I was in the last row on the pirate ship. My back was covered. In my path, two planets of vomit. I still had everything under control.
The ship plummeted, its descent newly impetuous. I threw a combination right cross paired with an aggressive left-handed uppercut, and once I'd passed, those two planets no longer existed, shattered into countless fragments that splattered down onto the crowd. I weaved my way through with a simple shimmy of the hips, right, left, and then right again. Down below, they were begging the operators to stop the ride. I threw four more punches, each of them executed to perfection. Every time I swung through, new worlds of vomit scattered below. My face was still clean. I was ready for my first bout. I was almost sorry when a compression of air as loud as it was sudden brought the pirate ship to a definitive halt. The ride operators helped us out, assuring us in their Slavic accents that someone had already hurried over to the phone booth to call an ambulance. Many of the riders were incapable of standing up straight. They hit the ground without even extending their hands to break their fall. Gerruso looked like a rag, but deep in the back of his eyes glittered a fierce light of happiness that defied his tears.
“Jesus, Davidù, my mother's going to murder me.”
He vomited one last time, then his face lifted. He was smiling. He cleaned the vomit off his face with his fuchsia tie. As soon as he felt certain he was done vomiting, he came over to me, took both my hands, and, with his filthy necktie, started cleaning them off.
In that exact instant, in the silence born of the passing of an unmitigated disaster, Nina appeared. She came straight toward us at a run. Her hair tossing free, loose, the way I like it. She stopped in front of Gerruso.
“What happened? Are you okay?”
She turned her back to me, absorbed in that conversation between cousins, from which I was excluded.
Gerruso, come on, get her to turn around, I understand that if I want to make peace I have to apologize to her for what happened at her girlfriend Giusi's party, please, see if you can get her to turn around, if you do, I'll give you permission to come to my first fight, oh, come on.
“Nina, Davidù is here, my best friend, did you say hello to him?”
An icy shiver ran through my body. Gerruso, are you and I communicating telepathically now? But what if you infect my thoughts? And anyway, you and I aren't friends, I refuse to break bread with you at the table of friendship.
Gerruso's question imposed a silence that contained everything imaginable, except for stasis. It was a ragged-edged silence. It expanded and spread, farther and farther, second by second.
Come on, Nina, turn around and let's clear things up, I'm ready to admit that it was my fault with Giusi, all I need is for you to turn around, Nina, here I am, just take one look at me, there aren't any splatters of vomit on my face.
Instead, the inconceivable happened.
There hove into view an enormous, ridiculously tall guy, heavy footsteps, buzz-cut hair, plain white T-shirt, a motorcycle helmet under his arm. This guy was, at the very least, nineteen. He was accompanied by three other bikers, each with his own helmet cradled under an arm. He came over: no introductions, no questions, no clue as to the importance of the moment. He shattered the solemnity of the silence that Nina and I had achieved and, ignoring me, with a voice devoid of all charm, said simply: “Babe, let's go.”
And he laid his hairy paw down, swallowing up Nina's delicate little hand.
Not only did she not recoil, pulling her fingers away from that bestial touch, she actually flashed the enormously tall adult a smile.
And so, just inches from the objective, as I was closing in on the finish line, virtually about to attain my goal, I, too, was seized with the urge to retch.
And yet just two months ago, we would have come here to this fair together, you and I, Nina. You would have been sitting next to me on the pirate ship, not Gerruso, there wouldn't have been any vomiting, no hairy-handed boyfriend. Because just two months ago, Nina, you and I were together. Then there was that damned party at your girlfriend Giusi's house. And I made the mistake of telling the truth. And you got mad at me. And an abyss opened between us, separating us.
Two months.
And now you had a new boyfriend.
You hadn't wasted any time, had you, Nina?
Is that why you weren't turning around?
Because you didn't want me to catch a glimpse of the shame on your face?
What was this? Now that we'd broken up, had you lost your bold recklessness?
Were you no longer able to look me in the eye?
Then Nina turned.
