The Gladiator

Seven

In the Mazzillis' apartment, Gianfranco's father looked up from the report on the latest Communist Party Congress and said, "That cousin the Crosettis have staying with them seems like a nice young fellow."

"I think so, too." Gianfranco was glad to get away from his literature project, even if it meant talking with his father. The assignment was, Write a canto in the style of Dante's Inferno. Which feudal lords, capitalists, and Fascists would you assign to which circles of hell? Why?

How was he supposed to do anything like that? To begin with, he was no poet. Then, Dante's language was almost nine hundred years old now. It lay at the core of modern Italian, but nobody had a style like Dante's any more. Would anybody be crazy enough to ask a modern English-speaker to try to write like Chaucer, or even Shakespeare? Gianfranco hoped not, anyhow.

"Yes, that Silvio seems very friendly," his father went on. "You talk with him like you've known him a long time."

Oops, Gianfranco thought. He had known Eduardo for a while, of course. But it wasn't supposed to show. "He has interesting things to say," Gianfranco answered.

"Good. And it's nice that he plays that game you were teaching Annarita." His father paused, looking for a way to say what he wanted. "If he didn't already know about it, you might have wanted to think before you showed it to him. Annarita's all right, but some people might wonder if you were politically reliable for having it around."

This was the first time he'd said anything about The Gladiator, even in passing. Gianfranco had wondered if he even knew the gaming shop got closed down. There were times when Gianfranco wondered just how connected to the real world his father was. Maybe more than he'd figured. That meant he had to be even more careful than he'd thought.

"It's only a game, Father," he said, as if no other possibility had ever crossed his mind.

"Nothing is only anything." His father sounded very sure of that. Gianfranco wondered what it meant, or if it meant anything. He started to ask. Then he noticed his father was deep in the Party Congress report again.

That meant he had to get back to imitating Dante himself. Rails across Europe had taught him something about dealing with big, complicated projects. If you could break them down into smaller, simpler pieces and tackle those pieces one at a time, you had a better chance than if you tried to tackle everything at once.

So… If he were traveling through the circles of hell, whom would he see? He needed to figure that out first. Then he could decide why they were there. And after that… Well, after that he could try to sound like Dante. He didn't think he would have much luck, but he didn't think anyone else in the class would, either.

Feudal lords, capitalists, and Fascists. The assignment made it plain he needed at least one of each. The Fascist would be Hitler. He'd already decided that. And he'd put Hitler as close to Satan as he could, because Hitler attacked Stalin and the Soviet Union. Probably more than half the class would pick Hitler, but Gianfranco couldn't help that. Mussolini was the other choice, and he didn't do as much.

"Capitalist," Gianfranco muttered, not loud enough for his father to hear him. When you thought of a capitalist, you thought of…

When Gianfranco thought of a capitalist, he thought of Henry Ford. And Ford would definitely do. He made millions of dollars and exploited his workers doing it. Gianfranco had to check a map of Dante's hell to decide which circle to put him in.

The fifth, he decided: the circle of hoarders and spendthrifts. Didn't that say what capitalists were all about?

Now he needed a feudal lord, and one Dante hadn't used. He smiled when Francesco Sforza came to mind. Sforza had ruled here in Milan. The big castle near the heart of town was his creation. Since he'd taken the city by force in 1450, he probably belonged in the sixth circle of hell, that of the wrathful. And Dante had never heard of Francesco Sforza, because the poet was long dead when the soldier of fortune came to power.

I have my people, Gianfranco thought. Now all I've got to do is sound like Dante. That would have been funny if it weren't so ridiculous. He could think of all kinds of people he might be when he grew up. He could imagine himself as a game designer if everything went just right. He could imagine himself as a gray functionary like his father if everything went wrong. But a poet? A poet wasn't in the cards.

Still, he had to try. He could steal some lines from Dante and change names. He could adapt some others. But he still had to write some of his own. He had to think about that old-fashioned Italian, and about the rhythm, and about the right number of syllables in every line, and about what he was trying to say. Ft was harder than patting his head and rubbing his stomach at the same time.

Finally, though, he wasn't too unhappy with what he had. "Do you want to listen to my verses, Father?" he asked.

