Beneath a Scarlet Sky

by Mark T. Sullivan

men arguing over nothing but the sheer Italian love of verbal battle and mock outrage.

He was dizzyingly high up the mountain now, felt a rush of vertigo and almost lost his grip on the rock. That scared him half to death. He couldn’t fall. He couldn’t live through a fall. Have faith. That thought was enough to drive Pino up the chimney and onto the ledge, where he gasped with relief and thanked God for helping him.

really loving the hiking commentary. such a beautiful portrayal of how rigorous exercise demands a flow state. it is necessary in order to silence the mind, stay on track, not get hurt, and feel into your body. in these moment of flow we can access massive amounts of faith

“But we can’t stop loving our fellow man, Pino, because we’re frightened. If we lose love, all is lost.

well, my young friend, how can you survive what life throws at you if you cannot laugh and love, and are they not the same thing?”

The Alps had taught him not to fret and whine at difficult circumstances. It was a waste of energy.

Wordlessly, he ate two helpings of his aunt’s risotto, and then described everything that had happened to him during the course of his day with General Leyers.

This is the bizarre underwriting that I can’t grasp. We lived every detail in the avalanche but we really have no idea how he’s feeling post slave exposure, Mussolini translation, witnessing of a bombing and a friends death, and his best friend hating him

All we really know of him is his size, his appetite for both Anna and food, and how he feels about the weather. Disappointing 😅

His first happy thought was that Anna had come down to feed him again.

hahaha so Italian male coded

Anna put her finger across Pino’s lips, gazed into his eyes, and said, “Someone very wise once told me that by opening our hearts, revealing our scars, we are made human and flawed and whole.” He felt his brows knit. “Okay?” “I’m not ready to reveal my scars to you. I don’t want you to see me human and flawed and whole. I want this . . . us . . . to be a fantasy we can share, a diversion from the war.”

“Good,” Anna said. “I’m a student of happiness, you know. It’s all I really want—happiness, every day for the rest of my life. Sometimes happiness comes to us. But usually you have to seek it out. I read that somewhere.” “And that’s all you want? Happiness?” “What could be better?” “How do you find happiness?” Anna paused, then said, “You start by looking right around you for the blessings you have. When you find them, be grateful.”

“Then refind your faith in mankind in your love of Anna, and build your strength through your love of God.

He choked back his emotions, forced his mind to put a wall around his memories of the battle. That wall held as he showed his documents to the sentries in the lobby of his apartment building, and when he rode the birdcage past the Waffen-SS soldiers on the fifth floor, and as he dug in his pocket for his keys. When he opened the apartment door, he thought he’d step inside an empty apartment, fall to the floor, and let it all go.

ooo what is this? A glimpse of style? 70% of the way through?

These questions went round and round in Pino’s head until he couldn’t take it anymore. He moved through the lightly falling snow toward a hedgerow of ornamental cedar trees that flanked the parking area. He stopped and took a piss in case any of the other drivers were watching, and then pushed through the cedars and disappeared.

The Forrest Gumpiness is Forrest Gumping. This is WILD - who would risk this? Sullivan just needs Pino present at his 473927494 crucial war event.

“I haven’t asked about Uncle Albert. You saw him this morning in San Vittore, yes? How is he?” “He’s lost weight, which isn’t a bad thing,” Aunt Greta said, smiling wanly.

hahahaha if this isn’t Austrian as hell

For many hours on that hill that day there was little sound save that of spring birds and insects, and a warm breeze carried the scent of fields under plow. It all made Pino realize that the earth did not know war, that nature would go on no matter what horror one man might inflict on another. Nature didn’t care a bit about men and their need to kill and conquer.

Other church bells began to peal, and soon it all sounded like Easter morning. Then, without warning, and for the first time in nearly two years, streetlamps all around Milan flickered on and brightened, banishing the night and the city’s long misery in the shadows of war. Pino blinked at how bright the lamps were, and how they made Milan’s ruins and scars stand out scorched and livid. But the lights were on! And the bells were ringing! Pino felt an enormous sense of relief.

Easter was a good choice instead of any given Sunday

“To be young and in love. Isn’t it remarkable that something like that can happen in the middle of a war? It says something about the inherent goodness of life, despite all the evil we’ve seen.”

When he roused himself, the aria was into its second verse. Canio, the heartbroken clown, was telling himself to go on, to put on a mask and shield his inner pain.

He bowed his head, understanding that this was between God and . . . The aria of the heartbroken clown echoed in his ears and Anna crumpled and fell again, and again, and . . . in a matter of seconds, his faith in God, in life, in love, and in a better tomorrow drained away to empty.

Previously the story was severely stylistically stunted. I’m thinking now Sullivan was not going to fill in the blanks of the emotions that Pino was not allowing himself to feel. He was escaping in Anna and the hope of their happy ending so all we really knew of Pino were his immediate physical needs. Now the illusion has evaporated and suddenly we have cadence and rawness

“Faith is a strange creature,” Schuster said. “Like a falcon that nests year after year in the same place, but then flies away, sometimes for years, only to return again, stronger than ever.”

In a wavering voice, he said, “I can’t talk about it. I can’t think about it anymore, and I’m not hungry. All I want to do is sleep.” He was shivering as if it were the middle of winter again.

He’s not hungry now that his not suppressing

Pino’s head swung slowly back and forth. “But where will I go to . . .” “See her?” his father said. “You go to where you were both happiest, and she’ll always be there. I promise you that.”

the long wall of the Dolomites, the grandest of God’s cathedrals in Italy: limestone spire after limestone spire after limestone spire, eighteen of them soaring thousands of meters toward heaven and looking for all the world like an enormous crown of pale gray thorns.

He would pursue happiness above all, and he would do so con smania.

On the slopes, teaching, he found his greatest happiness and passion in life. He taught skiing as a form of joyful fun and creative adventure.

We never know what will happen next, what we will see, and what important person will come into our life, or what important person we will lose. Life is change, constant change, and unless we are lucky enough to find comedy in it, change is nearly always a drama, if not a tragedy. But after everything, and even when the skies turn scarlet and threatening, I still believe that if we are lucky enough to be alive, we must give thanks for the miracle of every moment of every day, no matter how flawed. And we must have faith in God, and in the Universe, and in a better tomorrow, even if that faith is not always deserved.”