Fists

by Pietro Grossi

  The trainers put our towels round us and made us get up, turn to the audience and wave. The audience stood up with us, clapping, whistling and yelling incomprehensibly. The referee said the judges were about to deliver their ruling and called us both into the centre of the ring. The Goat came forwards with his head down, massaging his neck. He looked like a frightened little boy, nothing like the raging avalanche that had attacked me not so long before. Even his eyes seemed clearer, his forehead less massive. I wondered how I looked. Actually if I look at the photos I don’t seem all that different, just tired, and perhaps a little bewildered.

  We stood on either side of the referee, he took our hands and we waited for the judges to deliver their ruling. We stood there, our sweat glistening under the spotlights, the audience suddenly silent but all on their feet, waiting and staring at us as if we were heroes. It was just like a fight on TV. If I continued, would my nickname always be the Dancer, I wondered, and would his always be the Goat, or was that kind of thing only for young boys?

  From somewhere came a voice that bounced around the walls: “BY A UNANIMOUS DECISION, THE JUDGES DECLARE THAT THE MATCH HAS BEEN WON BY BOTH CONTESTANTS EQUALLY.”

  The hall exploded, the way it does after any controversial fight. There were some who applauded, raised their hands and cried “BRAVO!”, others who threw pieces of paper and cried “THIEVES!” and others “IT’S A FIX!” Some people laughed and shook their heads, some nodded, pleased with the outcome, and some went over some of the punches, already getting ready to tell their friends who weren’t there all about the fight, trying to find the most vivid words to describe it.

  The referee raised our arms, and the Goat, being short, hung there in a kind of lopsided way. Then he let them drop and shook our hands and congratulated us.

  The Goat and I found ourselves face to face. I like to think that, like that smile through our teeth in the sixth round, this, too, was a moment that no one noticed. Suddenly here we were, close to each other without our gloves on, both winners, both losers. Our weapons were gone, and we both had to come to grips with what remained of our lives. We hugged briefly in the centre of the ring and felt the touch of each other’s naked, sweaty bodies. He muttered a thank you, I said thank you. And I don’t know if either us knew what we were saying thank you for.

  WITH THE FIGHT OVER, everything carried on much the same as before: I would get up, go to school, study, get good marks. Everything, though, was different somehow. Overnight, everything had become real. Perhaps that’s what growing up means: realising how things really are. If you think about it, it’s as fascinating as it is sad, and although you know you couldn’t live any other way there’s also a touch of melancholy in admitting it.

  I even started to like the piano. Overnight, I realised it was another thing I was good at, whether I liked it or not, and I had the feeling that somehow even that deaf bastard Beethoven was coming back to life in my hands. Above all, I realised how great the music was.

  Yes, I also continued training, but even that was different. Now I was really the best, the strongest, there was no doubt about it now—but I was strong like any other boxer, like any other man. Not with the unreal, artificial strength of a legend, but with the stinking, sweaty strength of a man. It was the same outside: now I was just a nerd who couldn’t live the way you were supposed to, I wasn’t some mysterious comic book character, I wasn’t a Peter Parker or Clark Kent ready to save the world with his fists of steel. Now I was just one person among many who wasn’t invited to parties, who didn’t have a moped and couldn’t stay out later than midnight, and it didn’t really matter if there was a piece of the world, square in shape and with ropes round it, where I’d fought with the Goat; that didn’t change the clothes on my back and didn’t sort out my life.

  One day, three or four months after the fight, I got an envelope in the post with a medal inside. On the medal were the words G Cotti Boxing Tournament—First Prize Junior Welterweight.

  I had no idea who G Cotti was. I went to the gym and showed the medal to Gustavo. He took it in his hand from behind the scuffed brown Formica desk and turned it over in his fingers.

  “The G Cotti is a meeting that’s held once a year near Bologna,” he said. Then he looked at me for a few seconds. “Don’t you know who won this year?”

