Stephen Kelman - Man on Fire

‘Come on,’ she said, and she held out her hand for me to take. ‘You’re not stuck to that chair, are you? Get up and show me what you’ve got.’

I ended up showing her everything. I promised there was more to come and she was happy to wait for it. If she asked for it now I don’t know what excuse I’d give. All my excuses went up in flames the moment I first saw Bibhuti in the flesh.

He was standing in the middle of the room dripping sweat and smiling saintlike and there were thirty kids lining up to kick him in the balls. They waited patiently for their turns. There was no talking or messing about. Some of the children were very young and they looked comical wearing their concentrating faces, barefoot and disciplined and stiff with training. Bibhuti would wave each one in and they’d bow to him with their little hands curled into a reverent fist. Then they’d arrange themselves into the right stance and step back and plant a kick between their sensei’s legs, true and hard and with meaning attached. Bibhuti would take the blow gratefully and nod his appreciation. Another bow for godspeed and the child would peel away to join their friends in warmdown and Bibhuti would wave the next one in.

Clockwork.

He had a conveyor belt going, smooth and faultless. A thing of hypnotic beauty. It felt like art was being made or history and if I breathed too hard I’d ruin it. I kept my distance. I watched with Harshad from the back of the hall by the badminton nets. There were holes in them I could have put my head through if the mood had taken me.

Bibhuti looked just like I remembered him from the footage I’d seen. Tall and strong, not as bulky as you’d think. Graceful. The full moustache and the dune of thick black hair on his head placed him somewhere in the Seventies, a leftover from the days of strict codes of honour and bad fabrics that gave off extravagant static shocks. In his white karate suit he looked like he should be flying.

The children in his charge kept going and he kept on taking their finest shots without a flinch or a tremble, a strange smile fixed to his face, as if he’d swallowed magic. A little girl was next up. She could only have been six or seven. She didn’t have a costume. She wore a Dora the Explorer T-shirt a size too small and she had a ferocity about her that can only come from a precocious awareness of how close death walks alongside the living.

She let out a blood-curdling cry and went arrowing at Bibhuti, her whole weight directed into a spiteful kick that landed with gruesome precision. Bibhuti absorbed it willingly. He waited for her to meet the ground again before giving her a bow that bristled with good humour. He was a tiger scratching at a spot where a fly had just been.

When the kids had all taken their turn at assaulting him Bibhuti clapped his hands and they fell into a semicircle around him. He bowed to them all, slow and ceremonial, and as one they returned the gesture, their little fists clasped in a warrior pose, little brown toes digging shyly in the parquet. He said something encouraging to them in his language and class was dismissed.

My heart was beating fast. All I wanted to do was take a run at him and give him the hardest kick I could. All I wanted was to be one of those children, to enjoy the immunity they enjoyed, so I could do something bold and unwarranted and not have to answer for it.

‘It is a shame we missed the beginning,’ Harshad said, putting himself in front of me so he could get the first shot at Bibhuti’s attention. ‘The best part is the sparring. The younger ones are very fearless, they will fight until the last and BB is encouraging full contact.’ He nodded to the girl in the Dora the Explorer T-shirt. ‘This one is Kavita. She is defeating all comers. Once she made the other child unconscious. He failed to keep up his guard. He may be damaged in the brain.’

The girl and Bibhuti were deep in conversation. They were probably discussing the best techniques for killing a man without leaving a mark. Having received his advice she strode out of the hall spoiling for another fight, her delicate steps emboldened by her sensei’s approval.

Bibhuti spotted us. He gave me a cagey look and wandered over. Immediately I felt as if I were in the presence of a man for whom the laws of nature had been tweaked. He was made of something different, I could tell. Harshad lowered his gaze, starstruck. While they spoke in their language the hall emptied of all except one boy, who hadn’t taken part in the class but had been watching from the tiered seats. He thumbed lethargically at the mobile phone in his hand.

Bibhuti turned to me beaming, his hand held out for me to shake. My heart beat faster, infatuated.

‘Hello, sir, I am BB. Welcome to my country. You want to help me with my record.’

‘Yes I do,’ I said. ‘My name’s John. John Lock. I saw you on TV and I read about you, I think you’re brilliant. I came here from England, I just got here today. I want to help you if you’ll let me.’

I realised how strange and foolish I must have looked to him, tripping over myself trying to get my words out, peeling and tired from the heat and the jetlag and stretching for credibility in holiday clothes. When he looked at me he saw sloping shoulders and pigeon toes and uninvited errands he didn’t have the time to run. I did my best to look convincing.

‘You have seen me before? Was it the AXN special?’

‘Maybe. It was on a programme about world records. The one you did with the sledgehammers.’

‘Right,’ Bibhuti smiled. I’d loosened up a fond memory for him and he drifted to it. He swam around in it for a moment or two. ‘This record is very old. There have been others since then. You have seen them?’

‘Yeah, I saw all the clips on YouTube. Then I read the interview you gave, the one where you mentioned the next record you want to go for and how you needed backing.’

‘And you decided you are the man for the job,’ Bibhuti said.

‘I am. I did. Definitely.’

We smiled at each other. A game of chicken. We both tried not to be the first to break and admit the profound stupidity of my coming here. Bibhuti eyed me up, checking for cracks and defects of character. Under his scrutiny I felt weak and unfortunate, an exhibit in once-firm flesh gone softly to seed.

The silence crept in, punctured only by the Space Invaders sound effects that fizzed from the boy’s phone.

‘I’m not taking the piss,’ I said after a while. ‘I’ve got money. I can show it to you whenever you want.’

The boy saw me then and left his seat to join his father in assessing me. His cautious eyes flickered with amusement.

Bibhuti tousled the boy’s hair and draped an elaborately muscled arm over his shoulder. ‘This is my son, Shubham.’

The boy mumbled a hello. Bibhuti whispered something at him and with a petulant shiver he sent his phone to sleep and slipped it into his pocket.

‘He is a good boy. He must study harder and watch less television.’

‘We all should,’ I said, because it sounded conciliatory.

I’ll tell you later how Shubham became Jolly Boy. It’s not important to the story. All I’ll say for now about the boy is that he wore well the privilege and shame of being his father’s son.

He wears it well today, leaning in gently to swab Bibhuti’s lips, unqueasily parting the lifelines that trail from his father to rest an appraising hand on his forehead. He tells me it’s hot. I say that’s a good sign. I don’t know if that’s true or not.

‘He will be very proud of his father when I achieve my big success. Come,’ Bibhuti said, and he led us out of the hall and down the corridor, passing walls studded with newspaper clippings of his past successes, and bringing us out into the car park where the children gathered to be collected by their parents in a stuttering tide of Toyotas and country-made SUVs whose wing mirrors still bore the protective film stickers of the showroom.