The Distance

by Ivan Vladislavic

  This is madness! You can’t go around in these broken old things. Dad will kill you if he finds out.

  He won’t find out if you don’t say anything.

  The next time there’s an inspection before assembly one of the prefects will notice. He’ll send you to the office.

  At second break, we meet again on the pavilion and he brings the new shoes in a brown-paper bag. He puts them on and walks up and down.

  I can’t hear a thing.

  You’re not listening properly, he says. And he paces up and down more slowly, heel and toe, heel and toe, trying to squeeze a sound out of the soles. Still nothing.

  You’re imagining it. They don’t look great, you’ve got a point, but they’re not squeaking. It just looks that way.

  It’s too noisy here. And this grass is muffling the sound. When it’s quiet in class you can hear it easily. Last Monday Shillington called me to the board to do an equation and you should have heard it then. People thought there was a mouse somewhere. Shillo nearly bliksemed me for messing around.

  Enough. Sit down and eat your sarmies.

  It can’t last. He keeps swapping shoes for a couple of weeks. Then he gets careless and leaves the old shoes under his bed, where Mom finds them. She hits the roof. This time they go into the rubbish and out to the dump. Now he’s got to wear the new shoes, like it or not. Of course, no one thinks there’s anything strange about them. But he blames me anyway. He says I ratted him out to Mom. It’s my fault he has to go around dressed like a clown. And it’s my fault Buster ended up at the SPCA, he says. You never liked that dog.

  Joe

  The Ali-Norton rematch took place at The Forum in Los Angeles on 10 September 1973, five months after the first fight. For only the second time in his career – the first being the two victories against Sonny Liston – Ali met the same opponent twice in a row. The loss had been a setback and he’d needed time to recover physically and mentally. The wish to cash in on the big money excitement (Solly Jasven) no doubt played a role too: the promoters wanted to get a title fight with Foreman back on track.

  In the buildup to the rematch the joking about Ali’s jaw redoubled. ‘The Lip must keep mouth buttoned’ ran one headline in The Star. In fact, this was also the medical advice of Dr Ferdie Pacheco. He explained that Ali’s healed jaw would be stronger than ever, but Norton had dislodged three of his teeth, which had been replaced. Dr Pacheco offered a cheerful caution: If Ali opens his mouth during the fight and gets caught again these could fly all over the place.

  While most of the sportswriters were predicting that a second loss to Norton would be the end of the road, Ali had found a way to turn the logic of the first loss inside out. When I lost to Ken Norton I took a nobody and created a monster. A Frankenstein has broken loose…Now I’m going to pull out all his nuts and bolts.

  There was greater interest in the Ali-Norton rematch than in any fight since the Fight of the Century, with forty countries taking live or closed-circuit television coverage. The fight went the distance and Ali won on a split decision. The aficionados were not impressed with his performance. Alan Hubbard: The butterfly was back, but the bee had lost its sting.

  Afterwards Ali’s camp was worried that he had broken his hand, while he complained of old age and aches and pains: Every time I fight, something gets hurt lately…I’ve punched and been punched at since the age of 12…the pain, the blood, and the bones are all real and they take it out of you.

  Towards the end of October, after an exhibition match in Malaysia against sparring partner Alonzo Johnson, there was concern that Ali had injured his jaw again and on his return to New York it was examined by a doctor.

  Why am I here? Ali asked plaintively. What’s so important about my jaw? People are dying in Egypt and Israel. Ninety-six people killed in a plane crash…You hardly hear about that. But my jaw is going to be on the front pages all over the world. People are dying, people are bleeding…and all this fuss over a mere boxing match. It shows how messed up the world is. I don’t think it’s right to get all this attention. People who deserve it don’t get any.

  Yet he had no intention of leaving the circus. The long-awaited return against Joe Frazier was scheduled for early in the new year and the signing took place in the Hall of Fame at Madison Square Garden. Ali ran amok when Frazier refused to call him by his name: You are still calling me Clay, you are still calling me Clay. I’m going to beat your bones unless you call me Muhammad Ali.

