Брайс Куртенэ - The Power of One

‘You know me better than that, Hymie.’ I turned to Nguni and offered him my hand, ‘Mr Nguni, tell the people I will fight this one who will be a chief.’

‘I will tell the people,’ he said.

I set about preparing for the fight with Mandoma the Zulu bantamweight with all the vigour and purpose I could command. While I longed to be rid of the concept involving the Tadpole Angel it was quite impossible for me to bring myself to the point where I would throw the fight. I had settled myself to win so often that, in my mind, a single loss in the ring would have meant that I would not become the welterweight champion of the world. A childish concept perhaps, but nonetheless one which was bound with steel wire through my resolve. I had even taught myself never to consider the consequences of losing a fight. Too much cross-referencing of consequence robs the will of its single-minded concentration to win. While this fanatical resolve never to be beaten may have been a sign of immaturity, the sophistication I brought to the task of winning I was to see adopted by sports psychiatrists throughout the world in later years. The mental exercises adopted, first behind the Iron Curtain and then worldwide, in an attempt to win that endless cold war called the Olympic Games or any of the other master race events, were all familiar to me.

The greatest difficulty confronting me with the Mandoma fight was information. We knew nothing about the Zulu bantamweight. I always felt awkward going into a fight with an unknown opponent. It was like entering a dark room having been told to beware of the trap doors. If you know everything there is to know about an opponent your mind will do the fighting for you, triggering the body mechanism to do the things it needs to do a fraction faster. It is this fraction that makes for a winner.

The power of one is above all things the power to believe in yourself, often well beyond any latent ability you may have previously demonstrated. The mind is the athlete; the body is simply the means it uses to run faster or longer, jump higher, shoot straighter, kick better, swim harder, hit further or box better. Hoppie’s dictum to me: ‘First with the head and then with heart’ was more than simply mixing brains with guts. It meant thinking well beyond the powers of normal concentration and then daring your courage to follow your thoughts.

Saturday arrived. The fight was to take place in a ring set up in an African school soccer field in Sophiatown. We arrived about four-thirty on the outskirts where Mr Nguni was waiting for us.

The roads were dusty and it had been a hot day. Dust clung to the whitewashed walls of shanties and shops and everywhere there were advertising signs, for Gold Seal Cooking Lard, Blue Light Paraffin, Primus Stoves, Drum Tobacco and Sunlight Soap. There were a few trucks on the road and we saw one native taxi and several buses crowded to the point of bulging, though hundreds of people were on bicycles. The chauffeur kept an almost constant hand on the horn, which only seemed to add to the sense of excitement. As we drew closer to the school, people were lining the dusty narrow streets which seemed to weave haphazardly in among shanties built from every conceivable kind of material. Mr Nguni requested I turn my window down so the people could see me. Blushing, I complied. ‘You are very famous in this place, Peekay. The people have come for many, many miles to see you.’

‘Why are they all women and children?’ Hymie asked.

‘It is the men who will see the fight. The women they have come to see the Onoshobishobi Ingelosi.’

‘Christ, I had no idea. You’re more famous than Johnny Ralph, Peekay.’ Johnny Ralph was the reigning heavyweight champion of South Africa and a household name among whites.

Mr Nguni laughed. ‘Johnny Ralph, they do not know who is this boxer in Sophiatown.’

‘Mr Nguni,’ I said, ‘you must tell the people I am not a chief. I have no power. You must tell them that the Onoshobishobi Ingelosi is only a name, a name I was given at the prison in Barberton. It was for nothing.’

Mr Nguni turned to me in the back seat. He was clearly shocked. ‘I cannot do this thing, Inkosi. It is not for me to say who is Onoshobishobi Ingelosi. Tonight we will see, we cannot change this thing, it is in the bones and in the smoke.’ He turned back to the chauffeur to give a direction.

‘Shit! He believes it himself,’ Hymie said out of the corner of his mouth.

We turned into the school grounds and were met by a sea of Africans. The Buick was forced to inch its way through the crowd. It was an hour and a half before the fight and the soccer ground was totally full, with only a narrow aisle leading to the ring in the centre. There must have been ten thousand spectators with more pouring through the school gates.

‘I thought you said it would be a fight in a school,’ Hymie said to Mr Nguni. ‘I thought you meant a school hall or something. The whole of Africa has come to see the bloody fight! What if there’s trouble, a riot or something?’

‘No, no! No trouble here, Mr Levy. The woman, she will speak to the people.’

‘You mean the witchdoctor?’ I asked.

‘It is she, Peekay, she will speak to the people.’

Hymie grinned nervously, ‘It’s got to be the first time a witchdoctor has ever announced a fight. Are you sure you’ve told me everything there is to know about you, Peekay?’

I grabbed him by the shirtfront, ‘Don’t you start now!’

We were taken to a shower block to change. Solly Goldman was waiting for us. ‘They’re doing it kosher orright, they’ve got Natkin Patel, the Indian referee from Durban to handle the fight. Blimey! ’Ave you see the crowd?’

I changed and we walked along to the school hall for the weigh in. Hymie looked at the scales, they’d been borrowed from a local trader and were the kind on which bags of mealie meal are usually weighed. ‘What’s the bloody difference, we’re going to fight him anyway, even if he’s over the limit,’ Hymie said.

‘It is very important, Mr Levy. The people must know everything is correct,’ Mr Nguni said.

Standing in the middle of the school hall beside the scales were a dozen or so Africans all neatly dressed in suits and ties. Though the suit parts were not always of the same parentage, they were clean and pressed. Standing to one side was Gideon Mandoma, the Zulu bantamweight I was to fight.

I broke away from Solly and Hymie and walked over to him and extended my hand. ‘I see you, Gideon Mandoma,’ I said in Zulu.

Gideon Mandoma took my hand, barely shaking it. He did not look up as he replied, ‘I see you, Peekay.’

‘I hear you come from the Tugela River Valley. It is where my nanny came from when I was a small infant, her name was Mary Mandoma, was she from the same chief’s kraal perhaps?’

Gideon Mandoma looked up at me, his eyes wide, a shocked expression on his face. ‘The one you are asking about is my mother. She is dead now five years.’ He pointed a finger at me. ‘You are the one of the night water?’

It was my turn to be shocked. I stood in front of the Zulu fighter completely stunned. I was going to fight Nanny’s son, the infant she had had to leave to look after me. It was I who had stolen the milk from her breasts when she had been hired to be first my wet nurse and then my nanny.

Gideon was the first to recover. ‘They say you are a chief, but must prove you have the spirit of Onoshobishobi Ingelosi. I know I am a chief and have the spirit of Cetshwayo and before that of Mpande, Dingane and even of Shaka the king of all the kings.’ His eyes grew suddenly hard. He had waited a long time and now he would fight the one who had taken his mother from him so that he had not known her until he was six years old. It was not meant to be like this, but for him there was now an added reason to win. To the Zulu there is no such thing as coincidence. I knew this would be a certain and powerful sign for him. Gideon Mandoma had a reason greater than my own to win. For the first time in my boxing career I was afraid. I knew Mandoma could beat me.