“You'll always miss her.”
“Sorrow-making things.”
“Right.”
“Poet, how can you miss something you've never seen?”
“My father?”
“No, not him. One of his fights. You know your father from words, to you he's not something about seeing. But I knew my mother in a lot of different ways, we lived together, she always had me underfoot. You know that I can't think about my apartment without her inside it? I try, but it's no good, she's always there in my thoughts. It's like when I think about my hand, in my head I have all my fingers intact, I'm not a stump-finger in my thoughts. But you, on the other hand, are completely a stump-finger in your memory. You don't have any memories of your father's voice, of the way he moved, of the times he took you in his arms. He never scolded you. You don't even know what he smelled like. I know my mother's smell: she smells like hairspray.”
“I can't be a stump-finger in my memory, Gerruso. I never had a father. There was never any finger to cut off.”
“Then you're a no-finger! I win, I win, I still have a little piece of my finger.”
“It's not a contest.”
“But did you ever meet your father?”
“He died before I was born.”
“That's not what I meant. You, Poet, you know your father in words. Do you ever meet him in the words you use?”
He yawned a powerful and liberating yawn, eyes closed, mouth gaping wide.
In the last few months, the training sessions were brutal.
“Come on, how can you be slow? You lazy good-for-nothing, step it up, let's get faster, faster still, again.”
Everything was much angrier and more intense. To keep my level of concentration high, I practiced reciting names and dates for my tests at school. The amount of time I spent working out in the ring increased: sparring matches extended from three to four minutes in length. In the “dishing out punishment” sessions, in which I was supposed to attack and nothing else, the sparring partner who was defending himself from my attacks was Carlo. The goal was to score as many points as possible, calibrating my speed and strength. In the “taking punishment” sessions, the point was to limit the damage inflicted: feint, weave, keep your distance. These were apocalyptic four-minute sessions: the sparring partner changed, now it was Umbertino's turn. To spend four minutes in the ring with my uncle was an unforgettable experience: 265 pounds hurtling down on you all at once. He'd throw a punch and, while my body was shifting to avoid it, here came another before I knew a thing. It was an avalanche, a landslide you couldn't escape. What you had to do was lunge into that whirlwind, move through the openings where they presented themselves, fighting the water from within. I'd look into his eyes to guess what moves he was about to make. Deep in the center of his pupils, an intense flame glowed. After the training sessions with
Il Negro
, after sparring with the Paladin, my uncle was dancing again. He was no longer alone with his demons. All other activity in the gym came to a halt. A respectful silence reigned. The other boxers knew they'd never get to that level. Meaning my level and Umbertino's, of course. Watching the four-minute training session reminded Maestro Franco of when the Paladin was in the ring, responding blow for blow with the elegance of a man who feared nothing. The blood shed in training blossomed into the finest of buds. This wasn't boxing. It was fury turned into dance.
From inside the locker room you could hear the buzz of conversation in the hall and the drone of helicopters overhead.
“So here we are.”
“Yes, Maestro.”
“We're almost there.”
He was wrapping my hands at a much slower pace than usual, as if that act were the last stretch of calm sea before we plunged into stormy waters.
“Kid.”
“I'm not worried, Maestro, I'm fine.”
“That's better, good, perfect, bravo, kid.”
He was bending at the waist. An old lily buffeted by the autumn winds. He was rubbing his hands together.
“I've waited a lifetime for this moment. With the Paladin I missed it by a hair.”
The door was closed, the locker room had no windows, and yet for Franco the wind was gusting even more vehemently, shaking him more and more.
“Now that I'm here, now that we're about to climb into the ring, I'm not as on edge as I would have expected. I don't have a hole in the pit of my stomach. And you know why I'm cool and collected? Because I just turn my thoughts to my wife, Livia.”
“But don't the two of you fight all the time?”
“What does that have to do with it? We fight because Livia has a poisonous personality. There are Sundays when we don't say two words to each other. After lunch, she watches her ladies' shows on TV, I listen to
All the Soccer, Minute by Minute
to see if I've hit the jackpot in the Sisal soccer pools, so in practical terms we don't see each other again until dinner. Still, just knowing that she's sitting in the other room calms me down. You know what I like? Afternoons in the country roasting meat, your uncle telling stories about women, Livia complaining about the heat, and the cicadas all around us.”
Now the oscillation had infected his feet, too. They rose and fell and rose again. When his eyes met mine, his body slowed down without stopping. His eyes were still in love.
“My Livia is beautiful, isn't she?”
His lips arched into a smile.
I was being good as gold.
I wasn't getting a thing wrong.
I had managed to conceal my anguish even from him.
As soon as we walked out of the locker room, the noise of the audience swelled to an enormous roar. In the ring, an announcer spoke our names and weights into the microphone. Gerruso, in the second row, was shrieking my nickname. He had dark circles under his eyes and the euphoria that normally precedes a collapse. Sitting next to him were Grandpa and Uncle Umbertino.
Maestro Franco and Carlo were sticking close to me.
I was dancing on the balls of my feet, the movement that, according to Grandma, was the true secret of how to walk on water.
“You should never set your feet down truly flat; that way, since there is no weight, you don't sink in. The trick is to be really fast.”
My gloves were pounding the empty air, tiny jabs at nothing just to limber up my arms, extend my elbows, fire up the shock troops.
The three judges and the boxing federation's physician were all introduced.
“Poet!”
A young photographer at the edge of the ring caught my eye. He asked me to strike a pose for the traditional photograph. I stood there, motionless, gloves at my sides, in the position I used to let the warm sun dry me off. He asked me again to pose, gloves high, with a fierce expression, like a warrior. Even then I didn't stir an inch. Fed up, he took the picture and moved on to my opponent.
