LIGHTNOVELONLINE 254 Dante’s Widow
Diana swiped through the pages of the document on her tablet, pausing at what amounted to random so that she may select one of the items that grabbed her interest. This was something she had asked Arc to compile, a few lists of hundreds of movies and episodic shows that fell into one of the genres Diana had provided. They needed to be relatively easy to understand without much dialogue,
The slots for space opera and high fantasy had obviously been occupied by her favorite trilogies, with adventure being taken up by the last of the holy trilogy of trilogies, Indiana Jones. She had included a few other famous trilogies to the number for the fun of it, such as the Bourne for action mystery, the Matrix for cyberpunk sci-fi, Rocky for drama, Rambo for action, Terminator for dystopian sci-fi, The Sum of Suns for space sci-fi, and Pirates of the Caribbean because it was the best comedy she could see the others understanding.
That Godfather was also in the running, but Diana thought they required too much of a prerequisite knowledge of a specific culture of a region they didn't even know existed. In a similar vein, she would have loved to add franchises such as Austin Powers and the Naked Gun, but their comedy and plot relied a lot on understanding English and knowledge of things none of them had been exposed to. They also lacked the visual spectacle of the others. This wasn't to imply that the other trilogies didn't fit Diana's conditions as well, but at the current rate it was basically nothing but trilogies. She didn't know how long this voyage of theirs was going to be, but some of the standalone titles deserved love as well.
"It's a Wonderful Life?" Diana tilted her head. "Isn't that from the 1940's?"
"1946, to be exact. Given the information you have provided me about the Holifanians, I believe that providing a time setting they may have some level of familiarity with will be beneficial."
"Hmm, maybe. I do have to wonder if they ever had a Great Depression equivalent, or if they have a Christmas. The angel aspect might be hard to pick up on without a firm grasp of English, same with the whole erased from the world concept." Diana rubbed her lip. "Meh, lets include it anyways. Besides, this is mostly for Titanyana."
"Should we include a few war movies? For Donovan's sake?"
"Won't he be stuck in the cockpit?"
"Only while important or untested components are in operation. If my calculations are correct, our capabilities to move through space are far greater than our escorts. There should be enough down time for a movie on occasion, especially while he eats." Diana bobbed her head, weighing a few thoughts in her head. "I feel it would be a good idea to increase his cultural literacy while we still can."
"That's a good idea. I doubt he will display much interest in romances or dramas though, not that he really needs to watch them. Do you know if he has seen Saving Private Ryan or Dante's Widow?"
"I do not. I take it you want those on the list?"
"Definitely. There are good lesson's in those movies, lessons I think might save us from headaches in the future."
"Lessons that haven't been taught to him already?"
"Moral lessons of a sort. I'm sure he has an academic understanding of how war deaths rip families and people apart, but I would like him to have a story to attach to that understanding." Diana added a TV series, Band of Brothers, to her list. Episodes would be easier for him to digest during breaks.
"How will Dante's Widow accomplish that? I understand it covers the first world war, particularly on life after it, but the focus is on a fictional woman."
"That's a gross oversimplification." Dante's Widow was one of Diana's favorite war stories, though the 'war' part of it was told through letters. It was six hours long, the longer form of cinematic projects being the trend at the time it was released. The first 45 minutes covered the romance of Dante and Bella, a pair of Sicilian sweethearts, and their marriage a few weeks before Italy's entry into the war. Dante was drafted and sent to the Isonzo front, while Bella remained in Sicily with her family. The war ended by the second hour, but Dante never returned, only letters that continued for weeks, months, years after the end of the war, all out of order.
The mechanism for this was rather unbelievable, a disorganized and messed up postal service from the front keeping letters in circulation long after they were sent, but it did wonders for the narrative. From this point forward the movie was split into halves following Dante and Bella, alternating between Bella's life between the arrival of these letters and a visual representation of the many battles along that dreaded river, leaving the watcher to wonder when he died. These flashbacks would often have Bella's reply letter voiced over the end, usually as the hell of Dante's situation made itself clear again through the death of a buddy or another artillery barrage.
