A nasty chill of fear ran up Annarita's spine. Filippo was bound to be right about that. She didn't let him see that she was worried. If she had, it would have been the same as admitting she wasn't so confident about the report. "What could they be doing there?" she said.
"I don't know of anything. I guess you don't know of anything, either," Filippo answered. "Just hope you're right, that's all. I hope you're right, too, because I'm accepting your report, not Maria's. Don't make the League look bad."
Don't make me look bad, he meant. Once he did accept the report, his reputation would be on the line with it, too. The person at the top was responsible for what the people in the organization did.
"I won't, Filippo," Annarita told him, responding to everything under the words as well as what lay on the surface.
"I didn't think you would," he said. "You've got good sense. After I graduate, are you going to head up the league yourself?"
"I've thought about it." Annarita knew it would look good on her record. "Maybe I've got too much good sense to want all the trouble, though, you know?"
"Si. Capisco." He nodded. "I ought to get it. Most of this year's been pretty easy, but when it gets ugly, it gets ugly." He smiled a crooked smile. "I'll bet you'd say yes if Maria were graduating with me."
"Maybe I would." Annarita smiled, too. Filippo was acting nicer than he usually did. "But there's bound to be at least one person like that every year, isn't there?"
"Well, I haven't seen a year when we didn't have one," Filippo admitted. "Pierniccolo, two years ahead of me…" He rolled his eyes. "His father really is a captain in the Security Police, so he had a head start."
"He'll probably end up with a fancy car and a vacation home on the beach by Rimini," Annarita said. Going to the Adriatic for the summer, or even for a bit of it, was every Milanese's dream. Not all of them got to enjoy it. Her family and the Mazzillis went, but they stayed in a hotel, not a place of their own. A red-hot Communist from a Security Police family was bound to have the inside track for things like that.
"I can't help but think…" Filippo Antonelli didn't finish.
That he didn't spoke volumes all by itself. He'd started to say something unsafe and thought better of it. He shook his head. "Let it go."
"I understand," Annarita said. Both their smiles were rueful. People got so they automatically watched their tongues. Most of the time, you hardly even noticed you were doing it. Every once in a while, though… Annarita wondered what it would be like to say whatever she had on her mind without worrying that it would get back to the Security Police.
Somewhere in a police file drawer sat a folder with her name on it. Whatever word informers brought on her went in there. Maria might well go to the trouble of writing out a denunciation. All the same, Annarita didn't think the folder would be very thick. She didn't go out of her way to cause trouble. Nothing the authorities had, wherever they got it from (and the informers you didn't know about, the ones who seemed like friends, could be more dangerous than out-and-out foes like Maria), would make large men in ill-fitting suits knock on her door in the middle of the night.
She hoped.
"I wish-" she began, and then she stopped.
"What?" Filippo asked.
"Nothing," Annarita said, and then, "I'd better head for home."
As she walked out of Hoxha Polytechnic, she knew she'd been right on the edge of saying something really dumb. She shook her head. That wasn't right. She'd been on the edge of saying something risky. Saying risky things was dumb, but what she almost said wasn't dumb at all. She sure didn't think so, anyhow.
I wish it weren't like this. I wish we could speak freely. I wish the Security Police would leave us alone. I wish there were no Security Police.
Tf she did say something like that, what would happen? She'd get labeled a counterrevolutionary. She'd get taken somewhere for what they called reeducation. If she was lucky, they'd let her out after a while. Even if they did, though, her chances for making it to the top would be gone forever.
If she wasn't so lucky, or if they thought she was stubborn, she'd go to a camp after reeducation. She'd probably only get five years, ten at the most-she was still young, so they'd give her the benefit of the doubt. But she'd stay under suspicion, under surveillance, the rest of her life.
Just for saying people ought to be free of the Security Police. For saying people ought to be free, period.
That's not right, she thought. It really isn't. She looked around in alarm, as if she'd shouted it as loud as she could. She hadn't, of course, but she worried all the way home anyway. Maybe she really was a counterrevolutionary after all.
Four
"You're helping me in school," Gianfraneo told Eduardo the next time he walked into The Gladiator.
"Don't say that." The clerk thrust out the index and little fingers of his right hand, holding the other two down with his thumb-a gesture against the evil eye. "Who'd come in here if he thought we were educational?"
"But you are. What would you call it?" Gianfranco pointed to the shelves full of books.
"That stuff?" Eduardo shook his head. "That's only to help people play the games better. Games are just games. How can they teach you anything?"
Gianfranco might not be sharp in school. But he could hear irony, even if he didn't always call it by its right name. "You're trying to fool me," he said now. "Lots of people have learned lots of things from your books."
"Now you know our secret," Eduardo whispered hoarsely. "And do you know what happens to people who find out?"
"Tell me," Gianfranco said, curious in spite of himself.
Eduardo used another gesture, with thumb and forefinger-he aimed an imaginary pistol at Gianfranco. "Bang!" he said.
Even though Gianfranco laughed, he wasn't a hundred percent comfortable doing it. Eduardo was joking-Gianfranco thought Eduardo was joking-but he sounded a little too serious. If The Gladiator had a real secret, he might do everything he could to keep it.
How much was that? How much could people at a little shop like this do if somebody powerful-say, the Security Police-came down on them? Gianfranco's first thought was, Not much. But after a moment, he started to wonder. The Young Socialists' League at Hoxha Polytechnic couldn't be the first set of zealots to notice them. They were still here, though. That argued they had ways of protecting themselves.
But Gianfranco had more urgent things on his mind. "Is Alfredo here yet?" he asked.
Eduardo grinned. "Eager, aren't we?"
"I don't know about you, but I sure am," Gianfranco answered, grinning back. "I know he's tough, but if I beat him, I make the finals, and I've never come close before. That would be a big deal, right?"
"If you think it would, then it would." In a sly voice, Eduardo went on, "Would you get that excited about finishing in the top two in your class?"
"I don't think so!" Gianfranco said. "Are you going to go all Stakhanovite on me? I thought I could get away from all that stuff as soon as I left school."
"You're probably working harder here than you are there," the clerk said.
"Yes," Gianfranco said, and then, in the same breath, "No."
"Which is it?" Eduardo asked. "You can't have that one both ways, you know."
"Maybe I try harder here than I do in school," Gianfranco said. "I wouldn't be surprised. But this isn't work, you know what I mean? I want to come here. I have fun here. Going to school…" He shook his head. "It's like going to a camp. You do it because you have to, not 'cause you want to. They make you do things, and they don't care if you don't care about them. You've got to do 'em anyway." He eyed Eduardo. "Does that make any sense lo you?"
"Some, maybe, but not as much as you think it does," Eduardo answered. "You've never been inside a camp-I know that. But do you know anybody who has?"
"The janitor at our building-he's a zek, I'm pretty sure," Gianfranco said. The word for a camp inmate sounded about as un-Italian as anything could. Just about every European language had borrowed it from Russian, though. There wasn't a country without camps these days, and there wasn't a country without people who'd done their terms.
"Well, ask him whether he'd rather do algebra and lit or chop wood and make buildings and starve," Eduardo said. "See what he tells you."
"I hear what you're saying. But school still makes you do stuff you don't care about and you don't want to do," Gianfranco said. "That's what I don't like."
"Some of that stuff, you end up needing it," Eduardo said. "You maybe don't think so now, but you do."