Sometime after the noon class a basket with food items arrives. It has a French baguette, foie gras, camembert cheese, and a number of other delicacies, including a small tin of caviar. The card says, “to my niece.” My first reaction is to throw everything in the garbage, but on second thought I go outside, cross the street, hand the basket to Amadeus the Homeless Guy, who is sitting there under the scaffolding, and quickly come back to the dojo.
A little while later, while I am on duty at the reception desk Sergey calls on the dojo phone.
“Can you talk?” he asks.
I look around. There is nobody on the main floor. Hiroji and Liam must be resting upstairs.
“What do you want to talk about? About my brother maybe? You fucking nearly got him killed.”
“Did you like the food basket?
I look out the window.
“The homeless guy I gave it too seems to be enjoying it very much. The caviar especially.”
“Ha-ha-ha. That’s all right. I’ll send you another one.”
“How could you let my brother into the cage again?” I ask pronouncing the words slowly, trying to control the rage that is starting to boil inside me once more.
“Well, why not? The pretty boy is quite the darling of the audience. I give the people what they want. Interesting how they enjoy witnessing a beautiful face and body get destroyed.”
“You fucking bastard.”
“Easy, easy. Calm down now.”
“What do you want from me?”
“I’d like to offer you a new deal.”
“Damn it, why won’t you just leave me alone?”
“Well, beauty, I cannot very well do that, now, can I? Let me be fully open with you. Even though you lost your first Dark Fight, the audience absolutely loved you. They were ecstatic. Such a combination of great martial arts skills and innocent beauty is not easy to come by, and I would very much like to hold on to you. So here is my offer. You come back into the Dark Fights, do a series of five fights and get paid ten grand for each win, and—this part you will like the most—I never have your brother enter the cage again. This is an incredible deal, don’t you think?”
“Go to hell. I won’t make any more deals with you,” I say and hang up the phone.
As I turn around, I see Liam standing by the entrance to the men’s changing room looking in my direction. Hmm, so he was not upstairs after all? I don’t know how much if any of my phone conversation he was able to hear.
*****
Every year in February Sensei goes to Japan for the whole month and classes at the Dojo are taught by other senior-ranked instructors, and with each year Sensei assigns more and more classes to Liam. I must say Liam is a gifted teacher and his classes have excellent dynamics, and he has a natural talent for explaining in a clear and precise way even the most complicated of techniques. In the past, with great frequency he would call me to the center of the mat to demonstrate a new technique on me. He would also watch me closely throughout the class, correct my mistakes, and give me instructions, which always helped me execute techniques in the most effective manner. Now he completely ignores me, calls other people up for demonstrations, and never once approaches me to correct a mistake or offer advice.
Strangely enough, I feel somewhat disappointed that he’s ignoring me in this way on the mat, but maybe it’s for the best. Things have been quiet and I want them to stay that way. Martine has kept her word and didn’t tell anyone she saw me outside the dojo that night, and Liam hasn’t raised the topic again. My conflict with him will probably never ever be resolved, but at least for the time being his anger and resentment against me are burning somewhere under the surface, and I don’t want them to flare up again. So, the less interaction I have with the man, on or off the mat, the less chance there is we might get into a bad altercation of some sort.
With Sensei away, attendance goes down, the classes are smaller than usual, and get smaller still when the flu hits the dojo. This year it hits us pretty hard around the second week of February with students falling ill one after the other. Liam, Hiroji, and I are taking tons of vitamin C, eating oranges and tangerines, but of course it is all pretty ineffective. Being in close contact every day with coughing, sneezing, sweaty people on the mat, it is inevitable that we get the bug too. It starts with feeling very tired all the time, exhausted, all your muscles sore, then your throat gets dry and scratchy, and then you wake up one morning completely sick.
