We had been invited by some friends of ours for Christmas Eve. Margherita said we should exchange presents before we went out, and so, at nine o’clock, there we were in her apartment, all dressed up, standing next to the little Christmas tree, which was decorated with giant fir cones and thin slices of dried citrus fruit. They were almost transparent and gave off coloured reflections. The apartment was full of nice, clean smells. Pine needles, scented candles, the chocolate and cinnamon dessert that Margherita had made for the party. The cheerful melody of “Bright Side of the Road” was coming from the stereo speakers.
“Empty-handed, Guerrieri? You’re running a risk, you know. If you take another book or a CD from inside your jacket, or anything else that isn’t a real present, I swear I’ll leave you tonight and go and get hitched – so to speak – to a South American dance teacher.”
“I see I got you all wrong. I thought you were a sensitive girl, not at all materialistic, interested in the arts, literature, music. And besides, I don’t see heaps of presents for me under the tree.”
“Sit down and wait here,” she said, disappearing into the kitchen. She came back a minute later, pushing a huge package, irregular in shape, wrapped in electric blue paper with a red ribbon.
“This is your present, but if I don’t see mine you can’t even go near it.”
“But what about the sheer pleasure of giving, just to make another person happy, with no compensation apart from his gratitude and his smile? What about-”
“No. I’m only interested in barter. Bring me my present.”
I shook my head. All right, seeing as how you don’t understand the poetry of giving, I’ll go.
I went to the door, stepped out on the landing, and came back holding by the handlebars a red, shiny and very beautiful electric bicycle.
“Is this enough of a slap in the face?”
Margherita stroked the bicycle for a long time, as if just seeing it wasn’t enough. Like one of those people who get to know things by touching them, not just by looking at them. Then she gave me a kiss and said I could open my present now.
It was a rocking chair, part wood, part wicker. I’d always wanted one, ever since I was little, but I couldn’t recall ever telling her. I sat down in it, closed my eyes, and tried rocking.
“Happy Christmas,” I said after a minute or two. In a low voice, still with my eyes closed, as if talking to myself in a kind of half sleep.
“Happy Christmas,” she replied – also in a low voice – stroking my hair, my face, my eyes with her fingers.
Part Two
24
Left, left, right, another left hook.
Jab, jab, right uppercut, left hook.
Left, right, left.
Right.
The end.
I was lying on the sofa, watching a sports documentary about Cassius Clay/Mohammed Ali. To anyone who has any idea of what really happens in the ring, it’s an amazing thing to watch Mohammed Ali’s fights.
For example, the way he moves his legs. To understand, you need to have been in the ring. Not many people know this, but the surface of a boxing ring is soft. It isn’t easy to skip around on it.
It’s an amazing thing to watch the man – a man now afflicted with Parkinson’s – dancing like that. A 240-pound man dancing with the lightness of a butterfly. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, as he used to say.
Punches hurt, and are usually pretty nasty. Which is why there’s something so incredible about that superhuman grace of his. It’s as if he’s overcome matter, overcome fear, as if he’s making a leap out of the dirt and the blood towards a kind of ideal of beauty.
At the end of the documentary, images of the young Cassius Clay – beautiful and invincible – dancing lightly, almost weightlessly, during a training session were intercut with images of the old Mohammed Ali lighting the flame for the Atlanta Olympics. Shaking, concentrating extremely hard to avoid making any mistakes while performing such an easy action, his eyes staring into space.
I thought of how I’d be when I was old. I wondered if I would even notice. It struck me I was really afraid of growing old. I wondered if at seventy – if I reached that age – I’d be capable of reacting if someone attacked me in the street. It’s an idiotic thought, I know. But it was what I thought at that moment, and the fear of it went right through me.
So I got up from the sofa as the credits of the documentary were rolling, and took off my shoes, shirt and trousers, leaving just my socks and underpants on. Then I took the boxing gloves that were hanging on the wall, put them on, and set the alarm for three minutes: a regular professional round.
I did eight rounds, with one-minute intervals between them, punching as if a title, or my life, depended on it. Without thinking about anything. Not even my old age, which would come sooner or later.
Then I went and had a shower. My arms hurt and my eyes were a little blurred. But the rest of it was over, for that evening.
25
I met Martina and Claudia in a bar near the courthouse, half an hour before the start of the hearing. To go over my instructions on how Martina should conduct herself.
A few days before, she’d brought me her medical records, and I’d compared them with those Delissanti had produced in court. They were the same. That is, Delissanti’s were a copy of ours. As I was comparing them I noticed a detail, which I made a note of in red. It was an important detail.
Martina had memorized well everything I had told her a month earlier. She was nervous, she smoked five or six cigarettes, one after the other, but all in all she seemed to be in control.
When we’d finished going over my instructions, she asked me again if Scianatico would be there that morning. I told her again that I didn’t know but that, if I had to make a prediction, I’d say yes. If I were Delissanti, I’d make sure he was in court.
She noticed I’d brought the medical records and asked me what I needed them for. To ask her the questions I’d already talked about, I replied.
I also needed them for something else. Something Delissanti and his client weren’t expecting, but I was keeping this to myself. I asked her if she had any other questions. She hadn’t, so I said we could go to court.
Scianatico was there. He was sitting next to his attorney, looking through the file. He seemed calm. A professional surrounded by other professionals. He was elegant and tanned. Seeing him like that, he didn’t look like someone who was having to defend himself against a slanderous allegation. As they say.
I made only a small gesture to greet him and Delissanti, the least I could get away with.
Alessandra Mantovani, on the other hand, wasn’t in court. In her place was an honorary assistant prosecutor I’d never seen before. He had very thick eyebrows, hair coming out of his ears and his big nostrils, and rings under his half-closed, slightly bloodshot eyes. He looked like a warthog and had serious problems with even basic Italian.
Holding my breath, I asked him if he had been asked to deputize for the whole hearing. In other words, for our case too. If he had, we could all go home without wasting any more time.
No – Warthog replied – he wasn’t deputizing for the whole hearing. There was something Dottoressa Mantovani had to attend to personally and he was to call her when the other cases were over. Then, apparently exhausted by his own eloquence, he collapsed onto the files on the desk in front of him. I noticed he was wearing a wedding ring, and I couldn’t help wondering what his wife was like, and if he had conquered her with those beautiful long black hairs coming out of his nose and ears. Maybe she had them too.
Maybe I was going crazy, I thought, dismissing the subject from my mind.
Caldarola arrived, there was a bit of plea bargaining, some summonses were issued, some cases were adjourned. Then the judge retired to his chamber to write out his rulings and the assistant prosecutor/ warthog disappeared.