CRAVING U (The Rook Café) (52 page)

“Drive safely!” Clara called out to him,
mother-like, while Valentina was already dreaming about marrying that handsome
guy with the sky-blue eyes and a smile that made you go dumb, and about whom
she knew only that he was a hot, professional soccer player.  She liked him for
nothing more, not knowing the man he really was.

“Forget about him, Vallie!”  Braidi didn’t
need a degree in psychology to understand his daughter’s state of mind, totally
at the whims of her estrogen level.  “He’s got other things on his mind.” 
Carlo imagined little pink and red candy hearts escaping from his daughter’s
body and flying into the sky to mingle with the falling snow.  “Trust me, let
him go!”  After the revelations of that evening, everything about his playmaker
began to make sense: from the willfully unauthorized tournament he had
organized in his hometown to the violent outburst he had had in response to his
agent’s harsh words.  “Come on, everybody inside.”  He clapped his hands
together.  “There’s nothing more to be seen here.”  Braidi stayed outside by
himself to watch the compact car turn the corner, reflecting on the wisdom of
letting Canosi know about Marika’s role in Matteo’s life.

The days passed, and shop windows grew
more and more festive while the movie theaters hosted a glut of sappy holiday
films.  At
Visconti
, players were counting down the days until practice
would be over for Christmas.  “If you don’t push your way into the shooting
zone, you’re never going to score!”  Agostini spurred on the attacking side
during their final drills before the mid-season break.  “When your teammate has
the ball, you can’t just stand back and watch... you need to make yourself
open.  Create space!  Otherwise you can kiss those goals goodbye.”

Many things had certainly changed since
last Christmas: the air was still crisp, snow was sprinkled on the ground, and
blinking lights still lit up the streets and houses of Orgiano, but there was a
strange, unfamiliar fragrance in the air, something insipid and lifeless that
did not fire the imagination.  Nothing like the ambrosia of the previous year. 
Marika and Carlotta strolled the streets of Lonigo, busying themselves with the
selection of gifts and of their outfits for the Christmas Eve party at Dario’s,
to which both Eve and Federico had been invited.  They were officially no
longer considered outsiders.

Tommaso Campanella may have written in
The
City of the Sun
that, “
it is a capital offense for women to use
cosmetics, however, or to wear high heels and gowns with trains to cover the
heels
,
” but Marika was in desperate need of a good rouge that would
mask her wistful longing for last Christmas and for that fragile, slightly
bittersweet sound of the Oriental koto which had animated the chords of vinyl
tech-house, but which had been replaced in the space of one short year by the
syncopated rhythms of Brazilian pop dance music.

***

“I won’t be home
for Christmas.”  From
Visconti
on the north side of Milan, deserted by
all for the holidays, Matteo was speaking on the phone.

“What do you mean you aren’t coming home?” 
Dario’s face fell at those words, and he hid his face from Carlotta, who was
splayed out on the couch eating popcorn after a tiring afternoon of “I love
shopping with my
cousin
.”

“I’m staying here to practice.”  Matteo
was lying on his bed, flipping through the pay per view channels.

“You can’t stay in Milan for the holidays,”
Dario whined from Villaga.

“It won’t be so bad,” he declared,
distracted by Manolete, a toreador from the 1940s who had been brought back to life
on the movie channel: the greatest Spanish toreador of all time, turned into a
deity in that arena of blood, but not able to become a real man until the love
of a woman saved him.

“Aww man!” he moaned.  “There won’t be
anyone there to celebrate with.”

“Exactly!”  Matteo had already planned out
his training schedule.  “An empty
Visconti
is perfect for practicing
without getting distracted.”

“You’re going to miss my Christmas Eve
feast.  Marika’s going to be there!”  Dario hoped to pull on his heart
strings.  “I seem to recall that she’s of some interest to you.”  He was
hitting below the belt.  “So why don’t you come at least for that?”  He felt
hurt by Matteo’s indifference.  “Maybe being so far away has made you forget
who you really are?”  A rhetorical question motivated only by an intense and
painful longing for the past.  “All you can think about is soccer.  You’re
going to lose her that way.”  He was being blunt and aggressive.  “Just don’t
come crying to me, saying that I didn’t warn you.”

