to watch the action, either in the stadiums or at the fan fests.
WHEN ARE YOU COMING OVER?
I TOLD FEDE I’D WATCH THE PREGAME AT CAMILLA’S.
IT’S ALREADY PACKED OVER HERE.
SAVE ME A SEAT.
The Ukrainians came for Christmas. I mounted an all-out campaign. Everyone in town was in on it, trying to make me look good. I knew I’d made great progress when Yuri, Mykola, and Ihor sat me down and told me if I broke Zhuki’s heart they would come after me and the police wouldn’t be able to find the pieces.
At the end of January, she was back with all her things, and they put her in charge of Martina’s.
I know. It’s a miracle. And do you know how when you see something once, you get the pattern in your eye and you start to see it all over? That’s exactly what happens, and I realize the world is full of miracles.
Like Fede not talking about any girl but Camilla for ten months and counting.
Like Signor Cato going out to the molo to fish again.
Like Nello walking into Martina’s distraught because Pia finally left him.
Like Guido and Nicola Nicolini inviting their parents over for dinner, and their parents accepting.
Like the multiplying photos of the four of us around the apartment, at least as many as the years we were together.
Like Yuri getting tickets to the World Cup for Papà and Silvio, and both of them flying to Germany for two weeks.
Like Ukraine—Ukraine, for God’s sake—making it to the final eight teams, and the Azzurri finally throwing away the catenaccio.
“How can you tell?” I ask Zhuki.
“See the backs? They’re usually well behind the line.”
“Which ones are the backs?”
“See . . . right . . .” Her index finger floats in front of the screen, but her voice trails off. Unbelievably, the rounds have worked out so Ukraine is playing the Azzurri in the quarterfinals tonight. Zhuki’s blazing yellow shirt is bobbing in a sea of azure, and I imagine Papà in the stadium in Germany, his hands clasped to his mouth, barely breathing as he sorts out his loyalties.
At Martina’s, the tables have been stacked at the edges of the room, and rows of chairs are lined up in front of the flat-screen. For the past three weeks, there has been a strict seating hierarchy, the regulars and the old guys up front, the overflow sent to Camilla’s, any perceived violations sorted out by Mino.
A cheer goes up on all sides. Zhuki hunches on her elbows, sputtering jagged consonants and raggedy vowels. Mamma was the same. She loved speaking Italian, but whenever she was upset or moved or passionately arguing about something, she would revert back to English, and not just English, but an almost incomprehensible stream of California slang.
By the fifth minute, I stop asking for explanations. Zhuki and Nonno and everyone else are caught in the same trance, their concentration never wavering, even when Vanni Fucci heads it into the goal in the sixth minute, even when Luca Toni scores the second and third goals in quick succession. The bar explodes. Signor Cato stands up, spreads his arms wide and kisses the screen.
“I love you, Luca Toni! I want to make love to you!”
“Come on, Yuri,” I hear Nonno whisper on my left. “Let’s at least make it a real contest.”
But Cannavaro has been clinging to Yuri like a barnacle, and he’s been unable to get a pass, much less score a goal. Zhuki’s neck and shoulders soften, and as the minutes line up and the massacre continues, she sinks lower on her elbows. Behind us, the crowd is calling for blood.
“Get those sonofawhores, get them!”
“No mercy!”
“Kill them!”
But there’s a close-up of Yuri, and suddenly the shouting is muffled, the cursing tamped down to half of what it was. Out of respect. Not for the Yuri who’s running around the field in a yellow jersey, making a run at our own Gigi Buffon, but for the
Yuri who ran up and down the field at the liceo, the Yuri who passed the ball even to the weaker players, the Yuri who would politely wave whenever he scored a goal, but shout at the top of his lungs when anyone else did.
The match runs into injury time, and it’s clear that the Ukrainians are done for. It’s then that I hear it start in the back, a low, quiet rumbling. One voice, then two, then five.
“Yu-ri. Yu-ri. Yu-ri. Yu-ri.”
It spreads across the rows and fills the room.
“Yu-ri. Yu-ri. Yu-ri. Yu-ri.”
Zhuki finally hears it through her trance. She picks her elbows up off her knees, turns around, and smiles at the rest of the room.
“Thank you,” she says.
