Don DeLillo - Underworld

"I don't follow the game at all," Bronzini said.

He fell into remorseful thought. The girl appeared again, sullen in a limp blouse and shuffling loafers. Only four tables, theirs the only one occupied. The plain decor, the time-locked thickness in the air, the trace of family smell, even the daughter discontented-all argued a theme, a nonpicturesqueness that Albert thought the priest might note and approve.

"But baseball isn't the game we're here to discuss," Paulus said.

In other shops the priest had made an appreciative show of selecting a pastry from the display case, with moans and exclamations, but was subdued today, gesturing toward the almond biscotti and asking the girl to bring some coffee. Then he squared in his chair and set his elbows firmly on the table, a little visual joke, and framed his head with cupped hands-the player taut above his board.

"I've been taking him to chess clubs," Bronzini said, "as we discussed last time. He needs this to develop properly. Stronger opponents in an organized setting. But he hasn't done as well as I'd expected. He's been stung a number of times."

"And when he's not playing?"

"We spend time studying, practicing."

"How much time?"

"Three days a week usually. A couple of hours each visit."

"This is completely ridiculous. Go on."

"I don't want to force-feed the boy."

"Go on," Paulus said.

"I'm just a neighbor after all. I can push only so hard. There's no deep tradition here. He just appeared one day. Shazam. A boy from another planet, you know?"

"He wasn't born knowing the moves, was he?"

"His father taught him the game. A bookmaker. Evidently kept all the figures in his head. The bets, the odds, the teams, the horses. He could memorize a scratch sheet. This is the story people told. He could look at a racing form with the day's entries, the morning line, the jockeys and so on. And he could memorize the data of numerous races in a matter of minutes."

"And he disappeared."

"Disappeared. About five years ago."

"And the boy is eleven, which means daddy barely got him started."

"Adequate or not, on and off, I have been the mentor ever since."

The priest made a gesture of appeasement, a raised hand that precluded any need for further explanation. The girl brought strong black coffee and a glass of water and some biscuits on a plate.

"The mother is Irish Catholic. And there's another son. One of my former students. One semester only. Bright, I think, but lazy and unmotivated. He's sixteen and can quit school any time he likes. And I'm speaking on behalf of the mother now. She wondered if you'd be willing to spend an hour with him. Tell him about Fordham. What college might offer such a boy. What the Jesuits offer. Our two schools, Andy, directly across the road from each other and completely remote. My students, some of them don't know, they remain completely unaware of the fact that there's a university lurking in the trees."

"Some of my students have the same problem."

Bronzini remembered to laugh.

"But what a waste if a youngster like this were to end up in a stockroom or garage."

"You've made your plea, Consider your duty effectively discharged, Albert."

"Dip your biscotto. Don't be bashful. Dip, dip, dip. These biscuits are direct descendants of honey and almond cakes that were baked in leaves and eaten at Roman fertility rites."

"I think the task of reproducing the species will have to devolve upon others. Not that I would mind the incidental contact."

Bronzini leaning in.

"In all seriousness. Have you ever regretted?"

"What, not marrying?"

Bronzini nodding, eyes intent behind the lenses.

"I don't want to marry." And now it was the priest's turn to lean forward, shouldering down, sliding his chin near the tabletop. "I just want to screw," he whispered electrically.

Bronzini shocked and charmed.

"The verb to screw is so amazingly, subversively apt. But conjugating the word is not sufficient pastime. I would like to screw a movie star, Albert. The greatest, blondest, biggest-titted goddess Hollywood is able to produce. I want to screw her in the worst way possible and I mean that in every sense."

The small toothy head hovered above the table in defiant self-delight. Bronzini felt rewarded. On a couple of past occasions he'd taken the priest into shops and watched him taste the autumnal pink Parma ham, sliced transparently thin, and he'd offered commentaries on pig's blood pastry and sheets of salt cod. The visitor showed pleasure in the European texture of the street, things done the old slow faithful way, things carried over, suffused with rules of usage. This is the only art I've mastered, Father-walking these streets and letting the senses collect what is routinely here. And he walked the priest into the acid stink of the chicken market and pushed him toward the old scale hung from the ceiling with a lashed bird in the weighing pan, explaining how the poultryman gets twenty cents extra to kill and dress the bird-say something in Latin, Father-and he felt the priest's own shudder when the deadpan Neapolitan snapped the chicken's neck-a wiry man with feathers in his shirt.

"If I were not so dull a husband we might sit here and tell stories into the night."

"Yours real, mine phantasmal."

The priest's confession was funny and sad and assured Albert that he was a privileged companion if not yet a trusted friend. He enjoyed being a guide to the complex deposits around them, the little histories hidden in a gesture or word, but he was beginning to fear that Andy's response would never exceed the level of appreciative interest.

"And when you were young."

"Was I ever in love? Smitten at seven or eight, piercingly. The purest stuff, Albert. Before the heavy hormones. There was a girl named something or other."

"I know a walk we ought to take. There's a play street very near. I think you'd enjoy a moment among the children. It's a dying practice, kids playing in city streets. We'll finish here and go. Another half cup."

He signaled the girl.

"Do you know the famous old painting, Albert? Children playing games. Scores of children filling a market square. A painting that's about four hundred years old and what a shock it is to recognize many games we played ourselves. Games still played today."

"I'm pessimistic, you think."

"Children find a way. They sidestep time, as it were, and the ravages of progress. I think they operate in another time scheme altogether. Imagine standing in a wooded area and throwing stones at the top of a horse chestnut tree to dislodge the sturdiest nuts. Said to be in the higher elevations. Throwing stones all day if necessary and taking the best chestnut home and soaking it in salt water."

"We used vinegar."

"Vinegar then."

"We Italians," Albert said.

"Soak it to make it hard and battle-worthy. And poke a hole through the nut with a skewer and slip a tough bootlace through the hole, a lace long enough to wind around the hand two or three times. It's completely vivid in my mind. Tie a knot, of course, to keep the chestnut secured to the lace. A rawhide lace if possible."

"Then the game begins."

"Yes, you dangle your chestnut and I bash it by launching my own with a sort of dervishy twirl. But it's finding the thing, soaking the thing, taking the time. Time as we know it now had not yet come into being."

"I tramped through the zoo every year at this time to gather fallen chestnuts," Bronzini said.

"Buckeyes."

"Buckeyes."

"Time," the priest said.

Across the room the girl filled the cups from a machine. Father Paulus waited for her to slide his cup across the table so he could let the aromatic smoke drift near his face.

Then he said, "Time, Albert. Both of you must be willing, actually, to pay a much higher price. Hours and days. Whole days at chess. Days and weeks."