His father looked at the report on the Party Congress. Gianfranco thought he would say no, but he nodded. "Well, why not?" he answered. "They've got to be more interesting than this thing. Doctors could bore patients to sleep with this, and save the cost of ether."

That didn't mean he was eager to listen to Gianfranco, but he'd said he would. Listening was all that really mattered. Gianfranco did his best imitation of Dante. He'd just started Hitler, whom he'd saved for last, when his father broke out laughing. Gianfranco broke off, insulted. "It's not that bad," he said.

"Scusi. Semi," his father said, laughing still. "I wasn't laughing at the poetry."

"No? What, then?" Gianfranco knew he sounded suspicious-he was.

"When I was in high school, oh, a thousand years ago, we had this same assignment," his father said. "I haven't thought about it from then till now, but we did. And do you know the people I picked?"

A light went on in Gianfranco's head. "Ford and Sforza and Hitler?"

His father nodded. "St. Ford and Sforza and Hitler. So that's why I was laughing. Some of what you wrote even sounds familiar, but I can't prove that-it's been too long. Any which way, though, you're a chip off the old block. Now you can finish."

Gianfranco did. He wasn't sure he liked thinking like his father. Like it or not, he didn't know what he could do about it. Probably nothing. "Well, what do you think?" he asked.

"It's not exactly Dante." His father held up a hasty hand. "Neither was mine, believe me. The only one who was Dante… was Dante. But it does what it's supposed to do, and I think it's good enough to get you a pretty high grade. All right?"

"I guess so." Gianfranco didn't want to admit too much.

His father eyed him. "You've been doing better in school lately, haven't you?"

"Some, maybe." Gianfranco wondered where that was going. Would his father ask him why he hadn't done so well before? That would be good for a row.

But it didn't go anywhere much. His father just said, "Well, I'm glad," and went back to the Party Congress report. Gianfranco'd been ready to argue. Now he didn't have anything to argue about. He felt vaguely deflated as tension leaked out of him.

He'd got rid of the assignment, anyway. He stuck it in his notebook and looked to see what he had to do for history.

"Why can't you telephone your friends-wherever they are- and find out if they're all right?" Annarita asked Eduardo. Silvio, she told herself. He has to be Silvio.

"Well, I will if I have to, but I don't much want to," Eduardo answered. "Even if nobody's dropped on them, the Security Police are bound to be tapping their telephone lines. I don't want to do anything to hurt them, or to give myself away, either."

"Ah." Annarita nodded. "I thought you might have ways to get around the bugs."

"I don't, not with me. They do," Eduardo said. "But they don't use them all the time-what would the point be? So chances are I'd give myself away before they realized who I was. We don't work miracles. I wish we did."

"You have that little computer in your pocket, and you tell me you don't?" Annarita worked an eyebrow. If that gadget wasn't a miracle, she'd never seen one.

But Eduardo shook his head. "The computer can work by itself. If I use the telephone or write a letter, it has to go through the government phone lines or the postal system."

"You don't have your own phones?" Annarita was disappointed.

"Sure we do. There's one in the computer, in fact. It works great in the home timeline, but not here," Eduardo said. "A phone isn't just a phone-it's part of a network. The only network it can be part of here is the one you've already got. We don't have our own satellites-people would notice if we launched one. They'd notice if we built our own relay towers, too, even if we did disguise them as trees or something."

Annarita laughed. He was right, no doubt about it. He and the other people from his home timeline had been thinking about this stuff longer than she had. They had more of the answers worked out than she did.

But one other thing occurred to her. "If you can use your computer like a phone, can you use it like a radio, too?"

"Not… as far off as my friends are, if they're still here," Eduardo said. "And even if I could, the Security Police would be listening. Best thing I can do right now is sit tight and wait for the hullabaloo to die down. Maybe the goons will decide everybody got away and stop being interested in me."

"Maybe." Annarita didn't believe it. "From what Gianfranco said, the Security Police knew you weren't with the others."

Eduardo sighed. "You're right, of course, no matter how much I wish you were wrong. I don't dare take anything for granted."

"Do you want to hear something funny?" Annarita asked.

