Peter Corris - Forget Me If You Can

I hadn’t seen Roberto Panella for over a year and when I saw him coming out of the big Annandale house I was shocked at the change in him. He’d grown a couple of inches, not surprising between sixteen and eighteen, but he’d also bulked up in the shoulders and chest in a way that suggested weights or the heavy bag or both. What really rocked me was the black eye he was sporting. I’d caused and suffered a few of them in my time. It’s not a one-punch thing, contrary to popular opinion. The flesh around the eye is mashed between the glove and the bone by a series of blows and is deeply bruised. Those shiners can last more than a week and if you get too many of them the skin can be permanently darkened and coarsened.

Otherwise, Roberto was in great shape, jumping out of his skin. He unlocked a battered white Corolla hatchback, tossed in a gym bag and a backpack and skipped around to the driver’s door. He pulled smoothly away from the kerb, drove to the Booth Street lights, turned right and threaded through to Arundel Street in Glebe opposite the university, where he got one of the last all-day parking spots. He took out the backpack, locked the car and jogged towards the bridge over Parramatta Road. He was wearing jeans, a football shirt and sneakers and he moved as only an eighteen-year-old athlete can move.

A going-on-fifty-year-old ex-athlete has learned a trick or two in his time, like people forget things and come back to their cars, or change their mind about what they’re doing. I waited in my illegal parking place until I was sure Roberto had gone for good before selecting a key on a ring that holds more keys than any ring should and crossed the street. It was the work of a couple of seconds to lift the hatch on the old car, zip open the gym bag and sift through the contents. I was back in my car when the parking attendant came into view. I drove off and stopped in Glebe Point Road for a coffee and a think.

Roberto’s gym bag had held a singlet, shorts, socks, a jockstrap, a pair of boxing boots and a mouthguard. There was also the business card of Freddy Trueman, who ran a gymnasium in Newtown. The card was embossed on good quality cardboard with Freddy’s name in capitals. Aerobics and weight training were the gym’s specialities. In the old days, Freddy’s card had featured crossed boxing gloves. ‘Former Australian featherweight champion,’ it had said, which was true. But the word was that Freddy had got the title when the former champion was having trouble making the weight and had thrown the fight in return for a percentage of Freddy’s earnings from then on. It was a fairly standard arrangement but it backfired this time because Freddy had lost on a second-round KO in his first defence and was finished after that. He’d gone on to become one of the worst of the old-style fight manager-trainers-a real chew ‘em up and spit ‘em out merchant. I was surprised that he was still in business and even more surprised that he had such a flash card.

I drove to Newtown and parked in one of the gentrified streets off the main drag. Freddy’s gym had been spruced up: there was a stylish sign over the footpath outside, a fresh surface on the stairs and a new handrail to replace the old one that had given you little support and many splinters. The renovations continued inside: paint job, polished floors, resurfaced mirrors and new equipment including weights and exercise machines. A dozen or so men and women were working up serious sweats. There was one unoccupied boxing ring.

My next surprise was the sight of Freddy Trueman coming towards me. He’d lost about thirty kilos since I’d last seen him. He was plump now rather than gross and, in a white silk shirt, grey slacks and black slip-ons, sleek rather than slobby. His thin white hair was fluffed up and he wore tinted glasses. His eyes used to be permanently bloodshot.

‘Cliff, boy. How are you?’

‘Hello, Freddy-not as prosperous as you by the look of things.’

He glanced around the big, bright room with its gleaming chrome and polished surfaces and let out a wheezy laugh, the product of hundreds of thousands of cigarettes. ‘Yeah, this fitness thing, it really caught on. And I had the right spot-you wouldn’t believe the amount of money in Newtown these days.’

I looked at his shrunken waistline. ‘You’re taking some of your own medicine.’

He patted his stomach. ‘Diet and exercise, son. Diet and exercise. You don’t look too bad, all things considered. Come for a spot of aerobics?’

I wished I could take the glasses off; his eyes had always given him away, even in the ring.

He was the living embodiment of ‘shifty’ and I couldn’t believe that he’d changed. He also frightened easily. ‘Got an office somewhere, Freddy?’ I said. ‘Nice desk?’ I moved forward and backed him towards the nearest wall.

‘Hey, hey, what’s the big idea?’

I don’t know what I would have done if the weight-lifters had come to his aid, but they didn’t. I put one foot on his right polished loafer and grabbed a fistful of his shirt. A button spun away on the polished boards.

‘Still train real boxers here, do you?’

‘Sure. Amateurs, you know. The old game’s dead.’

‘How about Roberto Panella?’

‘Who?’

‘Italian kid. Eighteen. Middleweight I’d say. He’s got a shiner on him the size of a saucer.’

‘Don’t know him.’

‘I found your card in his gym bag. I’m working for his father. You must remember Fabrizio. He’s not happy. He’s making threats against those responsible for getting his boy into fighting.’

‘Jesus. Okay, Cliff. Ease up. Come back here and we’ll talk.’

I released him and he straightened himself up, stepped briskly around me and ushered me to the back of the gym where there was a partition wall. His office was small and there was no teak or leather but it was a big improvement on his old set-up of a laminex table and plastic chairs. The furniture was modern and the boxing pictures on the walls were framed instead of cellotaped to the wall as in the old days. Freddy sat behind his desk and I perched on a corner of it. He looked up at me anxiously.

‘Bobby Pain,’ he said. ‘That’s the name he goes by. Good, eh?’

I ignored that. ‘He’s fighting smokos, right?’

Freddy shrugged. ‘Kids want to fight. They always will. They want the dough, too. This law’s a fuckin’ farce. When’s the last time anyone died in the pro ring in New South?’

‘I know the arguments. What’s your cut?’

‘Shit, Cliff. I don’t train him or manage him or anything. He comes in, uses the equipment, spars a bit with amateurs, with the headgear and all. That’s it.’

‘Who handles him?’

Freddy stroked the loose flesh that sagged around his chin from when he was fat. ‘Fabrizio Panella was a bloody good fighter.’

‘I know that.’

‘But Mario was a bum.’

I had a few words more with Freddy and went off to spend the rest of the day doing routine things. I was back at the gym, playing on the exercise machines when Roberto came in at about 6 o’clock. The first thing I noticed was that he didn’t look at himself in any of the mirrors the way most of the other patrons did. The second thing was the seriousness of his workout. He skipped, shadow-boxed, used the light and heavy bags and sparred with an Aboriginal featherweight. Roberto wasn’t much slower than the lighter man and he was beautiful to watch. I’ve seen a lot of fighters over the years, enough to be able to tell when a kid has what it takes. Roberto had ring sense-he always knew where the ropes and corners were and if you can control the territory you’re on the way to controlling the opponent. He also knew how to pace himself, how to get the other guy to waste energy and when to move up on him. It was point-scoring, fight-winning stuff.