“That’s the way it is. It’s not up to me.”
“How about a little fight between gyms, two rounds, just for fun, to keep my boy happy and get him fighting again? Look, this guy’s going to get me to the European championships.”
“The Dancer doesn’t fight.”
“Not at all?”
“Not at all.”
“All right, let’s keep our fingers crossed.”
“How’s your wife?”
“Better, thanks. How’s yours, still dead?”
“Fuck off, Buio.”
The second time, after the friendlies and the Italian championship, Buio came to the gym in person. I wasn’t there. I found out by chance the following day from a middleweight named Franco, a not very talented fighter, completely crazy but friendly. He told me that late in the day, as he was on his way out, he had seen Buio go into Gustavo’s office and close the door behind him. He also said he thought the reason for his visit was to ask Gustavo to let me fight. As he said this, he looked really moved, like a little boy who was talking about God knows what. The fact is, I heard this story about a fight another couple of times over the next few days.
This was it, the moment had come. I had to get in that fucking ring and demonstrate once and for all that I really was the best, that it wasn’t only a fantasy, that I wasn’t just a legend, but a person of flesh and blood, muscles and speed. I had to thrash the living daylights out of that deaf mute from the world outside. It would be a bit like thrashing Beethoven, Signora Poli, mother, every other boxer and the whole world — and then once and for all everyone would know that there was a piece of reality, square in shape with ropes all around, where I really was a sensation.
So a few days later I went into Gustavo’s office and said, “I want to fight.”
Gustavo took his head in his hands and said in that whiny black jazzman’s voice of his, like a chugging tractor, “What’s got into both of you? You can’t fight. Your mother would tear my head off. The last time you went home with a black eye, she came here and threatened to kill my family. Your mother’s crazy, son, and I don’t want to have anything to do with her. Why are you both so keen to fight anyway?”
“Because we want to know who’s the best.”
“What do you care? You’ll never be in the ring together, because you’ll never compete.”
“We’ll fight, it’s the same thing.”
“No, it’s not the same thing. Drop it, forget that guy, I mean it. It wouldn’t be a good fight.”
“It would be the fight-of-the-century.”
That was it. I’d gone and touched Gustavo’s weak point, the weak point of any genuine lover of boxing: the possibility of witnessing a great fight. And even though we both knew it wouldn’t be the match-of-the-century, or even of the decade, it was also obvious that it would be a great fight and that everyone was itching to know which of these two great young boxers would get the better of the other. Where he would land a great left I would land a great right, where he would deliver a great uppercut I would deliver a great straight punch, and where he would close up like a goat I would start dancing.
No doubt about it, it would be a great fight.
“Forget it,” Gustavo said.
I don’t know what happened, but a few weeks later Gustavo called me to his office. Buio was there, sitting on a chair. He stood up and shook my hand, looking almost moved.
“Hello,” I said.
Gustavo told me to sit down. He passed his hand over his face and took a deep breath. “So,” he said. “You really want this fight?”
I felt every muscle in my face relax. My moment had come. “Yes,” I said.
“Then let’s do it,” Gustavo said. “But no fucking around”—he pointed at both Buio and me—“no sissy little two-round affair. You want to fight? All right. Let’s go the full seven rounds. I don’t want a fistfight, I want a boxing match, and I want to do it properly. We’ll hold it in three months’ time, on the twenty-eighth of February at nine in the evening, in your gym, Buio, because you have an Olympic ring, and I’ll leave it to you to organise it. We’re the beginners, so we’ll be the challengers. We’ll choose the referee together. I was thinking of Paoli but we’ll see. If one of you turns out to be over the weight, the match will be decided by adjudication. If there are any delays due to unforeseen circumstances, accidents and so on, we’ll get together and decide what to do, though I can’t guarantee we’ll keep the challenge going. And you,” he said, pointing at me, “if your mother comes here again and starts sounding off, I never want to see you again. Is that clear to everyone?”
Buio and I looked at each other like two little boys called to the headmaster’s office and nodded.
“Now fuck off before I change my mind,” Gustavo said.
Buio and I left the office with our heads down. Once outside, we shook hands.
“Bye, then.”
“Bye.”
“See you on the twenty-eighth of February.”
“OK. Good luck, then.”
“Thanks, you too.”
THEY WERE THE LONGEST three months of my life, and they flew by in an instant. Before I knew it, I was suddenly up there in that damned ring, skipping up and down in the corner with a towel round my shoulders, my face smeared with Vaseline and two beads of sweat already stinging my eyes, suddenly aware that it wasn’t a game any more.
Gustavo worked me harder in those three months than he ever had before. He insisted I go running every morning before school, do two hours’ training every evening before dinner, go to bed at nine, and so on. At the same time I had to keep up with my schoolwork, my piano lessons, my marks and all those other things that kept my mother quiet and gave me some cards to play with, so I could continue my training and be forgiven for the two black eyes I brought home with me during those three months.
Gustavo would breathe down my neck for nearly an hour about speed, flexibility, developing my potential. Then he’d stick me up there in the ring to face whoever was available, whether they were tall or short, good or not so good, fast or slow, closed or open, technical or otherwise. He would stick them in the ring with me and urge them to wallop me as hard as they could, then from time to time he would stop the clock, get in the ring, give me a couple of slaps on my helmet and show me this or that punch, the mistake I had just made, the uppercut that had turned out so unbalanced … And then he’d give me another slap on my helmet.
“What are you doing? Can you tell me that? You do a dumb bend to your left and fire off an uppercut to the liver without even being properly supported on your legs. Don’t you know who it is you’re going to fight? Haven’t you seen how that boy fights? He’s a sniper. That’s what he’s waiting for — for you to take a big step and lose your balance or leave yourself exposed — and then he’ll get in there with one of his killer punches. And remember this, son, he won’t wait the way he waited with that nobody from Rome, he won’t stand there looking at you, he knows you won’t get caught like a sucker that way, he knows you’ll keep still. And if he doesn’t know it Buio does, he knows I’ll stop you and he’s seen you train. No, I’ll bet my arse he won’t wait. From the first round he’ll be there in front of you like a block of granite and he’ll parry you and tease you until you show him a square centimetre he can sink his fists in, and if you show him that, I guarantee you he’ll be in there like a shot. That’s all he can do. You’re too fast, too tall and too technical for him to fight you any other way. That’s all he’ll do: keep you at a slight distance and try to find a way in. And once he gets in you’re fucked, he’s too strong for you, you pansy, do you understand? Do you understand?”
He gave me another slap on my helmet and I nodded, cowed.