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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.
/ 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. Gian-franco 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."
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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 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] - zanotowane.pl
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