The Dark Fights

by Alexandra Vinarov

  “That’s none of your business. You must be so happy I’ve been thrown out of the dojo. You’ve wanted me out of here for a long time. Thanks for snitching on me. Now you got what you wanted.”

  “Sasha, you’ve brought this onto yourself. You’ve made some very bad choices.”

  “You don’t know anything about my life.” I raise my voice and try to sit up, but the pain blasts through me, and I lie back down and close my eyes. When I open them again, Liam isn’t in the room anymore.

  Chapter 14

  “So where should I take you?” Drago asks after putting my suitcase on the back seat and getting into the car.

  “I guess to 82nd Street?”

  “Wouldn’t you rather go to my place tonight?”

  “Yes,” I reply and cheer up a bit.

  Packing up my gi and my black belt, going down the narrow staircase one last time, opening and closing the door behind me, all the while feeling like an outcast banished from the place that has been my home—more than my home, a place where I truly belonged—well, that hasn’t been easy. Good thing I’ll be with Drago tonight. Sitting next to him in the car already makes me feel better. I look out the window at the three-story brick building. Right now Sensei is teaching the evening class and they are all on the mat training. I suppress a sigh and turn away. From across the street Amadeus waves goodbye. I resist the urge to steal another glance at the dojo. The car turns the corner and I leave all that, my whole life behind.

  Drago drives north on Park Avenue, but instead of continuing uptown, turns East on 57th and then gets onto Queensboro Bridge.

  “Are you lost?”

  “Nope. I moved.”

  “You don’t live on 103rd Street anymore?”

  “Nope. That place was a dump. Too small and filled with roaches.”

  “I can’t believe you are not living in East Harlem anymore. That’s so unlike you.”

  “I know. And just when I got to know every single rat and roach by name.”

  “I liked your old apartment.”

  “You’ll like this one better.”

  We cross the East River into Queens and drive North on Vernon Boulevard, turn left, and get onto the Roosevelt Island Bridge and cross the East River again in the opposite direction.

  “There is no direct bridge from Manhattan to Roosevelt Island,” Drago says. “That’s the only inconvenient thing about living here. Otherwise it’s pretty amazing. It’s considered a part of Manhattan, but it’s like a different world here.”

  He parks the car in a garage and takes my suitcase out of the back seat.

  “Why are you bringing it?” I ask

  “Won’t you need stuff from it?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  His new apartment is in a large multilevel building on Main Street, whose architectural style is a mix of residential and industrial. We take the elevator to the tenth floor. He opens the apartment door and inside there is a staircase leading down into a huge living room.

  “Cool, huh?” Drago glances at me to see if I share his enthusiasm.

  The place is indeed pretty cool. The windows in the living room are floor to ceiling. The kitchen is modern and spacious. The bedroom alone is almost the size of the entire apartment on 82nd Street. And there is a huge walk-in closet. He got all new furniture too. A big sectional black-leather couch in the living room, large coffee table, bar stools, a huge TV. How could he afford this place?

  “Did you win a lottery or something?”

  He smiles but does not answer my question directly. “It’s good to have some money,” he says instead. “Money can be damned useful, girl. Useful and pleasurable. Who wants to spend their entire life with roaches, rats, and hookers for neighbors in an old dirty walkup?”

  At first I think that I don’t like the new place very much but when I see stuff from the old apartment—the same books in French, Russian, and German on the bookshelves, the same black-and-white photographs on the walls, his collection of old cameras—it starts to feel more like Drago’s former apartment, where I felt so comfortable and secure.

  There is an enormous wood-and-metal telephone, from the end of the nineteenth century, standing in the corner.

  “Yup, this is my phone. The one I use daily,” he smiles.

  This artifact somehow fits very nicely into the whole setup of the place.

  The one-eyed cat jumps down from a shelf onto the couch and makes itself comfortable by my thigh. Yep, now it absolutely does seem like Drago’s apartment. I find the whole ambience of the place so very soothing and calming. It envelops me and makes me feel the same way I did at his place on 103rd Street—I belong here all right.

