Pietro Grossi - Fists

The Goat waited for two of my lefts, parried to the side, delivered a left uppercut to my liver, took a small step back and fired off that textbook straight right with the full force of his arm. I moved my right leg, pivoted on my left foot and sent a sharp left uppercut straight to the Goat’s chin, under his arm, followed immediately by a right hook that sent the Goat flying back against the ropes. I wish I hadn’t then launched that final straight punch, I really wish I hadn’t, but it came just like that, by itself. If I could turn the clock back, I would stop myself firing off that final thunderbolt, I really would stop myself, I wouldn’t let one stupid punch determine the future of two people forever. I would let that right hook run its course and watch the boy bounce against the ropes, would make it clear it was a mistake, then take two steps back and let the last few seconds run on in all their glory. But when you’re there you don’t have much choice, and anyway there are moments when you can’t really control what happens to you. So I landed that right hook and then, just as the Goat slammed into the ropes, a missile was launched from somewhere near my face and hit my opponent’s chin like a thunderbolt, flinging him from the ropes and laying him out on the canvas a metre from me.

The referee pushed me away and sent me to my corner, then started counting. He had just counted six when the bell went. Gustavo had decided with Buio that if the bell went when a fighter was down, he’d be saved by it. I don’t know why, maybe that’s the kind of decision no one ever knows how to make, and in the end you decide by tossing a coin. Heads you’re saved by the bell, tails you aren’t. That time, if that was really what had happened, heads had won. That’s life, we say, and we think we’re in control of everything.

But in the end it didn’t really matter what the rules said. We both knew how the fight had gone. The Goat knew it and I knew it and Gustavo knew it and Buio and anyone in that packed gym who knew anything about boxing. The bell rang and after a few seconds Mugnaini was picked up and carried to his corner; his gloves were slowly taken off, he was given smelling salts and presumably Buio told him that he had been saved by the bell, but that that was fine, because it had been a great fight, one of the best he had ever seen.

In my corner, Gustavo massaged my shoulders, hugged me, congratulated me and told me again that I was a sensation, and that I had won all the fights I wanted to that night. I didn’t understand. Suddenly, it was over. I had done it; I had finished the fight and had stayed on my feet and if it hadn’t been for the bell I might even have won. And now I felt empty and alone; I had the rest of my life in front of me and all of a sudden I had to figure out what to do with it.

The trainers put our towels round us and made us get up, turn to the audience and wave. The audience stood up with us, clapping, whistling and yelling incomprehensibly. The referee said the judges were about to deliver their ruling and called us both into the centre of the ring. The Goat came forwards with his head down, massaging his neck. He looked like a frightened little boy, nothing like the raging avalanche that had attacked me not so long before. Even his eyes seemed clearer, his forehead less massive. I wondered how I looked. Actually if I look at the photos I don’t seem all that different, just tired, and perhaps a little bewildered.

We stood on either side of the referee, he took our hands and we waited for the judges to deliver their ruling. We stood there, our sweat glistening under the spotlights, the audience suddenly silent but all on their feet, waiting and staring at us as if we were heroes. It was just like a fight on TV. If I continued, would my nickname always be the Dancer, I wondered, and would his always be the Goat, or was that kind of thing only for young boys?

From somewhere came a voice that bounced around the walls: “BY A UNANIMOUS DECISION, THE JUDGES DECLARE THAT THE MATCH HAS BEEN WON BY BOTH CONTESTANTS EQUALLY.”

The hall exploded, the way it does after any controversial fight. There were some who applauded, raised their hands and cried “BRAVO!”, others who threw pieces of paper and cried “THIEVES!” and others “IT’S A FIX!” Some people laughed and shook their heads, some nodded, pleased with the outcome, and some went over some of the punches, already getting ready to tell their friends who weren’t there all about the fight, trying to find the most vivid words to describe it.

The referee raised our arms, and the Goat, being short, hung there in a kind of lopsided way. Then he let them drop and shook our hands and congratulated us.

The Goat and I found ourselves face to face. I like to think that, like that smile through our teeth in the sixth round, this, too, was a moment that no one noticed. Suddenly here we were, close to each other without our gloves on, both winners, both losers. Our weapons were gone, and we both had to come to grips with what remained of our lives. We hugged briefly in the centre of the ring and felt the touch of each other’s naked, sweaty bodies. He muttered a thank you, I said thank you . And I don’t know if either us knew what we were saying thank you for.

WITH THE FIGHT OVER, everything carried on much the same as before: I would get up, go to school, study, get good marks. Everything, though, was different somehow. Overnight, everything had become real. Perhaps that’s what growing up means: realising how things really are. If you think about it, it’s as fascinating as it is sad, and although you know you couldn’t live any other way there’s also a touch of melancholy in admitting it.

I even started to like the piano. Overnight, I realised it was another thing I was good at, whether I liked it or not, and I had the feeling that somehow even that deaf bastard Beethoven was coming back to life in my hands. Above all, I realised how great the music was.

Yes, I also continued training, but even that was different. Now I was really the best, the strongest, there was no doubt about it now — but I was strong like any other boxer, like any other man. Not with the unreal, artificial strength of a legend, but with the stinking, sweaty strength of a man. It was the same outside: now I was just a nerd who couldn’t live the way you were supposed to, I wasn’t some mysterious comic book character, I wasn’t a Peter Parker or Clark Kent ready to save the world with his fists of steel. Now I was just one person among many who wasn’t invited to parties, who didn’t have a moped and couldn’t stay out later than midnight, and it didn’t really matter if there was a piece of the world, square in shape and with ropes round it, where I’d fought with the Goat; that didn’t change the clothes on my back and didn’t sort out my life.

One day, three or four months after the fight, I got an envelope in the post with a medal inside. On the medal were the words G Cotti Boxing Tournament — First Prize Junior Welterweight .

I had no idea who G Cotti was. I went to the gym and showed the medal to Gustavo. He took it in his hand from behind the scuffed brown Formica desk and turned it over in his fingers.

“The G Cotti is a meeting that’s held once a year near Bologna,” he said. Then he looked at me for a few seconds. “Don’t you know who won this year?”

“No,” I said.

Gustavo lifted the phone and dialled a number, then waited a few seconds, still turning the medal over in his hand.

“Hello,” he said. “… Hi, Paolino, it’s Gustavo. Yes, fine, fine. And you? … Oh, good, I’m glad to hear it … Well, what can you do, that’s how it is. Listen … Yes, yes, quite a bit. Listen … Well, you know how it is. Listen … No, nothing, I just wanted to know if you went to the Cotti … Just curiosity. I didn’t have anyone to take, so I … Oh, good, congratulations … Yes … Yes …”