And she leveled her gaze straight at my eyes.
“Ciao.”
Her voice didn't belong to the present. It came from two months ago. We had just finished having a fight on the phone and, after a lengthy silence, she had told me “Ciao.” More a surrender to exhaustion than to defeat. No words of love to fill the void that stretched between us.
Over time I'd eventually learn how, in communications between human beings, meaning travels very short distances in the vehicles of words. In sex, for example, bodies speak louder and more eloquently: grimaces, arousal, taste, moans, and sweat. Or when a relationship comes to an end. There are few experiences that tell the story more eloquently than the silence between two people who have just broken up. And yet it is only when the break is certain that at last two people are able to listen to each other, in a silence that is pure because it is absolute. And they understand that the abyss constituted by the other has never truly been explored.
And yet it wasn't that long ago, Nina, that there was no gulf between us, no edge of the cliff. There was me and there was you and there was the red wrapping paper around Giusi's birthday present.
“Fifteen is an age that really matters,” you were saying.
“That's true, you only turn fifteen once in your life.”
“You dope.”
Between the two of us there still existed, in that moment before the disaster, a familiar and reassuring silence. It's nice to be close to someone without necessarily having to speak. And so there followed a series of actions to all appearances innocuous: ringing the buzzer at the gate of the enormous villa, walking through the garden, entering the building climbing the steps past tapestries and paintings, wondering inwardly how much money, how much heaven-sent cash Giusi's family must have. Then the door to their lavish apartment swung open to admit us and we were simultaneously greeted by the light of the afternoon and Giusi's fifteenth birthday party. And then, teetering on those heels that even a wading bird would have mocked, sheathed in that ill-fitting black tube dress that squeezed her in all the wrong places, her face coated with a thick layer of makeup meant to conceal her acne, immersed in a sickly sweet hurricane of expensive perfume, a pair of chandeliers hanging from her ears and two irregular picture frames in place of eyes, Giusi made her appearance.
She was squealing.
And you, Nina, told me under your breath: “Try to behave.”
Was I coarse? Yes, unquestionably.
Was I a hypocrite? No, this, too, was unquestionable.
Giusi was homely.
Was continuing the charade like everyone else the right thing to do? Why, because she's wealthy and therefore immune to the laws of aesthetics? But the day that she wanders out of the garden of her estate and steps into the real world, do you have any idea of how badly she's going to be hurt? Someone like her, Nina, is trotting blithely toward sheer mayhem. Might as well get her used to the beatings now. Your body starts to get used to them, and eventually it practically can't feel a thing.
And that's why, after Giusi gave you a hug, and she asked me, “How do I look?” I, Nina, gave her the answer that I gave her.
I wasn't proud of what I'd done, by any stretch of the imagination. But you were standing in front of her, you were standing at my side. Another category entirely. Was it conceivable that she didn't see the difference? Could she be so blind? In that triangle, neither you nor I was the wrong side, Nina.
I couldn't lie to her.
“You may have on an expensive dress, ostentatious earrings; your hair may be teased into the latest style; you may be rich and you may be able to afford it, but loveliness, Giusi, loveliness: that's something priceless and its not available for purchase in any store anywhere.”
You shoved me away, taking Giusi's side and pointing to me, denouncing me as “the usual asshole who doesn't understand shit about the world.” And the door slamming behind me and me trudging home and the telephone not ringing for countless hours of torment and then it rang and it was you and it was impossible to talk because of the shouting, me a little and you a lot, and words starting to be inadequate, sentences falling apart, silence claiming more and more territory, and, while I clutched at the telephone to keep from plunging into the abyss, at the other end of the line, your voice as you said: “Ciao.” And in the silence of abandonment, continental drift in the air between us.
Two months ago.
And now, who was this holding your hand?
Was this the shame that you were trying to conceal from my eyes?
As if by telepathy, Nina turned to look at Gerruso, as if in response to my question. Nina was able to read my thoughts. Is that why she said, “Try to behave”? What was that, a warning?
“This is Raul.”
