On Earth as It Is in Heaven (14 page)

My first fight.

Marcello Brullera, from Catania. Having abandoned his studies after elementary school, he was taken to a gym by his cousin, a respectable amateur who never managed to take the next big step up. He had an unusual physique: extremely tall for his age at fourteen, he was unassailable unless he dropped his guard. His leverage and reach kept everyone at arm's length.

He was my first opponent in the ring.

During the third and final round, one of his punches hit me on my left side, the injured side.

I curled up, biting my mouthguard to keep from closing my eyes.

I was in my corner.

I could feel my heart throbbing in my side.

“This bruise on your side is the size of my hand, kid.”

“I can still move all right, Maestro Franco, it doesn't hurt as much as it did yesterday, thanks.”

“If you say so . . . in any case, it's just five days until your first fight, youngster, it seems to me that there's already been plenty of nonsense, so listen to me now: no drinking, get to sleep early, and above all, no fucking.”

“Yes, but . . .”

“But what? How old are you?”

“Fourteen.”

“Sure, at your age you all think with your dicks, kid. Listen to me and learn a great truth: you should never fuck before a fight. But the real life lesson is this: you should never fuck
after
a fight. I'm speaking to you with my heart in my hand, out of hard-won personal experience. When the bout is over, you can't really do a thing, you're so riddled with pain that the best thing to do is renounce any such pursuits. What are you going to do? Break down in tears in the presence of a woman? Heaven forbid! Instead, listen to what I say: after a fight, you need to withdraw to some lonely place and listen to what your body is telling you, you understand? Even if your dick is screaming, ignore it, let it shout. You need to focus on the way you're breathing, whether your ribs are fanning out properly, the way your neck is moving, if your eyes are steady. Most important of all, you need to do memory exercises, make sure everything's operating properly. Do like me, kid, take this fabulous advice that I learned from your uncle: think about all the women you've ever fucked, every last one, the blondes, the brunettes, the raven-haired beauties, the sisters of your best friends, the whores you might have gone to, you have to remember them all. And you have to remember all their names. You have to be straightforward and accurate; some injuries are invisible to the eye, and in fact they come from the punches that you take to the head. So forget about your cock, before and after the fight. Let me have twenty light and agile push-ups on your fists, then jump a little rope with Carlo. And in the ring, the way your first fight turns out is up to you.”

“Maestro, can I ask you a question?”

“Be my guest.”

“Was my father nervous before his first fight?”

“Who are you talking about? The Paladin? He was never nervous, quite the opposite.”

“I'm plenty calm; if anything, it's you and Umbertino who seem nervous.”

“Kid, there's an unwritten rule in boxing: you're going to lose your first bout.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yes.”

“Did you lose?”

“Certainly. And so did the Paladin.”

“Maestro, forgive me, but isn't this my opponent's first fight, too?”

“Yes.”

“Then it's not like both of us can lose.”

“Stop being a smart-ass.”

“Like my dad?”

“No, like your uncle. And remember to put a wet towel on your side when you lie down tonight.”

Uncle Umbertino, in the front row, was waving his arms for me to move out of the corner. Franco the Maestro was twisting his cap in both hands. My grandfather, standing at the far end of the room, was motionless. Gerruso was crushing a can of Chinotto and shouting my nickname.

Nina wasn't there.

She hadn't come.

Who knows what she was doing, maybe she was looking for a song on the radio or underlining words in a book or drawing a swan on a fogged-up window.

Somewhere else, not here.

I created a narrow opening in front of my face, giving my opponent a glimpse of my forehead.

It was the third round.

Brullera's face lit up.

My first fight was about to come to an end.

Carlo, standing next to Franco the Maestro as my second, was eyeing the alignment of my feet.

“But why did you give that name to this move, Davidù?”

“It's all about diving and whores.”

Carlo was like a leaf. He was light; there was always a discrepancy between where the tips of his feet seemed to be and where you knew they were. It didn't even look as if he was lifting off the ground. The only sounds that could be heard were the turning rope and the falling drops of sweat. Knees forward, elbows windmilling, gaze straight ahead.

For years, Carlo was the gym's most powerful fighter. He'd fought twice in national championship bouts. He'd just happened to be matched up with more powerful opponents, that's all. He'd become Maestro Franco's assistant, just as Franco had become Umbertino's assistant. Carlo really loved me. He was the one who knocked me to the canvas when I was nine years old.

“Let's give it another try, I like this move, it's unbeatable,” he said with genuine awe.

And again and again, one leap after another, to perfect the movement that had been revealed to me at the beach the summer before.

The footwork of the Buttana Imperiale—of the Imperial Whore.

It started with an offside foot shuffle.

Brullera had just landed a punch to my already battered ribs. Doubled over, I waited for him to continue the attack. He wasted no time. He pulled back his right elbow, cocking his arm to unleash a right cross full in my face, where an opening had appeared. It lasted only a fraction of a second but this movement meant he'd dropped his guard. He was a fourteen-year-old fighting his first match, happy, proud of the way he was boxing, certain he was about to taste victory. For a single fleeting instant, I felt sorry for Brullera. My right fist had already landed square on his chin. It was shoving forward, fiercely. The glove climbed, shattering his septum. He'd only had to give me a single opportunity. Three rounds to glimpse this opening: let him pound my ribs so that I could unleash, with the footwork of the Buttana Imperiale, a single uppercut. A gush of blood poured out of Brullera's mouth. It stained the back of my boxing glove, my forearm, my chest. His mouthguard flew onto the referee's shirt. Brullera fell flat on his back onto the mat.