“I won’t, so long as you spare me the rest
of your sermon.”  Matteo shook his head and rolled over onto his back.  “You
still don’t get who I am after all these years!”

“Oh, I know you well enough.  I just don’t
understand you.”  He sneaked a peak at Carlotta, totally absorbed by the
Vuitton bag carried by the actress on TV, so much so as to not have even
noticed Dario’s excessive absence.  “So... explain yourself!”

“If I am forced to accept the transfer to
the
yellow and green
in the southernmost tip of Italy,” Matteo said,
turning off the television and staring up at the ceiling, “I’ll never have any
possibility of getting my old life back.”

“But you can’t bet your entire future on
just one stupid tournament!”  Dario knew all about the “
Beijing clause
”
upon which the future of the midfielder hung, but it made no sense to him.  “After
all, Milan, Sicily... what difference does it make?”  Dario could only imagine
the sandy, crescent-shaped bays and  miniscule inlets surrounded by cliffs and
blue waters, immersed in a lush Mediterranean landscape where juniper shrubs
grew on the sides of Mount Etna and the sun warmed the earth with the smells of
oranges, almonds, and bergamot.  “Your future is equally bright, either way.”

“Not if she can’t be a part of it.”  The
past and the future were all one in the young playmaker’s head.  “And how could
she be?”  He was toying with certain ideas, and his faith in the future
steadily vanished.  “Ferdinando would never let her... we’re not married.”

“Now you’re scaring me.”  Dario swallowed
hard.

“Take it easy, man.”  Matteo breathed in
and out deeply, according to his practice in mental coaching.  “I’m not
planning on getting hitched anytime soon.  I was just thinking out loud.” 
After all, everyone knows that as recently as a decade ago, teams and agents
were still encouraging their players to form conjugal bonds... as a reliable
source of stability.  Many of the greatest coaches had a theory that matrimony
created dependability, and preferred married players to bachelors when all else
was equal.  Nowadays, people get married later, or not at all, and there are
more divorces, and soccer players are no different from anybody else.

“Well, stop thinking so much.  It’s bad
for your health,” Dario protested.  “The last time you got to thinking about
your future in Serie A, you almost decided to give it all up!  Can I be any
clearer than that?”  He waited for an answer that didn’t come.  “You’re not
considering that again, are you?”  He was on full attack, as penetrating and
impossible to ignore as vuvuzelas.  “You’ve worked very hard to get where you
are.  You’ve achieved so much through your own determination and tenacity.  You’ve
got talent.  You have earned this.  Do you really want to throw all that away?”

“Oh my God, would you cut it out?  You’re
such a drag!”  Matteo blew a puff of air between his tightly pressed lips.  “I’m
not thinking about throwing anything away.  Quite the opposite, actually.” 
Matteo got up from the bed and looked out of the French doors, waving at his
teammates down in the street as they left
Visconti
, goofing off in the
slushy snow.  “I want to take back what is mine.”  He needed to be able to
believe that he was in control of his own life, that he wasn’t just a mere
piece of fluff in the winds of fortune.  “And to do that, I’m willing to make
any sacrifice.”

“I’m making polenta and salted codfish for
Christmas Eve.  You don’t know what you’re missing!”

“That’s a low blow, man.”  Fragrances and
memories of home flooded his mind: roasted duck, pasta and beans, Vicenza
salami, walnut bread, his mother and father in the kitchen and siblings
everywhere.  “Is it too much to ask you not to say anything about this to
anyone for the time being?”  It wouldn’t be politically correct to let the word
get out about the Sicilian club’s offer.

“Do your parents know about it?”  Dario
loved the idea that he might be the only person who knew the inner secrets of
AC
San Carlo
.

“Braidi told them about it.” –
Obviously,
who did he think he was
? – “But he asked them to be discreet about the
whole thing.”  Matteo, on the other hand, was totally in the dark about the
daily pressure his agent was placing on his family, trying to get them to help
convince Matteo to accept the transfer offer.

