Брайс Куртенэ - The Power of One

The crowd stood and clapped. As I returned to my corner I looked towards Doc. He had the bandanna in his mouth and was chewing on it.

‘He’s going to try and finish you this round, Peekay. You got both rounds, you miles ahead on points. He is going to try to put you down.’ Lieutenant Smit’s usually calm voice was gone and he was breathing hard. ‘Stay away, man. I don’t care if you don’t land a blêrrie punch, just run away, keep clear, you hear? Keep clear, you got this fight won. Magtig! You boxing good!’ His eyes were shining as he spoke.

The bell for the final round went and we met in the centre of the ring and touched gloves. Killer Kroon was still breathing hard and his chest was heaving. As we moved away he said, ‘I’m going to kill you, you blêrrie Rooinek.’

Geel Piet said you always had to answer back, so they know you’re not afraid. ‘Come and get me, you Boer bastard!’ I shot back at him. He rushed at me and I stepped aside but his swinging arm caught me as he passed and knocked me off my feet. It wasn’t a punch, it was the inside of his arm, but it sat me down. I couldn’t believe it had happened. One knockdown and you lose the fight! I had lost the fight! I had opened my mouth to talk, lost my concentration and lost the fight! I couldn’t believe it was me sitting on the canvas. There was a roaring in my ears and a terrible despair in my heart.

‘No knockdown, continue to box!’ I heard Meneer de Klerk shout as though in a dream. I was coming to my feet but it felt as though I was underwater. The thought of defeat had drowned my senses. Killer Kroon rushed in and that clumsy left uppercut just missed my chin. This time he should have used the right cross as I couldn’t move upwards to my feet and sideways at the same time. A right cross would have caught me flush on the chin and finished me for keeps. Instead I simply moved my head backwards and the uppercut whizzed safely past the point of my chin. I was back on my toes and dancing out of reach, moving around him. The stupid bastard couldn’t box for toffee. No way was he going to get a second chance at me.

I was making him miss pretty easily and began to realise that there was something wrong with him. His breath was coming in rasps and his chest was heaving, his punches had lost their zing. I moved up and hit him as hard as I could with a two-fisted attack to the spot under his heart and his hands fell to his sides. His gloves came around my waist but there was hardly any strength left in him and he leaned heavily on me, his gloves working up and down my waist. The thumb of his glove must have caught the elastic band of my boxing shorts for they slipped neatly over my hips and fell to my ankles. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t step backwards for fear of falling, anyway his arms and weight made it impossible to move. So I just stood there and hit him again and again as he draped his arms over me, my bare arse pointed at the crowd. Then he gave me a last desperate push and I tripped over the shorts caught around my ankles and fell down. I tried to pull my pants up with my boxing gloves but without success. The crowd was convulsed with laughter and Killer Kroon was standing over me with his hands on his knees, head hanging. He was rasping and wheezing and trying to take in air.

‘No knockdown!’ Meneer de Klerk shouted. ‘Get back to your corner, Kroon!’ He grabbed me by the wrist and jerked me to my feet and then pulled my pants up. I had been covering my snake with my gloves. In those days nobody wore underpants and I was bare-arsed and fancy free in front of everyone. But I didn’t care a damn, the only thing that mattered was Killer Kroon in the ring with me. I would have fought him with no clothes on if necessary. Meneer de Klerk wiped my gloves on his pants. ‘Box on,’ he said. I turned to face Killer Kroon’s corner. He was standing with his back to me and his chest was still heaving. Suddenly a towel lofted over his head and landed at my feet. I couldn’t believe my eyes, Kroon’s corner was throwing in the towel, the fight was over! Meneer de Klerk moved quickly over to me, and with a huge grin on his face held my hand aloft. ‘Winner on a technical knockout, Gentleman Peekay!’ he announced. The crowd stood up for the second time and shouted and cheered and Lieutenant Smit and Klipkop jumped into the ring. Klipkop lifted me up and held me high above his shoulders and turned around in the ring and everyone went wild.

Meneer de Klerk had moved over to Kroon’s corner and now he came back to the centre of the ring and held his hand up for silence. The timekeeper rang his bell until the crowd quietened down. Klipkop put me down again. ‘The Lydenburg squad want me to say that Martinus Kroon retired because of an asthma attack.’ A section of the crowd started to boo and there was general laughter. ‘More like a Rooinek attack!’ someone shouted. The bald referee held up his hand once more. ‘I just want you to know that I had the fight scored two rounds to none for Gentleman Peekay and I also had him ahead on points in the third round. The technical knockout stands. Let me tell you something, this boy is going to be a great boxer, just remember where you saw him first.’ The crowd whistled and stomped and cheered again and Lieutenant Smit held my hand up and then we left the ring. Doc was crying and I had to sit down and hold his hand for a bit and then we went together to the showers. But first Doc and I shared the last two pumpkin scones.

‘I think Geel Piet and the people will be very happy tonight,’ Doc said as he handed me a towel. ‘I go to get you a soft drink? What colour do you want?’

‘But we haven’t got any money,’ I said.

‘That’s what you think, Mister Schmarty Pantz!’ Doc fished into the pocket of his white linen suit and produced two half-crowns.

‘Five shillings! Where’d you get that?’ I said in amazement.

He grinned slyly. ‘I am making this bet with a nice man from Lydenburg.’

‘A bet! You bet on me? What if I’d lost? If I’d lost you couldn’t have paid him!’

Doc dropped the coins back into his coat pocket with a clink and then scratched his nose with his forefinger. ‘You couldn’t lose, you was playing Mozart,’ he said.

I asked for an American cream soda. It was the drink Hoppie had bought in the café at Gravelotte after we’d changed the tackies at the Patels’ shop and it was still my favourite. It was also the closest I could come to sharing my win with Hoppie. If Geel Piet and Hoppie could have been there, everything would have been perfect. Not that it wasn’t perfect. But more perfect.

By the time we got to the last fight of the evening, the Barberton Blues had won five of the eight finals and only the heavyweight division remained. Naturally it was the event from which the crowd expected the most and they were not disappointed. Gert was matched with a giant of a man called Potgieter, a railway fettler from Kaapmuiden who was six foot seven and a half and weighed two hundred and eighty-nine pounds. Gert was no lightweight and at six foot one he weighed two hundred and twenty.

Potgieter was a better boxer than he first appeared and in the first round he had Gert hanging on twice, but Gert won the round by landing more clean punches. In the heavyweight division a knockdown did not mean the end of the fight and in the second round Potgieter, way behind on points, connected with an uppercut under the heart which doubled Gert up like a collapsed mattress before he dropped to the canvas. The bell went at the count of five but it looked all over for him anyway.

To our surprise he came out for the final round and started hitting Potgieter almost at will. The big man knew he was behind on points so he dropped his defence, confident he could take anything Gert dished out. Gert dished out plenty and there was blood all over the giant’s face and one eye was completely closed. He smiled throughout the fight, a grotesque, dangerous-looking smile from a mouth that was missing the front teeth. Gert’s straight left and right were working like pistons into a face that was moving relentlessly forward. Potgieter chopped his way to within range of Gert and finally managed to trap him in a corner. The uppercut seemed to be in slow motion as it caught Gert on the point of the jaw. The warder was out cold even before his legs had started to buckle and we thought he’d been killed. The referee counted him out and Klipkop and Lieutenant Smit lifted him unconscious from the floor and carried him to his corner. Gert had, as usual, fought with too much heart and not enough head. If only he had known about Mozart.