On Earth as It Is in Heaven (31 page)

“He's delirious,” said Randazzo.

“From today on, you're not even going to take a piss by yourself,” my grandfather replied.

Lucio La Mantia from Enna had made a deck of cards out of forty aloe leaves, carefully carving the four suits using the thorn of a cactus. It took him twelve days. A
scopa
tournament began. Marangola was unbeatable.

“In Naples, we learn the suits of the cards even before we learn the numbers.”

He knew all the games:
briscola
,
rubamazzetto
,
tivìtti
,
tressette
.

During the course of a single game, he could remember every hand that had been played. He possessed a memory forged by sheer dint of practice.

“On the boat, if the weather is good, we spend a few hours playing cards, the night passes and we listen to the sea.”

The card games were watched by most of the prisoners.

Marangola played against a guy from Potenza for his shoes, and won.

“Can I keep these shoes with your stuff?”

D'Arpa said yes. After the boxing victory, everyone loved him. No one would have dreamed of trying to steal anything of his.

Marangola went over to D'Arpa's cot, lifted the blanket from the floor to slide the shoes underneath, and gave a desperate shout. A scorpion had stung him right on the thumb.

“What was it?”

“A scorpion.”

“Everyone get away,” D'Arpa ordered, trying to figure out where the scorpion had scuttled away to. Rosario had taken off at a dead run. “Where are you going?” shouted Nicola, but my grandfather was already out of earshot. He crossed the camp, ignoring the shouted “halt” of the guard, burst into the kitchen, went straight to the cutting board, seized the largest knife, burst through the barrier of soldiers, and continued running, indifferent to the shouted orders to stop, there was no time, he had to go faster and faster still, taking good aim and firing at his back was in any case a process that required time, however little. He managed to get back to the barracks without a shot being fired, at the exact instant that D'Arpa was crushing the scorpion with the heel of his combat boot.

“Nicola, here.”

Randazzo saw Rosario handing him the knife but at first he didn't understand. The guards rushed in shouting, rifles leveled, safeties off, but the minute they saw Marangola's body convulsing on the floor, they understood.

“Go ahead, cut.”

Rosario's voice was firm.

This was the only chance they had of saving Marangola's life.

“The thumb?” Nicola asked.

“The hand,” D'Arpa replied.

“It's useless, whatever you cut,” Melluso snickered.

Rosario and D'Arpa held the arm tight. Three others immobilized Marangola.

“Go ahead.”

Nicola felt Marangola's wrist with his thumb. He held the knife straight up and down and pushed it into the flesh, driving it down with the weight of his body. Butchering a pig was harder than this, he thought. Two sharp blows and the hand was severed.

The soldiers escorted them to the infirmary, then to see the officers. Rosario was not punished for having taken the knife, Nicola was not punished for having used it. The urgency and necessity of their actions were recognized.

The doctor stopped Marangola's hemorrhaging by cauterizing the wound, but it was too late, the scorpion's venom was already circulating in his bloodstream.

Marangola died a little before noon.

We drove back to Palermo crammed into Franco's Fiat Ritmo.

Umbertino drove.

The car radio was turned off after the news anchor reported yet another Mafia bloodbath in the city.

“Bad signs,” said Franco.

“It's going to rain blood,” Umbertino said, continuing his thought.

“And soon,” my grandfather concluded.

Gerruso forced us to make a pit stop: “I'm practically wetting my pants.”

We stopped at a café. Umbertino ordered an
arancina a carne
, a fried rice ball filled with ragout, and invited me to step outside with him. Spread out before us, beyond the fields of prickly pear, was the sea.

“This is the worst
arancina
I've ever tasted.”

“Then why are you eating it?”

“Did you see the barista? Too damn sexy.”

“What a surprise.”

“Davidù, beauty should be celebrated when and where you find it. Speaking of which, it's only right for me to tell you: you fought fabulous, kid. There were times in the bout when you were exactly like the Paladin, you know that?”

“Maestro Franco told me the same thing.”

“It was just stunning, you were the spitting image of your father. That said, though . . .”

He popped into his mouth the last bit of
arancina
and lit a cigarette while still chewing.

“But Davidù, what happened there at the end? You had the fight in your pocket.
'U Ziccùso
was about to hit the mat. What were you thinking? Why did you give him that last punch to the head?”

“Wouldn't my father have done it?”

“
He
wouldn't have.
I
would've.”

Umbertino took a long, deep drag, then blew out smoke for a good twelve seconds.

“The Paladin,” he said, putting an end to that hard-won silence.

“Better than
Il Negro
?”

His cigarette, clenched between forefinger and middle finger, had burned down to the end.

“That would have been a beautiful match.”

He confided that, a couple of years before my father married my mother, he and my father had been alone in the gym. My uncle had even sent Franco away.

“I just wanted to verify one thing, all by myself.”

“Did the two of you fight?”

“That wasn't the point but, anyway, yes, we fought.”

