The Gladiator ct-4 Page 7

  Alfredo did everything he could to throw Gianfranco out of Turin. Nothing worked. Gianfranco hung on. After a few turns, he started to prosper. Once, when he was deep in thought about whether he could move more tourists through Turin and build up a hotel business there, he happened to catch Alfredo studying him again. The older gamer looked more thoughtful than he had when they started.

  I can play with this guy, Gianfranco thought. I really can, and he knows it, too. He had no idea whether he would win or lose. It was still much too early to tell. But, in a way, whether he won or lost hardly mattered. Alfredo was one of the best around. Everybody knew that. And Gianfranco was holding his own against him.

  If I can play against Alfredo, I can play against anybody. Gianfranco grinned. He'd come as far as he could-he'd come as far as anyone could-with Rails across Europe. That made him proud. Then it made him sad. Once you'd taken the game as far as it would go, what else could you do?

  "We are lucky today, class," Comrade Montefusco said in Russian. "Two Russians from the delegation in Milan to promote fraternal Socialist cooperation and trade are going to stop by the class. You will get to practice your Russian with native speakers."

  Annarita nodded. Talking with someone who'd grown up speaking a language was the best way to learn it. She grinned. It sure was a chance she hadn't had when she was studying Latin!

  The Russian teacher looked at his watch, then at the clock on the wall, then at his watch again. "They're supposed to be here now, in fact." He sighed. "But one thing I found when I studied in Moscow -Russians are often late, f know the Germans say the same thing about us…"

  Everybody laughed. Germans had made fun of Italian inefficiency even when the two countries were allies against Russia in the Great Patriotic War. The next time an Italian cared about a German opinion would be the first.

  "But Russians are often really late," Comrade Montefusco went on. "What do you suppose this has to do with the way the Russian verb works?"

  Along with the rest of the class, Annarita blinked. That wasn't the kind of question they usually got. Almost everything was right or wrong, true or false, yes or no, memorizing. With those questions, deciding what a student knew was easy. This? This made her think in a way she wasn't used to doing in school. Some of the kids looked horrified. They didn't like anything different from what they were used to. A little to her own surprise, she found she did.

  Hesitantly, she raised her hand. It was the first one up even though she hesitated. The teacher pointed at her. "Comrade, isn't it because the Russian verb isn't so good at describing when something happened in relation to now or in relation to some other time? There's just finished action or unfinished action. The Russian verb to be doesn't even have a present tense. You can't say / am in Russian, only / was or / will be." She'd been amazed and dismayed when she discovered that.

  Comrade Montefusco didn't wear a smile very often, but he beamed now. "Si," he said. "Very good! That's just right. Ever since the glorious October Revolution, the Russians have tried to run more by the clock, the way Western Europe and America do. I have to say it hasn't worked too well. Their own language fights against them."

  "Comrade, why is it the glorious October Revolution when it happened in November?" a boy asked. "Did their verbs make the Revolution late, too?"

  The students laughed. Comrade Montefusco didn't. "No," he answered. "The Tsars were so reactionary, they were still using the old-fashioned Julian calendar, and it was out of phase with the sun and with the rest of the world. The Soviet Union brought in the Gregorian calendar and even improved it, though no one will see a difference between theirs and ours till the year 2700." He paused. "Since our distinguished guests aren't here, let's get on with our regular lessons."

  They'd just got well into the homework on prepositions when the two Russians breezed into the classroom. They didn't apologize for being late. They didn't seem to notice they were. They both looked old to Annarita's eyes. The man had to be past forty, and the woman wasn't far from it. But they had on Italian clothes not much different from those Annarita and her classmates wore when they weren't in uniform. It made him look stupid and her look cheap. She wore too much perfume, too.

  And the way they talked! Comrade Montefusco taught the class proper grammar and the best Moscow pronunciation. If they were going to learn Russian, he said, they should learn it right. The two real, live Russians couldn't have set things back further if they were trying to do it on purpose. The man's accent made him sound like a mooing cow. He stretched out all his O's and swallowed most of the other vowels. The woman sounded more like a Muscovite, but her mouth was so full of peppery-sounding slang that Annarita could hardly follow her. And some of what Annarita couldn't understand made the teacher's ears turn red.

