City

by Alessandro Baricco

  “We all stood there, like stone, and didn’t even know where to look. A silence like the grave. Only the sheriff moved: he went up to the corpse, rolled him onto his back, and stood looking a while. He seemed to be searching for something. Then he turned to us: he shook his head and smiled.”

  Carver stopped wiping the glass. He smiled, too.

  “That fool had been very clever. He’d taken the jack of hearts out of the pack and hidden it. Guess where.”

  “Vest pocket.”

  “Just above his heart. I remember it still, that card. Covered with blood. And in the middle: two holes, just so, like a signature.”

  “Whiskey, Carver.”

  “Sì, señor.”

  At the trial—said Shatzy—the judge searched through his books for something that would allow an unarmed cheat to be killed without the killers’ ending up on the gallows. He couldn’t find anything. So he said, Fuck you, not guilty. He took the sheriff aside and said something to him alone. Then he went and got violently drunk.

  “Carver?”

  “Sì, señor.”

  “Why am I alive?”

  “This is a saloon, the church is farther along, on the other side of the street.”

  “How is it that the Dolphin sisters shot me and yet I’m here, drinking whiskey?”

  “Blanks. The sisters don’t know it, Truman Morgan makes them, red, .44-.40 caliber, they did a good job, exact likenesses of the real ones. But they’re blanks. Sheriff’s orders.”

  “And they don’t know it?”

  Carver shrugs his shoulders. The stranger empties his glass. There is a stink of sweat, alcohol, horses, rotten teeth, pee and aftershave. If you asked Shatzy what the hell it had to do with the menu, she said it does, it does. Don’t worry, this is only the beginning.

  8

  Since the bathroom was at the top of the stairs, when Shatzy went up to bed she passed it. Gould was in there. And what she heard from outside was his voice. His voice imitating other voices.

  “We’re not at your fucking college, Larry, you know? Look at me and breathe . . . come on, breathe . . . AND GO SLOW WITH THAT STUFF, CHRIST!”

  “Your eyebrow’s a mess, Maestro.”

  “Go slow, just the same, for God’s sake . . . listen Larry, are you listening to me?”

  “Yes.”

  “If you don’t stop playing the little rich kid that guy will send you home with somebody else’s face.”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you like to have somebody else’s face?”

  “No.”

  “Breathe . . . like this, Mr. Mama’s boy.”

  “I am not a . . .”

  “YES, YOU ARE, YOU FUCKING MAMA’S BOY, breathe . . . give him some water . . . WATER . . . listen to me, are you listening to me? You won’t beat him if you stand there waiting, get it?”

  “. . .”

  “Shorten up, Larry, you have to get inside there and stay with his punches, you have to look for those punches, understand, stop running, you’re not here to look good in the photos, watch for his punches, NO MORE WATER, when you feel his fists then you’re at the right distance, that’s where you have to work, left to the liver and uppercut, that guy’s got a defense you could drive a truck through, LARRY!”

  “Yes.”

  “Go with his punches and then hit him. Repeat after me.”

  “My hand . . . my hand hurts.”

  “REPEAT IT, BY GOD!”

  “Go with his punches . . .”

  “Go with his punches, Larry.”

  DONG!

  “Fuck you, Larry!”

  “. . . fuck.”

  Third round here in the ring at the Toyota Master Building, Larry Gorman and León Sobilo, scheduled for eight rounds, Gorman’s face already looks tired, Sobilo stays in the center of the ring . . . in his usual position, not too refined but effective . . . a great fighter, remember his match with Harder . . . twelve brutal rounds . . . left jab from Sobilo, another jab . . . Gorman backpedals, Gorman at the ropes, then he slides down, gracefully . . .

  “WHAT WAS THAT, LARRY? YOU’RE NOT DANCING THE TANGO, FOR GOD’S SAKE.”

  Sobilo doesn’t ease up, again with the jab, and again . . . right hook, DOUBLES WITH THE LEFT, GORMAN WAVERS . . . LOOKS FOR THE CORNER, BOTH STANDING . . . Sobilo on the attack, Gorman crouching in the corner . . .

  “NOW, LARRY!”

  UPPERCUT FROM GORMAN, RIGHT HOOK, LEFT TO THE BODY, SOBILO SEEMS TO BE HIT HARD, BACKS UP TOWARD THE CENTER OF THE RING

  FINISH HIM LARRY, FUCK, NOW...