The referee stopped the fight immediately.

Maestro Franco was clapping.

Carlo was gleeful.

“The Buttana Imperiale! That foot shuffle! You did it! I knew it!”

Gerruso was squealing my last name, waving the can of Chinotto in the air, spraying everyone around him. Whenever someone asked him to calm down, he'd reply: “I know the guy who just won and you don't, and I don't talk to losers like you.”

Umbertino climbed into the ring. His eyes were glistening.

“You reminded me of the Paladin, sweetheart.”

Then he turned to look at the audience.

“Bow down, assholes.”

My grandfather came out onto the square of canvas, too. He took a look at my injured side.

“It's only pain, Grandpa, it'll go away.”

He came over to me and, unforeseeable event, he gathered me in his arms, shy man though he was, hugging me despite the fact that all eyes were on him.

I thought about my father.

He would have been proud of me.

My first fight.

KO in the third round.

“Ciao, Grandma.”

“Davidù! You came to see me.”

“Eh, sure, if I hadn't you'd be complaining about it from now till the end of the world.”

“You idiot.”

“Is Grandpa here?”

“He's outside, in the garden, tending to the plants.”

“Does he want to give me another one?”

“Most likely.”

“Sometimes I look at the cactus that he gave me for my birthday, and I still can't believe that it'll be such a long time until it blooms.”

“How many years until it blooms?”

“Thirteen, Grandma. My plant is going to bloom in thirteen years.”

“Did you know that your plant is the daughter of the one that his old friend Randazzo gave him?”

“The plant that Grandpa took with him to Germany?”

“Exactly.”

“Grandma, can plants be relatives?”

“In my imagination, sure they can. Your grandpa took a sprout from the mother plant, transplanted it, and gave it to you. That plant is the daughter.”

“What's that you're holding?”

“Essays my kids wrote.”

“Are you correcting them?”

“It's always instructive to see the way my kids manage to abuse the language.”

“Just like Gerruso.”

“For instance?”

“He dreams up figures of speech, he gets the intransitive verbs all wrong, he systematically ravages the rules, and he always tries to justify his mistakes. For example, he says things are crazy-driving instead of saying that they drive him crazy, and funny movies don't make him laugh, they're laugh-making. He says it's easier to say things that way.”

“He's not all wrong.”

“Huh?”

“The point is that if you want to unhinge the language, you have to know what you're doing. Does Gerruso know the language so well that he can afford to abuse it?”

“I doubt it.”

“In that case, it's a red and a blue error at the same time, let's not kid around here. If you want to break a rule, first you need to know it the way you know the Hail Mary.”

“You like it when someone shatters the language.”

“It's a sign that the language is alive and still working. The immediacy indicates the acquisition of a shared code of meaning.”

“The construction of a rapid and agile vocabulary.”

“Times change and forms of expression follow the things that are happening around us. Once, we all spoke Latin, now we have Italian, and what's more, we speak Palermitan, a fine dialect with deep roots, capable of great speed and strength. But, listen, do you understand why I asked you to come?”

Grandma's voice had faded away. She'd lifted one hand to cover her mouth.

“Go out to the garden and ask your grandpa to come the day after tomorrow.”

A piece of advice, an instruction, an indication of a strategy, and, at the same time, something verging on a prayer.

In the little garden behind the house, Grandpa was surrounded by sage and rosemary. His back turned, he raised his left hand, anticipating my greeting. His back was immaculate, his fingers covered with dirt.

“Ciao, Grandpa.”

His hands went back to work, uprooting weeds and clover, straightening branches with twine, watering where plants thirsted.

“I wanted to tell you something.”

Grandpa's gestures were minimal, orderly, spare. Precision is the product of ceaseless training.

“I wanted to invite you to my first fight. It's the day after tomorrow, at our gym. Would you like to come? It would make me happy if you did.”

Grandpa turned away from his plants and faced me. His head tilted slightly to the right, his cheekbones jutting above the hollows of his cheeks. A forward movement of the head confirmed that he'd attend.

“Okay, well, I'm leaving, see you tomorrow.”

“Your side?”

“Better, thanks, that is: it hurts, it really hurts a lot, I still have all the marks from the beating I took, just look.”

Grandpa turned on the water, carefully cleaned his hands, and, without drying them, placed them, still wet, on both sides of my chest.

“Every man has twelve ribs on each side, did you know that?”

The hands that had raised the Paladin were caressing me.

Grandpa smiled until the water on my skin had dried.

Rosario handed the dish to D'Arpa. When jobs had been doled out, he'd wound up in the kitchen with Nicola Randazzo. Francesco D'Arpa and Marangola had been assigned to carpentry, Melluso and Iallorenzi to janitorial work.