Within a few weeks, the Goat had managed to reconstruct everything. He knew that Mirco had been talking about the day he had seen me training. That name, “the Dancer”, had started appearing more and more frequently on the lips of the people around him — like words you don’t know that suddenly start cropping up everywhere — to finally reveal the figure of this legendary boxer, who danced in the ring like a butterfly, as fast as a gun and as powerful as a missile. The final shock came when the Goat read on the lips of a guy named Lotti that the Dancer was the same weight as him. He had only to glimpse that handful of syllables, junior welterweight, to understand they were talking about his weight.
That was when the Goat started to become obsessed with my legend. Let’s be clear about this, for him there was no one better to play that role: I obviously had an extraordinary talent but I didn’t fight, I packed quite a wallop but had a totally inappropriate body, and outside the gym I was the biggest nerd imaginable, as well as being shy and not talking much. In other words, I was a shadow. There were boys at school who boasted about how they’d met me several times and had actually seen me fighting an illegal match in some seedy basement. One day I told one of my fellow singers in the school choir — another thing my mother had forced me to do — that I was a boxing fan. He looked at me with a glint in his eyes and asked me if I had seen Mike Tyson’s last fight. Of course, I said, but Tyson is a has-been these days. We talked about boxing for a while and although he made out he was a real connoisseur he didn’t know anything. He was convinced that Cassius Clay was Muhammad Ali’s constant challenger, and had once even beaten him. It was an interesting mistake, and in its way quite acute, even if unwittingly, but it spoke volumes about his knowledge of sports.
Anyway, after a while he asked me if I had ever heard of the Dancer. I burst out laughing.
“Why are you laughing?”
“No, nothing, forget it.”
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“Have you ever heard of him?”
“Yes, a few times.”
His eyes lit up again. “Really?”
“Yes, a few times.”
“And have you seen him training?”
“No, never.”
“I have.”
“Oh, sure you have.”
“You know he doesn’t fight, don’t you?”
“Yes, so I heard.”
“Or at least not legally.”
“Obviously not.”
“He says he doesn’t fight because when he’s in the ring there’s a risk he’ll kill his opponent.”
“Is that right?”
“I swear. My brother trains with him.”
“Oh, yes? And what’s your brother’s name?”
“Enrico.”
The only Enrico I knew around the gym was the caretaker, who had three fingers of his right hand missing, and it was as unlikely that he was his brother as that he had ever trained with me.
“What’s he look like?”
“Who, my brother?”
“No, the Dancer.”
“Oh, he’s tall and thin with a small head.” So far, the description was spot on. “And he’s covered in tattoos and has a long scar over his right eye.”
Here it came.
“Imagine that,” I said. “I was told he was a very ordinary guy you wouldn’t look twice at.”
He looked at me and moved his hand up and down, as if to say, “Come on!”
I have no idea who that tone-deaf boy who sang with me in the choir had seen training, or if he had even seen anyone training, or if he even had a brother at all. But it’s a good indication of the kind of things people said about me.
And this legend had been started by people who had all their five senses; people who should, with those five senses, have been able to put together a picture that had some connection with reality. But think now about a deaf person, think about someone who, in order to put together that same picture, is forced to gather bits and pieces here and there, wherever he finds them. What are you left with then? You’re left with that bloody name that jumps from mouth to mouth and bounces around your head like a stone, always preceded and followed by knowing and admiring looks, until you’re going out of your mind.
And when you’re a boxer, and you believe in it, and you’re good — maybe the best — and you discover that name belongs to someone who weighs the same as you do, then you wait a while and when you can’t stand it any more you go to your trainer’s office and inform him that you want to fight that name, because the reason you go to that damn gym every bloody day and sweat and slog away like an animal is that you want to be able to say that life isn’t shit after all, and you don’t really want to be wasting your time because of some little arsehole people call the Dancer.
So it was that the Goat went into Buio’s office that day and tossed that piece of paper on his desk with that message — that he wanted to fight me. And Buio, after asking himself why and answering his own question, after wondering how he had found out about the Dancer and telling himself it really didn’t matter, looked the boy straight in the eyes for a few seconds, then said, “The Dancer doesn’t fight.”
The Goat also looked Buio in the eyes for a couple of seconds, then grabbed a pen and a piece of paper, scribbled something on it and tossed it back on Buio’s desk.
There was one word on it: Bullshit.
“It’s not bullshit,” Buio said. “I’m telling you the truth, son. The Dancer doesn’t fight. I know his trainer Gustavo well. He was my trainer once upon a time. I’ve seen this guy training many times, and no one really knows why, but he doesn’t fight. Even Gustavo splutters when I ask him, and Gustavo isn’t the kind of man to splutter. Forget it, son. He’s good, yes, but in my opinion you’re even better, and anyway, a boxer who doesn’t fight, well, it’s hardly surprising they call him the Dancer.”
The Goat had stopped watching his lips and had started looking him in the eyes again, then he leant over the table, quite calmly wrote something on a little piece of paper, turned and walked out.
Buio picked up the paper, turned it and held it between the thumb and forefinger of both hands, without lifting his arms from the desk. This time, the Goat had written: Until I fight the Dancer I’m not fighting anyone else.
NO ONE THOUGHT the Goat would carry out his threat, but in fact he missed a regional championship, two friendly matches between gyms, two inter-regional meetings and even the Italian championship, which he probably would have won hands down.
He still trained as enthusiastically as ever, just as if he was going to fight, but whenever Buio took him a form to sign for a match, he would shake his head and quickly go back to whatever it was he was doing.
The first time this happened, Buio phoned Gustavo.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Gustavo, it’s Buio.”
“Hi, Buio, how’s it going?”
“So-so, and you?”
“Feeling old.”
“You were saying that thirty years ago.”
“But I probably won’t be saying it in another thirty years.”
Buio gave a little laugh. “Maybe not,” he said.
Silence.
“Listen, Gustavo, my boy Mugnaini says until he’s fought the Dancer he’s not going to fight anyone else. He’s already missed an international.”
“The one in Lucca?”
“Yes, the one in Lucca. Why weren’t you there?”
“Because I didn’t have anyone ready.”
“OK, but are you going to put the Dancer in a fight or not?”
“No.”
“Why not?”