  Gorman presses him . . . holds his arms down at his sides, a really weird sight, all you folks out there listening . . . Sobilo stops . . . Gorman’s torso wobbles, he still has his arms lowered . . . jab from Sobilo, Gorman ducks, AND GETS INSIDE

  SOBILO’S DEFENSE

  RIGHT

  STRAIGHT RIGHT

  LEFT

  LEFT HO OK . . .

  AND RIGHT

  RIGHT HOOK, SOBILO TO THE CANVAS, TO THE CANVAS, SOBILO GOES DOWN, A DEADLY COMBINATION, SOBILO TO THE CANVAS, HE DOESN’T SEEM TO HAVE THE STRENGTH TO GET UP . . . RIGHT LEFT RIGHT WITH DIZZYING SPEED . . . SOBILO TRIES TO GET UP . . . GETS UP, SOBILO ON HIS FEET, THE COUNT IS OVER, SOBILO ON HIS FEET BUT IT’S OVER, IT’S OVER, THE REFEREE STOPS THE FIGHT, IT’S OVER, AT A MINUTE AND SIXTEEN SECONDS INTO THE THIRD ROUND, TECHNICAL KNOCKOUT, ALL YOU LISTENERS OUT THERE, ONE AMAZING BURST WAS ENOUGH FOR LARRY GORMAN TO CARRY OFF THE VICTORY HERE AT THE TOYOTA MASTER BUILDING . . .

  “Where the fuck did you learn that tango step?”

  “In college, Maestro.”

  “Don’t bullshit me.”

  “I’ll teach you if you want.”

  “Put this on, let’s go.”

  “Whose face do I have?”

  “Yours.”

  “OK.”

  Sound of running water. Then the faucet, and brushing of teeth. Then nothing. The door opened and Gould was in his pajamas. Shatzy stood there motionless, looking at him.

  “And what was that?”

  “What?”

  “That TV.”

  “It’s a radio.”

  “Ah.”

  “Ugly son of a bitch, that Sobilo.”

  “Italian?”

  “Argentinean. A fighter. Ugly to look at, but a stubborn son of a bitch. Never went down before.”

  “Gould?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why don’t you just pee when you’re in the bathroom, like other little boys?”

  “I do it in bed, it’s more comfortable.”

  “True.”

  “Night.”

  “Night.”

  9

  Shatzy invited them all out to dinner on Saturday, so in the afternoon they went to Wizwondk’s, the barber’s, to get their hair cut. It was crowded; there was a line out the door. Everyone gets a haircut on Saturday.

  “At my house we all have a bath on Saturday,” said Diesel.

  The man lying back in the chair, soaped up to his nostrils, kept clearing his throat, but in that position, of course, he couldn’t spit, and so it accumulated. Horrifying to think what he might cough up, at the right moment. Fan blades turning on the ceiling whirling hair stubble old Brilliantine ads and the smell of cologne. Yellow walls, Brigitte Bardot, who has never aged in Wizwondk’s heart, pasted on mirrors; someone says he was a priest, at home, then something about girls, some such story. Wizwondk the barber: on Thursday he cut hair free, “I know why, and I’ll never tell you.” Poomerang had his head shaved. Gould: “Cut as little as possible, please.” Diesel didn’t sit in chairs, so he stood, leaning on the sink, and Wizwondk climbed up on a stool, up and down, and cut, tapered in the back, center part. For now, anyway, people were lined up outside in the heat, waiting.

  “Technical knockout in the third round,” said Gould.

  “Shit,” said Diesel, taking a greasy bill out of his pocket and handing it to Poomerang. “You want to explain to me how he stayed on his feet all that
time?”

  “I told you, that guy was a stubborn son of a bitch.”

  “You can’t hurry an artist, and Gorman is an artist,” Poomerang didn’t say, pocketing it.

  “And what about Mondini?” asked Diesel.

  “Mondini made a face like this, he didn’t want to utter a word. He says Larry’s trying to be clever, he gets up there and dances the tango.”

  “Baila, baila.”

  “Next,” said Wizwondk.

  Mondini was Larry’s trainer. The Maestro, they call him. The one who discovered Larry. His hair was stiff and curly, like steel wool. He had a story of his own.