The announcer informed the crowd that I was wearing black shorts and black gloves, Renzo Ceresa white shorts and red gloves. He asked for a minute of silence to honor the victims of the recent Mafia attacks. As the audience got to its feet, silence fell like snow settling over the landscape.
Nina.
The death of Gerruso's mother.
The bombs.
The Dumas.
Things weren't right, not at all.
It had never even occurred to me that I might lose.
The important things never seemed to occur to me.
The voices began rooting again, shouting out names and nicknames, insults and prophecies. Gerruso was arguing with two men in the row behind him. He pointed at me with his stump-finger, repeatedly. Grandpa and Umbertino, sitting next to him, were a pair of sphinxes.
The referee summoned me and Ceresa over. He didn't want to see any blows below the belt, he wanted to see a nice clean fight, and if either opponent hit the canvas, we were to wait for a sign from him before resuming the fight. He wished us good luck, had us touch gloves, and sent us to our corners, where our trainers awaited us.
Carlo was giving me a neck rub.
Maestro Franco was rinsing my mouthguard.
Was this what I wanted?
To dive into the raging sea in the middle of a tempest?
I focused on the center of the ring and waited for the beginning of the end.
“Ciao, blondie.”
“Ciao, boxer.”
“Listen, I only have one coin, so I'll get right to the point: I just got off the phone with Nina, and I told her that the two of usâ”
“Have you lost your mind?”
“What?”
“What did you tell her? No, look, I don't care what you said, I'm speechless.”
“Huh?”
“What do you think, that you're the only boy in the world? That you sign an agreement of exclusivity the minute you have a few private moments with someone?”
“I don't understand.”
“I went to bed with you because I felt like it, and you felt like it, too. Period. Stop. End of story. And instead you and your usual gift for tragedy, what do you do? My God, your sense of guilt. Try to grow up, Davide, the world doesn't revolve around you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You don't give a fuck about me or Nina.”
“Horseshit.”
“Horseshit? But you just destroyed our relationship.”
“How can you say that? You and Nina are friends, while you and Iâ”
“So what? First of all, you two haven't been a couple for a long, long time.”
“But we were a couple.”
“When I was twelve I remember giving Giuseppe Guagliardo some great French kisses, and now? I don't get upset when he forgets to send me a Christmas card. It's over, I'm done with it, I don't expect anything from the past.”
“Is Nina part of your past?”
“You're part of my past.”
“She needed to know.”
“Needed to know? How dare you? The relationship between me and Nina is a relationship between me and Nina, and it has nothing to do with you.”
“You're a hypocrite.”
“You're a child, Davide, you can't see past the tip of your own dick, and by the way, let me tell you that you're hardly unusual in this world we live in. You're a pathetic egotist. You devour other people. Nina was right to break up with you.”
“You're nothing but a miserable bitch.”
“Oh, go fuck yourself, you and your childish judgments.”
In the deafening din of the sports arena, one voice reached my ears: the most squawking, croaking voice of them all. Gerruso was out of control, and the people in the row behind him had made bets on
Bentu Maìstu
, the Sardinian, the odds-on favorite.
“No matter what you claim to know about things, I'm in the second row, I'm ahead of you guys in life.”
“Listen, kid, you want to cut it out?”
“You guys count for nothing, you know that, right? You're sitting behind me, your seats are poverty-stricken compared to mine.”
The photographers' flashes lit up the air at ragged intervals. Carlo was massaging my legs, while Maestro Franco dried the mouthguard with a handkerchief. In the opposite corner, Ceresa was flanked by his trainer and his second. His face betrayed no emotion. The referee signaled for everyone else to leave the ring. The square of canvas emptied out. The roar from the audience gradually subsided and turned into a murmur. There were those who had one eye on the ring and the other on their watches. Some were ready to applaud, fingers extended, forearms tense. Others were still standing up, and had to be asked to take their seats. A few were checking their betting slips, over and over again, as if they might be written in disappearing ink or, even worse, might suddenly reveal the name of the wrong boxer. Here and there, people crushed out cigarettes with the heels of their shoes. Someone was taking a sip from a can of beer. There were those who emitted piercing whistles and those who nervously tugged at their hair. Gerruso slipped his hand into his pocket, pulled out a sheet of paper folded in four, kissed it, crossed himself, and prayed to Caterino Gerruso to make the miracle happen.
One last glance around the hall.
She wasn't there.
She hadn't come.
I knew it.
I'd always known it.
It was just to get a confirmation of her absence.
I never even heard the sound of the bell.
The championship fight had begun.
Ceresa had moved to the center of the ring before me.
The wind was gusting, hard and fast.
I went straight at him with my guard down.
My chest bared before the fray.
A simple and inconsolable anguish in my heart.
“Hello?”
“Nina.”
“It's been a lifetime since you called me.”
“I have something to tell you.”
“What?”
“I called you a few days ago to find out if you were okay, after the bomb.”
“I wasn't in Palermo. But I'm fine.”
I was holding the coins in my right hand, ready to slip them into the slot when the beep announced I was out of credit.
“I went to a party.”
Putting all the coins into the slot would have meant a carefree phone call: no worries about how much time is wasted, talking about nothing in particular just for the pleasure of sharing something, putting together phrases just to hear the sound of your voice.
“Did you have a good time?”
Slipping in one coin at a time was the triumph of the provisional: breaking time down into units of measurement.
“I saw the blonde there.”
Plant the seed.
“Who is the blonde?”
The silence before the words was the kind that comes before a catastrophe.
“Eliana.”
On the other end of the line, Siberia.
The phone booth became uncomfortable, inhospitable, drained of oxygen.
“Well?”
To begin a slow death.
“I drove her home, on her scooter.”
Knowing full well that it would come to an end, sooner or later.