  “Where is the dog?” I ask.

  “She had to be put to sleep.”

  “Oh. I am sorry.”

  I look him in the eyes and there is a momentary expression of deep sadness in them and he seems lost. I can tell he loved that dog very much. Within a second however he smiles. “Well, it’s just you, me, and the cat now,” he says. “Are you hungry? I’m starving.”

  This man does not show emotion very easy, does he? Is he always this tough? How deep does the toughness go? If you dig through layers and layers of this toughness, will there be anything under it?

  He cooks dinner—tilapia with grilled vegetables. I come into the kitchen and want to help, but he jokes that he’d prefer if I didn’t burn down the apartment on the very first night and tells me to go back to the couch and choose a movie for us to watch.

  We both like Andy Lau, so I find Firestorm, and we start watching it in the living room with dinner. When we are done eating I put a pillow on Drago’s lap and lie down with my head on it. He places his hand on my hip.

  “Come on,” he says after a while. “We can watch the movie in the bedroom.”

  Lying down in the bed, my raised knee blocks his view of the screen. He pushes my knee down with his leg. I raise it up again. He pushes it down one more time and leaves his leg on top of mine. I want him very much, the weight of his leg is so pleasurable it is almost burning through my skin. He places his hand on my stomach, then moves it down and his finger is now inside me. But it is not what I want. I push his hand away. I want to feel the weight of his whole body on top of me and him inside me. And it has to be right now. Nothing else will do. He puts his hand on my neck and kisses me hard on the mouth and lowers his body onto mine and guides himself into me. After a while he puts my legs on his shoulders.

  In the morning his alarm goes off, and I don’t want him to get up. I press my body into his and soon he is inside me again.

  “Damn,” he says afterward. “I have to go to work. You stay here and go back to sleep.”

  When I wake up again, it is almost noon. On the nightstand there is a set of keys and Drago’s passport opened to the page with his birth date. He is forty-four, quite a bit older than I thought he was, but it makes no difference to me.

  I spend the day in the apartment, reading on the big couch in the living room most of the time. I go out once, walk the short distance to the river and look across at the Upper East neighborhood of Manhattan, and then go back to the apartment and fall asleep reading, the one-eyed cat by my side.

  Drago comes back in the evening and asks why I have not unpacked my suitcase.

  “There’s plenty of shelves and hangers in the closet for your stuff,” he says.

  “Do you want me to unpack my suitcase here?”

  “Yup. I think it would be best.”

  *****

  Living with Drago, the first few days are filled with him and being with him and thinking only about him when he is not around. My mind just blocks out thoughts of anything and anyone else. Then waking up late one morning I have a strange feeling that I am late, that I missed the first class of the day and have not even started on my chores. Liam will be furious with me. It
takes me a few seconds to realize I am not at the dojo anymore. After that, the thoughts of the dojo do not leave me. I push them to the very back of my mind and try not to dwell on them, but I cannot help but miss my life as an uchi-deshi. Sure it was a tough life, filled with intense training, hard work, injuries, strict rules, the constant feeling of tiredness, but yeah, I do miss it now. I miss Sensei, my friends, and especially the structured training, the instruction from Sensei and other higher ranked martial artists.

  I need to continue my training, and Sergey puts at my disposal a private gym he has at 2 Gild Street. I am not surprised he owns a gym. I have heard from my brother that half of the building there belongs to him. I am only allowed in the gym at certain hours, however, in the morning and in the evening. I guess Sergey does not want me to bump into other fighters who might be training there.

  For my first training session I go around eight in the evening. I hop on the subway and head downtown to the Financial District and get off at Fulton Street. From there it is a couple-minute walk. I pass Wolf Flannigan’s Pub on Molten Lane, glancing in the window and seeing the familiar bartender behind the counter, turn the corner, and continue under the archway on what seems like the narrowest sidewalk in Manhattan. Then the space opens up and 2 Gild Street appears in all its enormity.