The Paladin was tired and all he wanted to do was drop by and say hello to his girlfriend. If it were any other girl, Umbertino would have said something sarcastic and cutting, but this was Zina, and if he heard of anyone failing to show her the proper respect, he'd have clubbed him right out of this world and into eternity.

They climbed into the ring, both wearing boxing gloves.

“You have one round, Paladin, just one round to land a punch to my face.”

He had a longer reach than the Paladin, he could hold him at a distance with his left, and his footwork was still formidable.

“Still, he managed to hit me, on the chin. No one, from the times of
Il Negro
. . . no, from the time I lost the finals, no one had laid a fist on my face. It was by no means a knockout punch, let's be clear about that. Still, it was exactly what I'd asked him to do: hit me in the face. It took him less than a minute to do it, too. That day I told him: You're going to win the national title. There weren't any other boxers like the Paladin, there was just no one like him, period. Enough said.”

That punch was worthy of
Il Negro
, so different from the ones taken in the championship loss.

“I remember every last one of them. Every last one. They still burn.”

“Was that your darkest moment?”

“That, and the times when Giovannella and the Paladin died. Only then it was them who died, and I couldn't do anything about it. The night of the championship fight, on the other hand, I died, and it was all my fault.”

My uncle narrowed his eyes, laying both hands on my shoulders.

His fingers pressed into my flesh.

“But you, Davidù.”

There was no longer a hurricane in his eyes.

Gerruso walked out of the bar. He was drinking a Chinotto with a straw. He was telling Franco about the filth that littered the street where he lived: garbage bags, syringes, refrigerators, rats. He'd seen a purse-snatching, right outside his front door. The mugger knocked the old woman to the cement, and she'd hit her head.

“A geyser of blood was pouring out of her forehead. The motorcycle was roaring away down the street like it was a motocross event. Insane.”

I went back in, ordered a mulberry granita, and sat down next to my grandfather.

“Grandpa, I've won the regionals. But now there's the national title fight, and our family's never won that.”

“Then you'll have to be even faster than you are now.”

“Like my father.”

“Faster still.”

“Like you?”

“Even faster than me.”

“And who's faster than you?”

“My friend Nenè.”

Gerruso sat down between us.

“Let's hope we don't get in a car crash on the way back, because if you die, Poet, Jesus, the national title curse, that really would be just too much bad luck for one family.”

The same way she vanished, she reappeared.

Two years without seeing her.

Ever since that afternoon at the fair.

I'd kissed three of my classmates: Eva, Annalisa, and Silvia.

Especially Eva.

She was a really good kisser.

Annalisa was a year older than me and she had a really remarkable pair of tits.

Silvia was bright and funny.

We got to know each other, we dated, we sniffed around each other, we got to like each other, we fell for each other.

But none of them was Nina.

Enough said.

I ran into her in Via Notarbartolo, at the corner of Via Libertà.

I was sixteen years old.

I was going into the Cinema Fiamma, and she was coming out.

“Nina.”

“Ciao.”

And once again, separating the two of us, the Great Wall of China.

“You're by yourself.”

“Yes, I am.”

“I'm with . . .”

“I can see who you're with.”

There she was, as proud and arrogant as she was two summers ago.

Eliana Dumas.

The Buttana Imperiale.

She had her arm cradled snugly around Nina's waist.

She hadn't changed a bit.

She asked with feigned interest what I was doing there, she'd never thought of me as someone who liked that kind of movie. By the way, who had I come with? Oh, I was alone? Eh, there's so much loneliness in the world. Was I still boxing? I was? Then I must have flunked out of school. I hadn't? She guessed my high school must be much easier than hers. When was my next bout? On the twenty-first of January, here in Palermo? Where? What was my opponent's name? Fabio Rizzo? Well, he was certain to beat me, and whatever happened, she'd be rooting for him. They'd spent enough time with me, it was really time for them to go. She had to say that it hadn't been much of a pleasure. Ciao.

“Nina, will you come?” I asked, but in such a faint voice that even I couldn't hear it.

A city is a labyrinth. Arteries that turn into piazzas, alleys that dovetail at diagonal angles. The thoroughfares you take every day, and the streets you've never even seen. A city conceals people, encounters missed by an instant because someone stopped to tie a shoelace or turned distractedly into the wrong street. The strategies of the labyrinth are incomprehensible to the human soul.

Two years without seeing you.

You'd grown up, Nina.

Your hair was longer.

Your breasts were bigger.

Your posture was even more elegant than before.

Your awareness of your own allure had increased.

Mulberry lips and deep, dark eyes.

Nina didn't come to the bout against Fabio Rizzo on January 21.

Gerruso did.

He argued with everyone.

As usual, he shouted out: “Poet.”

By now, that's what everyone on the boxing circuit called me.

They called me by the nickname that Gerruso had given me.

Nina liked it.

Nina never came to the fights.

After the fight, after the shower in the locker room, outside of the gym, I found myself in
her
presence: legs straddling a Piaggio Sì, black helmet under her arm and purse draped over her thighs: the Dumas.

“Is Nina here?”

“No.”

“What are you doing here?”