I usually don’t run fevers, even when I’m pretty sick, and on those rare occasions that I do, it affects me in a strange way. I guess my body feels it too acutely, and if my temperature goes up even a bit, I start feeling incredibly cold, like I’m freezing, and shaking, breathing real fast, and even hallucinating.
Lying in bed in my room I’m not sure who it is that brings me hot tea and pills, helps me sit up while I drink, walks me to the bathroom, and lays me back down and covers me with blankets. Somehow in my mind I picture that it’s Drago’s hands that hold the cup to my lips and gently push the hair away from my face. It seems to me that I am having a conversation with him, and he tells me jokes and I laugh.
In the moments when my temperature goes down and the fog clears, I see Liam’s unshaved face by my side and his very dark eyes looking at me. Has it been him taking care of me this whole time? I am too exhausted to think this out, and then the fever starts in again and my thoughts get all muddled and the images confused.
At one point I open my eyes and lie very still, trying to leave behind my hallucinations and adjust my mind to the reality, and I become aware that it is indeed Liam sitting on the side of my bed. He looks very tired, exhausted. How long has he been sitting here?
“Sasha!” he exclaims. “You feeling better?”
“I think so.”
In an unexpected gesture, he takes my hand and kisses it several times. He then notices me looking at him with dismay and drops my hand.
“You gave us quite a scare. The doctor said you’d be fine, but I was really worried.”
“You were worried about me?” I ask unable to believe it is the same Liam who hates my guts talking to me this way now.
“Yes, me, worried,” he mutters under his breath.
I look closer into his eyes and see tenderness and affection in them. Can it really be? Perhaps I am hallucinating again.
“You were delirious before. You were talking about some Drago. Who the hell is Drago?” he asks.
I don’t answer and turn my head sideways so that I won’t see his eyes that seem to be peering deep inside me. We are both silent for a while, and the next time I glance at Liam, the tenderness and affection in his gaze are gone, replaced by his usual stern look.
*****
Just when I begin to recover, Hiroji and Liam fall ill. It is now my turn to cook light nutritious foods for them, make them tea with honey and plenty of lemon, and give them pills that are supposed to help with the sore throat and body aches. I also try to convince Liam to move from the red couch to his real bed, where there are sheets and pillowcases, and where he would be much more comfortable, but the stubborn man refuses. At one time, when I am sitting by his side on the couch, he takes my hand and holds it in his and falls asleep, not letting go of my hand, holding it fast. I don’t want to wake him up, so I lie down next to him and stay like this for a long while until he turns over and releases my hand.
It seems like an especially persistent strain of flu this year, because just when you think you are getting better, all of a sudden you are worse than before, and it goes on and on for days. And then a terribly annoying cough sets in. We are all walking around like ghosts, pale, with deep shadows under our eyes, and coughing all the time. It is only toward the end of the month when things are starting slowly to get back to normal.
One evening Hiroji and I are alone upstairs, Liam having gone to one of his bouncing gigs. I am in a
bad mood, because I really wanted to see Drago tonight, but he is now sick with the flu too and told me not to come over. I thought about going anyway against his expressed wishes, but he must have guessed my thoughts and said he might not even open the door. I keep playing his words in my head again and again and only manage to upset myself more. I don’t understand why he does not want to see me. I guess he is one of those people who prefer to be by themselves when they are not feeling well. But this conclusion does not cheer me up a whole lot.
Hiroji orders dinner from his favorite Japanese restaurant and invites me to eat with him. I know from before that this restaurant’s food is delicious, but I don’t have much appetite and only eat a few pieces of salmon and a seaweed salad and then go to my room and lie down. I am almost falling asleep when I hear the dojo phone ring in the living room. A minute later Hiroji knocks on the door and says my uncle is sick and a car is coming to take me to him. I ask who it was that telephoned and why that person did not want to talk to me.
“How should I know?” Hiroji shrugs his shoulders. “They seemed in a lot of hurry. ‘“Tell Sasha her uncle is sick and a car will take her to him,’ was all they said and hung up right away. So, will you go?”
