On the 50th anniversary of the release of the iconic Rocky, the memoirs of one of the greatest actors of our time arrive in bookstores: Sylvester Stallone. An intimate, frank, and humorous account of the years of rejection, learning, and stubbornness that led Stallone from poverty to the creation of one of cinema’s universal stories of overcoming.
In Zenda we reproduce the opening pages of The Steps (Plaza & Janés), by Sylvester Stallone.
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FIRST STEP
NEW YORK
1
Back in the kitchen
Leaving Port Authority Bus Terminal after ten hours aboard a plane and two on a bus, I was hit by a heat surge and a deafening racket I wasn’t prepared for. The incredible clamor of human voices, the screech of suitcases dragged across linoleum and concrete, the roar of constant traffic and car horns above the blasting radios… everything slammed into my senses like sunlight through a magnifying glass, igniting the summer air of New York in a blaze of infernal fire and human activity.
“Welcome home, Sly.”
It was nearly evening, I had nowhere to sleep, and I didn’t know a single soul in that giant city of millions. Truly. I didn’t know where to go. I stepped out onto the street and found myself walking among strangers. I looked at the signs to orient myself: Forty-second Street and Eighth Avenue. That sounded familiar. Our first apartment, when I was a baby, was on Forty-sixth Street at Ninth Avenue, in the heart of the neighborhood known as Hell’s Kitchen, the Kitchen from Hell. It wasn’t far. I decided to stroll there, to where it all began.
I was born on July 6, 1946, to my mother’s surprise. She had never wished to have children, so she endured the pregnancy in outright denial until she went into labor while riding a bus on a Saturday afternoon. A kind passenger helped her down and accompanied her to the nearest hospital, which turned out to be a charitable institution serving working-class people.
The birth was difficult.
There were complications.
I hadn’t fully come down the birth canal, so a member of the medical team used forceps to pull me out. That carries certain risks. If the baby’s head is misaligned, it can cause permanent injuries such as skull fractures, brain trauma, facial and ocular trauma, and the kind of injury I suffered: paralysis and permanent disfigurement. They accidentally crushed a nerve, leaving the left side of my face partially paralyzed. That changed my life forever. I ended up with a crooked mouth and a perpetual rasp. What can you do. Our apartment was a tiny place, what was then called a “cold-water flat.” As the name suggests, it had no hot water, which made washing dishes almost impossible. Getting into the bathtub, especially in winter, was brutal, so it didn’t happen very often. My mother boiled water on the gas stove, mixed it with the cold bath water, and cleaned me as best she could with a sponge. When we weren’t using the little tub for its ordinary purpose, which was most of the time, we placed a plywood board on top to serve as a kitchen table and… there you have it.
The rent was about fifteen dollars a month. No central heating. The kitchen had a single stove with a small rack on top. Now let’s move on to the fun part. My father sealed the holes in the baseboard with metal fiber to keep rats from entering. He thought they wouldn’t eat it because it would catch between their teeth. But just in case, he would also bend back the lid of a large can of tomatoes and place it against the hole.
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Author: Sylvester Stallone. Title: The Steps. Translation: Santiago del Rey Farrés and Jesús de la Torre Olid. Publisher: Plaza & Janés. Sales: Todostuslibros.