On Earth as It Is in Heaven (26 page)

“Does Zina know?”

“Not yet, I'm going now.”

At the front door on his way out, all Umbertino could get out was: “I'm sorry.” There was still silence when he left, but just a few seconds later there rose from behind the door the wail of a mother who had just lost her son.

My mother lost her balance and staggered into the table, knocking over the glass of water. She fell, and both she and the glass shattered into a thousand pieces. Over the years, shards of glass continued to emerge, having stubbornly outlasted all previous cleanings, as if they had been hiding or had somehow crept away into deeper recesses, and then: out pops another one, a reminder of that moment in the past, the mayhem it had inflicted, and the way that day by day she had been struggling to get past it ever since.

But the instant when the news broke—that was the time of crashing to the floor.

My mother didn't give way to grief with a scream. Instead she began ripping out her hair and scratching her face. Silently.

“She'd slowed down. There were two forces battling each other furiously inside her. One was the urge to go crazy and unleash sheer mayhem, destroying everything within reach.”

“What was the other, Uncle?”

“The other was you. She was pregnant. And her head, her instincts, or the Lord knows what all else, kept her from exploding.”

Umbertino got a good grip on both her hands and hugged her close.

“We'll survive this, too. I swear it.”

My mother was a wounded wild animal. She lunged at Umbertino's shoulder and sank her teeth into his flesh, drawing blood. Perfect, Zinù, take it out on me, bite, scratch, I'm here for you, free your heart from all this darkness. His flesh was pierced by my mother's teeth and nails. His eyes rested, motionless, on the photo of the wedding. He'd been there, he'd attended that ceremony, dressed in a fabulous suit. It had been a long time since he'd worn that suit. His gaze was starting to turn peaceful, just like his voice. The hunting season was beginning again. The predator was back.

“I've got everything under control, kid.”

It would take tough training, necessary to keep her from going under. My uncle moved in with us for the second time. He watched over my mother every day and every night, for as long as he deemed necessary, watching to see how, over time and with constant love, all of the tiles of her personal mosaic were reassembling themselves, making it possible for her to survive this period of mourning. Umbertino knew. He'd been through it himself. He'd emerged in one piece. You can survive anything, as long as you fall in love again. And when he understood, once he was certain that my mother had fallen in love again, only then did he return home, leaving Zina's heart ready and able to fill and overflow with the joy of her new beloved. Me.

He left the bedroom when Provvidenza, crushed by grief and sorrow, finally managed to get to sleep. Rosario hadn't yet shed a single tear. He wasn't in a state of denial. What he felt was confusion of the most intense kind. He needed to distill the blow, drink it down in tiny gulps before he could face up to it. It wasn't a matter of accepting the news, it was a question of when he'd start fighting to keep from sinking under the weight of the thing. He walked as far as the kitchen, shuffling his feet. His ankle knocked against the hoe. It was lying there where he'd dropped it. He bent over to pick it up and, in that moment, it all became clear to him: his son had been killed in a motorcycle crash and now he'd never see him again.

He picked up the hoe, opened the French door leading out to the garden, and pulled it half-closed behind him. He turned to the left, where his mint plant grew. With sharp, short, well-placed blows he hacked away at the roots, then bent over and dug his hands into the dirt, lifting the plant out whole. He laid it on the gravel. He inserted the hoe between the wisteria and the wall and, with precision, cut off the crucial branches. The wisteria came down on its own. One by one, he plucked all the lemons from the tree. He felt exactly the way he had that morning of the bombing raid on the prisoner of war camp in Africa: alive, but with no reason to go on living. He uprooted the basil, sage, and rosemary plants. With a pair of clippers he snipped off all the rosebuds. He laid them on the stones the way, years before, in Africa, he had set down the remains of human bodies. He tore the ivy and the jasmine vines away from the wall. He was about to cut all the leaves off the magnolia when he stopped, frozen to the spot by what he'd just seen.

The cactus.

A bud had sprouted.

Twenty-two years had gone by.

He'd been to Germany, he'd come back to Palermo, he'd raised a family, he'd lost a son.

And the plant had kept its promise.

It wasn't strictly speaking a flower, it was a bud, but it had sprouted, there it was. Rosario knelt down. He picked up the plant with both hands, loosened the ties of resistance within himself, and his eyes rediscovered the ability to weep, sobbing inconsolably, a lament that never seemed to end, from Africa to Palermo.

On the way back from the beach, the minute the bus entered Parco della Favorita, Nina rose from her seat next to the Dumas and came over to sit down next to me. Gerruso had taken a seat in the back of the bus. He was still counting whores.

“What are you thinking about, Davidù?”

Leave it to her to pick the exact time I wasn't thinking a thing. To answer “nothing” would have sounded wrong, it would make Nina think I was empty. I replied with a question. Only after uttering the words did I consider the implications.

“Why did you kiss me?”

I did my best to weigh every option mentally. One incontrovertible fact was clear: in the battle between me and the Dumas, I was the one who had lost, from every possible angle. I hadn't taught Gerruso to dive, and that bitch—this was especially galling—dived better than me. So why had Nina spent time sitting with me on the rocks, why had she even kissed me? I couldn't figure it out. And so her answer swept over me like a Copernican revolution. That whole day long I'd thought of Nina as a battlefield. A trophy to be won and to show off to the world. Once I heard her answer, it became clear to me just how wrong I'd been. I was mortified, more deeply than ever before in my life.