  POOMERANG: Mondini was a tinker; he didn’t know much about it, but he did it. He fixed a toilet in a gym and fell in love with boxing. In his first fight he ended up on the mat six times. Back in the locker room, he got dressed, then went out and waited for the guy who had flattened him. He had a Russian name, Kozalkev. Mondini could barely stand up because of the hits he’d taken, but he followed him, without being noticed, until the Russian went into a bar. Mondini went in, too. He ordered a beer and sat down next to him. He waited awhile, then said to him: Teach me. Kozalkev had fought fifty-three times, he sold fights, and every so often he had himself set up with a few greenhorns to straighten his record. Fuck you, he said. Very calmly, Mondini emptied his beer on the fighter’s pants. That started them brawling, hitting and kicking and throwing glasses, until they were forcibly separated and thrown into a jail cell, down at police head-quarters. For an hour they sat in the semi-darkness, in solitary silence. Then the Russian said: First of all, you box if you’re hungry—it doesn’t matter for what. By morning they had gotten as far as how to punch your opponent in the kidneys without the referee’s seeing you, and then how you protest when the opponent does the same. A fist in the kidneys, incidentally, hurts all the way up to the eyes.

  DIESEL: Mondini said that it takes one night to learn how to box. And a whole lifetime to learn how to fight. He stopped at thirty-four. A career, like so many, with one memorable match. Twelve rounds at Atlantic City, against Barry “King” Moose. They ended up on the mat four times each. It looked as though they were going to murder each other. They spent the last round leaning on each other, head to head, exhausted, their fists swinging like pendulums winding down: and for those last three minutes they insulted each other like pigs. In the end the victory went to Moose, he’d gotten some hooks in. Mondini tried to forget. But one time, when they were all watching TV, and there was something about a murder in Atlantic City, someone heard him mutter: Great place, I spent a week there once, one Sunday night.

  “Shall I touch up all this white hair?” said Wizwondk. On Monday, his day off, he visited the cemeteries; he seemed to have relatives everywhere. And at night, at home, he played the guitar. The neighbors opened their windows and listened.

  POOMERANG: Mondini stopped when he was thirty-four. His last fight was against a black guy from Philadelphia. He was at the end of the line, too. Mondini called his wife, who always sat in the first row, and said to her:

  “Did you take the money?”

  “Yes.”

  “OK. All on me, on points.”

  “But . . .”

  “Don’t argue. Me, on points. And let’s just hope the guy manages to stay on his feet to the end.”

  Mondini went to the mat in the second round and again in the seventh. He didn’t fight badly, but he just didn’t see that damn left hook coming. The black guy did a good job of getting it off, you couldn’t see it coming. He let him have one in the tenth, and put him out cold. Mondini saw stars for a while. Then he saw his wife looking at him, leaning over the cot in the locker room. He attempted a smile.

  “Don’t worry. We’ll start over.”

  “Done,” his wife said. “I put it all on the other guy.”

  It was with that money that he opened the gym. And he became Mondini, the real thing. The Maestro. Try finding another like him.

  The kid sitting right under the Berbaluz calendar (hair dyes and shampoos) began to tremble like a condemned man. His whole body was trembling, violently. He slid off the chair and lay on the floor. He was gnashing his teeth and foaming at the mouth. With every breath he let out a frightening hiss. Wizwondk stopped, scissors and comb in his hand. They were all staring, no one moved. The big fat man who was sitting in the chair next to him said “What’s with him?”

  No one answered. The boy was in bad shape. He was beating his arms and legs on the floor, and his head was bobbing on its own, his eyes were crossed and the slobber was fouling his face.

  “Fucking disgusting!”

  The fat man got up, looked at the boy lying in front of him, and ran his hands over his jacket, as if wiping them off. He was pale, and his forehead was shiny with sweat.

  “Are you going to make him stop, or not? It’s indecent!”

  Wizwondk couldn’t move. Someone else got up but no one dared approach. An old man who had remained sitting in his chair murmured something like

  “You have to let him breathe . . .”

  Wizwondk said

  “The telephone . . .”

  The boy hit his head on the floor, he didn’t complain, nothing, only that dreadful hissing . . .

  DIESEL: A really fine gym. Mondini’s Gym. Right above the door, so there would be no mistake, was written, in red, “Boxing: Do It If You’re Hungry.” Then there was a picture of Mondini as a young man, with his fists in the air, and one of Rocky Marciano, autographed. There was a blue ring, a little smaller than regulation. And equipment everywhere. Mondini opened at three in the afternoon. The first thing he did was plug in the clock, the one that timed the rounds. It only had a second hand, and every three circuits it rang and then stopped for a minute. Mondini had a kind of reflex. When the bell rang he’d spit and then smile: as if he had emerged unharmed from something. He lived in his own time, divided into three-minute rounds and one-minute pauses. When he closed the gym, late in the evening, the last thing he did, in the dark, was unplug the clock. Then he went home, like a ship whose sails have been lowered.

