The Sun and Other Stars (29 page)

“Well, she loved life. It sounds like a cliché, I know . . . well, it sounds like a lie now, too. But it’s true. Every morning, she would get up and go for a swim in the sea. It never got old for her, living here. Spring, summer, winter, it didn’t matter. She was always outside, and she talked to everyone on the street. Complete strangers. Tourists. Even people like Farinata and Nello. Sometimes it would take her an hour just to make it down the passeggiata.”

“She sounds like an amazing person.”

“Yeah. When you were with her, you really understood why people gravitated toward her. There was just something about the way she would look at you that made you feel . . . I don’t know, loved. So loved, it was impossible not to love back.”

We lie there in silence for a minute, listening to faraway voices somewhere down below.

“It must be really difficult to live without her.”

“It is. But it’s more than just her.”

“What do you mean?”

“Have you ever read the ‘Inferno’?”

“No.”

“We all read it in school. Our teacher used to tell us these different theories of hell, and one of them is that it’s a permanent separation. And you know what? That’s exactly what it feels like. Not just from her, but from everybody else.”

“God, too?”

“Maybe.”

“Is that why you sit outside the church instead of going in?”

I turn my head away from her and spot a lizard hiding out. I pluck a long blade of grass and try to touch the lizard with it, but he scampers away.

“I don’t know,” I say. “I used to pray. That whole year after my brother died, when my mamma was like that . . . I was like a monk, I prayed so hard.”

“But it didn’t work.”

I look her in the eye. “No. It didn’t work. And after that, I just thought, you know, what’s the point of it if you can’t save one person? If you can’t save this one good person. What’s the point?”

Silence settles over us and sinks into the field.

“Now can I ask you something?” I say.

“Sure.”

“Why do you hang out with me?”

She laughs.

“No, I mean, all I ever talk about is depressing stuff, and when I’m not doing that, I’m kind of a pedant anyway. I should be taking you to Nice, or at least to the bars or the disco or the Truck Show . . . telling you jokes, making you laugh.”

She smiles at me. “Etto, all I meet are boys who want to go to bars and talk about stupid things. This is my least favorite part of being the sister of a calcio player. If I want to talk about something important, about the world, about life, they tell me, ‘Don’t be so serious,’ or ‘You should smile more.’ Ugh. I hate that one the most.”

“You
should
smile more.”

“Very funny.” She tosses the ball at me, and it bounces off my leg in the direction of the cypresses. “See, Etto-Son-of-Butcher? You do make me laugh.”

I reach my hand into the space between us, and I can feel her hand sliding into mine, resting comfortably under my palm. We lie there for a long time, just holding hands, and as the minutes pass, it’s like someone is kneading a soft spot into my side, parting my ribs and making a path.

F
riday is the start of the Apocalypse. That’s what we call the first two weeks in August—the buildup to Ferragosto, when the tourists outnumber us ten to one and there is no bagni, no street, no vico, and no mule track where you can go to escape their voices or their children or their giant beach blow-up animals. It can take you half an hour to shuffle down the pedestrian streets, tourists pressing in on you from all sides.

“What I want to know is where the water’s going to come from to flush all these toilets and run all these showers,” Chicca says. Papà, Chicca, and I are standing out in front of the shops.

“Franco said the bagni are calling a meeting about rationing.”

“Rationing?”

“You were too little to remember how it was back in the eighties. Lines all the way down the passeggiata waiting for the water trucks. Even the hotels had to ration. It was a nightmare.”

Officially, there hasn’t been any rain in San Benedetto since June. Down here in town, it’s easier to ignore, but up on the terraces, Nonno’s garden is shriveling away to nothing and his cistern is so dry, even the stench has abandoned it. For the past couple of weeks, the fire helicopters have been chopping up and down the shore, mesmerizing the kids on the beach as they scoop up seawater in their giant buckets and drop it on the smoking brush. There were two fires last week, one just past Laigueglia, and one not far from the campground in Albenga.

I spend the morning at the band saw and the vacuum-pack machine, cutting and packing ribs while Papà works the counter up front. He steps out onto the passeggiata in between customers, chatting with everyone who passes. Every time the door opens, the banco kicks on, chugging like a locomotive to keep itself cold.

Sawing ribs is one of the simplest tasks you can do in a butcher shop. And one of the most dangerous. If you let your guard down, it’s easy to catch the bone on the blade, which can set off a few nightmare scenarios, including but not limited to flinging the bone into your face, lodging a chip in your eye, or ripping your hand into the path of the blade. If you’re really unlucky, the blade can snap and send two meters of toothed steel whistling and vibrating through the air. But Papà seems to think I can handle the band saw and almost everything else in the shop these days. He doesn’t hover anymore. He doesn’t microsupervise or talk about hairnets or greet me with lists of tasks, and I’ve started to see it not only as his shop but maybe mine one day.