"Right now, I'd love to hear something funny," Eduardo answered. "What is it?"

"Talking about Gianfranco put it into my head," Annarita said. "I think he's jealous of you." She laughed to show how silly that was.

By the look on Eduardo's face, he didn't think it was even a little silly. He seemed ready to jump up from the sofa and run. "How jealous? Jealous why?" he demanded. "That could be very bad. He's a Party official's kid. If he goes to the Security Police, they'll listen to him, sure as the devil."

"He wouldn't do that!" Annarita could imagine Gianfranco doing a lot of things, but turning informer? She didn't believe it.

"Hmm." Eduardo didn't sound convinced. He didn't know Gianfranco the way she did. But her neck wasn't on the line- at least not directly-and Eduardo's was. He went on, "You didn't answer my question. What's he jealous about?"

"Well, he kind of likes me," Annarita said. "And here you are, staying in the same apartment with me. And you're already grown up and everything, and he's… not finished, if you know what I mean."

"Diavolo!" Eduardo clapped a hand to his forehead. "Will you please tell him nothing's going on? Nothing will be going on, either. Or maybe I should talk to him myself. Si, that'd be better. I'll do it."

"Grazte," Annarita said. "The whole idea is silly, anyway."

"Well… Not as silly as you think, maybe," Eduardo said slowly. "If you were twenty-one, say, instead of seventeen… If I weren't in a jam…" He kept starting sentences he didn't finish. "But you aren't, and I am," he went on, confusing Annarita till she figured out what he meant. "And so, the way things are, nothing's going on, and nothing's going to go on. Right?"

"Uh, right," Annarita said. She wasn't just confused now- she was flustered. She realized Eduardo had paid her a compliment, and not a small one, either. She'd probably never had one, though, that she felt less ready to deal with. If Gianfranco liked her, that was one thing. She knew what she needed to do about it-not much. If Eduardo liked her, or could like her…

Now she was starting sentences and not finishing them. And maybe that was just as well, too.

Gianfranco rolled the dice and moved his locomotive from Berlin toward Vienna. When he got there, he was going to unload beer and fill his train with chocolate for the return trip.

Annarita yawned. "What time is it?" she asked.

"Getting on towards one in the morning," Eduardo said after looking at his watch.

She yawned again. "I'm going to bed. I don't care if tomorrow-I mean, today-is Sunday. I'm too sleepy to play anymore. Good night." She slipped away before Gianfranco could even try to talk her into going on a little longer.

He sighed and shrugged. "We'll just mark everything and pick it up again later on."

"Right." Eduardo took care of that and put the game back in the box. Then he said, "It ought to be pretty quiet out on the street, right? Come on out, why don't you? I've got some stuff I want to talk to you about."

"What kind of stuff?" Gianfranco asked.

"Stuff, that's what." Eduardo got up. "You coming or not?"

"I'm coming," Gianfranco said. "What do you want to say out there that you don't want to say in here?"

Eduardo didn't answer. Whatever it was, he didn't want to say it in here. They went down the stairs together. Somebody from the floor above Gianfranco's was coming up. He'd had a good bit to drink. "Ciao" he said thickly. He reeled on the stairs. Gianfranco hoped he wouldn't trip and break his neck.

It was cool and dark and quiet outside. Well, not too quiet- Milan was a big city. In the distance, car horns blared. Dogs were barking. Somebody yelled at somebody else. But none of that was close. Gianfranco and Eduardo could stand on the sidewalk and not worry about it.

Gianfranco looked up into the sky. Even at one in the morning, city lights washed out all but the brighter stars. But he hadn't come out here to find the Big Dipper. "So what's going on?" he asked Eduardo.

"I'm not trying to take your girl away," the older man said bluntly. "I'm not-all right?"

"Annarita's not my girl," Gianfranco said with a sour laugh. "Ask her if you don't believe me."

"She's more your girl than she is mine," Eduardo said. "That's how it'll stay, too. She's too young for me, for one thing. And I don't belong here. This isn't my world. What I want most is to get back to the home timeline."

He'd said that before, but never so strongly. "You have somebody back there waiting for you?" Gianfranco asked.