In spite of that, his parents had decided
not to get involved.  They were willing to listen to their son, advise him, and
support him, but not sway him.  They would act as a filter for third parties
and a protective shield against opportunists.  They worried about their teenage
son who was feeling homesick, surrounded by flatterers and temptresses, and
they had been hurt by his decision to stay in Milan for the holidays, but they
had not put up any resistance.

“My brother isn’t coming home for
Christmas.”  That’s how Loretta greeted Marika when she bumped into her on the
streets of Lonigo on the third Sunday of December.  “He decided to stay in
Milan to train for the
Wagon Cup
in China.”

“Oh.”  Marika’s smile, freely given on
seeing her, wilted as she realized she would have to reset her countdown to the
day he would come back.  “This is Federico,” she said, remembering that she was
not unaccompanied.  He distracted them both from their disappointment.

“Nice to meet you!”  Loretta shook his
hand politely, remembering his name from when Matteo had not been able to hide
his timid jealousy of him.  “I saw you play at....”  Her memory was interrupted
by a brigade of little girls who splashed them with a muddy mix of snow, slush,
and salt as they walked boisterously by.

“... at the Pigafetta Stadium.”  Federico
smiled at Marika, scraping the sludge from his jeans.

“Oh, Marika!”  Loretta broke away from
their stares as they continued down the street full of shops.  “Did Matteo say
anything to you when you last talked to him?”  Her question assumed that their
relationship was still the way it had once been, that it could never be
otherwise.  “Did he sound strange to you?”

“Uh, no,” she said uncomfortably, “but in
truth, we don’t really....”

“I’m a bit worried about him.  So are my
parents.  It’s not like him to act this way.”  His choice to stay in Milan for
the holidays had confused her.  “I know you care about my brother.”

“
You can’t imagine how much
,”
Marika sighed, saying nothing and keeping a neutral expression on her face,
while Federico rocked nervously on his heels.

“I was thinking, I don’t know...,” Loretta
continued, looking hopefully at her, “that you could talk to him, find out if
there’s something wrong or something bothering him.”  She looked sad, and her
eyelids closed for a moment over her cobalt eyes.  “Matteo’s always so closed
off, so quiet with us.  But he’s different with you.”

She nodded.  “I’ll do it, I promise.”  She
couldn’t say anything else.  It would have been too complicated to explain all
of the things that had gone on between the two of them.

“Thanks.”  Loretta hugged her before going
off in another direction.  “Merry Christmas!”  Then she disappeared in the
crowd of frenzied holiday shoppers.

Alone again with Federico and his
disapproving gaze, Marika felt the need to call Matteo and to do so openly, but
she was hampered by her weakness to feel loved and courted by both of them.

It was the oldest story in the world, the
one that Goldoni brought to life on the stage of Venice’s Sant’Angelo Theater
on December 26, 1752: “
My whole delight is in seeing myself served, desired,
and adored... That is my weakness, as it is the weakness of almost all women.
”

“Don’t let him use you.”  He, on the other
hand, had no doubts: Matteo was a soulless puppetmaster, manipulating her from
afar.  “He’s already done it once and....”

“You’re not being fair.”  Marika put his
arm around her and pulled at his heart strings.  “You know that Matteo and his
family are important to me.  I’m not going to cut them out of my life.”

“I’m not saying you have to avoid them,
but you have to be careful.”  Federico was walking through the lights of the
Christmas Village, inhaling the fragrances of cinnamon and candied fruits,
while Marika fingered the trinkets in each one of the little wooden chalets,
trying to find small gifts and decorations.  “
He’s already hurt you once,
and there’s no reason to think he won’t do it again
.”

“Oh, it’s so pretty,” Marika whispered,
charmed by the hand-painted lantern ornament she was holding in her fingers.  “I’m
gonna buy it.”  She turned to Federico, letting her eyes be hypnotized by the
old wooden carousel spinning behind him.  “What do you think?”