by Edoardo Nesi
If something did not happen, he would have failed their first meeting and she would think he was an idiot and would end up sooner or later catching the eye of another boy, somebody older and bolder, maybe with a car, and they would have ended up like Brenda and Eddie, the protagonists of “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant,” that song by Billy Joel he loved so much: “the popular steadies, And the king and the queen of the prom, Riding around with the car top down, And the radio on,” who decided to marry, but then “started to fight when the money got tight, And they just didn’t count on the tears,” and then “got a divorce as a matter of course,” and nobody heard from them anymore.
Vittorio thought of all the hours spent listening to Jackson Browne and the Eagles and Chicago, learning their songs by heart so that he could translate them for her, if she had asked. He remembered all the times he had tried on his clothes in front of the full-length mirror in his parents’ room, finally deciding on a blue lambswool sweater, blue jeans that were not Levi’s 501s, and a pair of old Superga tennis shoes he had personally washed three times in a row to eliminate any trace of clay.
The doorbell rang. The first mother had arrived to pick up her son or daughter. It could even be his, or Milena’s. Everything could already be over.
No, he told himself. He withdrew from the window, went over to the record player, waited a few seconds for the song to finish — it was “Moonflower,” by Santana — removed the disc from the turntable, extracted the album’s other disc, put it on the turntable, and placed the needle at the beginning of the pause before the last song of side 2. Then, without stopping, without thinking, Vittorio went over to Milena, who saw him approach and immediately lost interest in her friends’ conversation. Just as Santana’s guitar started up the magic of “Europa,” he spoke to her.
— Do you want to dance?
She got up and followed him to the center of the floor, and didn’t straighten out her arms as she had with the other two boys, and didn’t rest her hands on his shoulders, but wrapped them around his neck, and they began to dance.
— Thank goodness you finally came over, she whispered to him, and he blushed and smiled. Then, while he was thinking of something dazzling to tell her, Milena said it was a wonderful song he had put on, because she had seen him suddenly turn from the window and go and fiddle about with the stereo. So he told her everything about Carlos Santana and “Europa,” and then he said that he dedicated it to her. That it was hers. If she wanted it, of course. She said nothing, and when the song ended, someone put it on again and again, and they kept on dancing to “Europa” until they decided to sit down, and they were very close, their shoulders touching, right next to Beatrice who was kissing Ricky Mariotti, and a little farther over was his friend Fede Carpini, who was kissing another girl.
At first they were embarrassed, then they started to laugh, and Vittorio thought that, in that evening blessed by the gods, he could dare to do something else he had never done before. With great caution, his heart beating wildly, he slowly slid his arm behind Milena’s back and then moved it down until it touched her lightly, and when she felt that very slow and very shy and very clumsy embrace, she drew closer to him, very close, and spoke softly.
— Listen, I’ve never kissed anyone before.
— Me neither.
Their awkward smiles dissolved into laughter, and Milena moved her mouth closer to Vittorio’s and their lips touched, and then she opened her mouth very slightly and so did he, and they stayed like that for a few seconds, sharing breath, until he very gently pushed his tongue into her mouth as he had been told he was supposed to do, until it touched her lips, and when Milena’s tongue touched his. It immediately seemed to him a very unpleasant thing, this kissing with tongues, something that was absolutely impossible to like, but he stayed there and so did she, and they kept on kissing and kissing until Cinzia’s mother called out for her, and Milena said, “I have to go.”
— What a shame, though…What a terrible shame…
— So, I guess you and I are together, now.
— Yes.
They looked at one another and smiled. Milena gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, ran to hug her mother — a slim and elegant woman who looked absolutely nothing like her — and left with her, arm in arm.