I’m moving the last of the ribs to the walk-in when my phone lights up.

“Papà?”

“Yes?”

“The Ukrainians are on the beach.”

“Are they?”

“You should go over there, Papà.”

“But who will work the counter?”

“It’s not so busy today. And I just finished the ribs. I’ll be fine alone.”

“Well,” he says, “only if you’re sure.” But in the time it takes to say the words, he has already whipped off his jacket and washed up at the back sink, one foot out the door.

The rest of the morning is slow. I close up at twelve thirty, wrap up three sandwiches, and bring them over to the beach. Fede’s on duty in the entrance hut, playing with his phone.

“Look who’s suddenly coming to the beach every day.”

“I’m working on my tan.”

“Nice try. I think everybody knows exactly what you’re working on.”

“What about you? You got your eye on any nannies these days?”

“I told you. I’m taking a break. Why does nobody believe me?”

I look over at the Ukrainians. Yuri’s holding court again, Papà sitting in the place of honor next to him, his pants rolled up, his toes digging into the sand. Zhuki is off to the side making a sand tower with Little Yuri and some of the other boys. I put one of the sandwiches on the counter and hold it down with my hand.

“I need a favor, Fede.”

He looks at the sandwich, then eyes me suspiciously. “What kind of favor?”

“I need to borrow your moped.”

Fede hesitates. After Luca’s accident, he sold the wrecked motorcycle and his other one to a guy in Albenga. They were both Japanese models—hypersports—zero to one hundred in three seconds, and to replace them, he bought a used moped that barely makes it over fifty. When he rides it, he looks like one of those clowns on a toy bike, his legs nearly doubled up.

“No.”

“Come on, Fede. Dai.”

“No.”

“Please? I want to take her up to the meadows, and I’ve got no other way.”

He sighs and shakes his head. “I don’t know, Etto . . .” He looks over at Zhuki. She sees us and waves, hands her shovel off to one of the boys, and comes over to the boardwalk.

“Ciao.” She gives me a one-armed hug around my waist. I let go of the sandwich and plead my case with my eyes.

“Do you swear you won’t go over thirty?”

“Thirty? I won’t make it up the hill.”

“Forty, then. No faster. And both of you better be wearing helmets.”

“Thanks, Fede.”

“I mean it.”

*   *   *

I somehow manage to start it and rock it off the kickstand. We wobble through the alley and onto Via Londra, Zhuki gripping the rack behind her, the front tire rasping against the pavement as I overcorrect. I haven’t driven anything since Luca’s accident, and it bucks every time I touch the brake or the accelerator.

“Are you sure you can’t tell me where we’re going?” she says in my ear as we idle at the stoplight, our helmets clacking together.

“You’ll see.”

The light turns green, and I twist the throttle. She switches her grip to my waist, and I can feel her knees pressing into the backs of mine. I creep around the curves as we drive through town and onto Via Aurelia, the sea on our left, the terraces on our right. No afraid, no afraid, I hear Yuri say in my head. I twist the throttle a little and feel the motor level out beneath me, the rattle of the chain falling into a rhythm. I can feel the breath entering and leaving her body, her weight leaning with mine around the curves.

Shit, God, please don’t let us fly over the cliff. Please? If not for us, for Papà and Yuri.

We pass the disco and Laigueglia, and go around the cape toward the valley of the Dianos. I make a quick apology to Fede as we pass fifty, and I open the throttle all the way. The wind whips at my face and hands, the sun reflecting up at me from the metal tank and the tar in the road. The cars are flying by, the sea unmoving to our left, the sun steady overhead. I think about Luca and the French girl, and my eyes start to water in the wind. Because you know what? I think God, he, she, it, whatever, wants this for us—to ride a moped down the coast in the embrace of a girl. Maybe this is exactly what God kicked us out of the garden for.

We turn inland, and the road becomes narrow and ragged at the edges. They didn’t make this road until Papà was a boy, and everyone had to give up a small piece of their land to do it. It’s nothing but steep rises and hairpin turns snaking through olive groves and along garden walls, dodging around the backs of chicken coops and tiny chapels to the Virgin Mary.

We used to come up to the meadows all the time when we were kids. Especially before Papà and Nonno had our side-by-side apartments renovated and installed the air-conditioning. August was the worst. The mugginess would rise up to our room, soaking into our skin until even the salt of the sea couldn’t wash it away. Sometimes Mamma would leave the shop early and collect us from the beach. She’d pile us into the back of the shop Ape, and we’d stay up in the meadows all afternoon, leaving just enough light to steer back down the hill. I don’t remember the first time or the last, only the habit of it—Luca and I bouncing in the bed of the Ape, the buzz of the motor, and the flush of green that met our eyes as we crested the hill.

