On Earth as It Is in Heaven (33 page)

“He was on edge, Davidù. He said that he didn't know why they'd decided to pick on him, but he hadn't reacted to their bullying.”

He was fourteen. For the past two years, he'd been going to my uncle's gym. He was fit, not skinny. His shirt concealed shoulders that were much broader than they looked. He had slender hands and long fingers. He'd enrolled in the science high school. My grandparents were proud of how well he was doing.

“Of course he was on edge, Grandma, there were five of them against the one of him, plus the fact that they'd insulted you by calling you a . . . well, you know what they said, it's a serious insult, you can't let people get away with talking about your mother like that.”

“They were just kids.”

“They were hood rats. At least when you beat someone up, you're teaching them some manners. There are some people that words are just wasted on.”

“Words are always useful, the important thing is to use them with precision. When a message fails to get through, it's because the vocabulary of your interlocutor does not include the words in question.”

“Grandma, don't mistake bad manners for a small vocabulary.”

“Getting into a brawl with a bunch of kids over an insult was pointless, that time.”

The next day, the same scene: the five punks showed up outside the school and shoved my father around, insisting my grandmother was a whore and my grandfather was a faggot. My father managed to elude their grasp and run home.

“Better to avoid a fight.”

My grandmother's advice seemed reasonable. Rosario wasn't in Palermo, he was finishing out the season working in the kitchen of a hotel outside Messina, and he wouldn't be home for another couple of weeks. The following day, the little thugs took things even further. They took my father's books out of his bag and pissed on them.

“Oh, how I missed your grandfather then. I didn't know which way to turn. Maybe I had chosen the wrong strategy, I was confused.”

My father had erected a wall between himself and the rest of the world. He had shrouded himself in an impenetrable silence. With death in her heart, Grandma sat down beside him and took his hands in hers. His hands resembled Rosario's.

“Francesco, if it happens again, this time you should fight back. Never let anyone take advantage of your good nature.”

My father looked her in the eye. The blue of his irises was still, like the horizon on the sea.

“Mamma, there's five of them and they're all bigger than me.”

Grandma caressed his temples.

“Well, you'll just have to make sure you hit them harder.”

Four months after the championship defeat, Umbertino returned to boxing in an underground fight. Right away, he decided he didn't like the guys who were taking the bets. They talked too much. They were arrogant and quick to anger. Where money's involved, people need to stay calm and keep cool.

The Guadagna gym had nothing: no ring, no ropes, not even any chairs for the audience. It wasn't a proper fight. It was going to be a bloodbath. The rules were simple: last man standing is the winner. There was the semblance of a referee. After all, they had to have someone who could count to ten.

“I hopped around for a whole minute without landing a single punch worthy of the name, would you believe it? I'd never been face-to-face with an opponent for that long without going on the attack.”

“You were out of practice.”

“Hell I was. I was waiting.”

“For what?”

“I'd missed it, Davidù. The eyes of the audience, the back-and-forth of the bout, feinting to avoid punches, understanding just how far I could push things. I'd really missed it, more than I'd realized. I wanted to make it last as long as I could.”

His uppercut was intercepted by his opponent's forearm, but that didn't do much to help him. Umbertino penetrated that shield of flesh and bone, unleashing hooks and crosses, avoiding the head but shattering the man's entire torso.

All it took was a single attack.

“I was back.”

It wasn't true. He wasn't back. He'd never left. Six months after it opened, the gym had twenty-six paying students. Umbertino fought only three more clandestine boxing matches. No one wanted to take him on after that.

As soon as he came back home, my grandfather was told about the brawl that had taken place outside the school.

“I told him myself, he couldn't keep taking the abuse.”

“Leave us alone.”

Grandma went into the kitchen and pressed her ear against the closed door. On the surface of the wood she could feel the beating of her own heart.

My father told his father about the insults, the shoves, the pissed-on books. When they'd grabbed him to strip him and steal his clothes, he'd laid all five of them out with a fast round of punches.

When he was done with his story, a lengthy silence ensued, interrupted only by the sound of chair legs scraping on the floor. Rosario had risen to his feet.

“You did wrong, Francesco.”

Grandma felt a wave of shame wash over her.

Her son must have felt the same sensation.

“Papà, what was I supposed to do? Let them strip me naked?”

“No, you weren't wrong to fight back. You were just wrong to use your fists.”

Grandma felt the tears welling up in her eyes.

“You're a boxer, you know how to use your fists better than they do. You should never take advantage of your superiority, and if you do, you're just a piece of shit.”

Grandma began crying, her hand covering her mouth to keep from being heard.

“They had come to an understanding: if your father ran into them again, this time he wouldn't use his fists. It happened again a few days later. He was as good as his word.”

