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“It’s just that he’s always by himself, away from the others, always quiet …”

“That’s because he can’t speak.”

Buio thought it best not to say anything else, not to clutch at straws, because he was already embarrassed enough to feel as if he’d been taken forty years back in time. His back was even more stooped, as if the caretaker, without being seen, had put two ten-kilo sacks in his hands.

“I’m sorry,” Buio said in a thin voice, with his head bowed.

“That’s all right, Signor Buio. I know my son is a very reserved boy, and that can fool people. I understand how difficult that can be. But maybe you should pay more attention to your boys.”

Buio nodded with his head bowed, and for a moment met Signora Mugnaini’s stern, determined eyes.

“Goodbye, Signor Buio.”

“Goodbye, signora.”

I don’t know if it was as a reaction to that embarrassment, or out of compassion or admiration, or because of the Goat’s sheer, obvious talent, but from that day on Buio’s attitude changed to that squat, fair-haired boy with the forehead like a wall and the shadow over his eyes that looked like a mask. He took him under his wing and turned him into a great boxer. The boy’s talent was second only to his dedication, and perhaps to Buio’s enthusiasm, as he watched him grow from day to day in his hands.

As the weeks passed, he saw everything take shape: those shoulders along with that perfect left hook, that sculpted back along with that granite guard, the line of those pectorals along with that perfect legwork. The Goat was a sponge, a machine for learning, and within barely a year he was ready for his first fight. He won the regional championships, beginners’ class, then the national championships, in the finals of which, in a mere forty-eight seconds, he saw off a bull-headed Milanese who everyone considered a great white hope.

By the time I saw him fighting that night at the Teatro Tenda he had cleaned up in the first heats of the national championships for two years running, and was preparing for the European championship. His opponent was a slim boy with catlike eyes who came from a village near Rome. He was a decent boxer, quick on his feet, and defended himself well. Sooner or later, he intended to strip the Goat of his growing legend. He knew it wouldn’t be that night, there was no point in even trying. The Goat had agreed to the fight because it was good practice, and the Roman boy because he wanted to see him at work, at close quarters, without much risk to himself. One of these days, he’d fight him properly and beat him. But that night he didn’t manage to land a single punch. The Goat would wait for Buio to hit him on the leg to let him know that the bell had gone, then, like a machine, he would raise his guard, put his head inside his gloves, hunch his shoulders and skip to the centre of the ring, just like a goat. The Roman boy did what he could: he kept firing off lefts and rights, one after the other, trying to keep that squat little animal with the shadow over his eyes at a distance. But he didn’t even hit him once. It was like a game: making little movements with his body and bending his knees, the Goat managed to parry all those straight punches, one after the other, as if he knew when and how they were coming. And those he didn’t parry he let run on, brushing them away with his glove as if they were mosquitoes. That was all he did for two rounds. Two frustrating rounds during which I saw the tension rising on his opponent’s face, punch after punch; two frustrating rounds during which the Roman boy’s punches, sharp and clean at first, turned loose and messy. It had become a matter of honour to him to hit the Goat at least once, but the Goat just watched as he became ever more flustered. By the end of the second round, the boy was tired, worn down by his own powerlessness, and his once accurate punches simply piled up on top of each other, obsessively, leaving him as wide open as a valley.

In the third round, the Goat made a beeline for that valley like a ploughman who’d rested well and had a good lunch. Fresh as a rose, he would wait for one of his opponent’s messy punches and would get in there with a lightning-fast one-two-three combination. Parry, parry, parry, bend to the left, uppercut, straight punch, hook, swivel and step back. Pause, then parry, parry to the right, hook, uppercut, hook, swivel and step back. He was a pleasure to watch.

After the fifth combination, the Roman boy staggered back onto the ropes and stayed there, and the referee started counting. His trainer went to him, examined him, and stopped the fight.

For the first time I had seen a boxer who could beat me. It was a hard blow. On the way home that night, I couldn’t say a word. When we got to my front door I almost forgot to say goodnight to Beppe.

“Hey,” he said as I unlocked the door.

I turned, lost in thought. “Hey,” I replied.

“Goodnight, then.”

“Goodnight.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing. I’m tired.”

I was just about to go inside.

“He was good, wasn’t he?” Beppe said, already with his feet on the pedals, ready to start his moped. I thought about it for a moment. I wished I could play it down and say “Not bad”.

“Yes, he’s good,” I replied.

THE WORLD CHANGED. Suddenly there was someone out there capable of beating me, or at least of having a good shot at it.

Up until then, I’d been such a nerd, the only thing I didn’t do was collect stamps. But that was fine, there was even something quite appealing about the fact that there was that one place which was like a distorting mirror. From that point of view, my life was actually rather amazing: I felt like an undercover CIA agent, a character from a film with a double life I had to keep secret. I looked at all the boys who considered me a nerd and thought, you don’t know. I almost felt like a superhero, Spiderman or something. I was Peter Parker and Clark Kent.

But now, suddenly, I had realised that it was all in my imagination, that I wasn’t the best or the strongest, that the world was a big place and there were probably loads of people better than me. In other words, the chances that I was a superhero had suddenly become very slim.

That was why, when I found out that Buio had gone to see Gustavo and asked him to let me fight, I jumped for joy.

Apparently, one afternoon, the Goat had gone to Buio and tossed a piece of paper on his desk. Buio had looked up, puzzled, and had picked up the paper. On it, the words ‘I want to fight the Dancer’ were written.

Buio dropped the paper on the desk and the first thing that came into his mind was “Why?” But he knew why, and perhaps he didn’t want to hear the answer repeated. Buio knew these things, and he didn’t like them. He knew what it meant not to be sure whether you were the strongest or not. And he knew how, in the ring, that uncertainty could become an obsession.

The second thing that came into Buio’s mind was “How does he know about the Dancer?”

The first time the Goat had seen that name was on the lips of Mirco, a mediocre heavyweight who had somehow managed to win a regional championship, beginners’ class, before becoming a plumber and ending up in prison for robbery. He saw that sequence of syllables dan-cer, dan-cer appear, almost in slow motion, on Mirco’s coarse lips, and immediately they rang in his head like a bell. The Goat couldn’t follow the conversation very well, because Mirco and the other two guys, who were drying themselves after the showers, kept moving and turning away, but he had the impression they were talking about a fight: the heavyweight’s lopsided eyes excitedly echoed the avalanche of words which seemed to gush from his mouth like a fountain, and from time to time he raised his guard, fired off one or two of his uncoordinated punches, and dropped his arms again. The Goat even managed to read, “You have no idea the things—” Whatever things he was talking about, it was obvious they had to be better than the way Mirco imitated them.