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“Yes.”
“You turn me into a fighter… and I’ll turn you into a master of the spoken word.”
“It’s a deal,” I said –
And we lifted our glasses in a toast.
97
Ibegan to train Dario immediately.
First, I had him demonstrate what he knew. He explained that he’d boxed a little as a teenager.
Some of his technique was good, but most of it was sloppy. I told him he would have to unlearn most of what he already knew.
He was a good student – neither arrogant nor defensive. He didn’t protest when I told him to change something. He accepted that I was better than him at hand-to-hand combat, and he listened to what I said and immediately implemented it.
We started with balance first, then footwork. That alone took weeks.
He had an impressive physique, but it was mostly from weightlifting for aesthetics. He lacked strength in his core and leg muscles, so I put him through a punishing regime of calisthenics and bodyweight exercises. The first day, he could barely do a handstand; five months later, he could kick up in a handstand against the wall and do 100 vertical pushups in a row.
I taught him how to channel all of his energy into a punch by using his hips as the driving force. We got an extra mattress and hung it on the cinderblock wall, and he hit it like he would a punching bag. We started with a plush mattress like the kind we had in our bunks; after six months, we exchanged it for one of the inch-thick pads most prisoners slept on. After a couple of years, he graduated to punching the bare wall with his hands wrapped to keep him from bloodying his knuckles. Eventually, I took away even the hand wraps.
I taught him how to block – but I also taught him that the best way to deal with a punch was to move out of the way so he couldn’t be hit in the first place.
We eventually moved on to kicks, then ground fighting, then fighting with and against weapons like knives and shivs.
Speaking of shivs, he gave me some of his improvised body armor on day one: phone books secured with duct tape around my stomach and lower back.
I have to say, I felt a lot more confident walking around with the knowledge that no one could stab me in the gut or kidneys. Slit my throat, yes. Stab me in the eye, maybe. But 50% protection was better than none, and ‘none’ was what I had before.
As for teaching me Italian, Dario was relentless. He was a good teacher, constantly drilling me and making me perfect my pronunciation. He would force me to say a line a hundred times until it rolled off my tongue like I was a native.
And he didn’t just teach me polite conversation, either.
“Va’ a farti fottere, pezzo di merda,” I repeated for the 50th time.
“Che significa?” he asked.
Which means…?
“Go fuck yourself, you piece of shit.”
“Questa è la migliore traduzione in inglese, sì, ma letteralmente significa?”
That’s the best translation in English, yes, but it literally means…?
“Go get fucked, you piece of shit.”
He laughed. “Excellent.”
He schooled me in the use of Italian profanity, which was an art form all its own, full of nuance and musicality.
I learned that Madonn’ was a shortening of Madonna, the Italian term ‘my lady’ – which was used to refer to the mother of Jesus, as in ‘Madonna and child.’ Madonn’ was used as an expression of shock or surprise. After I found out what it meant, I realized I heard it quite often amongst the prisoners of San Vittore.
The more Dario taught me, the less hostile and incomprehensible the prison became. It was still an environment full of danger – but also humor and small kindnesses.
When you can’t understand what someone’s saying, and they get frustrated – a common occurrence with Italian males, who wore their emotions on their sleeves, unlike Swedes – everything sounds hostile, even when it’s not.