Zhuki and I round the final switchback. The hill rears up, then ripples into meadows, the rolling foothills of the Alps in the distance. Zhuki sighs. I cut the motor and let my feet skip along the ground as we coast, the road finally crumbling into dirt. There’s a nice breeze up here, like someone has thrown a bucket of water on the broiling sun.

“I can’t believe it,” she says. She gets off, turning around in wonder and relief. “Who would ever think this is up here? I always thought our villa was the top of the hill.”

“That’s the thing about the terraces,” I say. “They always trick you into thinking you’re finally at the top.”

I dig the remaining two sandwiches out of the seat compartment, along with a blanket and some matches Fede must keep in there for when he’s trying to make nice with some girl. Good old Fede. We spend the rest of the afternoon up in the meadow with no plan, and it’s like being a kid again. We shut off our phones and take off our shoes. Zhuki shows me how to hunt for mushrooms, and I bring her to the stream I remember. We skip stones and build leaf boats, and she shows me what she promises are the most popular Ukrainian children’s games. There’s one that involves chasing and hitting each other with a belt, and one that is like hide-and-seek, only the penalty for being found is to get your arm rubbed until it burns.

“They really toughen the kids up in Ukraine, eh?”

“Most of them have a hard life ahead of them anyway.”

“Do you think you’ll ever go back there?”

“I doubt it.”

“Not even when Yuri’s career is over?”

“I don’t know. Yuri and I have talked about opening a restaurant. But probably not there.”

“What kind of restaurant?”

“Ukrainian food, of course. Vareniki, borscht, blintzes . . . but I would make my restaurant modern. Not so heavy. Euro-Ukrainian. I used to cook at such a place in Kiev.” She picks at the grass, extracting small wildflowers and collecting them in a bunch.

“Why do you have to wait for Yuri? Why can’t you open a restaurant on your own? I’m sure he would loan you the money.”

“But where?”

I swallow hard. “Why not here? In Italy, I mean.”

“Oh, it would be difficult to open a restaurant in Italy. People don’t know Ukrainian food at all, and there are so many good restaurants. Even in the small towns. And then if Yuri moves to a different team?” She pulls a long blade of grass and wraps it around the stems of the flowers.

“You can always visit them.”

“Oh, I cannot imagine this.”

“No?”

“Yuri is my entire family. Little Yuri. Principessa. Ihor. Mykola.”

“Not Tatiana?”

She makes a face. “Not Tatiana. Tatiana and I, we are very different women.”

“Thank God.”

She grins. “Yes. And what about you, Etto-Son-of-Butcher? Do you always want to be a butcher?”

“I don’t even know if I’m a real butcher yet.”

“That’s not what your papà says. He was talking to Yuri the other day and saying how proud he is of you. He says you are a natural.”

“He did?” I try to imagine Papà saying anything remotely like this.

“You know, Etto, I think you’re lucky.”

“Why?”

“You have no questions about your life. You already know the answers. Where will you live . . . what profession will you have. You mustn’t keep asking and wondering what is around the corner. Your whole life is under control.”

“It sounds really sad and pathetic when you put it like that.”

“I don’t mean to say it this way.”

I’ve never talked to anyone like this. With Mamma, I just assumed she knew, when maybe she didn’t, really. And with everybody else, especially in the last couple of years, it was like a punishment I could dole out, that if they couldn’t manage to ask me the right question when I was in the right mood, they didn’t deserve to know anything about me. But as Zhuki and I watch the sun go down over the foothills, I feel an urgency to tell her the things I left unsaid with Mamma and Luca, the things Papà and I can only skirt around.

I stand up and brush the dirt and grass off my culo. “I want to show you something.”

“That’s what all the boys say.”

“You’re funny.”

“What is it?”

“It’s a surprise.”

“A good surprise or a bad surprise?”

“Trust me.”

It’s much harder to steer the moped on the way down, and I have to brake almost constantly to fight the pull of gravity. By the time we reach Via Partigiani, the shadow of the hill swallows us up, the headlight slowly opening the infinite road. I drive up the service road, kill the engine, and coast. The kickstand won’t hold in the grass, so I balance the moped against Luca’s headstone.

“What, you have some new moves or something?”

“I wish.”

I lead her to the liceo door and pull out the keys.

She laughs. “We used to break into our liceo in Ukraine all the time, too,” she says. “We had codes on our doors, and the director always said they were changing them, but they never did.”

I push the door open and flip on the lights in the corridor. They buzz and flicker as Zhuki looks around. She wanders along the class photos and reaches up to touch each one. “Are you in one of these?”

“We never got to take our picture. It closed the year before we graduated.”

“Your father, then?”

I show her Papà’s and Nonno’s pictures, but she lingers on the others, too. The moonlight pools on the wooden floor and casts our shadows on the wall. I lead her down the corridor, but she takes her time, standing on her toes to look into the window of the director’s office and opening the door of each classroom along the way.