Only one of the crew wanted to get his own back for the last time, the one who'd gotten off the easiest, evidently. My father ignored the words—“cuckold and cop lover”—launched in his direction by a voice dripping with mockery; he refused to hand over his bag, he wouldn't step off the sidewalk. The other guy, frustrated by my father's unflustered response, spat right in his face. My father took the gob of spit, wiped it off with the back of his hand, and walked off without so much as a blink of the eye. No one ever bothered him again.

At home, Grandpa was in the dining room, alone with his son.

“In Africa, my friend explained to me that a great general isn't the one who wins the battle, but the one who wins the war without having to fight at all. You shouldn't be afraid of people, but of what you can do to them. Never forget that. You're a seed taking root in the earth, that's what you are.”

Through the half-open kitchen door, Grandma saw him caress his son's cheek.

When Fabio Rizzo spat, he betrayed tension, rage, and base hooliganism.

I took it the way you take the sirocco in November.

These things happen.

“If you were an angel, it would have passed right through you.”

“If I were an angel, I couldn't have beat him to a pulp.”

At the start of the third round, Fabio Rizzo got to work immediately. His left fist grazed my temple. At the same time, my hook, totally unimpeded, caught him square in the cheekbone. He lunged at me, his whole body sprawling in dead weight, the mass of it a shield preventing me from continuing my attack. The shock of the next hook I threw was absorbed by his arm. My right fist, however, managed to land against his chin. It was a hard blow. Fabio Rizzo bent forward from the waist. A one-two punch straight to his face drove him back onto the ropes. He crossed his arms over his head, but his legs were giving way beneath him. He staggered to one side, took three steps, shattered on his right flank.

He dropped to the floor like a broken toy.

The referee counted to ten.

I was ready for the national title fights.

I went into the locker room, I took a shower, I left Gerruso to carry my bag, I walked out into the open air, and I ran into the Dumas.

“What are you doing here?”

“I was just passing by.”

“Sure, another coincidence.”

“Funny, isn't it? You still in your tracksuit? We dress better at the conservatory.”

“I train here.”

“Every day?”

“Yes.”

“And you fight here, too?”

“Only when it's my gym that's hosting the bout.”

“Will you come to another one of my recitals?”

“Never underestimate divine providence.”

“Do you want a ride?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don't trust women on scooters.”

“Then you can drive.”

“No.”

“Do you know how to ride a scooter?”

“I'm confident I'm a fabulous driver.”

“Show me.”

“No, you show me.”

“Then get on.”

“I just live around the corner.”

“I'll take you home later, first there's something I want to show you.”

“All right, let's go, as long as it's not on the other side of the world.”

“So what was it you wanted to show me?”

“Are you really such a dope or are you doing it on purpose?”

“I don't understand.”

“Come over here and shut up for a minute.”

Lips, tongue, saliva.

A stolen kiss.

She pulled away from my mouth.

An amazing kiss.

“I like you because you went to the movies all alone. And because the other day you came to my concert. And because you have pretty eyes.”

My eyes.

The same compliment that Nina paid me.

She kissed me again.

Our tongues intertwined.

“Toward the middle of the fifties, I think in '55 or '56. White skirt, bare arms, slender neck. A spicy morsel.”

Her name was Chiara.

He'd nicknamed her “Libera.” Freedom.

“She belonged to no one, she was her own girl, that one.”

The oval shape of her face, the glint in her eyes, the way she wrinkled her nose.

“She had a powerful effect on me.”

She looked like Giovannella.

She was studying to be a lawyer. She came from the upper crust of Palermo.

“We didn't have anything in common, the two of us.”

“Then how did you wind up together?”

“Davidù, did you just suddenly go stone blind? Take a look at what a fine, handsome man your uncle is now, and try to picture me thirty years ago: I was God's own gift.”

Libera wore a headband: she was twenty-one and carried a gift-wrapped tray of pastries.

“What are they?”

“St. Joseph's Day cream puffs:
Sfinci di San Giuseppe
.”

“Are they for me?”

“Why, we haven't even been introduced.”

“Introduced? What, like a thermometer?”

She replied that she was in no mood for jokes, she was in a hurry, she was expected at Sunday dinner, and she really had to go. Still, she showed no sign of leaving.

“Oh, hey, she stood up her whole family and we took a walk to see the ruined church at Spasimo.”

My uncle ate the entire tray of pastries. As soon as he finished, she told him that she had to get going. He asked her to stay a little longer, and she politely but firmly declined. That evening her future husband's parents would be coming to town from Ganci.

“You're getting married?”

“In two months. Aren't you going to congratulate me?”

“No. So now you're leaving? Without even giving me a kiss?”

“You had the chance to choose between me and the
sfinci
and you picked the pastries.”

He waited a whole week for her, on the very spot where he first met her, and he finally laid eyes on her the following Sunday, at the same time, with the same tray, the same bold twenty-one-year-old girl.

“Cream puffs again?”

“Genovese pastries.”

“I like Genovese pastries even better than I like
sfinci
.”

“So no kisses for you this time either?”