Memoirs of a Karate Fighter

by Ralph Robb

  *

  There was full attendance for the Saturday morning fighting class. Although the windows of the dojo were wide open, the gentle breeze did nothing to dissipate the cloying heat that was generated by our bodies. My gi was drenched with perspiration and the creases in the canvas chafed my skin as I performed my sixtieth front-kick. There would be a brief respite after another forty as we changed our stance to execute another hundred kicks with the other leg. After forty or so, the maegeris would lose their snap as our muscles would start to burn, then knot in excruciating pain; and by the eightieth kick the foot would become a like leaden weight on the end of a leg that felt light and powerless. Yet the count carried on remorselessly and despite all the voices in my head that told me to stop, I never did until I heard the instructor call “Yame.”

  Some weeks had passed since my win at the Wado Ryu championships, and Clinton had still not resumed training. I had gone around to his house on several occasions to persuade him to come training with me and each time we would laugh and joke, but he always had an excuse about why he could not go to the dojo. There had been times when, as I was talking to him, he would leave me and abruptly retreat to a darkened room to watch TV. More worryingly, he was back to working on that old car of his.

  “Yame, stop,” Eddie Cox called, before he told us to form straight lines and prepare ourselves to practise kata. It was peculiar to include kata practise in a fighting class, in fact it had never happened before, but I had the feeling that Eddie Cox wanted to maintain in our training an element of surprise to counterbalance the competition practice. The inclusion of kata was also an assertion that he was still the chief instructor and that we should followed whatever rules he laid down. The other black belts were his juniors and it seemed as though he was letting us know who was in charge by having them go through the same gruelling exertions.

  After a strenuous period of blocking and countering our imaginary opponents, Eddie Cox allowed us a short break. I sat on the floor with my back pressed against the cool concrete wall and dabbed the sweat from my eyes until they were drawn to a figure standing in the doorway. It was Clinton. He had a sports bag slung over his shoulder and he waved to me before disappearing into the changing room. I was glad to see him but then I became anxious as I wondered which Clinton had turned up at the dojo. I was worried that he may have arrived to take part in the training: a fit and well Clinton would have known that anyone appearing more than ten minutes late for a session would not be permitted to train.

  My heart sank as he reappeared in his gi, bowing as he entered the hall. Seeing Eddie Cox, he momentarily stopped in his tracks and waited for a signal from him. The sensei had not seen Clinton before he had entered the changing room and he appeared to be momentarily unsure of what to do. Clinton took his sensei’s hesitation as a sign that he should enter, and without needing further prompting, he skirted the hall to close to where I sat before taking up a kneeling position and bowing twice. He then got to his feet and waited for permission to join the class.

  Every eye in the dojo turned to Eddie Cox, whose expression had turned from mild bewilderment to one of embarrassment. He walked over to Clinton and rested a hand on his shoulder and talked to him in a quiet voice. Clinton smiled and shook his hand in greeting. As more hushed words were exchanged, Clinton’s smile vanished before he wandered back to the door. I tried to attract his attention but he did not see me.

  On watching Clinton slink out of the dojo I felt a heaviness in my throat. For an instant, instinct nearly overcame discipline and I almost got to my feet to march over to the sensei and ask him what was going on. But reason overcame my raw emotion, and glancing around the room, I became aware that everyone else had been closely watching Clinton’s dismissal. Some dropped their heads resignedly, and a few stared at me to observe my reaction until Eddie Cox shouted for us to line up once again.

  As we performed another kata, I felt Clinton’s eyes following me from the corner of the dojo where he stood perfectly still after changing back into his clothes. I willed the lesson to come to an end. I needed to speak to him, if only to offer a few words of comfort.

  “Yame,” cried the sensei. “Straighten your lines.” He then ordered us to kneel. As we closed our eyes in meditation, to reflect on the training and what we had achieved, all I could think about was Clinton and his obviously hurt feelings.

  “Moksu yame,” said the sensei, and we opened our eyes before bowing twice to bring the lesson to a close. Back on my feet, I spun around, looking for Clinton. The sun was blazing through the windows and I was momentarily dazzled. It took a few seconds for my eyes to refocus and see that Clinton had slipped away.

  In the changing room no one thought it appropriate to talk about Clinton. Instead the conversation was centred around a former member and another of my cousins who had been arrested for attempted armed robbery. It was only as the changing room filled with scornful laughter on hearing a description of his capture that I paid any attention to what was being said. The plan had been to hit a factory on payday as the wages were being delivered. My jaw tightened as someone chuckled and said that my cousin had decided to go ahead with the robbery even though a member of the gang had not turned up with the getaway vehicle and he had used his girlfriend’s car instead.

  I was back to being lost in grim thoughts about Clinton for a few minutes until I realized that the changing room had gradually emptied to leave only Eddie Cox and me. I asked him what had happened with Clinton. “I couldn’t let him train,” he said regretfully. “Not in his state.”

  “Come on, Eddie,” I said, my voice rising, “he needs to get back into the flow of things. You know, do the things he was doing before.”