  "Comrades, do you have any suggestions for students learning your language?" Comrade Montefusco asked. He was careful to keep his own pronunciation and grammar as fine as usual.

  Both Russians understood him well enough. "Stoody hard. Woork hard," the man said. "And yoo'll gooo fur."

  The woman winked at the Russian teacher. "Dmitri's right," she said. "And having a pal on the left never hurt anything, either."

  Annarita did understand that bit of slang, and wished she didn't. In Russian, doing things on the right was the legal way, the proper way. The left was the bribe, the black market, the underworld… all the things the glorious Revolution was supposed to have wiped out but hadn't.

  These were the representatives of the greatest Communist republic in the world? Annarita knew Russians weren't supermen and -women, but seeing them with such obvious feet of clay still hurt. And they didn't really want to have anything to do with the class. Why are they here, then? Annarita wondered. But she didn't need to be Sherlock Holmes to find the answer to that. Because their boss told them to show up, that's why.

  They'd come late, and they left early. When the door closed behind them, everyone in the class seemed to sigh at the same time. If any of the students had any illusions about Russians left, that pair would have shattered most of them.

  Comrade Montefusco sighed, too. "Comrade Mechnikov"- the man-"comes from southern Russia, near the Volga," he said. "That accent is common there. We have different dialects here, too-think how much trouble you can have talking with someone from Naples or Sicily."

  He wasn't wrong. Those southern dialects of Italian were so different, they were almost separate languages. Even so… Someone else said it before Annarita could: "The way he talked made him sound stupid. I don't know if he is, but he seemed like it."

  "I know." The Russian teacher spread his hands, as if to say, What can you do? "For whatever it's worth, people in Moscow feel the same way about that accent."

  "And what about Comrade Terekhova?" Annarita asked. "Am T wrong, Comrade Montefusco, or did she sound like a zek who'd just finished her term?"

  "I'm afraid she did." Comrade Montefusco looked even more unhappy than he had before. "There's a whole other side to Russian-mat they call it. It's more than slang. It's almost a dialect of its own, and it's based on… well, on obscenity." He spread his hands again. "The more you deal with Russians, the more you hear it. And yes, it thrives in camps."

  "Can you teach us?" a boy asked eagerly. He wasn't a very good student, but he sure seemed to want to learn how to be gross in Russian.

  But the teacher shook his head. "Foreigners shouldn't use mat or not very much. You almost have to be born to it to do it right."

  "What else shouldn't foreigners do?" a girl asked. It was a legitimate question-and it was a lot more interesting than which prepositions meant what with nouns in which cases.

  "Don't try to drink with Russians," Comrade Montefusco said. "I know most of you drink wine at home. I know you've been doing it since you were bambini. That's fine. Don't try to drink with Russians anyway, not unless you keep a spare liver in your pocket. They have more practice than you do. They have more practice than anybody."

  "Why do they need to drink
so much?" someone else asked. "They rule the roost."

  The Russian teacher looked at the boy as if he didn't have all his oars in the water. "One of the things you'll find out when you get a little older is that everybody has something to worry about. That's how life works."

  Annarita had some notion ol what he wasn't saying. The Russian security apparatus was even bigger and snoopier than the Italian one. Somebody could be watching you every minute of every day. You never knew which minute it would be, either, so you had to watch yourself all the time. If you were on edge so much, wouldn't you want to dive into the vodka bottle to escape for a while?

  "What other things do we need to watch out for, Comrade?" Annarita asked.

  "Don't tell a Russian he's uncultured, even if he is- especially if he is," Comrade Montefusco replied. "It's a much worse insult with them than it is with us. We Italians, we know we're cultured." He preened a little. "But Russians have doubts. They always measure themselves against Western Europeans, and they worry they come up short. Some ways, they're like peasants in the big city. Don't remind them of it."

  "What else?" somebody else inquired.