"Not… like that, no," Eduardo admitted. "But it's my home. It's where I belong. So I'm not trying to muscle in on you, capisce?"

"I never said you were," Gianfranco answered. True-he hadn't. But that didn't mean it wasn't on his mind.

"All right. But I wanted you to know. You don't have anything to worry about there, anyhow," Eduardo said.

"Thanks." Gianfranco said it even if he wasn't sure he meant it. If Annarita decides she likes Eduardo, what can I do about it? he wondered. But he knew the answer to that-he couldn't do anything. And she might. Eduardo was an older man, he wasn't bad-looking, and he had a genuine mystery hanging over him. What could be more intriguing? And even if she didn't, Gianfranco knew he had other things to worry about. The Security Police, for instance. He shivered, though it wasn't very cold. "Let's go back inside."

"Sure," Eduardo said. "But I wanted you to hear that, and I wanted to make sure nobody else did."

They both turned to walk back up the steps. A police car came around the corner as they did. A spotlight blinded Gianfranco. "Stay right there!" one of the carabinieri called. "Let's see your papers! What are you doing out on the street in the middle of the night?"

Gianfranco's teeth started to chatter. He had his identity card and his internal passport with him. He would no more go outside without them than without his pants. Nobody would, not in the Italian People's Republic, not anywhere. He assumed Eduardo had his papers, too. But would they pass muster?

Both policemen got out of the car. One covered Eduardo and Gianfranco with a submachine gun while the other came up and held out his hand. He looked at Gianfranco's documents first. Nodding, he gave them back. "I know who your father is. But who's this guy?"

"I'm Dr. Crosetti's cousin," Eduardo said, giving the policeman his papers. "I'm staying in their apartment till I find something for myself here."

"He is," Gianfranco said.

"How do you know, kid?" the policeman asked.

"I ought to. We share a kitchen and bathroom with the Crosettis," Gianfranco answered.

The policeman only grunted. He shone his flashlight on Eduardo's papers. "Is he all right?" the other policeman asked. "Shall I radio headquarters?"

No! Gianfranco all but screamed it. That wouldn't do anybody any good. He bit down on the inside of his lower lip. "I don't think so," said the carabiniere with Eduardo's papers. Instead of returning them, he asked, "What are you doing out here at this time of night?"

"Talking about girls," Eduardo answered, and it wasn't even a lie.

The policeman thought it over. After a moment, he decided it was funny and laughed. Even better, he handed back the identity card and internal passport. "Well, Pagnozzi, that's a nice way to pass the time, but do it somewhere else from now on, you hear?"

"We'll do that." Eduardo stuck them in his pockets. "Thanks."

With another grunt, the carabiniere turned to his partner. "They're clean. And we got that drunk an hour ago, so we're on quota. Let's go."

They drove off. Gianfranco noticed his knees were knocking. He tried to make them stop, but they didn't want to. If the policemen hadn't picked up the drunk, would they have hauled him and Eduardo to the station instead? It sure sounded that way.

Eduardo wore a small, tight smile. "Boy, that was fun, wasn't it?" he said.

"As a matter of fact, no." Gianfranco could play the game of understatement, too. Without another word, he went back into the apartment building.

"You did real well," Eduardo told him as they trudged up the stairs. Would the elevator ever get fixed? Gianfranco wasn't holding his breath.

"Maybe I did," he said after a few steps. "I didn't like it."

"Well, who would?" Eduardo said. "Police shouldn't be able to bother you whenever they want to. In a free country, they can't."

As far as Gianfranco was concerned, he might as well have started speaking Korean. "What would stop them? What could stop them?" Gianfranco asked, certain Eduardo had no answer.

But Eduardo did. "The laws would," he said. "If the police do something wrong or bother people they've got no business bothering, they get in trouble."

"How?" Gianfranco still had trouble seeing it. "The police are… the police. They're part of the government. The government can't get in trouble." He might have been saying, The sun will come up tomorrow.

"Sure it can. Why shouldn't it, if it does something wrong? In a free country, you can sue the government. You can sue the police if they beat you up for no reason. And if a court decides they're guilty, they have to pay." Eduardo spoke with a certain somber relish. "It happens now and again. And because it can happen, the government is more careful about what it does."