  “No,” I said.

  Gustavo lifted the phone and dialled a number, then waited a few seconds, still turning the medal over in his hand.

  “Hello,” he said. “… Hi, Paolino, it’s Gustavo. Yes, fine, fine. And you? … Oh, good, I’m glad to hear it … Well, what can you do, that’s how it is. Listen … Yes, yes, quite a bit. Listen … Well, you know how it is. Listen … No, nothing, I just wanted to know if you went to the Cotti … Just curiosity. I didn’t have anyone to take, so I … Oh, good, congratulations … Yes … Yes …”

  Gustavo looked down at the medal and turned it over in his hand.

  “Yes, listen, did you have anyone in the junior welterweight …? Oh, you didn’t? But do you happen to know who won?”

  Gustavo looked up and stared at me for a couple of seconds, nodding.

  “Oh, right, in the second round. Great fight, eh? … That’s fine, thanks a lot, Paolino, see you soon … Sure, you too, thanks. Bye.”

  Gustavo put down the telephone, tossed the medal on the desk, then looked at me.

  “It’s the Goat’s, he won the Cotti. Knockout in the second round. Paolino says he got up in the ring and the other poor bastard didn’t even have time to draw breath. He says it was amazing he managed to stand until the second round. The Goat won by default.”

  “So how come I have this medal?”

  Gustavo suddenly seemed shorter than usual, or maybe I seemed taller. “I don’t know, son, I have no idea,” Gustavo said, shaking his head slightly, the sides of his mouth turned down pensively. Then for a few seconds he stared at the medal. To tell the truth, he did seem to have some idea, but pretended he didn’t.

  It was a gift, I thought. It was a tribute or a symbol, I thought. I thought a whole load of things. But then I decided it didn’t matter; whatever the Goat meant by that gesture, there was no point spoiling it with words.

  A few weeks later, though, I received another envelope with another medal in it. This one bore the words Italian Championships First Heats—First Prize Junior Welterweight.

  The next day I went to Buio’s gym. When I walked in, everyone slowed down or stopped training, and some people leant towards their neighbours to say something. I felt like Rocky going back to the Apollo gym after years away. I asked a boy who was at the punchbag where Buio was, and he told me very politely that he was in his office.

  “What about Mugnaini?”

  “Who?”

  “The Goat.”

  “Sorry, no one’s seen him today. He may be in later.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  “Is the office that way?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thanks again.”

  “Don’t mention it, it’s a pleasure.”

  I could already hear the rumours that would circulate about this visit. I saw them pass in front of my eyes like newspaper headlines: ‘THE BALLERINA ISSUES A NEW CHALLENGE’; ‘FIXED MATCH: UNFINISHED BUSINESS’; ‘TWO JUDGES INVESTIGATED FOR FRAUD’; ‘THE BALLERINA DEMANDS JUSTICE’.

  Buio’s office was a small room at the back of the gym with a cracked frosted-glass door. I walked past the ring, where two boys with helmets on had stopped to watch me. It seemed like only yesterday that I had got up there with my face covered with Vaseline and that chilling feeling inside that I’d passed the point of no return. I felt like a soldier returning ten years later to a battlefield. Ten years. That much time had passed since that boy had got up in the ring, a boy who still believed in stories and was convinced he had superpowers, could see the world at a different speed and didn’t sweat, who thought that everything was easy and that there was a place free from the normal laws
of the world and nature. That much time had passed since the death of that boy who hated the piano and everything around him and still believed that stories and reality could be made from the same material. There wasn’t much more hair on my face that day in the gym than there had been last time, when I had come in here to conquer the ring, and yet my steps had a quite different rhythm, they already had that heavier, shuffling rhythm of a half-man which would be with me for the rest of my life.

  Suddenly, Buio threw open the door of his office and came out yelling, “WHY’S IT SO QUIET OUT HERE, YOU LOSERS? ARE WE TRAINING OR NOT? DO I ALWAYS HAVE TO BE HERE?”