  Now the Russian teacher frowned. He'd run out of obvious answers-and he'd seen something else that was pretty obvious. "1 think you people are trying to waste time till the bell," he said, but he couldn't quite keep from sounding amused. And then something else did occur to him: "When you're talking with Russians, never remind them Marx said theirs would be the last country where a revolution happened. Never, you hear me?"

  "Why not?" asked a student who was earnest but naive.

  Comrade Montefusco rolled his eyes. "Why not? Because they're sensitive as the devil about it, that's why not. The least that'll happen is, you'll make them angry. If you get a punch in the nose, you shouldn't be surprised. And if you do it in the Soviet Union and there's a knock on your hotel door at midnight, you shouldn't be real surprised about that, either." Two or three people raised their hands then. The teacher frowned. "One more question-and I mean one. Luisa?"

  "Grazie, Comrade," the student said. "How are Russian camps worse than the ones we've got here?"

  "How? I'll tell you how," Comrade Montefusco answered. " Russia has all of Siberia to put zeks in. Everything you've ever heard about Siberia is true, except the real thing is worse-and colder-than you can imagine. And the Russians really, really mean it. Sometimes you'll see security people here going through the motions. Not there. In the USSR, you climb to the top through the KGB. The smart, eager people are the ones who join."

  "Do you have fewer rights in the USSR if you're a foreigner?" Luisa asked.

  That was another question, but the Russian teacher answered it-in a way. "Don't be silly," he said, and then, firmly, "Now-prepositions."

  Annarita followed the lesson only halfheartedly. Don't be silly how? she kept wondering. Only one answer occurred to her. It doesn't matter whether you're a foreigner in the USSR or not. Nobody has any rights there.

  And how was that so different from Italy?

  Alfredo rolled the dice-a nine. He moved his train into Athens and unloaded the soft coal he'd carried from Dresden. "That puts me over the top," he said.

  "Si, so it does," Gianfranco said. He'd just picked up a cargo that would have given him enough cash to win once he delivered it, but his train was still hundreds of kilometers from where it needed to be. He stuck out his hand across the board. "You got me, all right. Congratulations."

  "Thanks." Alfredo shook it. "You played a devil of a game. When I saw you were so young, I thought I'd have an easy time of it. But it didn't work like that. You weren't especially lucky, either. You know what you're doing, all right."

  "I gave it my best shot. I really wanted it," Gianfranco said. "But you're good. I knew going in you were. You didn't make any mistakes I could latch on to. Good luck in the finals. I bet you win."

  "If you were in the other bracket, I'd probably see you there instead of here," Alfredo said. "When the next tournament starts, you'll be somebody to watch out for."

  Gianfranco shrugged. "We'll see what happens, that's all. Some of it's skill, but some of it's luck, too. That's part of what makes it fun, because you can't be sure ahead of time what'll happen."

  "I think so, too." Alfredo sent him a curious look. "1 don't want to make you mad or anything, but you are just a kid. 1 thought you'd be more disappointed if you lost."

  "Part of me is. I wanted to win," Gianfranco said. "But I played as well as I could, so what's the point of getting all upset? And 1 showed myself I could play in your league even if I didn't win."

  "I'm not going to tell you you're wrong, because you're right," Alfredo said. "That was quite a game, and I could see it was no fluke. You've got the right attitude to be a good player, too. You don't get too high when things go well, and you don't get too mad if they don't."

  Gianfranco climbed to his feet. Several joints in his back popped like knuckles. He'd been sitting hunched over in a hard chair for a long time. He hadn't noticed till he stood up. Stretching and twisting felt good. "Let's go tell Eduardo," he said.

  The clerk eyed both of them when they came out of the back room. "Who won?" he asked. "I can't tell by looking at you."

  "He got me," Gianfranco said. "I made him work for it, but he got me."

  "He gave me a big scare," Alfredo said. "With a little more luck, he would have beaten me."

  Eduardo wrote the results on the tournament chart. "Cheer up, Gianfranco," he said. "You've still got the third-place game. You win that, you get a little trophy and a free book."