THE BEAST IS BACK
UPON HIS RETURN FROM MONTE CARLO, Cesare’s mood improved considerably. It seemed that Ivo’s lucky star had started to shine on him too. All of a sudden he slept like a baby and had no trouble getting up in the morning, fresh as a daisy. He arrived on site before Citarella. He enjoyed the signs of the onset of a spring that promised to be exceptional, and even started to take care of the way he dressed, and resolved to return as soon as possible to the unkempt carpe diem that had always governed his life and that, in his opinion, had never betrayed him.
One evening he came home early and sat in the living room, still full of energy. Arianna was out, Vittorio was locked in his room. He sprung from the armchair, left the house, went to the record shop, and bought an old album by Barry White, Can’t Get Enough. He went home, placed it on the turntable, and as “You’re the First, the Last, My Everything” started to play, Cesare Vezzosi felt himself once again filled with the feral energy he had been born with. He began to sing along, there in his living room, totally indifferent to horribly mangling every line, clicking his fingers in time and even performing the deep sighs and scratchy moans of Barry the Master, and then he began to actually dance to that joyful, orgasmic celebration of women and love and sex and the good life, and danced and sang right to the end of the song because he was still alive — yes — and healthy, and he could still do anything he wanted with his life.
After a dinner he spent inundating with unusual compliments the routine meal his wife had put on the table, Cesare called Arianna to the bedroom under the pretense of going over the bank statements together, and he screwed her passionately, telling her over and over just how amazingly beautiful she was.
The next morning he woke in an excellent mood, looked in the bathroom mirror, and decided that the bad times were finally over, and for good. There was no need to fear anything; the work would be finished in no time. There was no problem, as Ivo said. Unconcerned that it was half past six, he shouted into the silence of the sleeping house: “Go, Cesare, Go!” and banged his hand down on the bathroom sink, waking Arianna and Vittorio with a jolt.
That day, he returned to the tennis club. He hadn’t been there since the morning of his obscene defeat at the hands of Marmagli, a year earlier. His friends at the top table welcomed him back like the prodigal son, rising to their feet and giving him a seemingly never-ending round of applause. They shooed away the last admitted member and immediately reinstated the Beast at the head of the table, and no one sat down until Cesare had shouted his battle cry, “The same ones always win!” and, to Zucchi’s classic question—“Cesare, have you been playing?”—he had answered with his usual phrase, which that day was finally true: “No, today I got laid!”
Cesare Vezzosi ordered spaghetti al pomodoro with a single basil leaf, and then announced that his tennis elbow had finally gone, so, perhaps, who knows, he might even be able to start playing tennis again. But first he wanted to ask his friends. Was it a good idea? On hearing these words, Dante Zucchi got to his feet and hugged him silently, causing a new round of thunderous, interminable applause from all those sitting at the top table, who were once again on their feet.
At his first training session — against the wall at seven o’clock in the morning of a gloomy day, in total secrecy — Cesare found that his forehand was like a bullet, and his backhand seemed capable of slicing those yellow Pirelli balls in two. He was out of breath in ten minutes and had to restring his racket because the gut was a little loose, but the first day was encouraging.
He spent a whole week playing against the wall and then, on a Monday, Cesare crushed Marmagli, 6–0, 6–0, in a challenge that the skinny lawyer had referred to as a rematch, but was
in effect a massacre, in which he failed to reach a score of 30 in any of the twelve games they played in less than half an hour.
Then it was the turn of everyone else who had benefited from his collapse, starting with Zucchi, who was so happy to lose 6–1, 6–1, that he immediately began to dream about re-forming their doubles team and competing at the Tuscan championships.
The next day a meeting was held in the sauna, and Loris Ciardi and Lapo Focosi, legendary veterans and former European champions, officially asked Cesare to re-form the Coppa Italia team with Zucchi.
Ciardi conceded that the season had already begun and the Zucchi–Marmagli team had started very badly, losing in Borgo a Buggiano and Scandicci. He added, sniggering: “These fools, Cesare, insisted on playing their doubles Australian style!”
Focosi explained that maybe it wasn’t too late: if Cesare and Zucchi started out winning, there was still a hope they could make it to the Tuscan finals.