  The press dubbed the second Ali-Frazier match ‘Superfight II’ and they poured a tankerful of ink into it. The last eight pages of my second scrapbook are devoted to the buildup.

  Branko

  On a melancholy morning, when the leaves are thick in the gutters and the air crackles with frost, my brother is back at my door. He should know better than to pitch up unannounced. People who work in offices always think freelancers are sitting around at home watching television, but he’s a freelancer himself. Still, I can’t very well send him away.

  He comes in with the Pres Les box in his arms and what Dad would have called a hare-brained scheme in his head. He wants us to collaborate on his book.

  I’ll make space for you in the text, he says. As if he’s scooting over on the couch or tidying up the spare room for a visitor.

  I remember the box and its contents: his so-called archive and its bastard progeny, the lever-arch file full of half-baked drafts that he calls his work. He showed it to me the last time he was here and complained that he was stuck.

  Have you made any progress?

  A little.

  Let me see then.

  He hems and haws about internal pressure and staying true to creative principles, but he unpacks the scrapbooks. The first time round they exuded some sort of charm, but now they look pathetic. What is this old stuff? That’s what Jordan asked when he saw them. How quaint all this paper must look to a digital native. Joe reaches into the box and takes out a yellow cardboard folder, opens it and removes a stack of A4 pages – he’s come prepared, it occurs to me afterwards – fifty feint-ruled and pre-punched sheets, handwritten in pencil. The pages are so densely packed with corrections and additions in bubbles moored to asterisks and arrows that I can scarcely find my way through a paragraph.

  I can’t read this, I say. You’ll have to type it up first.

  I don’t have time. And anyway it’ll disrupt my rhythm. I’ve got to press on to the end. It’s one of the principles: get the thing down on paper first. You can come back to the editing later.

  Doesn’t look like you’ve been following your own advice.

  With a sinking heart, I take the pages from him – it turns out to be the first few chapters of his book – and over the following days I hack a path through the jungle. I’ve never been in this position before and it’s not comfortable. It reminds me of our schooldays when I snooped through his diary.

  I go to the CNA to buy an exercise book for my notes. The soft-cover notebooks on their shelves have pictures of surfers and sunsets on them and so I settle for a black hardcover manuscript book with a red spine of the kind Mom used to use. They haven’t changed in fifty years.

  We agree to meet at the Mugg & Bean in Killarney to discuss my feedback. It’s on the route between his place in Troyeville and mine in Parkview. Let’s meet one another halfway, I tell him on the phone, and don’t get a laugh.

  He’s already there when I arrive, sitting at the window. Through the glass we can see the late-afternoon traffic thickening on the M1. It’s like having a view of the sea. The rush-hour flows are as reliable as the tides and nearly as reassuring.

  You weren’t entirely honest with me, I say. You insisted that you aren’t writing about Muhammad Ali – but you are. Mom and Dad are mentioned a couple of times and you’ve got a few pages about your pal Jolyon and that little bully Georgie Baker. That’s pretty good. But the spotlight is on Ali. Problem is we�
��ve heard it all before, the Fight of the Century, the hoopla, the baiting of Frazier. It’s just bits and pieces of your scrapbooks – sorry, your archive – it’s a cut-and-paste job.

  He’s getting het up already, waggling his teaspoon between his fingers like a jazz drummer on speed. His handwritten chapters are lying on the table between us. I tap on them with my finger and go on:

  All these details about wins and losses, split decisions and TKOs. The tale of the tape! What’s the point? There are hundreds of books about Ali, from pop picture books to heavyweight academic studies. You don’t even need to buy a book, just type his name into Google, which is what I did last night. It’ll take you a fucking year to go through the results. You can watch three versions of the big fights on YouTube. You can download just about every round he fought. If it was put on film, you can find it. If you’d prefer a movie – last time I looked you were going as a novelist – IMDb says the 2001 biopic is the best of the bunch. You have to watch Will Smith pretending to be Cassius Clay pretending to have sex, but otherwise it’s not bad.