  "I'm not down," Gianfranco said. "It's like I told Alfredo- I gave it my best shot, and it was pretty good. I know which book I want if I do win the third-place game, too-that one about the way the Prussian Army organized their railroads for war. I bet I can get a lot of ideas out of it."

  Eduardo glanced over at Alfredo. "He is going to be dangerous."

  "He sure is," Alfredo said. "I've got a copy of that one myself. He's right. It gives you all sorts of notions about the best way to put your rail net together."

  "So you've read it?" Gianfranco asked. Alfredo nodded. Gianfranco winked at him. "One more reason for me to want to get my hands on it, then."

  "You sure don't act like somebody who just lost a big game," Eduardo said.

  "I told him the same thing," Alfredo put in.

  "Oh, I wish I'd won," Gianfranco said. "But playing against Alfredo helped me take my game up a notch. I've never seen anybody who makes as good a capitalist as he does-in the game, of course." He didn't want to insult the older man.

  And he didn't. "I understood you, ragazzo," Alfredo said. "Where else can we be capitalists except in games? If we tried to do it for real… Well, we'd get in trouble, so we don't."

  "Here, look-I have to be a capitalist," Eduardo said. "1 have to take money from both of you for sitting at a table in my shop and playing."

  "I don't think you're being a capitalist for that," Gianfranco said. "I think you make a perfect Marxist, as a matter of fact."

  Both the clerk and Alfredo raised an eyebrow. "How do you figure?" Eduardo asked.

  "You have the ability to give us a place to sit, and we have a need to play your games," Gianfranco said. "What could be better?"

  Eduardo looked thoughtful, but Alfredo laughed and wagged a finger at Gianfranco. "You've got it backwards, amico. It's from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs. By that logic, Eduardo ought to be paying us."

  "Works for me." Gianfranco held out his hand, palm up.

  Eduardo had a can of Fanta on the counter. He made as if to pour some soda into Gianfranco's hand. Gianfranco jerked it away. That set all three of them laughing.

  Alfredo said, "I've got a question for you, Eduardo, if I can ask it without getting wet."

  "Well, you can try," Eduardo said, but he made a point of keeping his hand near the can.

  "Where do you get your games?" Alfredo asked. "T've looked all over Milan,
and this is the only place that sells them."

  "Of course it is," Eduardo said. "This is the only place in town where the elves make their deliveries."

  Gianfranco laughed again. He'd got the same kinds of answers when he asked questions like that. But Alfredo frowned and said, "Come on, Eduardo. You can do better than that. What am I going to do, take your answer to the Security Police?"

  "Well, you might," the clerk said. That turned Alfredo's frown into a scowl. You couldn't say much worse about a man than that he was an informer. Gianfranco wondered why that was true, when so many people really were informers. Memories of days gone by, he supposed. But before Alfredo could say anything everybody would regret, Eduardo went on, "You see, the true secret is that we have a sharashka full of zeks down in the basement, and they turn out the games for us."

  That was only a little less unlikely than the story about the elves. A sharashka was a lab where privileged prisoners went on working for the state. Ff they came through, they might get their terms cut. If they didn't, they went back to being ordinary zeks. Somebody who knew his Dante once called sharashkas the first circle of Hell: they were bad, but you knew there were worse places. That was the kind of joke you could repeat only to the people you trusted most. The USSR had got some good work out of sharashkas. The Germans and the Chinese also used them a lot. They weren't so common in Italy and most other fraternal Communist countries.

  Gianfranco clicked his tongue between his teeth. "Now I know you're telling us lies, Eduardo," he said sadly.

  "Oh, you do, do you?" The clerk stood on his dignity. "And how do you know that?"

  "Because The Gladiator hasn't got a basement."

  For some reason, that set all three of them off. They laughed so loud, somebody came out of the back room to complain that players there couldn't concentrate on the games. "And that's important" he finished, as if they were too dense to know it.

  "Sorry," Eduardo said. The irate gamer rolled his eyes and went back to his board and his cards and his dice. Eduardo and Gianfranco and Alfredo laughed harder than ever. That life should get in the way of the games… Well, heaven forbid!