All this seems awfully suspicious to me. What the hell is Sergey up to this time? I deliberate for a few moments.
“I think I’ll go, yes.”
With Liam out, Hiroji is the one in charge and he gives me permission to go and says he will explain to Liam that it is a family emergency.
*****
I approach the metallic gray BMW and the driver steps out and greets me very courteously and opens the door for me. It is the same driver who took me to and from the Dark Fight, and, thinking that we are at least not total strangers, I ask him what is going on. He does not answer my question and tells me to please get in the car as there is little time and we must be on our way. After hesitating for a few moments I get in. However, I don’t feel like just sitting here quietly not knowing where I am being taken. I question the driver again and again about our destination and the purpose of this ride. The only thing he says, again, very politely, is, “You will find out once we get there. It is not very far.”
We cross to the east side and drive into Chinatown, and then turn into a maze of narrow streets, where we have to slow down significantly. The car pulls up to the curb, and the familiar bald-headed man appears on the sidewalk, opens the door for me, and asks me to follow him and to hurry up. He leads me into a side street and we enter what seems like the back door of a rather big and boring modern building, which sticks out discordantly from the row of old and disheveled neighboring dwellings. Baldy leads me along a corridor that must be going deep inside the building. We open a door to a large hall where there are at least a dozen Ping-Pong tables. At the end of the hall there is another door and it opens as we approach. Behind the door is the gentleman with the buzz cut. The whole set up in fact strikes me as familiar, with several changes, such as the different neighborhood and the absence of the underground tunnels.
Inside, the fight seems to be in full swing. The excited, loud, elegant, and sweaty crowd is packed tight around the cage. I cannot see the fighters, as they are probably engaged in the groundwork at the moment. Buzz Cut hands me over to the tattooed one, who nods at me with as a sort of a friendly recognition, but for some strange reason avoids looking me in the eyes. I think he will lead me to Sergey like he did the last time, but he does not. Instead, he opens the way through the crowd for me, and helps me get right up to the cage.
What I see next sends me into a momentary shock.
There is my brother trying to scramble to his feet, his legs giving out under him, blood streaming down from his forehead, his nose, his mouth. But can this really be happening! He hasn’t even had enough time to fully recover after his last injuries to be in the cage again. This distorted nightmare can’t be real. And yet it is. Danilo’s opponent, twice his weight, actually helps him get up, and for a moment it seems that the two men are hugging each other, but then the big guy lifts my brother up and throws him down so hard, that my brother’s head bounces off the canvas.
The referee does not stop the fight, and now the big guy is picking my brother up and is loading him up on his shoulders, setting up for a brutal kata guruma—a shoulder wheel throw—that will most likely kill Danilo right then.
At that, my mind just shuts off, letting my body take over the control, and the next moment I know I have somehow gotten into the cage and am now leaping toward my brother’s opponent and thrusting a powerful kick into the side of his knee, which makes him go down, releasing his grip on Danilo. My semiconscious brother is sliding off of his opponent’s shoulders awkwardly and is about to hit the floor hard, but I catch him and make sure he falls down smoothly. I then help him get up, wrap his arm around my neck, hold him around his waist, and walk him toward the cage door. Neither the big guy nor the referee interferes. The crowd however is going absolutely wild. Some are cheering, some are booing. Everybody, men and women, are shouting ecstatically at the top of their lungs.
“Wait, wait,” Danilo pronounces with difficulty.
“What is it?” I can barely hear him through all the noise the mass of the excited people are making.
Danilo disengages his body from mine, kneels down with difficulty and picks something from the canvas. I do not understand what he is doing. I think maybe his mind is not working properly and he is hallucinating or something.
“Help me put this back in,” he mumbles and shows me a tooth he is holding in his fingers and opens his mouth, the blood still dripping from it. He actually tries to place the dirty tooth back into the socket. I stop his hand and take the tooth from him and assure him a doctor will do it.