  Thanks very much.

  Fine, I know you’re not a fan of Mr Smith. I can live without him too.

  Never mind that, he says, you’ve put your finger on something that’s been bothering me. Why Ali? My love for him used to feel inevitable, I would almost say predestined. But the more I think about it, the more arbitrary it seems. I could easily have chosen someone else.

  Like Eddy Merckx, I say, or Jackie Stewart.

  Exactly, he says. Or Evel Knievel.

  Evel Knievel!

  He was in the news all the time too. He used to jump over things on a motorcycle, over buses and so on.

  I remember who he was, Joe. But he was hardly in the same league as Ali. He was a publicity-seeking lunatic. It’s pure luck he didn’t break his neck in that Las Vegas stunt and wind up in a wheelchair. Do you know the one I mean? You’ll find that on YouTube too. And I’m thinking: how did we get here? Is he losing his marbles?

  You’d think he wanted to die, says Joe.

  Yes! He had a death wish. He broke every bone in his body at some stage – except his stupid neck. It’s like he wanted to get in The Guinness Book of Records for total number of fractures.

  Apparently he was a prick. Have you heard that? He treated the people who worked for him like shit.

  He used to dress up as Captain America. Or in a white jumpsuit. Like Elvis.

  Another Big Thing in the seventies. You could have chosen Elvis too.

  I know, I know. I would have had ten scrapbooks full of stuff about the King. The Great White Hope.

  Question is: would you be trying to write a book about him?

  I might have more luck.

  You went with Ali, I say – someone has to stop this train of thought in its tracks – you did the right thing.

  You and Dad hated him.

  Times have changed. I take it all back.

  It’s a little late.

  Actually I’ve been thinking about that. Did I really hate him? Maybe I was just following Dad’s lead. He certainly wasn’t a fan, as you say in here.

  This is great. He calls the waiter to refill our coffees. Talking to you like this, brother to brother. It’s just what I need. We haven’t been close in the last few years, but I want that to change. Having this discussion with you is really clarifying things. Perhaps we can do some interviews. Would you mind? I could ask you some questions. We can keep it informal like this, we’d just have a tape running, after a while we’ll forget it’s there.

  I don’t know, Joe. You’ve always left me out of this stuff of yours – and for good reason. It’s too arty for me, too cerebral. I’m happy to be left out, really, it suits me fine.

  But I could get your impressions of how things were in our childhood, in our youth. Your perspective.

  I suppose I could write them down…

  Don’t ask me why I say this. Maybe the thought of talking to him about the past makes me queasy or maybe I’m just fobbing him off. And it sort of works. He says:

  You’re not much of a writer.

  Neither are you, to judge by this. I pick up his handwritten drafts and shuffle through them. The chaos on the page shocks me anew: it’s as if his mind is going to pieces. Look, it’s not my place to offer you advice, but you’ve got to stop stressing. Go ahead and write about what’s in the scrapbooks. It’s not bad, actually. Leave the family stuff to me. Let me think about it anyway.

  Really? You’d do that? That’s fantastic! And then he wants to go. It’s like he knew I would make the offer. He waves at the waiter, pins a twenty-rand note under the salt cellar and rushes out. He’s trying to go off without his manuscript. I follow him out of the shop and the waiter runs after us waving the bill and the banknote. At the top of the escalator I thrust the yellow folder into his hands and he sinks towards the Ocean Basket, exclaiming and gesticulating in an exaggerated way as if he’s in a Woody Allen movie. Scenes from a Mall.

