Jukebox Queen Of Malta: A Novel - Softcover

Rinaldi, Nicholas

 
9780684867427: Jukebox Queen Of Malta: A Novel
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0684867427 ISBN 13: 9780684867427
Verlag: Simon & Schuster, 2000

Inhaltsangabe

The Jukebox Queen of Malta is an exquisite and enchanting novel of love and war set on an island perilously balanced between what is real and what is not.
It's 1942 and Rocco Raven, an intrepid auto mechanic turned corporal from Brooklyn, has arrived in Malta, a Mediterranean island of Neolithic caves, Copper Age temples, and fortresses. The island is under siege, full of smoke and rubble, caught in the magnesium glare of German and Italian bombs.
But nothing is as it seems on Malta. Rocco's living quarters are a brothel; his commanding officer has a genius for turning the war's misfortunes into personal profit; and the Maltese people, astonishingly, testify to the resiliency of the human spirit. When Rocco meets the beautiful and ethereal Melita, who delivers the jukeboxes her cousin builds out of shattered debris, they are drawn to each other by an immediate passion. And, it is their full-blown affair that at once liberates and imprisons Rocco on the island.
In this mesmerizing novel, music and bombs, war and romance, the jukebox and the gun exist in arresting counterpoint in a story that is a profound and deeply moving exploration of the redemptive powers of love.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Nicholas Rinaldi is the author of three previous novels (Bridge Fall Down, The Jukebox Queen of Malta, and Between Two Rivers) and three collections of poetry. His work has been widely reviewed and earned many awards in the United States and abroad. With his wife, Jacqueline, he currently resides in Connecticut. Please visit his website at NicholasRinaldi.net.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter One: Buy Lace -- Save Malta

They had names for the wind, for the different gusts and breezes that blew across the island. There was a wind that brought rain in October, and that was good, relief from the heat and the dust and the merciless sun that beat down through the long, torrid summer. But there were other winds, less welcome. The worst was the xlokk, which began in the Sahara and blew across the sea, picking up moisture and bringing hot, humid weather that sucked the breath from your lungs and brought on lethargy, inertia, frayed nerves.

When Rocco was told he was being sent to Malta, he recognized the name, Malta, but had only the fuzziest notion where it was -- somewhere out there, far off, north or south, in a hazy distance, as dark and mysterious as the name itself, which he repeated over and over, hearing the strangeness, almost tasting it: Malta, Malta, Malta.

It was, they told him, in the middle of the Mediterranean, just below Sicily. It belonged to the British, and -- the thing he didn't want to hear -- it was being bombed day and night by the Germans and the Italians.

He knew nothing about the winds, the majjistral and the tramuntana, the grigal and the scirocco, blowing through the green clumps of cactus and the sun-scorched carob trees, nor did he know about the rows of houses and tenements made from blocks of limestone that were quarried on the island. The limestone was soft enough to cut with a saw, but in the open air, baked by the sun, it hardened, shading to a rich golden brown.

It was early April when they told him to gather his gear for Malta. There was an American team over there, a major and a few lieutenants, who needed a radioman. They were doing liaison work, talking with the British, who were having a hard time of it with the bombing, hanging on by their fingernails. They'd already moved their ships and submarines out of the harbor, to safer waters, off to Egypt and Gibraltar.

"Why me?" Rocco said to the sergeant who handed him his orders.

"Because you have such frantic brown eyes," the sergeant said, with no trace of a smile.

They put him aboard a Liberator and flew him to Gibraltar, where they gave him cheese and Spam in a sandwich, and a beer, then shipped him out on a British bomber, a Wellington, loaded with sacks of mail, and ammunition for the Bofors antiaircraft guns.

Rocco rode in the nose, with the front gunner, catching a view of the sea through the Plexiglas -- a thousand miles of water passing beneath them, from Gibraltar all the way to Malta. The crew was exhausted, making the long run daily, back and forth, sometimes twice in a day. The gunner slept the whole way, undisturbed by the roar of the big Pegasus engines. From ten thousand feet, Rocco watched the wakes of freighters and warships, white scars on the water.

The plane entered a long cloud, and when they emerged, back into clear sky, Malta lay far to the left, a dark pancake on the sea, the electric blue of the water turning to a clear vivid green where it rimmed the island. The Wellington seemed to hang, unmoving, as if the distance to the island was too great to overcome.