This pattern halted around the 5 hour mark. By this point, no more letters would come. Each and every message from her long deceased husband had made its way to her door somehow, a realization that sent her into a deep depression. Now there was nothing left of her husband, their few nights together before his deployment having failed to give her a child. Worse still, the Great Depression had hit Italy in full. Bella's world was falling apart, and the silhouette of Fascism could be seen on the mainland.
The naming of the main characters was no mistake, Dante being a reference to Dante Alighieri's 'the Divine Comedy'. As a matter of fact, Dante's Widow was intended to be a form of adaptation of the famous work. Dante first traveled through the nine circles of hell (inferno), represented in Dante's Widow by the nine battles of the Isonzo river through which he fought. In the Divine Comedy, Dante then ascended purgatory (purgatorio) in order to arrive in heaven (paradiso).
Dante's Widow ended in a two minute sequence of a crippled and disfigured man making his way up the hill to Bella's home, gasping for air with a dreadfully raspy breath as he did so, and knocking on the door. The final ten seconds being a shot of some life returning to Bella's otherwise spindly figure after she opened the door, recognizing the person standing before her.
The series of novels from which this story was adapted had one final 'chapter' that showed a snippet of their life after reuniting, including their migration to America in the face of another war and the birth of their child, but it also included a conversation on how Dante had survived. He had been struck by artillery in a charge, a crack in his mask leaving him vulnerable to gas. He awoke in a hospital, surrounded by people speaking a language he couldn't understand, unable to speak or move. It took him thirteen long years to recover, working as hard as he could to recover so much as a semblance of the ability to speak in spite of his chemically scarred lungs.
That was the purgatory the Divine Comedy described, and Bella was his paradise.
The director had decided to cut the story off there because it was more of an emotional hit, and many felt that the final book did not fit with the tone of the rest of the novels set. This wasn't to say it was unappreciated, some felt it to be the best book of the series, but the tone it assumed was completely different.
"The message is not exactly a unique one. People die in wars, and that can ruin those left behind."
"Yes, but I think this one is special. Why do you think that is?"
"Is it because there is a happy ending?"
"Nope. I want him to see this movie so he sees what will happen to me should he die. I want him to value his life more, even if he is doing so for my sake."
"I see." A few more pages were added to Diana's list, more war stories no doubt. "Oh, right. Arc, can I use the kitchen on the Pegasus yet?"
"It is functional. Why?"
"I wanted to try something, and I want to make sure the recipe is right before I serve it to our guests!"
- - - - -
"Lady D-Diana?" Cherry nervously stepped onto the ramp of the Pegasus's loading bay. "Is it alright for me to be here?"
"Why wouldn't it be?"
"Because it's um, it's scary! Aren't we going into this creature's belly?"
"Belly?" Diana looked around the Pegasus. Sure, the loading bay might look like a mouth in a vague sense, but did it really look like a creature? "This is a ship, Cherry, not a monster."
"B-but it doesn't look like a ship! It doesn't have sails! And it has shiny skin!"
"Metal. That's metal, Cherry." Cherry's legs were shaking, barely two steps away from 'safe' ground. Deciding that cajoling her into coming along would take too long, Diana grasped Cherry's wrist. "Come on, I want to show you the kitchen."
"Kitchen?"
"We will be cooking something today!" Diana marched over to a crate in the corner. "And we will be using this!"
Flipping the container open revealed a bunch of canvas pouches, each about the size of Diana's fist.
"What is it?"
"Sitrice, or so I've been told. Sailors are supposed to mix some of the powder in their water or food rations in order to make it taste better, but I imagine it also helps to stave off scurvy."
"Scurvy?"
"It happens when you don't eat enough of a certain thing. Sailors are at risk because they have a limited selection."
"So then . . . we will be making a dish to prevent scurvy on your trip?"
"Nope! I want to use this powder to recreate a drink from my homeland, a sweet, bubbly beverage that tastes similar to this Sitrice powder. You will be my assistant!" Diana handed two of the pouches to Cherry before letting the lid fall shut. "If it is a good enough recreation, I am considering selling it for profit."
"You are going to set up a restaurant? Won't you need more than just a drink to do that?"
"I want to sell the drink, Cherry. I was thinking it would make an excellent feature at parties, and I imagine that people aboard ships would appreciate a sweet drink that can be preserved for a long time!"
