Free City by Alessandro Baricco

Sobilo.”
    â€œItalian?”
    â€œArgentinean. A fighter. Ugly to look at, but a stubborn son of a bitch. Never went down before.”
    â€œGould?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWhy don’t you just pee when you’re in the bathroom, like other little boys?”
    â€œI do it in bed, it’s more comfortable.”
    â€œTrue.”
    â€œNight.”
    â€œNight.”

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.
    â€œAt 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.
    â€œTechnical knockout in the third round,” said Gould.
    â€œShit,” 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?”
    â€œI told you, that guy was a stubborn son of a bitch.”
    â€œYou can’t hurry an artist, and Gorman is an artist,” Poomerang didn’t say, pocketing it.
    â€œAnd what about Mondini?” asked Diesel.
    â€œMondini 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.”
    â€œBaila, baila.”
    â€œNext,” 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