"People… sue the government?" Gianfranco missed a step. Eduardo grabbed him by the arm and kept him from falling on his face. The idea was so strange, he might have been saying, The sun will come up tomorrow… in the west.

"Why not?" Eduardo seemed to enjoy provoking him. "You live in the Italian People's Republic, don't you?"

"Yes, but…" Gianfranco tried to imagine what would happen if someone tried to sue the government. He didn't need much imagination to figure it out. The Security Police would land on the poor crackbrained fool like a ton of bricks, and that would be that. "What about the Security Police?" he demanded.

"We don't have any, not like that, not to keep track of people who haven't done anything wrong," Eduardo said, and Gian-franco's jaw dropped. Eduardo went on, "We have carabinieri to go after criminals, but that's different. Some people will try to cheat no matter what kind of society they live in."

"I suppose." Gianfranco wasn't sure he would have walked past his floor if Eduardo didn't hold the door open, but he wasn't sure he wouldn't have, either. Eduardo had hit him with too many new ideas, too hard, too fast. He needed some time to get used to them.

"We wanted things to be like that here, too," Eduardo said as they walked down the hall to the Mazzillis' apartment and the Crosettis'. "That's what we were working toward." He shrugged. "Things don't always turn out the way you wish they would. We'll have to come up with something else and try again, that's all."

He paused at his doorway, Gianfranco at his. They nodded to each other and went inside. Gianfranco undressed and got ready for bed-quietly, so he wouldn't bother his folks. He lay down, but sleep was a long time coming. Some of the things Eduardo had said…

A country without Security Police? A country where the people actually had power instead of just giving the state their name? A country where, if people didn't like what the government was up to, they could do something about it? What would that kind of country be like? What would living in that kind of country be like?

Gianfranco didn't know. How could he, when it was so different from everything he'd grown up with? But he knew one thing: he wished he could find out.

After a moment, he realized something else. Without intending to, he'd just turned into a counterrevolutionary. Then he really had a hard time going to sleep.

Walking to school Monday morning, Annarita thought Gianfranco seemed quieter than usual. Had Eduardo talked to him? If he had, what had he said? Annarita didn't want to come straight out and ask. She tried a different question, a safer question, instead: "You all right, Gianfranco?"

He blinked. He thought it over. She watched him doing it. "Well, I'm not sure," he said at last, quite seriously.

She eyed him, exasperated and curious at the same time. "What's that supposed to mean?"

He looked around to make sure nobody was paying any special attention to him. In the Italian People's Republic, that kind of glance was automatic for anyone older than seven or so. Annarita suspected it worked the same way all over the world. Gianfranco said, "Wouldn't it be nice if there were no Security Police?"

"Sure it would," Annarita answered. "And it would be nice if everybody were rich and everybody were beautiful, too. Don't sit up nights waiting, that's all."

He said something rude-rude enough to startle her. Then he turned red and said, "Scusi. But I'm serious. I really am."

"That's nice," Annarita said. "No matter how serious you are, though, what can you do about it?"

"By myself? Nothing," Gianfranco said. "But if all the people united…"

"The Security Police would throw everybody into camps." Annarita finished the sentence when Gianfranco's voice trailed away.

He shook his head. "They couldn't do it to everybody, not all at once. There aren't enough camps for that. Not enough Security Policemen, either."

"Well, in that case the Russians would say we're trying to overthrow Socialism, and they'd invade," Annarita said. "Either they'd build more camps or they'd kill enough people so the ones who are left would fit into the camps they've got."

"But what if the Russian people united, too?" Gianfranco said.

Annarita stared at him. "You weren't drinking wine at breakfast. I saw what you had: cappuccino, just like me." Like most Italian kids their age, they did drink wine with dinner. Nobody here fussed about it, though people from northern Europe and America sometimes squawked.

"I was thinking about… freedom," Gianfranco said. "That gets you drunk like too much vino, but you don't come down again afterwards."

"I guess not, to look at you," Annarita said. "Be careful you don't get in trouble once you're in school."

"I'll try," Gianfranco said.