Raul?
What the fuck kind of name is Raul?
She introduced Gerruso to Raul's three friends, and the situation only got worse.
Igor, Loris, and Mattias.
They came over to me and extended their right hands, still cradling their helmets in their left. Their hands, however, were denied that pleasure. I refused to shake hands with them. I had no idea who they were; they had the advantage in terms of age, weight, and height, but they wouldn't get the honor of a handshake from me.
In a bubble of rapidly swelling discomfort, surrounded by the pungent scent of vomit that continued to emanate from our clothing, it was Gerruso who spoke first.
“His name is Davide, it is, and he has a normal name, he does, and he's a friend of mine, he is.”
Nina, the only person there who could have or should have said something, chose not to utter a word.
Raul spoke.
“Let's get out of here.”
“No.”
Gerruso's voice was so annoying that it immediately had everyone on edge.
“Little boy, what the fuck right do you have to stick your nose into my business?”
“Raul, don't you dare disrespect my cousin.”
“Nice cousin you have, he's all covered in vomit. And who is this other one? His boyfriend? You never told me that this guy and your cousin were married.”
Bravo, Raul, excellent work. You were doing it all with your own hands, and I couldn't have improved on a single detail.
“Fucking faggot, if you don't have the nerve to go on the rides, then you'd better stay home and suck your husband's dick, understood?”
“Cut it out, Raul!”
“No, first these two bed wetters need to apologize to me.”
“What for?”
“They're irritating me. Come on, little shits, say you're sorry.”
“Raul, I told you to stop it.”
Nina's voice was determined, firm, unbroken.
Raul's friends formed a wall of solidarity with His Miserableness.
They eyed me with scorn.
To make matters even more complicated, Gerruso piped up.
“Okay, if that's how you want to be about it, sorry, ciao, you can go ahead and leave.”
Now that he'd been given an apology, Raul evidently swelled with self-importance.
“Now you ask forgiveness, too, pitiful jerk.”
That parenthesis of silence, that physical stasis could have gone on forever. I was younger, smaller, lighter. There were four of them. My eyes weighed options, considered possibilities. My body stood motionless. In my head, there was a single, unavoidable thought: my first match was in seven days. I couldn't afford the luxury of doing something stupid. But no sound would issue from my mouth; I wouldn't apologize, and everything would remain exactly as it was, suspended, indeterminate, devoid of pain and sorrow. Nothing would happen, I'd climb into the ring without lacerations and contusions, the side of my body healthy and undamaged. If only you, Raul, hadn't ruined everything by using words so deeply offensive that only blood could wash away the insult.
“Son of a bitch.”
After so muchâtoo muchâtime, a ferocious calm swept over me again.
I'd been missing that.
There was nothing else I needed.
Nina, I know you can hear me now, that's the way it is between the two of us, I think and you understand, so I'm begging you, don't try to get between us, go, run away and take Gerruso with you, I know you can hear me, Nina, I'm begging you, go fast and far, do it for me.
Nina placed herself between me and Raul.
Her back remained straight and her hand was steady as she delivered a straight-armed slap.
“Don't you dare!” she said.
Slapped in public, his pride ground to pieces, Raul decided to react. He wound up to return the slap. Nina stood there, motionless, firm and ready for combat. I was too far away to do a thing, the slap was bound to hit her face. It would have been the death of me.
It would have taken a miracle.
And a miracle took place.
Between Nina and the open palm of Raul's hand, Gerruso's face suddenly appeared. Diving arms-first, ass muscles clenched, he intercepted the straight-armed slap with his cheek. The resounding smack was deafening.
What if Raul had hit Nina?
My back turned into a triangular fin, the world turned into the sea, and my hands became teeth.
Raul didn't even have time to understand what was happening. My fist had already cut his breath short. The good thing about having a low center of gravity: you can slam your fists into the other guy's balls. A sharp vertical uppercut connected with his jaw, shutting his mouth for him. Raul fell to his knees. He was still practically as tall as me upright.