It was then Marmagli’s turn to speak; he begged Cesare to immediately take his place on the team. He bowed down to a great talent, he said, and asked only if he could be the nonplaying captain of the team, “Like Nicola Pietrangeli in the Davis Cup,” he said, pretending not to see the mocking smiles of the two veterans.
Zucchi, only half joking, got down on his knees in front of Cesare and clasped his hands together.
Cesare nodded gravely, looked at those four naked, sweating, expectant men, and proclaimed, “Dear friends, the Beast is back!”
From that day on Cesare started to find comfort and encouragement in every little thing that happened to him. Each day without a registered letter or a visit by the finance police made him stronger and more trusting, so he decided to concentrate on tennis, bringing Zucchi back up to an acceptable level and leading him to a historic comeback that saw them beat the teams of Pieve a Nievole, Capannori, Montecatini, Lucca, Pistoia, and Arezzo, and took them to the final of the Tuscan championships, which they won in the tiebreaker of the play-off against Match Ball Firenze thanks to a definitive, triumphant, futurist smash from Vezzosi which created a dent in the soft red clay of the adversary’s court and bounced so high that it went over the back net and ended up in the muddy Arno, which ran slowly alongside the court.
Meanwhile, at the building site, the works were miraculously and simultaneously completed, the factory passed all its tests, and the first loom began to weave, immediately followed by another twenty-nine and, a few weeks later, by Ardengo’s two old but very efficient spinning machines, which immediately began to tease and card and spin. Ivo was moved almost to tears when–on return from Cape Town where he had spent a week selling flannel in the mornings and spending the rest of the day cavorting along that wild coast in his rented BMW convertible, caressed by the ocean winds and the long, bleach-blond hair of the Afrikaner interpreter he had nearly brought back to Italy with him — he found the first reel of yarn produced by the new factory lying on his rosewood desk.
Cesare realized that if he really wanted to reach the finals in Bari that September, he had to start training seriously. His Tuscan rivals walked on court already defeated, terrified by his reputation, but playing on a national level would be a different matter. He had to rediscover his metronomic rhythm, add at least twenty centimeters of depth to his shots, improve his side movements, and refine his physical fitness. In short, he had to train as he had never trained before.
He told Arianna and Vittorio that between the building site and the training he wouldn’t see them much—“Even less?” she asked with a sarcasm that passed him by — and embarked on a tour de force which, at the end of July, brought him and Zucchi face to face with the fearsome Lo Turco — Perroni pair of the Taormina Sporting Club, whom they defeated in a third-set double tiebreaker to win their place in the national finals.
July flowed into a silken August, and as the air started to grow fresher and the factories of their pulsating city resumed roaring like lions, Cesare left for Bari in a joyful caravan of blue Alfettas, all alone because Arianna and Vittorio had decided to spend the last days of their holiday in the seaside town curled up under the smallest mountain range in the world, citing both the ridiculously long journey and the absolute necessity not to neglect holiday homework.
As soon as he arrived, the Beast realized that he would have to face up to the terrible challenge of beating, in just one weekend, both his adversaries and the ghost of the memory of the Historic Baby Doll, who for some incomprehensible reason had reappeared in his thoughts and whose memory, one night, had goaded him so much that the next morning, just before taking to the court, he had locked himself in the office of the director of the championship and called the beauty salon — he had never managed to forget that crude sequence of odd numbers — just to hear her voice once again. He felt both disappointed and relieved when the phone was answered by a rude male voice which explained that the salon was now under a new management, and that he knew nothing about the previous owner other than that she had got married and gone to live in Florence.
Flanked by ghosts, armed only with his loyal Dunlop Maxply, Cesare Vezzosi, known as the Beast, shone like a supernova and won all of his matches, single and double, without ever losing a set, governed by a unique competitive ecstasy that allowed him to beat teams from Milan, Rome, and Naples almost by himself, leading the architect Dante Zucchi to a national victory and bringing him to tears as Paolo Bertolucci hung the gold medal around his neck.