A car went two wheels up on the sidewalk in front of them to let somebody off. It still blocked traffic. All the drivers behind the offender leaned on their horns. Some of them yelled at him, too. He ignored them. Annarita wasn't much impressed. She saw things like that almost every day. Keeping Gianfranco out of trouble was more important-and more interesting. Now she could say what she needed to say: "All this talk about freedom. You must have been listening to Cousin Silvio." In public, she wouldn't call him Eduardo.

"Well, what if I was?" Gianfranco said. "He likes to talk, you know."

He does not! But the hot retort never came out. If Annarita said something like that, Gianfranco would be sure she was sweet on Eduardo. And she wasn't, not really. So all she did say was, "What else were you talking about?"

"Oh, stuff," Gianfranco answered vaguely. Annarita wanted to clout him. She kept quiet and waited instead. It wasn't easy, but she did it. When Gianfranco spoke again, a few steps later, he sounded almost like a gruff old man: "He said he wasn't going to run off to Sicily with you."

"I should hope not!" Annarita exclaimed. "It's too hot down there in the summertime, and I wouldn't want to have to try to understand that funny dialect." She paused, too. "I suppose they think we talk funny, too."

"Wouldn't be surprised." Gianfranco took a deep breath. He seemed to look every which way but right at her. "Maybe we could go to a movie or something one of these days before too long."

"Maybe we could," Annarita said. Nothing wrong with a movie. "It might be fun."

Gianfranco lit up like a neon sign. He hopped in the air. He seemed so happy, Annarita wondered if he would come down. He did, of course. "Wonderful!" he said. "How about Friday night?"

"All right," Annarita answered, and he lit up all over again. He didn't seem so worried about freedom and overthrowing the Italian People's Republic any more. He didn't seem so worried about Eduardo, either, which was also good.

Would he have blamed Eduardo if Annarita told him she didn't want to go out with him? She hoped she hadn't said yes to keep him from blaming Eduardo. That was no reason to go to a movie with somebody.

What would I have done if Eduardo asked me? she wondered. After a moment, she shrugged. She didn't know, and she didn't seem likely to find out, either. Eduardo made a point- even stretched a point-of being a gentleman. And he was playing the role of her cousin.

Was that just as well, or was it a shame?

Before she could come close to finding an answer, they got to Hoxha Polytechnic. Then she had to worry about Russian prepositions instead. At least with Russian prepositions, you knew when you were right and when you were wrong. This other stuff? It wasn't nearly so obvious.

Gianfranco wanted to use the bathroom mirror to comb his hair. He'd already used it twice, but that didn't matter to him. He wanted to look perfect, or as close to perfect as he could. He was unhappily aware of the distance between the one and the other.

He couldn't use the bathroom right now because Annarita was in it. His mother saw his glance toward the door and smiled at him. "She'll be out soon," she said. "She wants to look nice for you. That's good."

"Is it? I guess so." To Gianfranco, Annarita already looked nice. Why did she need to do anything more?

But when she came out, she looked nicer. Gianfranco couldn't have said how, but she did. He ducked in there, ran the comb through his hair again, and wished he wouldn't have picked this exact moment to get a zit on his chin. He couldn't do much about that, though.

He stuck the comb in his pocket and went out again. "Shall we go?" he said, trying to sound like someone who did this all the time.

"Sure." Annarita seemed to take it for granted. Maybe that would help him do the same. He could hope so, anyway.

"Have fun, you two." Eduardo sounded as if he meant it. Gianfranco hoped he did.

"Grazie, Cousin Silvio," Annarita said.

She and Gianfranco walked down the stairs together. He wondered if his feet were touching the ground. When they got to the bottom, Annarita said, "It would be nice if the elevator worked. Coming down is easy, but going back up, especially when you're tired…" She shook her head.

"If somebody could make a nice profit fixing elevators, it would have been fixed a long time ago," Gianfranco said.

She looked at him as if he'd just told a dirty joke. His ears got hot. Profit was evil-everybody learned that in school. But then she sighed. She looked around to make sure no one could overhear, then said, "Cousin Silvio tells me the same thing. It still feels wrong, though-know what I mean?"