“Ok, but you must put it in milk for now. Not in water. You hear me, Sash, not in water!”
I walk my bleeding, disoriented, barely-able-to-stand brother out of the cage and toward the exit, with Head Tattoo making way for us. “In milk, not in water,” Danilo mutters several times. He must have heard or read somewhere how to keep a knocked-out tooth alive, and now his concussed and muddled up brain is clinging on stubbornly to that idea.
Buzz Cut opens the door just as we reach it. Baldy is on the other side. No one tries to stop us. At that moment it occurs to me that Sergey has planned the whole thing. Yes, definitely. He wanted me to see, with my own eyes, Danilo inside a fighting cage.
Just before going through the exit, I look at Head Tattoo, who has always seemed the most human of all three of Sergey’s men. He is, however, still avoiding my eyes.
“Tell your boss, I accept the new deal,” I say while feeling my brother lean heavier against me and fearing he might pass out.
Chapter 13
Sensei is coming back from Japan in a couple days and Liam has us start on the preparations early and do an extra-thorough cleaning. Today he makes us lift all the mats and wash under them. Between Hiroji and me it would take us late into the night to finish this laborious task. Good thing that several of the dojo students, my friend Martine among them, stay after classes to help us. Afterward we order pizza and refreshments for everybody, and I think it is Hiroji who pays.
All day long Liam is following me around the dojo and giving me suspicious glances if I as much as disappear from his sight for a few minutes. When Martine and the others leave and I go downstairs to lock the door behind them and do not come back up right away, he comes down. I am reattaching the anti-slip cover on one of the steps and he watches me work, and even though it annoys me quite a bit, I do not say anything. I have no idea what has gotten into him, but I do not want any confrontation between us, especially today, and try my best not to set him off.
Later in the evening, while Liam, Hiroji, and I are eating and watching a movie in the uchi-deshi quarters, Liam’s strange behavior continues. Every time I get up from the couch to bring something from the kitchen or to go to the ba
throom he stares at me with suspicion and asks where I am going. I am starting to feel quite fed up with this and have half a mind to tell Liam in very unequivocal words what he can do with all his questions, but manage to contain myself.
Around eleven I say goodnight and go to my room. A little while later Liam knocks on the door. I am wearing my pajama shorts and a T-shirt. He looks me over with great attention.
“What’s up, Liam?”
“Didn’t you say you were going to bed?”
“Yeah, so?”
“I saw the light coming from under your door.”
“So what? Do you want a full report on what I have been doing for the last fifteen minutes? Here.” I lift up my foot. “See, I’ve been working on my calluses.”
Taking care of the calluses is important for the uchi-deshi. When you just start out, training for many hours on the mat every day makes the skin on your feet crack and bleed. Nothing helps much—Band Aids and sports tape do not stay in place. We go as far as putting superglue into the cracks. With time the cracks heal and eventually calluses form, and you must take good care of them, applying special ointment, making sure they don’t get overly dry. Calluses, such as the ones on the side of your big toes, help you get a good grip on the mat, and are a distinct feature of the uchi-deshi’s feet. We are quite fond and a little bit proud of them.
Liam looks at my foot and nods. Then the suspicious expression returns to his face and his eyes scan the whole room, searching for I don’t know what, and then zoom in on me again. I can tell he has further questions but doesn’t know exactly what to ask. In the end he doesn’t say anything else and walks out.
I lock the door and stand still for a few moments listening to his steps. I then turn the light out and get ready in the dark.
Before tonight’s fight I do not feel as terribly anxious as I did before the first one. In fact, I am somewhat numb inside and have a strange sensation, as if the whole chain of preliminary activities—climbing down the ladder, getting into the car, driving through NYC’s nighttime streets—were happening not to me but to another person, and I am just a neutral observer who does not care much about the upcoming event or its outcome.
The Dark Fights Page 15