Yasmina Khadra - The Angels Die

No sooner was he released back into the ring than Bonnot pursued me with his blows, determined to finish me off. I was on one knee, literally overwhelmed. The referee began the count again. I had the feeling he was counting too quickly. I got up, clinging to the ropes. The hall was swaying around me. My calves were wobbling. I felt groggy. Bonnot pushed me. My body felt like an old building shaken by an earthquake; I was collapsing on all sides. The round ended. The water-soaked sponge that Salvo wiped my face with felt like a blowtorch. The slightest grimace was like an electric shock. Bonnot was watching me intensely, as if his stool was too hot to sit on, impatient to get on with the fight. His arms were shaking with rage. Throughout the ninth round, he went after me without catching me. I kept my distance in order to recover my senses, convinced that a blow to my head would mean the end. My tactic provoked jeers from the hall. I don’t know why Bonnot turned to the referee. Perhaps to complain, annoyed by my refusal to fight. He shouldn’t have taken his eyes off me. Drawing on everything I’d got left, I threw a left hook. Bonnot’s neck cracked beneath my glove. He whirled round and fell back on the ropes, which threw him onto me; I immediately gave him a series of lefts and rights, and he staggered and fell on his backside, stunned. Trying to get up again, he lost his balance, sprawled on his back, and writhed feebly like an insect caught in glue. He was saved by the bell.

‘He’s done for,’ De Stefano yelled at me, his voice so feverish as to be unrecognisable. ‘He’s completely dazed. Finish him off now.’ The Duke was gloating in his seat. This time, Gino’s hands were clasped together in prayer. The audience held its breath. Bonnot wasn’t in good shape. An hour earlier, a king had climbed into the ring as if it were a throne. A few rounds later, the monarch had been reduced to a wild-eyed torture victim on a scaffold. I could see the distress in his desperate gaze and I almost felt remorse. The tenth round was horrible. Bloodstained, his eyebrows cut and his eyes swollen, and still the thunderbolts rained down on him. Now he was the one who was huddled in a corner, waiting for the storm to pass. He collapsed after a series of lefts and rights, winded. The referee started the count. Bonnot shook his head, determined to hold out as long as he could. I worked on his sides, methodically. His body arched beneath my uppercuts, lifted, twisted with suffering. Just when I thought he was about to give up, his right made me reel. The floor creaked beneath my weight. We were both at the end of our tether, he clinging to his reputation, me to my chance of taking it from him. The audience realised that one of the two of us was going to die. The shadow of death hovered over the ring, but neither manager wanted to throw in the towel, certain that victory was within reach, but all down to a roll of the dice. Things were obviously going to end badly, but we all felt a kind of euphoria as the life was sucked out of us, hypnotised by the constant and rapid shifts in the situation. Bonnot refused to yield one inch of his kingdom and I refused to give up. We were nothing now but the expression of our intense stubbornness. I no longer felt the blows. I kept falling and getting back on my feet, tossed about from one moment of dizziness to another, driven by the single thought that I was in mortal danger. It was as if I didn’t want to miss out on my own death. Snapshots of my life flashed through my mind at dizzying speed. I was certain I had come to the last stretch, a point of no return beyond which there would be only nothingness. Bonnot must have been living through the same ordeal and seeing things in the same way as me: he was swaying in his fog, collapsing, getting up again, powerless to retaliate, a pitiful puppet lurching about at the end of his strings. Exhausted, but with a bravery verging on the ridiculous. With each blow, his neck looked as though it was turning three hundred and sixty degrees. I felt his ribs crack beneath my gloves. Don’t get up, I begged him, horrified by his suicidal tenacity. He was refusing to abdicate, got up grimacing with pain, disorientated, drained of all energy. In a final burst of pride, he swung his right and his wrist smashed against the wooden ring post. His wounded arm hung suddenly at his side, vulnerable and useless. It was a tragic, unbearable moment. The reigning champion was finished, delivered, feet and fists tied, to the knockout blow. I was expecting him to call it quits, but no, Bonnot threatened to eat his manager alive if he threw in the towel. He went back to his stool, swaying, holding his wounded wrist up to his stomach to show that his arm was functioning normally.

The twelfth round offered up a deeply disturbing spectacle. People were uncomfortable, held spellbound by the pathetic bravery of this champion who was risking his all, counting only on his one good arm to save face. He knew he was beaten, but he wasn’t giving up. It was pure madness. As I watched him charge head down and punch indiscriminately, unbalanced by his own clumsiness, driven mad by the blood that blinded him, wandering in the middle of the ring like a desperate spectre, the pertinence of Irène’s words came home to me. Bonnot was showing me my own image, the fate this life had in store for me. One day, refusing to relinquish my title, I’d behave in the same way; I’d give up my health, my life, everything that mattered to me for a hypothetical flash of pride as dizzying as a leap into the void. I would fall into a pernicious delirium, firmly convinced that death would be less painful than defeat, and I would let myself be taken apart piece by piece rather than acknowledge my opponent’s clear superiority. We weren’t idols, we were incapable of reason; fighting animals intoxicated by the cheers; two strange, exhausted characters cutting each other to shreds; two madmen drunk with fatigue and pain whose moans were drowned out by the uproar of the hundreds of spectators horrified, and at the same time fascinated, by the unbearable violence that defined us …

When Bonnot at last collapsed and didn’t get up again, there was general relief.

The nightmare was over.

In no time at all, the ring had been taken by storm. De Stefano and Salvo showed me off like a trophy. Gino was weeping with joy. Even Francis was dancing. The Duke climbed on his seat to make sure everyone could see him, arms open wide to receive manna from heaven.

Dazed, on the verge of passing out, I gave myself up to the jubilation of my fans, my eyes fixed on Bonnot, who they were trying in vain to revive.

The consequences of my fight with Bonnot became clear as soon as I got back to Oran. I started vomiting blood and was plagued by headaches, which would wear off only to return with greater intensity, as fierce as a toothache. At times, the ground fell away beneath my feet, pins and needles riddled my thighs and my arms, and my breathing became irregular.

I was taken to a clinic run by a doctor who was a friend of the Bollocqs. The X-rays weren’t alarming: I had two cracked ribs, that was all. For three days, I was given all kinds of medication, but the pains didn’t go away. My sight was sometimes blurred and whatever I ate I’d immediately throw up. The mirror showed me a poor devil with a dented face, cut eyebrows, swollen lips and cheeks covered in bruises. When my bandages were removed, skin came off with them.

Gino would come to see me from time to time. I almost hated him for his intact beauty. He looked invulnerable in his smart suit.

The news from Algiers wasn’t good. Bonnot still hadn’t woken up. They feared for his life. Even the most optimistic couldn’t see him getting back in the ring.

I felt bad for him. He had fought like a lion and earned my respect.