  It is a huge residential building and people are coming in and out of it in a continuous two-way stream. Delivery guys, partygoers, girls in high heels, dog owners in pajama pants—a lively ambience here. Inside, there are at least four or five doormen. I tell one of them my name and where I am going. Sergey said I would have to do this only once. From now on the doormen will always let me in without stopping me.

  The gym is on the sixth floor and it is a full-size gym with a complete set of exercise machines, a boxing ring, a cage, and a tatami mat area. Everything is modern, brand new, and sparkling clean. At my allocated time I am alone here. I change in the beautiful and spacious locker room and come out and sit on the mat feeling sad and gloomy, missing the dojo very much.

  A few minutes later the door opens and Head Tattoo walks in. I am suddenly so glad to see him I almost feel like I want to hug him and kiss him on a cheek, but I contain myself and we greet each other with a more appropriate fist bump.

  “The boss sent me. I am to be your sparring partner,” he grumbles under his breath. He seems rather uncomfortable and is standing a bit hunched over and shifting his weight awkwardly from one foot to another. As we start training he relaxes and proves a very good sparring partner. Despite his huge body size he is very agile and fast on his feet, and I can learn a lot from his footwork. His strikes are precise and powerful, and he teaches me a few good tricks for attack and defense. He also makes me work on strengthening my knuckles, so that I can hit hard surfaces like my opponents’ jaws without damaging my hands. Together we do pushups on bare knuckles, which is his favorite exercise. Unfortunately, his throwing and ground-work skills are somewhat lacking—still, I enjoy training with him quite a lot and after a while don’t feel so lonely and gloomy anymore. I go to the gym at 2 Gild Street every day, and later Sergey sends me other people to spar with—experts in BJJ groundwork as well as exceptional strikers—but I always prefer Head Tattoo.

  This new type of training takes some getting used to. Exiled from the dojo, I am no longer part of a real community. There is no sense of belonging to something big and meaningful, steeped in traditions, values, and rules of conduct passed down many generations. Now I am training just for myself, for the sake of improving my fighting skills for the Dark Fights—nothing else. I realize there is no sense in comparing. What I am doing now is purely utilitarian—I must do it in order to survive in the cage.

  *****

  On the day of my next Dark Fight, the metallic gray sedan comes to pick me up earlier than usual. Drago is not home yet, which is good, since I can just leave and don’t have to lie about where I am going. I get into the car and there is a garment bag and a box with shoes on the seat. A cocktail dress and high-heeled shoes.

  “The boss wants you to wear this,” the driver says.

  “In the cage?”

  “There is a small event before the fight.”

  I start taking off my sports clothes and see the driver’s eyes in the mirror. He averts his gaze, but I am sure he will look again within a second. I put on the simple sleeveless black dress and am glad it is modeled in such a way that does not require a bra or panties, since I am not wearing either.

  We drive to a building on West 16th street, close to the river, and I feel weird being only a few blocks away from the dojo. The building is filled with small and large art galleries and Baldy takes me up to the eighth floor, where Buzz Cut receives me at the door and indicates for me to go right in. I find myself in a modern art exhibit, with people walking around drinking champagne and having hors d’oeuvres. I sit on the windowsill and look at these people, their smiling and chewing mouths. Sergey comes over and takes me to see a big painting on the opposite wall.

  “What do you think?” he asks.

  “Nothing.”

  “You are not very fond of modern art.”

  “No.”

  “Well, I just bought this painting for one hundred and thirty thousand dollars. To tell you the truth, I don’t care for modern art either, but it’s a good investment. I invest wisely. I strategize. I seek out pieces that will bring me good return on my money.”

  “Pieces?”

  “Oh, yes. Fine Art. Martial arts. Martial artists.” He looks me straight in the eyes and his lips are curved in a half smile. “Martial artists can be a very good investment.” He takes a meaningful pause as if he wants his words to really sink in. “I really do not like to be disappointed, though.” The half smile disappears, and his eyes gain a hard, steely expression.