The injury time evaporates, and the stadium erupts in cheers and flares. The Azzurri jump on each other and run around the field, shouting and pointing to the heavens or their children at home in their pajamas. They start to peel off their wet jerseys and exchange them with the Ukrainians, along with a pat on the culo or the back, or even a caress of the head. There’s a close-up of Vanni Fucci throwing figs in the air, and another one of Yuri, alone in the middle of the field. He’s on his knees, his hands grabbing fistfuls of grass, his forehead pressed to the ground like a Muslim praying. The bar goes silent.
“Tell your brother sorry, Zhuki.”
Signor Cato is the first to offer his condolences, but pretty soon, they are filing past her like at a funeral, shaking her hand and patting her on the back like she’s one of the men.
“Next time.”
“2010.”
“South Africa.”
“Tell your brother he played a good game.”
Zhuki and I end up sitting on the rocks, leaning into each other, the water washing around us.
“That was his last big match,” Zhuki says. “He’s going to finish the season for the Fire, and then he’s done.”
“Isn’t he too young to retire?”
“He wants to end his career while he still has his legs. Now he feels like the scandal and the divorce are behind him, and he has made Ukraine proud.”
“When does the season end in Chicago?”
“In October. Nearly the opposite of here.”
“And what’s he going to do then?”
“He says he wants to go back to Ukraine, get a house in the country, and start a training institute with Mykola and Ihor. He wants to raise Little Yuri and Principessa near their grandmother.”
“I can’t believe she finally left that guy.”
“I can’t tell when I talk to her whether she left him or he left her. Doesn’t matter, I suppose.”
“And what about Yuri’s Hollywood career?”
“Ach. Yuri says he is too old to fall in love with another country.”
“And you?”
She grins. “I am younger than he is.”
The next day, Yuri makes his retirement announcement a thousand kilometers away, and it’s like a single tree falling in the Bavarian forest, a quiet bump among the crashing fortunes in Serie A that are strewn like postapocalyptic telephone poles across Gazzetta dello Sport and Sky News every morning. But this is part of the beauty and mystery of calcio—the inexplicable rise and fall of men and fortunes, and the surprises of fate.
We watch the rest of the quarterfinals. It’s a blood bath, the referees thinning out the teams with red cards. When I ask Nonno who he wants to win each match, he says simply: “Whoever can beat France.” And then for the next ten minutes he mumbles like someone mentally deranged about the 1998 World Cup in France and the cheating-bastard French that stole the quarterfinal from us.
Portugal beats England.
France beats Portugal.
We beat Germany.
“I can’t believe it!” Nonno shouts. “I can’t believe it! We’re in the finals with those rotten-bastard French again. Has there ever been a people so vain as the French?”
I’m sure the French are laughing at us across the border, too. Déjà vu, they say, hunh-hunh-hunh. A replay of the 1998 quarterfinals, of the 2000 Euro Cup, both of which the French won. To make it worse, the final is played in the foreground of the crescendoing investigations in Rome, which will decide the destiny of thirteen of the Azzurri and their teams back home.
* * *
It’s a clear July evening in Berlin when the two teams walk out of the tunnel and line up on the field, clutching the hands of children, a show of peace before the bloodletting. “La Marseillaise” and “Fratelli d’Italia” echo across the world. Shakira shakes her hips, and the whole world stares, eyes cast upward, mouths slightly gaped, faces frozen. The human equivalent of a stopped clock.
From the first minute, the match rages. Some of the French players are from the ’98 team, a little slower and a little older, with a little less hair. Zidane was always Luca’s favorite even though he played for Juventus and even though Nonno spent hours trying to convince him not to admire a Frenchman. When the second half starts, the sky turns dark, and I imagine all the people watching across the world, basking in the glow of flat-screens in trendy bars or velvet-choked pubs, huddled in living rooms and church basements, or crouched around a screen as big as a hand, taking turns cranking the generator.
It comes down to a shoot-out, just like in ’98. Man vs. Keeper. Man vs. Himself. The goalkeepers, Gigi for the Azzurri and Barthez for the French, have both been here before, and they embrace each other before the firing squad begins.
Pirlo. Gol.
Wiltord. Gol.
Materazzi. Gol.
Trezeguet. Miss.
De Rossi. Gol.
Abidal. Gol.
Del Piero. Gol.
Sagnol. Gol.
Grosso. Gol.