  POOMERANG: He took a couple of kids to the national title, kids without much talent, but he worked them well. He killed them with training exercises, and then, when they were ready, he sat them down and began to talk. About everything. And among the other things, boxing. After half an hour they got up. They wouldn’t have been able to repeat a thing, but when they went into the blue ring to fight, it all came back to their minds: how to defend, how to fake a hook, how to duck a left. Leaning on the ropes, Mondini watched them in silence, not missing a move. Then he sent them home without saying a word. The next day, it started again. His students trusted him. He managed to bring out the best in each of them. When the best was to get beaten soundly every time they went into the ring, Mondini would call them over, one evening like all the others, and say I’ll take you home, OK? He’d load them into his old sedan, twenty years old, and, talking about other things, drive them home. When they got out of the car, they also got out of the ring. They knew it. Some said: I’m sorry, Maestro. He’d shrug. And that was the end. It went on like that for sixteen years. Then Larry Gorman showed up.

  The boy started to pee on himself. His pants flattened out and the pee ran over the linoleum floor tiles. The fat man walked around the boy, he was beside himself:

  “God damn it, this is disgusting . . . stop it, you fucking bastard, will you stop it?”

  No one was thinking of going near him, because the boy was still writhing, and the fat man was frightening he was so angry. He went on shouting.

  “Cut it out, you bastard, you hear me? Cut it out, he’s peed all over himself, little bastard, shit, he’s peed on himself, like an animal, God damn . . .”

  He was standing in front of the kid, and suddenly he kicked him, in the ribs, and then looked at his shoe, a black loafer, to see if it was dirty, and that utterly enraged him.

  “Fucking shit, can’t you see how revolting it is, disgusting, make
him stop!”

  He began kicking him all over. Wizwondk took two steps forwards. He had the scissors in his hand. He held them like a dagger.

  “Now that’s enough, Mr. Abner,” he said.

  The fat man didn’t even hear him. He was like a madman kicking the boy. He shouted and struck, the boy was still trembling, there was drool all over his face, and every so often he made that hissing sound, but weaker, as if from a distance. Everyone was terrified. Wizwondk took another two steps forwards.

  DIESEL: Larry Gorman was sixteen. A good build, a light heavyweight’s; a good face, not like a fighter’s; a good family, from an exclusive neighborhood. He came into the gym late one night. And he asked for Mondini. The Maestro was leaning on the ropes, watching two guys who were sparring. One of them, the blond, was always leaving his right side unprotected. The other didn’t have his heart in it. The Maestro was brooding. Larry went up to him and said: Hello, my name is Larry, and I want to be a boxer. Mondini turned, looked him over, pointed to the red letters over the door, and went back to the two who were fighting. Larry didn’t even turn around. He had already read the words. Boxing: Do It If You’re Hungry. As a matter of fact, he said, I haven’t had dinner yet. The bell rang, they stopped fighting, Mondini spat on the floor and said Very funny. Get out. Someone else would have left, but Larry was different, he never left. He sat down on a bench in a corner and didn’t move. Mondini kept at it for two more hours, then the gym began to empty out, people picked up their stuff and left. Until it was just the two of them. Mondini put his coat on over his gym clothes, turned out the light, headed towards the clock and said: if anyone comes, bark. Then he unplugged the clock and left. When he came back the next day, at three in the afternoon, Larry was there. On the bench. Give me one good reason why I should train you, Mondini said to him. To see what it’s like to train the next world champion.

  POOMERANG: In a sense, Mondini hated him. But he spent a year remaking his body, with a killing regimen of training. He took the money off him, as he put it. Larry worked without discussion, and meanwhile he watched others, and learned. A model pupil, except he had this mania of never being quiet. He talked continuously. He commented. As soon as anyone was in the ring, he started. Maybe he was jumping rope, or even on the floor doing his eightieth kneebend. At the first punch, he began to comment. He gave his opinion. He corrected, he counseled, he got mad. Generally, he kept his voice fairly low, but still it was exhausting. One night, about a year after his arrival, there were two guys in the ring, sparring, and he wouldn’t stop. It annoyed him that the shorter one couldn’t hide his punches, and was too slow on his feet. What’s the matter, he shit in his shoes? he said. Mondini stopped the fight. He made the shorter one get out of the ring, turned to Larry, and said Get up there. He put on the gloves, the headgear, and inserted the mouthpiece. Larry had never been in the ring and had never punched anyone in his life. The other was a light heavyweight, with six fights behind him, all of which he had won. Promising. He looked at the Maestro because he didn’t really know what to do. Mondini gave him a nod that meant let him have it till I stop you. Larry put up his fists. When he met the other’s gaze, he smiled and with the mouthpiece wobbling in his mouth managed to say: Scared?