"Sweet?" Cherry sniffed the opening of one of the bags, recoiling. Though it was tied shut, there was still a little bit of the powder around the edge. "But it smells so sour!"
"In it's pure form, but what if we added some sugar to it?"
"But sugar is so expensive, why would you waste it on something sour?" Cherry rubbed her nose with her wrist. "Why don't you make a cake with it?"
"Sugar is only expensive if you let it be, Cherry." Diana pushed a button on the side of the wall, opening a sliding door. The kitchen, as per Donovan's request, was placed on the bottom-most floor of the Pegasus, closer to the 'front' where the primary weapons complex was located. She had to imagine there was some logistical decision attached to this with regards to interior spacing, but there was still some disappointment in her heart that the 'living space' of the Pegasus wasn't all in one place. "Put the Sitrice on the counter there."
"Okay . . ." Cherry seemed to be enamored with what she was seeing. No mistake should be made about the Pegasus' kitchen, it was not the most well equipped of workspaces, possessing only the most basic equipment to cook the majority of recipes on earth. This being the case, it remained a far cry from the kitchen in the Barracks. "What is that?"
"A microwave." The box on the counter stuck out the most. It couldn't be moved,
"A . . . tiny wave?"
"It can reheat cold food."
"Uh." Cherry did not appear to be convinced. Heating things up meant fire, and there was no place for fire in the tiny wave. "What about that?"
"It's a blender. It can either chop stuff up into a smooth puree, or mix ingredients together evenly." Diana pressed a button, the brief but violent whirring of the blade causing Cherry to jump back in shock. "I've never used one before, but there are a variety of beverages that you can make with it."
"So we will be using that?"
"Nope!" Diana fiddled with a screen by the door.
"We'll be using that?"
"This is a-" Diana stopped herself. Cherry wasn't going to learn anything important from vague explanations about tools and instruments she didn't understand on a fundamental level. "We'll be using that!"
A contraption emerged from the wall, right next to the microwave.
"This, my dearest Cherry, is a carbonator."
". . . a what?"
"Car-bon-a-tor. Say it slow."
"Caarbinehter?"
"Close enough." Diana filled up the bottle with water from the sink, all the way up to the indented ring, then pushed the opening against the "It's a magical device that can make liquids with bubbles."
whiiiiissh whiiiiissh
Diana then removed the bottle, swirling it around a few times as the bubbles rose to the surface.
"It blows bubbles?"
"It does."
". . . huh?"
"It blows bubbles, which makes the water bubbly."
"I can do that with a straw." Cherry looked at Diana as if something was wrong with her, Diana slowly realizing that she didn't actually understand how a carbonator worked. The extent of her knowledge was that the carbonator carbon-ed the water, and carbon in the water meant bubbles. She knew that these bubbles weren't the same bubbles in the carbon-ed water, or were they? Did some of them just get left behind? Or was there something else that happened?
"These are special bubbles, you see!" Diana decided that it was better if Cherry just tried it for herself. "Here, try it!"
Diana pushed the bottle to Cherry's lips, Cherry taking a moment to sniff it.
"It smells a little-"
"Just drink it." Diana put a finger on the bottom of the bottle and pushed up. Cherry got the hint.
"Mgeh!?" Cherry recoiled once more. "It's eh-, spicy? Bristly?"
"It doesn't taste too good with basic water, does it?" Cherry shook her head. "I thought so. Instead of water, we will be using this! Sugar water!"
Diana poured the freshly carbonated water down the drain, then placing the empty bottle beneath a spigot next to the carbonator. Arc was in control of this one, and filled the bottle exactly up to the line. Diana took the bottle and-
whiiiiissh whiiiiissh
"Now try it!"
Cherry displayed a reasonable degree of hesitancy given her experience with the 'pure' bubbly water, but she assented to Diana's assertion without pushback. This was sugared water, after all.
"Mm!" Diana often wished others had the sort of emotive ears and tail that Titanyana had, the amount of joy she could derive from watching those appendages waggle in delight would border on the immeasurable. "It's sparkly, but soft!"
Diana nearly keeled over in shock. Sparkly and soft? The two names for carbonated beverages? In one description?