  “I know he’s your cousin, Ralph, and you’re only looking out for him. But it’s medical help Clinton needs and not karate. And I can’t take the risk of him, or of someone else, getting hurt.”

  As Eddie was talking to me, in my mind I saw the smile vanish from Clinton’s face as he was told that he could not train and right then I felt as he had. “He was already changed,” I retorted. “I mean, we were only doing kata. It wasn’t like there was any risk of him getting hurt or somebody hurting him, now was there?”

  “Like the time you nearly hurt him?” Eddie said testily. “Like the UKKW final when you nearly took off his head with that punch? There have been signs, Ralph, and like everybody else I’ve been hoping that things had turned around for the guy. But now there’s too much of a risk. Do you think you could’ve caught Clinton with a punch like that if he was healthy?”

  I tightened my lips and nodded. “Yeah, you’re right, it’s just …”

  “It’s all right,” he said sympathetically, “no need to explain. We’re all just hoping that he pulls through.” He slapped my shoulder, and as we began to walk to our cars Eddie tried to lighten my mood by making a joke about my relative who had been arrested because of his own idiocy. I could only shrug my shoulders, and Eddie got into his car. I did not care about the man who had brought problems on himself because of his criminal activities, it was Clinton’s predicament that was on my mind as I watched Eddie drive away. I began to wonder if Clinton’s present state was a cruel twist of nature, or if it was the environment in which he lived which had applied so much pressure that it had finally started to break his mind and spirit. And if Clinton’s illness was due to where and how he lived, could it be that I might succumb to the same pressures at some point in the future?

  – Chapter Seventeen –

  When the clouds of perplexity clear away, there is true nothingness.

  Miyamoto Musashi – The Book of the Void

  WAS IT ME, or was it the world that was changing so fast? I had gone from a youth preoccupied with karate to a family man, with all the accompanying responsibilities, in only a matter of months. The transition to adulthood in a short space of time would have been difficult enough for me to cope with but it also seemed that the world around me had suddenly grown into a much less plea
sant place.

  Hundreds of workers had been made redundant at other factories in the area and the lack of certainty about what lay ahead for us sent ripples of discontent throughout my workplace. For the first time, I began to have concerns about whether or not I would have a job to go to in the near future. If I had only myself to look after, or if I were still living with my parents, the spectre of unemployment would have held no fear for me. But I no longer had the option of a solitary life, nor one of dependancy.

  I had arrived at the factory’s gates in time to find a handful of workers musing aloud amongst themselves on how they would form a picket line. As I walked through the gate, one of them was attempting to start a fire in an open oil drum and his colleagues were too distracted to even notice me. On reaching the maintenance department, my first inkling that things were not as I had been led to believe was the absence of Harold the tea-maker. For the first time in all my years at the factory, I made the tea, and had drunk three cups before it dawned on me that no other member of the crew was willing to cross the unofficial picket line.

  The day before there had not been a dissenting voice when the maintenance department had agreed not to take action to support Dave the labourer. The management, who had been spoiling for a fight, thought they had picked on a soft target when they suspended the factory’s resident gigolo after he had reported late for work three days in a row. However, the powers-that-be had not counted on Dave’s abiding allure with the female employees in the assembly area, who immediately withdrew their labour. Meetings were hurriedly convened all over the factory. The workers in the tool room and the stamp shop agreed with my department in that they would not take part in any action that did not have official union sanction. Privately, more than one had said that they would not be stopping work for a ‘toe-rag’ like Dave the labourer.

  I was relieved to see Mick Davies; he had been away on holiday and was unaware of the industrial strife. I filled him in on recent events over a cup of tea and I thought that he was having second thoughts about crossing the picket line. To prevent him leaving, I then mentioned another YMCA victory at a tournament the previous weekend, but his response was less than enthusiastic. He replied, “Well, you’ve done it all before, haven’t you?” The conversation became increasingly strained and I was glad for the sound of the buzzer that signalled the beginning of the shift.

  There had been a subtle change in my relationship with Mick since I had turned twenty-one. My birthday had held no special significance for me except that my apprenticeship had come to an end. As an apprentice, I had been viewed by those who inhabited the delicate ecosystem of the maintenance department as at the very bottom of the food-chain. Now, I had evolved into a fully-fledged tradesman adjustments were required if we were to preserve the delicate balance in the relationships that enabled us to work as a team. But a further threat of destabilisation within our department came in the form of Mr Pearson, a kindhearted man who was the personnel manager. Mr Pearson had always been on hand during my apprenticeship to offer encouragement and I had often wished that he could have been one of my teachers at school. Shortly after I became qualified, he had asked me to consider carrying on with my studies and said that he would arrange for me to have the necessary time off to take the Higher National Certificate course in production engineering. He added that when I passed I could then be inducted into the heady heights of lower management. Naively, I had mentioned Mr Pearson’s offer to the rest of the maintenance crew while we were seated at the long table and my ‘good’ news had been met with stony silence. My decision to take the opportunity to become better qualified had made my relationship with Mick difficult; there was a clear demarcation at the factory between workers and management, and the mere fact that I had expressed an interest in getting promoted had made me a potential ‘enemy’.

