The Gladiator Read Free Page A

The past is dead . But the history teacher didn’t want an answer. He wanted Gianfranco to sit down and shut up. Miserably, Gianfranco did.
    â€œWhat is the real answer? What is the right answer?” the teacher asked.
    Teobaldo Montefiore threw his hand in the air. He did everything but sing it out, which would have got him in trouble. Yeah, show off how smart you are, you little suck-up , Gianfranco thought scornfully. If you were really smart, you’d be in the advanced track, not stuck here with me .
    When the teacher called on Teobaldo, he jumped to his feet. “The Vietnam War and the Cuban missile crisis!” he said, squeaking with excitement.
    â€œVery good—so far,” Comrade Pontevecchio said. “Why are they important?”

    All of a sudden, Teobaldo didn’t look so happy. “Because they showed capitalism was doomed?” You could hear the question mark in his voice. He wasn’t sure he was right any more, even if he gave an answer that was almost always safe.
    â€œSit down,” the teacher snapped, and wrote something in the roll book in red. Comrade Pontevecchio looked out over the class. “Anyone?” His scorn grew by the second when nobody took a chance. “Knowing what is only half the battle, and the small half at that. You have to know why. Do you think Marx could have invented dialectical materialism if he didn’t understand why?”
    Nobody said anything. When Comrade Pontevecchio got into one of these moods, keeping quiet was the safest thing you could do. Gianfranco stared down at his desk. People had been trying to drum dialectical materialism into his head since he was five years old, but he still didn’t get it.
    â€œWhen the United States backed down and let the Soviet Union keep missiles in Cuba to balance the American missiles in Turkey, what did that show?” the teacher demanded.
    Gianfranco thought he knew, but he wasn’t about to stick his neck out. Luisa Orlandini cautiously raised her hand. Luisa was pretty. Even if she got it wrong, Comrade Pontevecchio probably wouldn’t bite her head off.
    Probably.
    He nodded to her. She stood up. “It showed the American capitalist regime was only a paper tiger, Comrade Pontevecchio,” she said.
    â€œThat’s right,” he agreed—he’d called the USA a paper tiger himself. “And what does the Vietnam War have to do with this?”
    â€œThe Vietnamese were trying to liberate the south from a
neocolonialist dictatorship, and the Americans tried to prop up the reactionary elements,” Luisa answered.
    â€œYes, that’s also right.” Comrade Pontevecchio warmed all the way up to chilly. “And what happened then, and why?”
    â€œWell, the Americans and their reactionary running dogs lost. I know that,” Luisa said.
    â€œSì. They lost. But how? Why? How could America lose? In those days, it was very rich. It was much bigger and richer than Vietnam. What happened?” Luisa didn’t know. Comrade Pontevecchio waved her to her seat. He looked around for somebody else. When no one volunteered, he pointed at somebody. “Crespi!”
    Paolo Crespi got up. “The Americans stopped wanting to fight, didn’t they, Comrade Pontevecchio?”
    â€œAre you asking me or telling me?”
    â€œUh, I’m telling you, Comrade.”
    â€œWell, you’re right. When the United States brought its soldiers home from Vietnam in 1968, that was another signal to progressive forces around the world that not even the heartland of capitalism would go on defending an outdated ideology anymore. And so the cause of Socialism advanced in Asia and Africa and South America. One war of national liberation after another broke out and triumphed. Meanwhile, what was happening here in Europe. Does the term ‘popular front’ mean anything to you?”
    It was in the textbook. Gianfranco remembered that much, but no