And it’s Grosso who wins it this time, or rather, Trezeguet who muffs it. Trezeguet, hero of the last time, who now takes his turn in the tragedy.
And it’s Gigi spreading his Mickey Mouse hands wide as he streaks across the field, and Barthez, the French keeper, sitting against the post, paralyzed from the loss.
And it’s Zidane sitting in the clubhouse missing it all. Zidane, who came in a hero of France and a gentleman foreigner of the Italian leagues, who goes out a head-butting rogue. And Materazzi, who comes in a rogue and goes out a hero for saying whatever it is the lip-readers say he said to Zidane, forcing the French to play with ten men.
I know that you who call it soccer instead of calcio will have trouble keeping track of these unfamiliar names, so go back now, and substitute the name of anyone you know. Maybe even your own.
The Azzurri leap across the field and lie on the ground in piles of disbelief. Clean-cut gray-haired men in suits jump up and down like little boys. French players stand around in a daze, stroking their chins as fireworks light up the Berlin sky. A snowstorm of ticker tape and toilet tissue covers the field, the white blotting out everything but the Rai announcer’s voice.
“It is finished! It is finished! It is finished! It is finished!”
Everyone at Martina’s is shouting and hugging and jumping up and down, and I imagine the vibrations shaking the foundation of the building clear down to the center of the earth, to the cavern where they say the devil sleeps, his muscles shifting and twitching under his matted fur, the tremors from hundreds of millions of reconstituted hearts disturbing his sleep.
Outside, fireworks and flares whistle and boom over the sea. People are already flooding the streets, jumping into their cars and blaring horns, running down the passeggiata chanting, singing, and waving flags. The Band emerges one instrument at a time, adding notes to the cacophony.
The rest of the summer will be more chaos. Martina will be reunited with her postcards and be so moved by the reconstruction of the bar that she and Zhuki will start serving food. Zhuki will travel back and forth from San Benedetto to Chicago to Strilky. The German tourists will return for the second half of the summer. All of Italy will be engulfed by the demotions, penalty points, and fines drifting down the boot like a poisonous gas. Juv
entus will be stripped of the Scudetto, Milan, Fiorentina, and Lazio cowed.
There will be a hundred hopeless endings, and these will be written clearly across the expressions of the suited men who fill the flat-screen every night. Even though they try to set their jaws and fix their stares, I can see the shadows of resignation and regret. They know what I know now, that it is impossible to go back to the beginning. You can’t go back to the big bang or the primordial swamp any more than our family can go back to the nosebleed seats of Estadio Balaídos in Vigo, or these scandalized players can go back to being little boys running through dusty streets, kicking a peeling calcio ball.
Instead, you have to cobble together your own beginnings where you can, out of imperfect clay. Messy synthesis instead of clean separation this time around. The sky cleaving to the earth, the sea lapping up on the land, the light infiltrating the darkness. And God is up there doing his part, too, throwing down terraces for us to train on and people to wander into our crooked paths—Ukrainians and French, calcio players and soccer players, little boys with dreams they will never accomplish and old men with foggy memories of the past. Paparazzi, showgirls, fathers, mothers, brothers, sons. And nonne. Lots and lots of nonne.
Zhuki and I, we escape to the end of the molo. We watch the steady streams of headlights and cell phone screens, the explosions of sparklers and sprays of fireworks in the sky. I think about Papà and Yuri and Silvio in Berlin, and I pull the fishing line into an orbit around my wrist. I imagine that it connects me not only to Mamma but Papà and Luca, too, and that we can all feel each other’s gentle tugging as we move around the universe.
Nonno has brought the 2CV of course, and he leads the procession down the passeggiata, the griffin finally rearing up in victory on the hood. Nonno is behind the wheel, sitting tall like a Roman emperor, and Nonna is by his side, her white hair blown into messiness, her arm leaning out the passenger window.
“Viva l’Italia! Viva l’Italia!” Nonno shouts at the top of his lungs as he blares the horn. “And death to France!”
Young guys leap onto the running boards and cling to the sides so that the little 2CV looks like a monster sprouting heads. I spot a few girls from the class below me holding the screens of their cell phones high in the air, their faces striped with red, white, and green, and flags trailing off their shoulders like the capes of superheroes. I watch the faces going by and they all look familiar, even the tourists who’ve been swept up into the crowd.
The Sun and Other Stars Page 33