"Si," he answered. "But what we've got doesn't work the way it's supposed to. If it did, the elevator would run. So shouldn't we think differently?"

"I don't know if we should think that different," Annarita said.

"Why not?" he asked.

She gave a perfectly practical answer: "Because we'll get in trouble with the Security Police if we make too much noise about profit. Look what happened to The Gladiator."

"Somebody ought to do something about the Security Police," Gianfranco said. "They just hold us back."

Annarita stopped, right there outside the apartment building. "If you keep talking like that, I'm going back upstairs. It's not safe to be around you. It's not safe to be anywhere near you. Cut it out, all right?"

He wished he could tell her she was worrying too much. He wished he could, but he knew he couldn't. "All right," he said meekly. "Let's go watch the movie."

"That's more like it," Annarita said. "This other stuff… Do you want to end up a zek in a camp?"

There shouldn't be zeks. There shouldn't be camps. If Gianfranco said that, he'd just get in more trouble with Annarita, no matter how true it was. But people who couldn't learn to keep their mouths shut were the kind who did end up in camps. So all he said was, "No," which was also true. Annarita nodded. Not only was it true, it was the right answer-not always the same thing.

The theater was about three blocks from their apartment building. It was showing a remake of the great early Soviet film, Battleship Potemkin. Gianfranco had seen the black-and-white original-with Italian subtitles-in his history class. So had almost everybody. He knew Annarita had. Even though it was more than 150 years old, with acting ridiculously over the top, it still had the power of a punch in the face.

He bought tickets, then sodas and roasted chestnuts when he went inside. When he and Annarita sat down, other people nearby were already crunching away. "Do you think it will be as good as the first one?" he asked her-that was a safe question.

"Remakes hardly ever are," she said. "People who do something the first time really mean it. The ones who do remakes are just copycats."

Gianfranco thought about that for a little while, then nodded. "You say interesting things, you know?" he said.

She shrugged. The house lights dimmed. The newsreel came on. Halfway through a story about a dam going up in South America (and how many of the laborers building it were zeks?), something went wrong with the projector. The house lights came up again. "One moment, please!" someone called from the projectionist's booth.

That moment stretched and stretched. People got restless. "Fix it, you bums!" a man with a deep voice yelled.

"Don't you know how to fix it?" somebody else said. No one from up in the booth answered. Gianfranco feared that meant nobody up there did know.

After a few minutes where nothing happened, a wit sang out: "You must he the jerks who worked on my car!" He won a laugh.

The house lights went down again. Sarcastic cheers rose. The newsreel started once more-upside down. Billions of liters of water seemed ready to spill out from behind the dam. The audience booed and jeered. The newsreel stopped. The lights brightened. "Sorry about that!" a man called from the booth. People went on booing.

At last, after half an hour or so, they got it right and finished the newsreel. It probably got more applause at that theater than anywhere else in Italy. The remake of Battleship Potemkin started. It was a Russian film dubbed into Italian. All the effects were bigger and fancier than the ones in the original. It was in color. The actors didn't ham it up. It should have been better than Eisenstein's version, but Gianfranco found himself yawning, not getting excited.

"You're right," he whispered to Annarita. "It's no big deal."

"Well, so what?" she whispered back. "We got to watch an upside-down newsreel instead. That's more interesting than the movie would have been even if it were good."

She was right again. Gianfranco wouldn't have thought of it like that, but he knew the truth when he heard it. He stopped being so disappointed in Battleship Potemkin and settled down to watch it-and to listen to it. All the boring speeches about the glorious Soviet Revolution, all the propaganda about the wicked Russian landowners and capitalists… Everything seemed different to him now that he knew Eduardo.

He wasn't the only one yawning. People had a lot of practice tuning out propaganda. But being bored didn't seem enough. What would happen if he yelled, We'd be better off if the Revolution failed!?

That was a dumb question. He knew what would happen. They'd grab him and haul him off to a camp. His father would get in trouble, too, for raising a subversive son. However much he wanted to come out and tell the truth, the price would be too high to pay.

Can we ever change things, then? he wondered. If they were ever going to, somebody would have to stand up and tell the government it was wrong. Somebody, yes, but who? Who would be that brave? Gianfranco wished he knew.