  *****

  The space behind the art gallery is where the Dark Fight takes place tonight. After midnight all the guests abandon the modern artwork exhibit and start migrating toward the cage. Plenty of drinks are still being served here. This is just the continuation of the party for them.

  Going into this fight I feel confident, having put in many hours sparring with Head Tattoo and other partners that Sergey provided for me. My fight plan is to take my opponent down with a kata guruma or a te guruma within the first minutes.

  I am waiting for the right moment to move in, when all of a sudden, bam! She shoots in for a te guruma.

  In this throw, you grab your opponent with one arm around their thigh and your second arm a bit higher than their waist, you lift them up, twist them in the air and throw them on their back. It is spectacular, highly efficient, and dangerous. In most sanctioned competitions it was banned several years ago. In many martial arts schools this technique is not even taught anymore. Grandpa showed it to me a long time ago, it was one of his favorite throws along with kata guruma, and I have practiced it ever since.

  I am quite shocked now that my opponent preempts my move with her own te guruma. But I instantaneously detect mistakes in her execution of the technique and make use of them. She is bending her back instead of bending her knees, and her right arm is too high, which gives me an opportunity to get it into a kimura lock.

  If played in slow motion, this will present a bizarre and horrifying sequence—

  She is lifting me up and turning me upside down in the air, all the while I am locking her arm in the kimura.

  She then finishes the throw, but instead of landing me on my back, she executes a piledriver, which means she is spiking me on the canvas on my head. And no amount of ukemi training from Hiroji could help me here.

  I crash onto the mat with my neck taking the brunt of the impact in a horrifying fashion.

  Did the piledriver happen because I was holding her arm in the kimura trying for a submission, didn’t disengage, and thus couldn’t maneuver my own body to break the fall? Was she in a lot of pain and so
angered by my lock that she decided to slam me onto my head? Or was it her intention from the very start—instead of landing me on my back to smash me on my head? It could be either or all, in any case, the result is that the piledriver, illegal in most sanctioned matches, does happen now, and the audience goes wild, erupting in applause for my opponent.

  Then, all is quiet. Has the room gotten silent, or the silence is in my head? Is my neck fractured? Damn, this is the injury many fighters are most scared of. Am I crippled for life now?

  I stay motionless on the canvas for a few moments, then move my neck, slowly, very slowly at first, then I sit up and try for a wider range of motion with my head. It is OK. A small miracle. Well, not so small for me.

  *****

  The fight is not stopped. In a sanctioned match, I would be attended by a doctor on the spot and he’d be putting a neck brace on me right away. But no such “luxury” in a Dark Fight. The bout goes on.

  I am quite rattled after the piledriver, and my opponent uses it to her advantage, attacking all the time, a number of her strikes connecting heavily with different parts of my body. I do my best to reciprocate, and after a while both our noses are bleeding. I don’t think mine is broken, but I cannot be sure, of course. Blood is coming out of our mouths too. There is blood on our bodies, our clothes, blood mixed with sweat in our hair. There is so much blood on the canvas, it starts feeling slippery.

  At one point she has me pinned down with her knee on my head, the weight of her whole body driving into my skull. I feel like it’s going to crush my skull. Later on, she is in a dominant position again, and she pins and twists my leg in such a brutal way that something seems to tear inside my knee. Still, I somehow manage to scramble back up on my feet, and the fight goes on.

  And then there comes a devastating kick to the head that fells me.

  It is strange but I do not pass out right away. For a split second I am still aware of myself and of my surroundings—I see and hear in almost exaggerated and overly bright picture the audience shouting, applauding, their arms up in the air. I know that it was a KO and I’ve lost the fight and feel myself falling backward and cannot stop the motion. I know now I am going to hit the floor, but do not feel the contact. I probably pass out before my head touches the canvas. When I come to, all the sounds are muffled, as if I have cotton wool stuffed in my ears.