On Earth as It Is in Heaven (27 page)

The only time the maestro wrapped the boxers' hands was before a fight. He knew every callus, every curve, every line. He performed quiet movements, with old-fashioned devotion. The bandage was white and smelled freshly laundered.

“You can't imagine how many times I've practiced on my wife, Livia, every night, for a year and more. Livia has slender hands. With your uncle's hands, it's a whole different thing, you'd need a bedsheet, wouldn't you, Umbè?”

The silence of the desert. He was smoking, lost in his thoughts. He wasn't checking the bandages, he wasn't talking about tactics, he wasn't wishing anyone the best.

The first two years, my father climbed into the ring only a few times, just enough to rid him of his fear of being hit and to allow his body to learn the dimensions of the battlefield. He was the only kid in the gym, but he, too, was subjected to
Il Negro
's stern teaching methods: running and jumping, abdominals, knee bends, and push-ups, building up and dodging sequences.

He was fast, well mannered, and a good student at school.

A couple of times a week, they played at slap-fighting.

Umbertino never managed to slap him in the face.

He and Franco worked harder to train my father than they ever had before. They took turns as his sparring partners; they went home with him, running alongside him; they corrected imperfections in his movements, suppressing the instinct to curse every saint on the cross; they inquired after his studies; and, at Christmas, they bought him a pair of expensive black gloves.

“There, when you snap off your opponents' horns with these things, we'll be able to see all the blood they lose.”

When he fought his first match, Umbertino and Franco knew that he'd lose. But it was during that match that they understood why the young man had captured their imagination. During that first unsuccessful fight, my father was one soldier against an enemy of thousands, but he remained calm and composed and elegant. A knight in battle, unspattered with mud.

“A paladin.”

He lost on points, two rounds to one, and he gained a nickname.

My grandparents loved his new nickname.

So did my mother, the day they met; in fact, a little too much so.

“Are you waiting for someone?”

“This gym belongs to my uncle.”

“Are you going in?”

“No, thank you, I'd rather stay outside.”

“I understand what you mean, it's not a pretty sight. If you're in a hurry, I'd be glad to call him for you.”

“No, really.”

“Anyway, training's over, Maestro Umberto is about to come out.”

“You call him Maestro?”

“What else would we call him?”

“Are you a boxer, too?”

“Yes.”

“What's your name?”

“Francesco.”

“Pleased to meet you, I'm Zina. You don't look like a boxer . . . Francesco, did you say?”

“Yes, why?”

“My uncle only calls you by your nicknames:
'u Mosca
,
'u Tirabusciò
,
'u Panza Lenta
,
'u Morto 'nta l'uovo
—the Fly, the Corkscrew, the Slack Belly, and the Dead Man in the Egg. Do you have one, too?”

“Yes.”

Umbertino appeared unusually confused. He started by saying “What are you doing here?” but he didn't even give my mother the time to answer before pouring out a list of urgent errands that had to be taken care of right now, in fact sooner than that, groceries to be purchased, people to go see, chores to be completed at home, right now, absolutely, it's really more important than you can imagine, only you can save me.

He took two steps and then stopped short.

“Zina, forgive me, I forgot something in the gym, you head home and get started on the things I asked you to do, wait for me there, I'll catch up with you in a minute, now get going, go go go.”

The instant Zina turned to go, my uncle leaped backward and planted himself square in front of the Paladin.

“Don't you move from this spot.”

Zina had reached the corner.

Her smile gleamed.

She waved goodbye to them both.

The minute she turned the corner, Umbertino started dancing on the tips of his toes.

“Paladin, I don't know what the hell is in the air these days, all this Communist garbage, free love and easy flesh and so on, so just to be perfectly clear let me tell you in the words of the Gospels: if you so much as touch my Zina even in your thoughts, I'll slit your throat, you understand? Now get the hell out of my sight because right now I already hate you.”

Franco lowered the roller blinds in front of the gym, snapped the padlock shut, and caught up with Umbertino.

