“So what were you doing, bending in that sloppy way? Do you know the chance you have of landing an uppercut to the Goat’s liver? Hmm, do you? Let me tell you: not much, not much at all. But if you want the truth, in my opinion that’s how you’ll win the fight, if you win.”
Gustavo always had that way of contradicting himself without contradicting himself which took you by surprise.
“What?” I muttered behind the gumshield.
“Yes.” Gustavo lowered his voice, as if he suddenly wanted to tell me a story. “In my opinion, that’s how you’ll win, if you’re going to win: you’ll hurt him where he least expects it. You have to have balls and the patience not to leave yourself open and not risk a sloppy uppercut, as if you’d just thought of it and were giving it a try. He’ll do everything he can to stay close to you and you’ll do everything you can to stay away from him. He’ll be thinking of those lightning straight punches that’ll be raining down on him like hail; he’ll be thinking of that right hand you keep up against your chin that’s as sharp as a cannonball when you let it go. That’s what he’ll be afraid of, it’s what he’ll be watching for, what he’ll be keeping an eye on. He’ll spend his time keeping you close, looking for a way in and keeping an eye on your right. He’ll be convinced that the moment he opens up you’ll get in there like a rocket with your right. That’s what he’ll be afraid of. And he’ll be so concerned about it, it’s very unlikely you’ll actually be able to get in there with that right. But damn it, that deaf-mute little bastard doesn’t have a thousand eyes; sooner or later he’ll have to forget that you have more than just a right; sooner or later he’ll leave his cheek or his liver or his chin exposed … That’s when you have to get in and surprise him; that’s when you have to come out with a great short hook or a strong uppercut and give him the jolt of his life. Sooner or later, too, he’ll have to try and get in a good straight right of his own. And that’s where I want you; that’s where you have to bend forwards to your left and get in an uppercut to his liver that’ll break a rib. Understood?”
I nodded again and Gustavo gave me another slap.
“So what was that crap just now? Why the hell do you bend like a dummy and leave yourself open like a sucker? He has to forget you can do those kinds of punches. Listen to me, son, and I want us to be absolutely clear about this: if, on the night, I see you throw a single pointless hook or uppercut, I swear I’ll throw in the sponge and stop the fight. If you risk going for the knockout punch when you don’t have it, I swear I’ll stop the fight. Get this into your head: if you win this fight, you’ll win it either narrowly on points or because you have the patience to wait for the right punch.”
That was how Gustavo thought. He trained me like a normal boxer of my size: he made me throw one straight punch after another and made me keep to the centre of the ring and give the initiative to my opponent, holding him at a distance and tormenting him with jabs, but he was convinced that the thing that would clinch the fight would most likely be one of those punches no one would expect: a quick, sharp punch from a short distance, with a lot of weight behind it, which would take my opponent by surprise. And that was something he worked on a lot, too. He would direct me in the ring: the rule was that if he suddenly clapped his hands I had to sidestep and deliver a quick combination of two or three punches, then turn and come out again, possibly rounding it off with a nice quick right just to annoy my opponent. When it worked, he would applaud for a few seconds and yell “GOOD!” but when I got it wrong and laid myself open he would throw a towel or a glove on the floor or stamp his foot and swear and curse me in that croaky black man’s voice of his.
One week before the fight, he told me we were there now and for the last days I had to take it easy and get some rest. Of course, I still had to go running, but mainly to work off the excess of lactate, and of course I still had to train, but one hour was enough, and then just gymnastics, or at most a couple of easy rounds, just to keep in practice.
I was wound up like a spring. No one could stop me now. I looked at myself in the mirror at the gym and felt as ready as a real champion. There I was, preparing for the championship of the world; I was Mike Tyson, Muhammad Ali, Sugar Ray Robinson and all the others who, over the generations, had ever skipped up and down on a wooden floor and looked into their own eyes in the mirror like gladiators.
Apparently, the betting had gone through the roof. They gave me three-to-one. They said that in the end the Goat’s experience would lay me out flat. They said I was a good boxer, but when you got down to it I was a ballerina, and as soon as I found myself up there I’d be shit-scared and start to fire off pointless punches just like that Roman boy I had seen at the Teatro Tenda. There were even those who said I would be beaten in the first round, or that the Goat would get in the ring and, when the bell rang, would walk to the centre with his head down, parry a couple of jabs the way he knew how, then get inside and cover me in a forest of punches so thick that Gustavo would have to use a chainsaw to get me out.
Luckily, there were also those who liked me, who said I was so accurate and fast and technical I could beat anyone; that however good you were, there was no way to get in close to me without leaving yourself open and getting one of my rights straight between the eyes. There were some who said the Goat would never even get close to me; that he would stand there powerless under a hail of jabs, and from out of that hail would emerge one of my power shots that would lay anyone out flat; that it didn’t matter that I’d never fought before, because class is class, and it doesn’t really matter if you demonstrate it or not: if you have it you have it, and all anyone else can do is acknowledge your superiority.
Then there were the undecided: those who may have been more far-sighted than the others and really had no idea how it would go, those who had seen both of us and didn’t let their imaginations run away with them, those who had come to see us both train during those three months; people you saw after the training session chatting away at the back of the gym, some of them smiling and shaking their heads; people who really didn’t see how one of these two boys could get the upper hand over the other because they were both so different and at the same time so similar.
But no one had any doubts that it would be a great fight.
AND NOW SUDDENLY there I was, up there in that ring, skipping about in the corner, holding my gloves up to my chin as if to pray, my eyes closed, the spotlights over my head, and in front of me and all round the ring those rows of seats and those aisles packed full of excited-looking people drinking beer, talking, watching silently, laughing, concentrating or drawing figures in the air. All those people had come there to see us, to see me, to see this ballerina they had heard so much about, this prince of the ring, rarely seen, the stuff of legends — a real master. They had come there to see if it was really worth telling the stories and believing in them or if, once again, as usually happened, reality would destroy the myths, like a father hitting a little boy who tells a lie, a little boy who only lies because he wants to live a different life from the shit around him. They were there to see a battle between dream and reality, between the world as it was and the way we would like it to be. Or perhaps they only wanted to see once and for all if it’s talent or effort that wins out, or whether talent even exists or is just a lot of hot air. There was a whole world hanging over that ring and as the referee walked into the centre of it and the people fell silent I knew that, if I lost, my life would no longer be the same. Maybe if I won, too, but that wasn’t what worried me.
I suddenly felt a slap on the face. Gustavo was looking hard at me.