  When I’m back at the table calming my nerves with an espresso, odd thoughts start sparring in my head. First it’s Rio Rivers in his powder-blue Speedo and Sammy Cohen with his cellulite. And then the camped-up entertainers in spangled catsuits, Alice Cooper, David Bowie, that character from Roxy Music. What was going on with Joe in those years? Once I left school, I was so busy with my own stuff, I can hardly recall what he was up to. How well do I know him? They say all obsessions are rooted in the erotic. I remember once Alan Fuchs, who used to race with me, asked if Joe was one of those. One of what? It was a moment before I understood. Surely not. I defended him angrily, outraged on his behalf. But it made me wonder. Why couldn’t he find a girlfriend? That was when I tried to set him up with Barbie McCann at Pietie Lochner’s party. Big mistake.

  And now? Is he in some kind of trouble? Perhaps he really needs my help.

  Joe

  Crying in public has become as commonplace as laughing. Men are expected to cry easily and encouraged to cry often. Politicians, businessmen, sportsmen, movie stars, criminals regularly shed tears of sadness, humiliation, remorse and even joy. Feeling humbled, which is to say exalted, a man praised by his peers or singled out for an honour will shed tears of gratitude.

  A generation ago, men did not cry in public and seldom admitted to having done so in private. An exception was made for one unlikely category: boxers. Yes, the thick-skinned and lumpy journeymen of the busted-beak industry were allowed to weep in defeat. Perhaps the privilege was paid for in suffering, in the blood and sweat they spilled in the ring.

  Jerry Quarry wept in the dressing room after losing to Ali. So did Buster Mathis. After Ali lost to Norton, Bundini Brown sobbed and Angelo Dundee was white-faced and shaking. But Ali was not a crybaby. There is no inkling in the archive that the Lip ever did so much as quiver.

  6

  Collectors

  Durban – Last week the Durban North Presbyterian minister the Reverend Charles Gordon told his Durban North congregation: “I’m tired of seeing only shining pink faces. Bring your servants to Church next Sunday.” But yesterday Mr. Gordon looked down from his pulpit on the same shiny pink faces – nobody had taken up his challenge.

  – The Star, April 1973

  Joe

  Have I got long fingers?

  My mother takes my hand in hers and runs her thumb over my knuckles. The ring finger curves in at the end, just like my Dad’s, and my Grandpa Blahavić’s. This crookedness is a mark of the Blahavić men.

  They don’t look very long to me, Mom says.

  But are they longer than normal?

  I wouldn’t say so. And she squeezes my fingers into a taper, turns my hand over and rubs the palm. You’ve got your father’s hands. Then she puts her finger to her lips. Her radio serial is about to start again.

  She’s sitting on her bed and I’m on the dressing-table stool. The silver tr
ansistor radio is propped on a pile of books on the bedside table. We sit in silence while the Reverend Matthew, the troubled young priest who’s the main character, wrestles with his conscience, as he does every day. When it’s over she turns the volume down.

  Who says you’ve got long fingers?

  It was Tim.

  Tim Knowles said you have long fingers?

  He said that’s what Auntie Jilly said.

  Is that so.

  She gets up and looks through the window. Auntie Jilly’s Volksie is parked in the driveway. She stands there for a while, looking out, and then she turns back to me.

  Well, she must be mistaken. Her own children have such stubby little hands. I’m sure they’ll all grow up to be street sweepers.

  Later that afternoon she pulls on her cardigan, stuffs a box of fags in the pocket and a tissue up the sleeve, and goes across the road to have a cup of tea with Auntie Jilly.

  When she comes back, she calls me to the lounge, puts her hands on my shoulders and looks into my eyes. Is there anything in this house that belongs to Tim Knowles?

  No Mom. Actually there’s a pocket knife that he swapped me for a Hillman Minx with one wheel missing, but I’m not supposed to have a knife and it’s well hidden in the bottom drawer of my desk, so I don’t mention it.

  Anything that belongs to his brother?

  No Mom.

  His sisters?

  No Mom.

  All right, she says. Now I want you to stop playing with Tim. I don’t want you going over there. Do you understand?

  But Mom.

  But me no buts. You’re not to set foot in that boy’s yard again. Is that understood?