As the pilot banked, correcting for drift, they were hammered by turbulence, the wind toying with them, bouncing them around. Then, abruptly, they hit a downdraft and the plane plunged, dropping in a long, slanting dive toward the island, a chaotic downward slide, as on some desperate magic carpet hopelessly out of control. The gunner, asleep in his harness, never knew a thing, but Rocco, unbelted, was hoisted in the air and pinned to the top of the cabin, unable to move -- unable to think, even, it was that sudden -- staring straight ahead through the Plexiglas as the island rose to meet him: streets, roads, church domes, dense clusters of stone buildings, small green fields crossed by stone walls, and smoke, plenty of smoke.

Then, as suddenly as it had begun, it was over. The propellers bit air again, and as the plane pulled up out of its long fall, Rocco was thrown to the floor, grabbing for something to hold on to, but there was nothing.

They put down at Luqa aerodrome, the largest of the three airfields, and it was a rough landing, the plane bouncing and swerving on the runway. Only a half hour earlier, the field had been raided by a flight of Stukas. On the ground, planes and trucks were burning, coils of black smoke rising thickly from the wreckage.

Carrying his duffel bag over his shoulder, Rocco trudged along toward a stone hut, the smell of the fires catching in his throat. Before he was halfway there, a siren sounded, and when the crew from the Wellington broke into a run, Rocco ran too, but he stumbled and went down hard. When he pulled himself up, back on his feet, the crew was gone, and he was alone on the tarmac.

In the weeds at the edge of the field, a tall figure in slacks and a Florida sportshirt, lanky, with thick dark hair, was urging him on, waving with both arms. Rocco scrambled, and leaving the duffel where it was, ran like hell, the roar of an attacking Messerschmitt loud in his ears. As he neared the edge of the tarmac, again he went down, tripped this time by a pothole, and the Florida shirt bent over him and, half-dragging, half-lifting, pulled him into the safety of a slit trench.

Rocco was breathing hard. "Close," he said, feeling a weird mix of fright and exhilaration, a wild alertness brought on by the proximity of death. It was his first time in a war zone, under attack, and what he felt, besides the fear and the terror, was personal resentment and a flash of anger, because if somebody was trying to kill him, actively and deliberately trying to do him in, what else was it but personal?

The Messerschmitt turned, a quick loop and a roll, and when it came back across the field now, its guns ripped into the parked Wellington, and Rocco watched, amazed, as the plane split open and blew sky-high, the cargo of antiaircraft shells spewing light and color and a riot of noise in the gathering dusk. It wasn't just one Messerschmitt up there, but three, coming and going, strafing at will.

"I'm Fingerly, Jack Fingerly," the Florida shirt said. "You're Kallitsky, right?" The voice was American, a smooth baritone raised almost to a shout while the 109s swept back and forth across the field.

"No -- I'm Raven," Rocco answered, noticing the lieutenant's bar pinned to the collar of Fingerly's shirt.

"They were supposed to send Kallitsky. What happened?"

"I don't know a Kallitsky."

"You're reporting to Major Webb?"

"Right. But if you're expecting Kallitsky, I guess I'm the wrong man." He was thinking -- hoping -- they would put him on a plane and fly him right back to Fort Benning.

"No, no," Fingerly said, soft and easy, with the barest hint of a drawl, "if you're here, you're the right man. Welcome to I-3, you're replacing Ambrosio."

"What's I-3?"

Fingerly arched an eyebrow. "Don't you know?"

Rocco had no idea.

"Intelligence," Fingerly said. "I-3 is Intelligence."

"I thought Intelligence was G-2."

"It is, but even Intelligence needs somebody to tell them which end is up. I-3 is the intelligence inside Intelligence. Didn't they tell you anything back there in Georgia?"

"They said Major Webb would fill me in."

"Major Webb is dead."

"When did that happen?"

"A bomb got him, yesterday. He was having a pink gin at his favorite bistro, in Floriana. I kept telling him, the gin in St. Julian's has more zing to it, more sass, but he wasn't a man to listen. He'd be alive today. Anyway, we've got a lot of work ahead of us, Kallitsky, I hope you're up to it."

"Raven," Rocco said, clinging to his name.

The 109s were gone now, and he glanced about, scanning the devastation -- the bomb craters, wrecked...

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Verlag
Simon & Schuster
Erscheinungsdatum
2000
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0684867427
ISBN 13 
9780684867427
Einband
Taschenbuch
Auflage
1
Anzahl der Seiten
372
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV
info@simonandschuster.nl

Herculesplein 96
Utrecht
3584 AA
Niederlande

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