“Holy shit of a world of shit.”

“What's the matter, Umbè?”

“Zina.”

“What?”

“It's done, finished.”

“What the fuck are you saying? Zina? How old is she anyway?”

“Seventeen.”

“But she's still just a girl.”

“Exactly.”

“Now who the hell dared to try something with her? Do we know him?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me who he is and I'll shoot out of here like greased lightning and bust his headlights.”

“The Paladin.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“The Paladin.”

“None other.”

“With Zina.”

“Right.”

“But when did they meet?”

“Just now.”

“Just now?”

“Five minutes ago.”

“And you're sure that . . . ?”

“I'd be willing to bet half a yard of hard prick.”

“So this is serious.”

“This year is starting badly, very badly.”

“Zina and the Paladin, ridiculous. I can't believe it. Even though, actually, now that I think about it for a minute, if you have no objection.”

“No, on the contrary, I do object, Franco.”

“Where's Zina?”

“At home, waiting for me.”

“Are you going to see her now?”

“First let's make a stop at the tavern.”

Along the way, they discussed the upcoming mission. The following week, there was going to be a bout, and one of their boxers, Michele Lo Quarto, aka “Ciaca,” would be taking on a fighter from the mainland.

“Umbè, did you have a girl in mind?”

“Either Moira or Nenzi.”

“Who's Nenzi?”

“Nenzi, Nunziatella, the one who talks all arrogant, with the foreign accent.”

“Who? Oh, you mean ‘Nancy, the Americana'?”

“None other.”

“This would be her first mission.”

“I know.”

“The Americana, sure, I like it, she could be perfect.”

Umbertino didn't think through the reasoning behind that suggestion. He lacked his usual drive in planning a new mission. He seemed hollowed out. He ruminated over a single thought. The conclusion he came to over and over remained the same: there was nothing to be done about it. Before long, Zina and the Paladin would be married. My mother was growing up and he had no way of stopping her. He couldn't set his mind at ease. He got stinking drunk the way
Il Negro
used to do.

In the locker room the questions that Franco asked him fell systematically into a pool of silence. My uncle was lost in thought. For him, the finals always had the taste of loss and defeat.

“When the Paladin won the regionals, youngster, he was fifteen years old, just like you are now. KO in the third round. But it was obvious that he'd win from the outset. There's no logical explanation for it, it was just something you could sense in the air, a hunch. But from that instant on, you know how it's going to turn out, and that's all there is to it. It happened at the weigh-in: the Paladin stepped onto the scale and it was obvious to everyone that he was going to win. We knew it, period. Of course, he did fight a legendary last round, didn't he, Umbè?”

Once again, Franco ran headfirst into that wall of silence.

Umbertino ran a hand through his hair, lit yet another cigarette, and walked out the door, closing it behind him without a word of farewell.

“He's on edge.”

“I know it, Maestro.”

“Your fingers, how do they feel?”

“They're wrapped perfectly, thanks.”

“It was easy, your hands are as slender as Livia's. Don't pay your uncle any mind, he's always restless before the finals. He was uneasy whenever the Paladin fought, too. Unless your uncle is completely in control of the situation, he goes through all the miseries in hell. Today, for example, not even a mission to occupy his thoughts.”

“Is there no mission because I'm fighting?”

“That's not the only reason. The missions have been abolished for the finals. Your uncle and I care about fair play, we don't kid around. And then there's one more thing.”

“What's that?”

“Your opponent is a minor.”

Cigarette ash was flying everywhere inside the dark blue Fiat 126. Umbertino was at the wheel, the driver's seat shoved all the way back, his elbow sticking out the window. Franco was hunched over, scanning the notes he'd taken. Umbertino let him study as he spoke to the female passenger sitting in the back.

“Still, from what you know, there's no chance at all?”

“Are you asking me if he's gay?”

“Yes.”

In the rearview mirror Umbertino saw a cigarette being lit between a pair of buttery lips.

