“This is it, son,” he said, taking the towel from my shoulders. “Do what you know and don’t think about it.”
I turned, and there in the centre of the ring were the Goat and the referee, waiting for me. I walked into the centre, skipping and loosening up my arms, until I was in front of him and caught a glimpse of his eyes under the wall he had instead of a forehead. I had never seen him so close. There were already two expressive lines on his cheeks, the muscles were moulded to his body like tight-fitting rubber, his neck fell thick under his ears, and his back and chest were like two marble slabs. He already looked like a man. You didn’t get the feeling he was deaf, you got the feeling he was a fighting animal in miniature. You only had to set eyes on him to know he was a boxer, and one of the best. While the referee was speaking, he never took his eyes off a point somewhere at the height of my breastbone, and when, at the referee’s request, I touched gloves with him, all he did was turn and go back to his corner, where he started skipping and hitting his own chin just as I had seen him do against the Roman at the Teatro Tenda.
Oh, God, who was I trying to kid? This guy was a real boxer, the kind that actually fights. Not like me, hiding myself away in a gym, persuading myself and other people that I was a sensation, when there’s someone outside who’s really sweating for that title, with fists and blood. Who did I think I was?
Then the bell went and I found myself in the centre of the ring. The Goat and I touched gloves, and for the first time we looked each other in the eyes. Everything fell into place; my left arm was in front of my eyes and my right arm against my cheek; my legs started to dance around and I started to shower him with straight punches, one after the other, the way you were meant to. It just happened, automatically. We touched gloves, my heartbeat slowed and the sounds of the voices and the cries all around me started fading; there was only me and this half-man in front of me with his head down and his guard up, just like a goat. I showered him with straight punches and he parried them one after the other, or brushed them away with his hand. Every now and again he would bend to one side and attempt a hook or an uppercut, but not very convincingly, as if measuring the distance.
My legs bounced on that green canvas as if they were springs. I skipped, turned and fired off some rather unconvincing straight lefts and rights. I saw the Goat dodge me and launch a few punches without ever taking his eyes off me; those two little black holes that seemed to be joined to my pupils with fishing line.
It occurred to me that it was the same for both of us up there: he’d never heard anything in his life and I’d suddenly become deaf. I actually wondered if, by some magic, he started to hear something when the bell went — if not the voice and the cries, then a few muffled sounds like his own heartbeat, the way I did. I realised suddenly that we were the same breed: both outcasts, both uncool, two boys who were fighting for their lives, for that dirty, square fragment of reality where things happened the way they were supposed to and everything fell into place. And suddenly part of me understood that neither of us could win, that both of us could only lose.
The match continued like that, nice, quiet and clean, for nearly three rounds. I kept my distance and fired off straight punches and as soon as I saw a chink I got in a few warning shots. A couple of times I immediately launched another right, just to show I wasn’t playing the fool, to make sure the Goat didn’t forget it. I skipped and danced around with my guard held high, keeping to the centre of the ring, trying from time to time to get the Goat into the corner with two punches and get out again before I got stuck there. Everything was too loose, and I had the unpleasant feeling the little deaf bastard was laughing beneath that marble forehead which hung heavily over his eyes; waiting and waiting with the patience of a Tibetan monk for me to make a mistake or get tired. But he never did anything, he just watched me dance, move round the ring and skip in front of him without ever taking his eyes off me, like a machine, just springing lightly on his toes, dodging my straight jabs by a millimetre, and every now and again firing off an uppercut or a couple of small punches. Just once, maybe twice, he did a bit more: I felt two gloves land on me more strongly and determinedly, pinning my elbow to my ribs, followed by a fairly strong hook to make me drop my guard. They were punches just like the others, but stronger, and they seemed to be there simply to say, “Watch out, girl, you can dance round this fucking ring as much as you like, but sooner or later you’re going to falter one way or another and then we’ll come visiting. That was just a taster.”
And at the end of the third round it happened. There I was, skipping and firing off lefts, when suddenly, just as a right set off from my cheek like an elastic band, I saw the little man dodge to the side and felt three punches as hard as stone hit me first in the stomach then on the chin, three punches as solid as bricks that had come from God knows where, landed on my body and slammed me hard against the ropes. I didn’t see anything more until suddenly the referee was there in front of me with his Dali moustache, raising the finger in front of my face and moving his mouth like a cartoon character; my hands were clutching the ropes and trying to keep me on my feet, Gustavo was somewhere to the side trying to tell me something, the Goat was in his corner skipping about with his guard up, looking at me from under his forehead like a hit man, and the audience were clapping and yelling. I saw one of the referee’s hands fill with fingers, then, slowly, the other one. I hauled myself back on my feet and nodded several times. There are those who claim they heard me say, “Here I am,” but I don’t remember that. The referee stopped counting, put his hands down, took my gloves, cleaned them on his shirtfront and said something. I kept nodding and trying to say yes, hoping it was enough. After barely a moment, the referee walked away and called the Goat back into the centre of the ring. He looked twenty centimetres taller and ten kilos heavier, his muscles were bulging and he seemed to be coming towards me like an avalanche. I would have liked to be in a cartoon film, rolling my eyes and running away in a puff of smoke, but I couldn’t, I wasn’t even sure I could move. All I could do was close myself up behind my gloves, lean on the ropes, wait for the avalanche to arrive, and hope it wouldn’t be too violent and that it wasn’t long till the end of the round. The avalanche arrived in a shower of uppercuts to the body, first a series of six or seven as fast as a machine gun, then some slower but stronger ones, one after the other, like tree trunks falling on me from a height of twenty metres. They landed like anvils, many of them on my elbows, and their purpose didn’t seem to be to bring me down, but to make something clear: they didn’t have the speed, precision and unpredictability of a knockout blow, but the rhythm and power of a lesson. “So far we’ve been playing,” they said. “It’s time for the big boys now.” And, yes, luckily the round was soon over.
But it didn’t really matter. That little man in miniature knew perfectly well when exactly to send me off, he had waited for that moment just so that he could send me back to my corner with the impact of those punches still on my ribs; with my head spinning and the knowledge that the games as I’d known them were over and now we were starting to fight.
I was an idiot: for three rounds, just like that Roman kid, I had played his game; I had tired myself out thinking he would never find a way in, throwing punches that were as clean and accurate as you could wish, just not very effective. And even though I hadn’t panicked like the Roman, I’d been an idiot and taken things too casually, and the Goat had punished me for it.
But to be honest, that wasn’t the tragedy, nor was it the fact that I’d suddenly realised what a boxing match was, what a real boxer was and what it meant to really fight. It wasn’t the certainty that my life had suddenly changed. And it wasn’t the feeling that things were slipping through my fingers and I was losing. No, the real tragedy was that in an instant the spell had been broken. In an instant, after that series of punches which had pinned me to the ropes, the noise of the shouting and all the rest had come rushing back like a goods train, and I didn’t see the punches coming in slow motion any more: I’d lost the almost magical feeling that allowed me to play with my opponents, that kind of slowed-down vision that let me see the punches, not before they were launched but while they were still in motion, and act accordingly. Suddenly, reality had put itself back together in front of my eyes just as it was, at its own speed, and that terrified me.