The Beast became the Unranked Champion of Italy, and no one asked him why, at match point, just before hitting the miraculous ace that ended game, set, match, and tournament, he had suddenly stopped bouncing the white Pirelli ball on the clay and had let it drop to rub his right hand on his left arm, as if in an awkward caress. And no one, during the party that followed, remembered to ask him whom in the crowd he was looking for when, in the moment of triumph, he had slowly stared at every person in the stands, his eyes wet with what everyone assumed was emotion or sweat.
MADDALENA OR MILENA
VITTORIO ADORED HER. He dreamed of her all day and all night. They spent their afternoons in his room, on his bed, kissing and listening to music and telling each other about their precious lives, embracing for hours. But if Milena seemed perfectly happy with the status quo, Vittorio couldn’t stop thinking how things hadn’t really moved on since the passionate kisses they had first exchanged at Cinzia’s party last spring.
While his father found it very amusing that Vittorio’s first girlfriend was the daughter of his doubles partner, and at the dinner table he would encourage his son to fuck Zucchi’s daughter, causing both Vittorio and Arianna to turn red and get angry, his mother didn’t like at all that girl who had taken it upon herself to buy Vittorio jeans as if she had always dressed him badly, and really hated that Milena spent almost all her afternoons at their house and never said a single word to her apart from a hushed, hurried “good evening” when she was entering and leaving Vittorio’s bedroom, so Arianna started to refer to her, half joking, as that girl, I can never remember if she’s called Maddalena or Milena, who has been coming to see you every day for six months now and clearly never has any homework to do.
After a long, empty summer during which they hadn’t really seen each other because of their families’ divergent holiday plans, in September Vittorio decided to take the initiative, and one day, as they kissed, he touched her breasts. She didn’t seem surprised or angry, didn’t say anything, didn’t pull back. She did, however, show a mute yet decisive resistance to the liberal advance of those uncertain hands: each centimeter would be a triumph. And she would be the one to authorize it.
It was the beginning of a slow, laborious, yet constant progression. Almost immediately Vittorio managed to win the right to touch them over her sweater, but it was well into October before he managed to touch them under the sweater. By November he was allowed to place his hand on top of her T-shirt, and then — it was Christmas, Christmas Eve 1980, after Mass — under her T-shirt, and never in h
is life had he ever received such a wonderful gift as being able to hold her nipple between his fingers and feel it stand and grow hard in just a few seconds.
It was only after mid-January that he finally conquered the right to see those small, freckled, ivory breasts of hers and touch them freely, with his whole hand, every time they kissed.
And then, in the harshest of winters, Milena began to bloom, and became more beautiful each day. A light seemed to burn inside her, and she lit up the world each time she smiled. Her movements, once clumsy, were now animated by a new grace. Her hair, thicker and doubled in volume, took on a warm copper tone, and each time he touched it, Vittorio had the impression he could hear the silvery sound of harps.
Although Milena was only sixteen and dressed like a tomboy, with the shearling jacket and the sailor’s cap, and her idea of a perfect Saturday evening still consisted of watching the same videocassettes of Rocky and Rambo and The Blues Brothers over and over while eating French fries with ketchup and mayonnaise and drinking Coke straight from the bottle with him and Cinzia, it was hard not to notice that her mouth, breasts, legs, and gravity-defying ass were no longer mere body parts of a young girl, but a woman’s tools of seduction — involuntary, of course, entirely involuntary, given that Milena had never once wanted to seduce anyone.
Her parents’ reaction to this transformation had been to boast to anyone who would listen about their daughter’s undeniable newfound beauty, and if her father was a bit more constrained out of fear of the scorching jibes of the Beast, her mother started to buy fashion magazines to compare her to famous models, and insisted that in a few years Milena would certainly be joining their ranks: all it took was the opportunity to be seen by the right people.
