The Jukebox Queen of Malta by Nicholas Rinaldi

Author:Nicholas Rinaldi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner Paperback Fiction

Nineteen

THE GLORIOUS TENTH

The submarine, the Lilith, sailed without him.

“Am I going to regret this?” he asked Melita.

Her eyes seemed to dissolve, out of focus. “You should have gone,” she said.

“Yes?”

“I think so.”

But he had stayed. Because of her, mainly, yes, but also because there was a strange attachment, a reluctance to separate from the misery that was Malta. He remembered what Fingerly had said, about missing the 109s on the days when they didn’t attack.

Melita was pensive. “If there is an invasion, do you really want to be here? You want to be a prisoner of war?”

“There won’t be an invasion,” he said, surprised at his own confidence.

“That’s what I used to think. But now—now I’m not so sure.”

She worried for him, fearing the worst. If the parachutes came, it would not be easy.

He looked up at the sky, the azure silence, no planes, no clouds, only the hot blazing sun. So simple, so easy and free.

What if she were made of detachable parts and he could carry pieces of her around all day, in a satchel? A leg, a hand, her avalanche of black hair. Any time of the day, there would be these parts of her for him to touch. At night he could reassemble her and she could be herself again.

He told her, and she thought they might have alternating days: One day he carries parts of her around, the next day she carries parts of him. She wasn’t interested in his warts or his knees, or the calluses on his feet. She wanted his penis in her purse. Or at least his nose.

“You can’t have my nose,” he said.

“Yes I can.”

“No you can’t.”

“Your nose belongs to me.”

“Is that what you think? Is it?”

They both thought, fleetingly, of poor Tony Zebra, whose nose had been damaged by shrapnel when he was on the veranda of the Point de Vue—and who, on Malta or anywhere else, would ever fall in love with him now, with a nose like that?

Melita was so glad that Fingerly was gone, she sold a stack of Jack Teagarden records to raise some cash for Rocco, now that he wouldn’t be getting subsistence wages from Fingerly any more. She sold to a farmer in Dingli, who had become rich selling black-market vegetables to housewives from the surrounding towns, who paid in cash when they could, and with gold rings and bracelets when desperate. The farmer was so rich he was now on a buying spree, snapping up anything that looked to be a good purchase, including Jack Teagarden records, even though he’d never heard of Jack Teagarden and only had a broken windup phonograph that didn’t play. Melita got a fair price for the records, and persuaded the farmer to buy a jukebox from Zammit to play them on, even though there was no electricity on the farm and probably wouldn’t be until the war was over, but at least it was something his neighbors could look at and admire.

* * *

The new Spitfires flew in to Malta on Saturday, May 9.

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