On Earth as It Is in Heaven (4 page)

Pullara's body language made it perfectly clear that some threshold had been crossed. Enough hesitation, no more fooling around, no more games. Now we'd entered the world of adults.

“Pass the test right now or I'ma cut your cousin's throat!” he threatened, pointing to the girl.

Gerruso, suddenly, stopped being a weakling. He raised his head without a whimper, just like that, from one instant to the next.

“Don't touch her,” he said. His voice was cool and steady. Not a hint of begging.

“Pass the test or I'ma cut her throat!”

Everything about Pullara was wild, restless: legs, eyes, words.

Gerruso stood up.

The knife he held was no longer trembling.

“Swear to me that nothing bad will happen to my cousin.”

Pullara, electrified, was waving both arms.

“Sure,” he shouted, increasingly frantic.

Pullara was possessed, the world outside of the test no longer existed. He hadn't even noticed that he wasn't the one who was being asked to swear the oath. Gerruso's eyes, the only eyes in the whole piazza, were staring into mine.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I swear it, nothing'll happen to her, now you just pass the test, go on and cut, go on and cut.”

Gerruso, unperturbed, insisted: “Swear to me that nothing bad will happen to my cousin.”

Before I knew it, my mouth uttered a reply.

“I swear it.”

Gerruso stopped staring at me. He gripped the knife firmly in his right hand and placed the blade carefully on the knuckle of his left forefinger. Tranchina gripped Dominici's hand and gnawed at his lip. Dominici was folded over, bent by abdominal cramps. The cousin lunged forward.

“You bastard.”

Castiglia decided to step in. He grabbed her and pulled her close to him.

Pullara was jumping up and down in place.

“The test! The test!”

Gerruso swiveled his gaze back to me. He wasn't crying, he was no longer shivering. He took one last look at his cousin, saw that Castiglia was holding her back, concentrated his gaze on the jackknife, and just for an instant he reminded me of my grandpa, sitting at the cutting board slicing mushrooms, the knife held clear of his finger, the thumb pressing down on the stalk of the mushroom, the cap being sliced away, the jet of blood spraying into the air, the last section of forefinger tumbling as it fell, Dominici vomiting, Tranchina weeping, the cousin shouting, Castiglia gripping her close to him, Pullara howling, the bloody blade bouncing off the ground, Gerruso with the tip of his left forefinger gone, fainting away backward.

In the midst of all this, I thought I heard someone calling my name.

A dark blue car drove onto the piazza, kicking up a cloud of dust and gravel behind it. There was no time to admire the strip of dust that rose through the muggy heat. Another car, painted a metallic silver, appeared behind it. Through the open window on the passenger side an arm emerged, a hand gripping a pistol. I glimpsed my reflection in the window of the rear door. Once again, my hands had flown up to guard my face. Tranchina was sobbing. Dominici was holding his belly. The girl was looking down at Gerruso unconscious on the ground. Castiglia continued to hold her tight. Pullara, who hadn't noticed a thing, was bellowing.

And as I became more fully aware of that amputated finger, it dawned on me, for the first time in my life, what power and focus the sudden epiphany of a gunshot brings with it.

The shot was perceived first by my ears, such a deeply penetrating sound that the body needed to immediately contract every single muscle in order to absorb it. That lasted no more than an instant. Like a wave, it was followed by the physical consequences that came hard on the heels of the crack of gunfire: the thundering shot unleashed a sharp stab of pain in my eardrum, and the world seemed to stretch out. Everything seemed to slow down, like when you're underwater. It lasted a few seconds, then the bubble slowly popped.

A second shot rang out.

My shoulders shot forward, huddling together as if my body were trying to shrink.

The back window of the dark blue car shattered into a hailstorm of glass pebbles.

The number of shots kept climbing. Three, four, seven, ten. Hard to keep track of them all. Over near Castiglia and Gerruso's cousin, the window of a parked Alfa Romeo Alfasud exploded into shards. Broken glass flew in all directions, hitting the magnolia leaves with a sound like a sudden squall. In this jagged score of breaking glass, crumbling walls, screeching tires, punctured leaves, and rattling gunshots, I heard someone shouting my name, like an echo in the distance. On the far side of the piazza I saw Umbertino. He was running straight toward me. Long strides, torso angling forward, arms pumping the air. Meanwhile, they were returning gunfire from inside the dark blue car, bullets hitting the windshield of the silver car. The windshield collapsed. Swerving crazily, the car thudded against the side of the parked Alfasud. At the moment of impact, seeing the car hurtling in his direction, Castiglia lost control of his nerves and threw his hands up to grab his own hair, letting go of Gerruso's cousin. He started moving erratically back and forth, within a few yards' radius, like a fly trapped in an overturned water glass. Danilo Dominici was still throwing up. Lele Tranchina had pulled his head down, clamped tight between his elbows and knees. Umbertino was running. The gunshots continued to dominate.

Pullara, drunk with rage, was still sunk in his delirious visions. He leaned over and grabbed the knife and then strode in the direction of Gerruso's cousin with the smile of someone about to do harm.

The dark blue car swerved left, beyond the piazza. The silver car followed it unhesitatingly, vanishing around the corner. More gunshots could be heard, but now they were elsewhere.

Umbertino was no longer shouting my name. His eyes were on Pullara.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

Pullara was singing under his breath, gripping the jackknife.

Gerruso's cousin wasn't running away.

She held her gaze level, meeting his.

“I ain't scared of you.”

Pullara seemed to be invincible. He seemed to be the shark fish going to war.

I was wrong.

The shark fish wasn't him.

The shark fish was me.