  Then he saw me and abruptly calmed down.

  “Hello,” he said.

  “Hello.” I shook his hand. “I’d like to talk to you.”

  “Of course, my pleasure. Franco, go on, get out, we’ll talk later.”

  A sweaty boy in grey trunks got up and went out, nodding slightly to me as he did so.

  “CARRY ON TRAINING, YOU LOT!” Buio screamed, closing the door. Then he turned, squeezed my shoulder and smiled. “It’s so good to see you. How are you?”

  “Not bad, thanks, not bad at all.”

  “Still training?”

  “Yes, still training.”

  “I’m pleased to hear it. It’d be a pity if you weren’t. Can I offer you something?”

  “No, I’m fine, thanks.”

  We were like two Thirties gangsters; all we needed were the raincoats and the felt hats.

  “Listen,” I said, and I dug the Cotti medal out of my pocket and showed it to Buio. “This came for me a while ago.”

  Buio took it from me, sat down, sighing, and leant forwards with his elbows on the desk.

  “I think it’s the Goat’s,” I went on.

  “I know, it was thanks to me he won it. He didn’t even want to go to that meeting, he said it would be a waste of time. He was probably right.”

  “Well, anyway, I got another one yesterday from the first heats of the Italian championships.”

  “That one, too?”

  “That one, too.”

  I tossed the second medal on the table.

  Buio stared at me and sank back into his armchair.

  I didn’t know what to make of that stare, but there seemed to be a lot of thoughts going through his mind.

  We were both silent for a while. Buio kept staring at those medals and turning them over in his hands. From time to time he looked up and gave me a quick glance.

  “Do you know where the Goat lives?” I asked at last.

  Buio looked at me with raised eyebrows. “Why?”

  “What do you mean, why? Because these medals aren’t mine, they’re his, he won them. I don’t want them.”

  Buio looked at me for a few seconds. “Son,” he said, “the Goat doesn’t want these medals back, so there’s no point embarrassing him. He knows as well as we all do that you won that fight. You’re the best, that’s what he’s trying to say to you, and there’s nothing you can do. You’re both good fighters, but you’re better than he is, and you demonstrated it up there in that ring, with your fists. So stop thinking and just enjoy it.”

  When I left I decided to go home on foot. I was a little puzzled. I had the feeling this was man’s business, and I wasn’t used to it.

  HORSES

  ONE DAY, their father tapped lightly on the doorpost and came in. They didn’t know what to think at first: their dad never came to their room unless there was something important he wanted to talk about—usually a problem.

  Natan’s hand froze in mid-air as he polished his boots; Daniel jerked his head up and cursed to himself. It was sure to be bad news: most likely the old lady at the end of the road had been complaining to their father again, to say they had been stealing drinks from her cellar. The boys loved the old woman’s drinks, and not only because when they drank they felt as if everything was rolling downwards, but also and especially because they made them feel more adult. The fact that the drinks were stolen just added to the pleasure.

  “Come outside,” their father said.

  Natan and Daniel looked at each other, a look full of many unspoken feelings that darted in and out of their thoughts like carts going downhill. Natan was the best cart driver in the area. Daniel had only beaten him a couple of times over the years, and one of those was because a wheel had come off Natan’s cart.

  The two boys were almost shaking as they left the room. It was like a slap in the face, reminding them they were only young. They filed like prisoners through the big kitchen and the living room to the front door. Their father calmly walked ahead of them, not saying a word, not turning round once. He was like a Greek statue in motion, with the same rigid, still perfection.

  Outside, the sun was playing a strange early spring game with a couple of clouds, and the wind raced through the tall pines round the farmyard. Over the years, Natan would come to miss that farmyard and those giant pines.

