Harry Turtledove - The Gladiator

"You sure know some nice people," Gianfranco remarked.

"Si. And I know Maria, too," Annarita said.

That was funny and sad and true, all at the same time. "1 hope she can't do anything worse than keep you from being president," Gianfranco said.

"I'm not even sure she can do that," Annarita answered. "She probably means she'll run against me, and everybody will be afraid to vote for me because I was wrong. Maybe yes, maybe no." She waggled her hand. "She doesn't realize she scares people to death herself. Fanatics never think they're fanatics, but they are anyway."

"If we could all see ourselves the way other people do…" Gianfranco said.

"There's a poem about that in English." Annarita frowned. "I read it for European lit. They translated it into a funny mountain dialect-the notes said the English was in dialect, too."

He stared. "How do you remember stuff like that?"

"I don't know. 1 just do." Annarita stared, too, imitating his expression. He laughed. He must have looked pretty silly. "How come you don't?" she asked.

Gianfranco hadn't thought about it like that. "Most people don't, I bet," he said.

"That doesn't make it wrong if you do," Annarita said, which struck Gianfranco as being true and not true at the same time. If you got too far out of step with what most people did and thought, you'd probably end up in trouble.

When he said so, Annarita frowned. "You shouldn't, unless you hurt somebody or something."

"I didn't say anything about what should happen," he answered. "T just said what would."

She looked at him as if he'd grown another head. "You know what?" she said. "You sound like my father. I never expected that."

"Neither did I!" Gianfranco exclaimed. Not only did he not expect it, he didn't much like it.

That must have shown on his face, because Annarita said, "Don't worry. It probably won't happen again soon."

"I hope not!" Gianfranco said. "I mean, I like your father and everything, but I want to sound like me, not like him."

To his relief, Annarita said, "Well, that's probably good."

He didn't have to cram any more. Neither did Annarita. They celebrated by going to see a remake of The Grapes of Wrath. It might as well have used a sledgehammer to drive home how wicked and corrupt American capitalism had been. Bang, bang, bang-each point thudded home, subtle as an earthquake.

"The book was better," Annarita said when they came out.

"I wonder if there's ever been a movie that was better than the book," Gianfranco said.

Annarita thought for a moment. "I wouldn't bet on it."

"Neither would I," Gianfranco said.

They stopped and had gelato to get the taste of The Crapes of Wrath out of their mouths. Then they went back to their building and trudged up the stairs to their apartments. "I do wish somebody would fix the elevator," Annarita sighed.

"If somebody made money doing it-" But this time Gian-franco stopped before he really got going. He couldn't make himself believe anything like that would happen here, not any time soon.

"Well, it was nice even if the movie wasn't everything it might have been," Annarita said as they paused in front of her front door.

Did she expect him to kiss her? The only way to find out was to try. When he put his arms around her, she didn't try to push him away. And when he kissed her, she kissed him back. That was all good. That was all wonderful, in fact.

"Good night," he said after reluctantly ending the kiss. "We'll have to do this again soon." Did he mean go out again or kiss some more? All of the above, probably.

"Sure. Why not?" Annarita said, and went inside.

Gianfranco didn't think his feet touched the floor once as he walked the handful of steps to his own apartment.

Monday after finals. Judgment Day, people called it, even if the Italian People's Republic officially looked down its nose at religion. A year's work, there in black and white. If you did well, you were glad to see it proved. If you didn't…

Annarita knew she'd worked hard. She hoped it would pay off. Even so, she worried. She couldn't help it. Some people had a Che sera, sera attitude-whatever will be, will be. She wished she could feel that way, but didn't expect she ever would.

Into Russian she went. Because it was her first class, she got her report card there. Then she had to turn it in again so Comrade Montefusco could write her mark on it. Giving it to her with the grade already written in would have been more efficient. Teachers didn't do it that way. Why not? Because they didn't, as far as she could tell. Maybe there was some obscure rule against it. Maybe nobody in the bureaucracy cared about being efficient. She figured it was about fifty-fifty either way.

Back came the report card, this time with a grade. An A- she breathed a sigh of relief. She hadn't messed up the final, then. A few other people looked happy. A few looked disappointed or angry. Most seemed to have got about what they'd expected.

"Comrade!" A boy raised his hand.

"Si, Abbaticchio?" The teacher was always polite.

"Why did you give me a C? I need at least a B+ if I'm going to get into the university I want to go to."

"Well, Abbaticchio, maybe you should have thought more about that during the year, not when all the work is done and it's too late to change anything."

"But I need a B+!" The way Abbaticchio said it, someone-maybe God, maybe the General Secretary of the Italian Communist Party-had promised him the grade.

Comrade Montefusco shrugged. "I'm sorry. That's not what you earned."

"You mean you won't change it?" The boy sounded as if he couldn't believe his ears.

"I'm afraid so," the teacher answered.

Abbaticchio turned red. "You think you're sorry now? Wait till my father gets through with you! I'm not going to let some miserable flunky of a teacher mess with my life."

"I have had terrorist threats made against me before," Comrade Montefusco said calmly. "I am still here. I expect to be back after the summer break, too."

186 Harry Turtledove

"You don't know who my father is," Abbaticchio warned. "He took down The Gladiator, so he can sure take you out."

"What on earth is The Gladiator?" the Russian teacher said. "There haven't been any gladiators in Milan (or almost two thousand years."

The angry student rolled his eyes. Several others in the classroom whispered behind their hands. Annarita didn't, but her heart beat faster. So Abbalicchio's father was a big shot in the Security Police, was he? If he found out about Eduardo… Cousin Silvio, she told herself fiercely. He's Cousin Silvio.

No matter how Abbaticchio blustered, Comrade Monte-fusco wouldn't change his grade. When the bell rang at the end of the shortened period, Abbaticchio stormed out of the classroom. Some of the things he said would have got him suspended, or maybe expelled, any other time. Students had some license on Judgment Day. The authorities knew the kind of pressure they were under. Did they have that much license? Annarita wouldn't have thought so, but the teacher didn't call Abbaticchio on it.

Now all I need is for him to get together with Maria Tenace, Annarita thought. That would really make a mess of things, wouldn't it? She had no idea if they knew each other. She didn't keep track of who their friends were. She wouldn't have guessed either one of them had any friends.

She sighed. All she could do was try not to draw attention to herself. Usually, that was easy for her. Now, when she needed it to be easy, it wasn't. How unfair was that?

She didn't quite get straight A's. Her dialectics teacher didn't believe in giving them. People said Karl Marx himself couldn't get an A in that class. People also said the teacher had given an A once, and the girl who got it fainted and (ell over and split her forehead open. Annarita didn't believe that. As far as she could tell, the teacher had always been the way he was. She wasn't so sure about Marx.