But I didn't know that yet.

Umbertino was about thirty feet away from us.

Too far.

Pullara raised his fist, gripping the jackknife still smeared with Gerruso's blood.

She didn't back down.

He threw his head back, poised to drive the stabbing blade as deep as possible. It was only then that the danger became concrete, and in that instant no other possibilities remained, and the shark fish remembered the oath he had sworn and finally surged onto the battlefield.

The body acted on its own.

A distant urge.

A seed sown a lifetime ago was suddenly sprouting.

My legs took me straight in front of Pullara.

Umbertino was cursing the names of the saints.

I alone stood between the girl and the knife.

She had dark eyes.

She smelled of salt and lemon.

I felt no fury, I felt no anger.

I was as calm and unruffled as the wrath of God.

I plunged my fists into Pullara's face, once twice three times four times. He tried to stab me but missed. A leap back and away, that's all it took. Pullara was off balance. A push with both feet and my right fist sank deep into his belly, forcing him to bend double toward me. My left uppercut rose dizzyingly, shattering his incisors. Before his back could hit the ground, I was already hurtling through the air. I landed with both knees on his gut. I clenched my fists and pounded him over and over again until my uncle managed to drag me off his body. He lifted me with both arms and clutched me to him.

My hands were bloody, my knuckles were skinned.

Beyond my filthy fingers, there she stood.

In the street behind the piazza: shouts, ambulances, and police sirens.

The sound track of Palermo.

Uncle checked what was left of Pullara.

“That'll teach him to treat women like dirt; what a dickhead.”

Danilo Dominici and Lele Tranchina sat riveted to the steel bench.

Castiglia, motionless somewhere not too far from us, had a lifeless gaze.

Umbertino stopped Gerruso's bleeding with a handkerchief.

Gerruso finally seemed serene, now that he'd fainted.

My uncle spoke to the girl.

“Honey, are you all right? An ambulance and the cops are all coming, can I leave you here? Can you take care of yourself? My nephew and I have to get out of here, right this second.”

“Wait,” she replied.

Calm and confident, she stopped looking at Gerruso and came over to me.

“Ciao,” she said.

I couldn't utter a word.

She took my filthy fingers in her hands.

“Ain't nothing but blood,” she murmured, “it washes off.”

She lifted my fingers to her lips.

One by one.

She washed away the pain.

I had a hollow feeling in my stomach, as if I were on a swing.

“I'm Nina,” she said. Then she smiled and I fell off the swing.

My uncle tousled my hair.

“Let's go before the cops get here.”

My fingers fanned open, clamped shut, then I was done saying goodbye to her.

A few minutes later, I was back in the gym, putting on my boxing gloves and climbing up into the ring, for the first time in my life.

I thought about her the whole time.

My grandfather Rosario came home to Palermo after being held as a prisoner of war in Africa. There was nothing left for him; the war had swept away his family, his house, his friends. The field of the present day was swept clean of the tumbleweeds of the past. His life was a blank sheet of paper. He wore a military uniform two sizes too big for him. He was sleeping in the ruins of bombed-out buildings. He spent his days at Cape Gallo. He would peel an apple and save the peel in a handkerchief: that would be his evening meal. He stared at the sea.

Provvidenza's curiosity was aroused by his skinny profile. He looked like a statue. She shut her book and studied my grandfather while her cigarette burned between her fingers, then she opened the book again; her final exam was drawing nearer, and the bus for Capaci was always late.

The next day, the same scene. The young man carved in stone was still there, on the bench, as if he'd never moved. She sat down, on a low wall, a dozen feet away from him. She watched him for a long time. He didn't look around. She did her best to concentrate on the textbook she was studying, but my motionless grandfather had become a puzzle that demanded an immediate solution.

“Soldier, what are you looking at?”

He turned around and stared at her, in absolute silence.

“What did he say to you?”

“Davidù, it was your grandpa. He said nothing, and just looked at me.”

“What was he like?”

“He was young, thin as a rail, and had these indecipherable, light-colored eyes. He was confused, poor thing.”

“And did you fall in love with him right then and there?”

“Not in the slightest. When I first saw him, to tell you the truth, I just thought he was odd. And so skinny, too skinny. Still, there was something about him.”

“See? You were in love.”

“I already told you I wasn't. Even though . . .”

“What?”

“He had these eyes that—well, you know it yourself—it's something you all have, you, your father, Rosario. Men with light-colored eyes and a very dangerous gaze.”

“Dangerous how?”

“Your gaze troubles the soul of anyone you look at.”

“Really? I never noticed.”

“Neither did your grandfather or your father. That's why you're such lady-killers, damned light-colored eyes.”

“I don't understand.”

“Of course you don't, you're not a girl.”

“Soldier, did you hear me? I asked you: What are you looking at?”

Silence and nothing more.

“Hey, can you understand me when I talk to you? Are you from around here?”

He tipped his head forward in a sign of assent. A small movement, the very minimum required. Better than nothing. Suddenly, amid that growing silence, she had a hunch.

“You aren't mute, are you?”

A tiny smile escaped his lips, a more than satisfactory response. He wasn't mute, just stingy with words to the point of miserliness.

“What are you up to? I've seen you here for two days now, motionless, staring out to sea. What are you looking at?”

No answer. A sphinx. Nothing she liked better than a puzzle. She tried looking at it from another angle.

“What's your name?”

“Rosario.”

Heavens above, he had actually spoken. In fact, he'd even added an extra syllable: “You?”

“My name is Provvidenza.”

Her lips parted in a smile, spontaneous and inviting.

His face showed no reaction.