The JUKEBOX QUEEN OF MALTA: A Novel - Hardcover

Rinaldi, Nicholas

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0684856123 ISBN 13: 9780684856124

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 1999

Synopsis

Corporal Rocco Raven, a scared Brooklyn kid assigned to the island of Malta during World War II, falls for Melita, a Maltese jukebox repairwoman, leading to a moving, funny, and, finally, calamitous wartime love affair. 25,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

Nicholas Rinaldi's stories and poems have appeared widely in literary journals here and abroad. He is the author of three collections of poetry -- The Resurrection of the Snails, We Have Lost Our Fathers, and The Luftwaffe in Chaos -- and the novel Bridge Fall Down. He teaches literature and creative writing at Fairfield University in Connecticut, where he resides with his wife, Jacqueline.

Reviews

In fluid prose and with subtle psychological insight, Rinaldi (Bridge Fall Down) writes of wartime love as a kind of complex anesthetic, or as a soul-saving form of amnesia during violent times. During the early years of WWII, U.S. Army Corporal Rocco Raven is sent to the small Mediterranean island of Malta on a vague intelligence mission concerning wire taps. Because of its key geographic position between Sicily and Africa, Malta has been subjected to daily Italian and German bombardments, and it seems that the only person keeping his head clear of falling rubble is Roccos commanding officer, shifty Jack Fingerly, who dresses inappropriately in a Florida sports shirt and disappears when the going gets bad. Walking along pitted streets lined by gutted buildings, Rocco meets and immediately falls in love with Melita Azzard, a beautiful, green-eyed Maltese woman who drives a pink Studebaker hearse, delivering her cousin Zammits handmade jukeboxes to the many bars that cater to English and American troops. Rocco learns Maltese history from Nardu Camilleri, whose national pride drives him to vainly shoot at enemy planes with his outdated rifle. As the conflict accelerates, Rocco and Melita occasionally manage to escape, driving through Maltas rocky terrain and swimming naked in the ocean, and Rocco hopes for a future that sanctifies their love. Readers may find echoes of Louis De Bernieress Correllis Mandolin here, in the juxtaposition of local history, island romance and senseless violence, but Rinaldis voice is distinct in its honest portrayal of a peoplelong deprived of food, information and entertainmentstruggling to reconnect to the world. While sometimes the plot momentum slows with long-winded dialogue, this is a compelling tale of lovers straining to hear the music through the din of a war-ravaged planet.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The influences of Joseph Heller's classic Catch-22 and Louis de Bernieres' recent Corelli's Mandolin are rather too blatantly present in this otherwise well-constructed and quite likable second novel by poet and author Rinaldi (Bridge Fall Down, 1985). The story recounts the awkward coming-of-age of Corporal Rocco Raven, a young Brooklynite assigned to an intelligence unit based on the island of Malta, under German and Italian air attack, in 1942. Rocco is an engaging innocent, a well-meaning Candide (or Yossarian, for that matter) who can't find the Major to whom he's supposed to report, can't understand the complex wheeler-dealer patois of his superior officer, Captain (later Major) Fingerlyand can't resist the ripe erotic allure of Melita Azzard, the forthright Maltese girl who delivers and services the jukeboxes her resourceful cousin Zammit peddles to bars that cater to American and British military men. Rocco's brief encounter with Melita, inevitably destined to end when his unit is reassigned, is charmingly portrayedand both the wry energy and the bittersweet transience of their union are paralleled by several beguiling comic creations, including cousin Zammit's hopeless infatuation with the reigning Miss Sicily, the combative fury of an indignant villager (Nardu Camillen) who loudly celebrates Malta's (nonexistent) military prowess, and the paradoxical lust for life exhibited by US bomber pilot Tony Zebra, ``an intuitive genius, with a nose better than radar and an uncanny knack for knocking planes down.'' Yet beneath the manic comedy here runs a steady undercurrent of destructiveness: the bombs never stop falling, and the end of Rocco's idyll looms unmistakably ahead. If Heller hadn't existed, we might be calling this a pretty terrific novel. Then again, in a universe without Catch-22, it's doubtful that The Jukebox Queen of Malta could even have been written. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Rinaldi's second novel, a wartime love story set in Malta during the German-Italian siege of 1942, follows the serendipitous military life of Rocco Raven, an army radioman from Brooklyn, sent to Malta by mistake to work for the deep-secret branch of army intelligence. There he is under the command of the shady and mysterious Fingerly, whose underground connections run from Gibraltar to Cairo and who eventually has Rocco unknowingly spy on the British. The real tale is Rocco's relationships with the islanders, especially Melita, with whom he falls in love. Throughout the island, Melita repairs jukeboxes, made by her older cousin Zammit, who uses whatever material he can scavenge from the bombing raids. With the ever-increasing shortages and imminent death from the Italian and German bombers, the novel evokes a sense of fatalism without falling back on the usual war-story triteness. And one is never so comfortable with Rocco and Melita's love affair as to decide beforehand that it is either doomed or triumphant because the novel's reality, the war, transcends those notions. Frank Caso

Although influenced by Joseph Heller's Catch-22, Rinaldi's World War II novel stands on its own unique merits. Fantastical with a touch of dark humor, it's both a moving love story and a gripping portrait of a tiny island under siege. (LJ 5/1/99)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

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 planes, the stone huts fractured and smashed, and the burning remnants of the Wellington, its big

Edition details

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0684856123
• ISBN 13: 9780684856124
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 368