“It's up to me who I kiss and who I don't, who I date and who I don't. Right then, I wanted to be with you because I felt like letting you kiss me, we kissed, I liked it, so why not do it again? You want to know why I felt like kissing you? Because of the way you behaved. You were nice to my cousin, you took care of him. You inspire trust, you're ready to commit yourself to lost causes, devoting your whole self to make sure they win, in defiance of logic and common sense. Plus, your eyes are green and beautiful. Hey, you're blushing, Davidù.”

“I know that.”

“You're handsome.”

She laid her head on my shoulder.

“My poet.”

Her hands were delicate. I felt like stroking her hair, but I considered how inadequate my fingers were to the task. I was thirteen years old and I already had the hands of a boxer. I turned to look out the window. Parco della Favorita alternated light and shade under the wild inlay of branches crowning the road we were traveling.

“What are you looking at, Davidù?”

Her voice was soft, she was trying to establish a tone of intimacy. That effort deserved respect and consideration. I answered in the sincerest way I knew how.

“The future.”

“And what do you want from the future?”

I laid my hand, with its cargo of calluses from hours enclosed in boxing gloves, on the window of the bus. Nina's fingers were caressing my chest. I closed my eyes and surrendered to her touch.

“To win the title.”

PART THREE

WELCOME
BACK,
FEROCITY

The front door of the gymnasium swung open with its usual weary creak.

Umbertino turned to stone.

Rosario and a blue-eyed child had just walked in.

Franco went over to them.

“
Buon giorno
, I'm the maestro's assistant: Something I can do?”

My grandfather laid his hand on my father's head.

“Is this your son? What's his name?”

“Francesco.”

“How old is he?”

“Twelve.”

My father looked around at the gym: the ring set up on the right, the blankets stacked up against the wall, the punching bags hanging from the ceiling, the tennis balls in the corners, the boxers' bodies leaping, bending, hitting.

“Papà, is this boxing?”

My grandfather replied by nodding his head forward. Then he held out his hand to my uncle.

“Rosario. It's a pleasure.”

“Umberto. The pleasure's mine. It's been a while.”

“Yes. Teach him to box.”

“After everything I told you, you're coming to me?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“When you say you're going to do something, you do it.”

Umbertino remembered how fast those hands had been. The kid was his son. Everybody should get a chance to show what they can do.

“Franco, trade some smacks with this kid.”

Initiation by mayhem. My father placed his hands against Franco's, palm to palm. His hands were slender, tapered fingers, not the hands of a boxer.

“Ready? Let's go.”

Franco let loose and failed to land a solid smack.

Seven times out of seven.

“Well?” asked Rosario.

“Taking lessons here isn't free of charge.”

“Money is no problem.”

“Every day except Sundays, two hours a day, bring him in at two or four or six. One month, on probation, paid, then I decide whether to keep him on. Now, if you want, you can stay and watch what we do in here.”

Rosario took a seat. He hadn't watched boxing since Germany. His son, sitting on a bench next to the ring, was moving his legs back and forth, like a young king curiously surveying what would someday become his domain.

“We all have guardian angels, even me, even you, even the victims of Mafia shootings, though I have to say that their guardian angels aren't anything to brag about, since they don't even know how to deflect bullets.”

“I don't believe in all that stuff.”

“That's all right, the important thing is whether the angel believes in you, that's how it works. My guardian angel believes in me fervently. His name is Caterino Gerruso.”

“With a last name?”

“Sure, he's my guardian angel. I think about Caterino Gerruso at night when I can't sleep because I've got thoughts in my head.”

“What kind of thoughts?”

“When you used to punch me in the belly, when you used to throw eggs at me, when you call me ‘idiot' at school, thoughts like that, day-to-day stuff. Where are your uncle and Maestro Franco?”

“Out signing some papers, they'll be back soon.”

“Are locker rooms always so shabby?”

“It's spartan, not shabby.”

A wooden bench, a coatrack, a shower, a Turkish bath, a sink with a piece of green hose in place of the faucet. Bare and functional, designed for use. No frills. Gewgaws are pointless when you're about to climb into the ring and trade brutal punches.

“There's not even a Coke machine.”

“We never drink before a bout.”

“Jesus, but what are you: boxers or priests? You're turning all man-of-the-cloth on me here. Anyway, come on, today we're really going to take the regional title, right?”

“We?”

In two years, 1988 and 1989, I climbed into the ring sixteen times. I won every last match, seven by knockout.

People talked about me with growing interest.

I was a finalist for the regionals.

My opponent was Gaetano Licata, seventeen, from Villabate, a left-hander, known as
'U Ziccùso
, literally, the Tick-ridden One.

He bumped me with his right shoulder, spoiling for trouble, as I was walking toward the scales for the weigh-in.

“Who the hell are you, anyway? What am I supposed to think of you?”

I looked straight past him.

Grandpa was sipping an espresso.

Umbertino was standing with his back to the wall, smoking, lost in thought, on edge the way he was before every finals bout. The minute he walked into the locker room, all it took was a jerk of his head to shoo Gerruso out.

“Poet, I'm going to go take a seat in the hall next to your grandpa. Watch me while you fight, I'll always bring you luck.”

Maestro Franco saw him out, shut the door, and then came back to talk to me.

“Kid, fight the same way you did in the last bout, no more, no less. Fight clean, fight fast, and don't overdo it, keep your distance and land your punches, score points and maintain your position.”

He started unrolling bandages.

Umbertino, sitting on the bench, was smoking in silence.

“Anyway, kid, the important thing is to have a woman by your side, the only problem is that women are too much, it's as if they're stealing the beatings they take from you, it's enough to make you lose your mind.”