“He isn't gay.”

“Not even a little bit? I don't know, like, gay every thirteenth of the month?”

Franco snickered.

“Shit, gay on the installment plan.”

Salvo Gurgone of Messina, the “Bull of the Strait,” was no faggot. He presented a serious problem, because he truly was a formidable boxer. He was planning to challenge the Paladin, who had roughly a hundred fewer bouts under his belt.

“Franco, you know what we're dealing with here, right?”

“We've got the Paladin matched up with the Monk.”

“Hell, that's right.”

“Hell, amen.”

The mission had been specially planned out. They'd even brought Lazzara along with them. She wasn't like the other girls. She was truly, heart-stoppingly beautiful. Dark-skinned, with long black hair that nipped at the fleshy curves of her lips, giving her a tormented look that would kindle protective feelings in even the flintiest heart. Her eyes, in contrast, were insolent and vivacious. Lazzara was one step up from sensuality. She was a queen in the realm of conquest.

“Lazzara,” Umbertino was telling her, “if a priest sees you, his robe'll turn triangular: head, feet, and hard-on.”

They walked into the Palestra La Trionfale, a boxing gym in Noto, they took their seats, they watched the fight. As expected, Salvo Gurgone, the “Bull of the Strait,” won. As the prizes were being awarded, Lazzara undid a button on her blouse. Immediately, an unexpected, intense hormonal tempest was unleashed. Every man in the room was going gaga over that impossibly sensual woman. All but one: Gurgone, the “Bull of the Strait.”

“So you're absolutely positive?”

“Yes.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“I just know.”

But Umbertino knew, too. Gurgone wasn't gay. He was a monk.

Franco was studying his notes. He had to find a crack, an error, something he could leverage.

Lazzara remained silent. She was resentful. She hadn't expected Umbertino to ask her to take part in another mission; of course, he'd paid her the way he did every goddamn time: it was just that she hadn't expected it, that's all. She was waiting anxiously for the moment when she'd see the waters off Palermo at the foot of the mountains ahead of her. It was late and she was hungry.

Franco had shown excellent skills as a trainer. When he decided he needed to be able to take notes on his ideas and impressions, the better to plan out fighting strategies, he enrolled in night school and got his junior high equivalency. He was twenty-six years old. Umbertino felt such respect for that decision that he paid for Franco's textbooks out of his own pocket.

Franco possessed a special talent for reading boxers, glimpsing their potential and their shortcomings. In the first half of the seventies, one of the many boxers he and Umbertino trained was Bruno Salatino, an eager young man who was, however, a mediocre fighter at best. He was slated to fight a certain Hernandez, an Argentine boxer who'd been working the circuit in Italy for the past couple of years. The two trainers traveled all the way to Naples to study the South American, boarding the ferry on a Friday night. Franco vomited the whole way; Umbertino brazenly tried to bed a woman from Enna but came up empty-handed. They landed, went to see the fight, understood in thirty seconds that their boy Salatino was done for, ate three puff pastries apiece, caught the boat back to Sicily, Franco vomited, Umbertino managed to bed an attractive blonde from northern Italy, they landed, and the two of them trooped off to the port café to drink a nice hot bitter espresso.

“So we're going to bet against Salatino?”

“It seems like the only sensible thing we can do; this match is a washout. Salatino is worthless as a boxer; at least this way he'll get a little experience and we, who are neither fools nor dickheads, can bet against him to pick up a little money on the side.”

“Yes . . . well, I don't . . . yes . . . that is . . . oh, well.”

“Franco, what's wrong?”

“First off, the odds on Hernandez winning are going to be very low.”

“True enough.”

“Second off, in spite of everything, Salatino is still one of our boxers.”

“He's nobody and nothing blended together.”

“That's not what I was saying.”

“Then what?”

“That's our name out on the ring. I sincerely dislike the idea of our name losing. You can imagine how little I give a damn about Salatino, but for our name to be seen as losing: that's something that's tough to swallow.”