  I was in the stamp shop trying to figure out what was wrong with a machine when the head engineer approached me. “Ralph, there’s no need to worry,” he said, “but your mother just rang.” In that split second my mind was filled with worry as my mother had never before telephoned the factory. I anticipated terrible news about a family member having an accident – or that something even worse had happened. He continued, “She said there was no need to panic but she asked if you would call into her on your way home.”

  “Did she say what’s it about?” I asked.

  “Er, no. She just said there was nothing to panic about.”

  “She’s never rung me at work before.”

  “Look,” he said, scanning the near-empty stamp shop, “with all this stuff going on at the gate perhaps it would be better if you clocked out early.”

  “I don’t understand it,” I replied. “Everyone agreed to come in and work unless there was proper union backing for a strike.”

  He smiled at my naivete. “You still have a bit to learn about human nature and factory politics, Ralph. Once you’ve got this job finished go and see your mom.”

  It was as I strode through the crowd at the gateway that my eyes met those of Dave the labourer. They shone with resentment. The boos and jeering increased in volume. “Scab! Scab! Scab!” spat some of the men, who relished the chance to pay me back for my “Malvinas” chant. I could imagine how they must have talked as they saw me walk from the factory. “Just shows you, don’t it? The Argie-lover has no loyalty to anyone or anything around here.”

  “Nigger!” snarled Dave the labourer, the supposed cause of all this trouble.

  His words cut through the cacophony like a sharp knife. His lips were still quivering as I stopped and stared at him. He rolled his shoulders and ran his fingers through his oily hair as he looked left and right to the men beside him. I stepped towards Dave and the men around him fell silent and moved away. In that instant he knew that he was on his own and that he had to make a quick decision: was it going to be fight or flight? He could tell by the look on my face what my intentions were and as I closed in on him he abruptly turned and ran as fast as his stubby legs could carry him.

  *

  On my way to my parents’ home I had persuaded myself that perhaps it was good news that my mother had for me and maybe my dad had won the pools or a premium bond number had come up. But it was obvious to me that there had been no big money win as I opened the door; the atmosphere was too subdued for there to be good tidings. My mom, who had always worked so hard as a hospital orderly in a psychiatric ward, was asleep in an armchair in front of the television. She had not heard me come in and I spent a moment or two studying her. Her head lolled to one side and my heart skipped a beat until I heard her gently snoring. The sight of her made me so thankful for all her daily sacrifices – but it did also make me wonder if I were capable of doing anything similar for my own child. She would wake in a few minutes, and I thought it best to put on the kettle rather than disturb her. Mom stirred as the water boiled. “Hi, Mom,” I called out.

  “When did you come in?” she asked.

  “Just a few minutes ago, while you were nodding off.”

  “Make a pot of tea, please, son. I’m parched.”

  “Way ahead of you,” I said, as I brought the pot and cups in to her.

  She put a cup to her mouth with two hands and rolled her lips after a first sip. “Ah, a nice cup of tea,” she sighed, “just what I needed.”

  I was too anxious to know about why she had telephoned me at work to take a drink. “Mom,” I said, “why did you ring the factory?”

  Her eyes immediately became sombre and her lips compressed momentarily. “Clinton,” she said sadly, “he was …”

  “Yeah, he was?” I interrupted.

  “… he was brought into hospital again yesterday.”

  “Back to Accident and Emergency?”

  “No,” she said gravely, “he’s in the psychiatric ward. He was examined and diagnosed as having schizophrenia.”

  “I knew it!” I blurted out, sad and yet relieved that a doctor had finally confirmed my suspicions about Clinton’s mental he
alth and that he was now in a place where he could receive treatment. I had visited him during the previous week to find him back underneath his old car. Although it was cold and dark, I felt that I had to get down and join him and see just what he was doing. With the aid of a lamp, Clinton explained the difficulty he was having in fitting the gearbox. It only took me seconds to see that the gearbox was for another type of vehicle and I told him so. He dragged himself from under the car and marched into his house. Sensing he would be out again, I waited next to the car and it was not long before he reappeared carrying a bag. I could tell that he was planning to do something that could have had dire consequences. He went past me without a glance and I sped after him, demanding for him to tell me where he was going and what was in the bag. When there was no response we ended up wrestling with one another on the pavement. He had been heading for Leslie’s house with a machete in the bag. After calming Clinton and guiding him back to his house, I went to find out why Leslie had sold Clinton a gearbox that could not possibly fit his car. Leslie explained that he and Errol had told Clinton that there was no way he could use that gearbox but he had insisted that they sell it to him. Leslie was dismissive when I told him about the machete but I knew I had saved someone from getting seriously hurt – or worse – that night.

  My mother’s news that Clinton had been diagnosed with schizophrenia prompted me to ask about the nature of the illness. “Schizophrenia,” I said, “isn’t that split-personality and someone going totally insane?”