  There were two horses tied to the fence, a bay and a chestnut. Their long necks were bent towards the ground and, as the boys and their father started crossing the gravel, the horses turned their big heads. The boys’ father stopped in the middle of the farmyard and the two boys came level with him.

  “They’re for you,” he said. There was no warmth in the words; they seemed to come from some cold valley in the north.

  The two boys looked at their father. They did not know what to say. They all stood there for a while, staring at the animals.

  “Dad, we never asked for horses,” Natan said. Daniel envied his brother’s courage. He would always envy his brother’s courage, just as his brother would always envy his will-power.

  “Well, now you have them,” their father said. “So you’d better take care of them. I don’t have time for any more of your nonsense.”

  He waited another couple of seconds, then turned and walked back to the house.

  “Are they tame?” Daniel called without taking his eyes off the horses, just turning his head slightly to one side.

  “Almost,” their father replied at the last moment before he went in through the door and was swallowed by the darkness of the interior.

  The two boys stood there, side by side, not knowing what to say or do, both feeling suddenly as if there was a dead weight on their backs.

  Natan spat on the gravel and moved his tongue over his teeth. “Fuck,” he said, twisting his neck slightly to one side.

  It’s always the same: you don’t know what you have until you’ve lost it. That was what Daniel thought years later, whenever he remembered that moment.

  “What now?” Daniel asked, already knowing the answer.

  “We don’t seem to have much choice,” Natan said.

  “No, we don’t,” Daniel said.

  Natan spat on the gravel again. “Fuck. Who the hell gives a damn about horses?”

  “We’d better start giving a damn about them,” Daniel said.

  The two boys stood there, side by side, staring at the horses, which to be honest were handsome animals.

  “They’re not bad,” Daniel said.

  Natan turned for a moment and looked frostily at his brother, then spat on the gravel again.

  “Fuck,” he said again. Natan liked to swear, especially when he was nervous.

  WHEN OLD PANCIA SAW the two brothers coming down the path, it struck him as funny: he had woken up that day with the feeling that something strange was going to happen. Old Pancia didn’t much like feelings, and certainly didn’t like paying them any heed—but then they usually turned out to be true, which bothered him even more.

  The second thing that struck old Pancia was that the boys had stolen the horses from some nearby farm, but if they had he’d surely have known about it. Old Pancia knew practically every horse in the area; he had tamed them, brought most of them into the world, and those he hadn’t weren’t worth bothering with. These two horses, though, he’d never seen—there was no way you’d forget two animals like that.


  When they reached the enclosure where old Pancia was working, Daniel was the first to speak.

  “They say you deal with horses,” he said.

  Old Pancia was mending the fence with a hammer. “Who says that?” he replied, without looking up from his work.

  “People.”

  “What people?”

  “People round here.”

  “Oh, is that what they say?”

  “You are old Pancia?”

  Old Pancia looked up at them for the first time. “What do you think?”

  The two boys looked him up and down for a few seconds. He was a big man, who looked quite a bit older than he was, with a fat, bulging belly that pushed his shirt out of his trousers so that it hung down like a skirt.

  “I think you are,” Daniel said.

  “You’re a clever boy,” old Pancia said.

  Daniel decided not to answer.

  “Are they tame?” old Pancia asked.

  “Almost.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “We don’t know, that’s what our father said.”

  “I know your father,” old Pancia said. He had now broken off from mending the enclosure, had pushed his straw hat back from his forehead and had leant with his arms on the fence, just in front of them.

  “I’m pleased to hear it,” Daniel said.

  “They’re fine horses,” old Pancia said.

  The three of them were silent for a few seconds.

  Natan shifted his weight from one foot to the other and spat on the ground. “Well?” he said. “Can you see to them or not?”

  For a moment, Pancia looked Natan in the eyes. “I don’t come cheap,” he said.

  “We don’t have any money,” Natan said curtly.

  Old Pancia waited another couple of seconds, then said, “Who’s going to mount them?”