One afternoon when Tim Knowles from over the road is nowhere to be found and I’m bouncing a soccer ball on the garden path alone, trying to outplay myself, I hear the machine at work. Each pass of the carriage across the bed is a long ragged gasp. It’s the sound Grandpa Reilly made in the ward at the HF Verwoerd before he died. I look through the net curtain into the dining room. Mom has her back to me, leaning forward with her feet planted in the wall-to-wall, her shoulders spread, hands floating. Joe is facing me but his eyes are turned inward. He waggles his fingers like a conductor or (it comes to me now) a two-finger typist who can do sixty words a minute.
Joe
I did not fall out of love with Ali when he lost to Frazier. To my credit, I became a bigger fan than ever. All through 1971 and 1972, I stuck with him as he fought his way back into contention for the major titles. In this period he held the NABF title but not the WBA or WBC.
Ali’s first comeback fight was against his former sparring partner Jimmy Ellis at the Astrodome in Houston on 26 July 1971. Before the fight, Ali entertained an audience of fight fans, mothers and children by miming his way through the final round of the Fight of the Century, exaggerating the details to the point of parody, bobbing, weaving, shuffling and shooting out his famed left jab. This variety-hall act included the left hook from Frazier that knocked him down. (Ali opened up with two fast lefts and a right to the head. Frazier dropped Clay with a left hook to the jaw, but he was up at four and was given the mandatory eight count.)
A reporter asked him how he would feel if by some miracle Ellis were to win.
I wouldn’t feel bad, he replied quietly, because it would be a miracle.
A miracle was not forthcoming. Ali won the fight on a TKO in the final round.
Four months later, he fought Buster Mathis at the same venue. The fight went the full twelve rounds and Ali won a unanimous points decision, but it was obvious to reporters that he had held back from knocking Mathis out. Questioned about this, Ali said: I’m a religious man…I don’t believe in killing a man just to satisfy a few people. He also pointed out that Mathis was a family man with a nice son and that his wife was at the ringside. Should I kill a man, a Black brother, in front of them? But it wasn’t just about Mathis, as this comment made clear: I just can’t get mad at anyone anymore…The more I fight, the more I realize how silly it is, two men beating each other up.
The Mathis reports mention Ali’s forthcoming fight with Jürgen Blin in Zürich, but the archive doesn’t contain a single cutting about the event itself. Of the 22 fights Ali had between October 1970 and October 1975, this is the only one that left no trace.
In the course of 1972, Ali fought six times, and half of these fights took place in foreign cities. Professional boxing was becoming a global business.
The first of the fights was against Mac Foster in Tokyo on 1 April. It took place in the Martial Arts Hall and it was the first professional heavyweight boxing match ever held in Japan. Apparently Ali was still finding boxing silly. In the seventh round, according to one report, he appeared to be deliberately allowing Foster to hit him. Ali had predicted that he would knock Foster out in round 5, but the fight went the distance and he won on points.
On May Day 1972 he fought George Chuvalo in Vancouver. Again he predicted a knockout, but went on to win on points over twelve rounds. The fight could easily have ended earlier: sometimes Ali appeared to be toying with his opponent. Afterwards Ali’s hands were badly bruised. He explained it to a reporter: Chuvalo’s head is the hardest thing I have ever punched.
Next up was Jerry Quarry. Quarry had been Ali’s first opponent after his licence was restored and the rematch at the Las Vegas Convention Center was charged with exceptional animosity. At the medical check-up in the Tropicana Casino, Ali shouted at Quarry: I’m told you don’t like Coloured people. And he told reporters: This isn’t going to be just a race war, it’s going to be a riot. He called me a nigger. Quarry denied the accusation. In any event, what rioting there was occurred in the venue after the fight, which Ali won on a TKO in round 7. Two brawls broke out in the crowd, one of them involving the entire Quarry family, including his mother Awanda, his sister Diane and his son-in-law Robert Coobaugh, who was arrested.
Afterwards Ali shouted, Bring on Joe Frazier. I’m ready for him now. But it would be more than eighteen months before he got his wish.
On the immediate horizon was a fight with Al ‘Blue’ Lewis at Croke Park in Dublin. Lewis, who was from Detroit, had spent eleven of his 29 years in prison, including a stretch for second-degree murder. The Pretoria News ran a four-part series by Alan Hubbard in which he described Ali’s reception in Dublin. The visit had been vigorously endorsed by the Irish Tourist Board and the Irish public were thrilled to see him, especially when it was revealed that one of his great-grandfathers was an O’Grady. With this Irish ancestry, Ali might want to kiss the Blarney Stone, Hubbard wrote, and warned: They had better be careful that he doesn’t swallow it.
The O’Grady story delighted me. I had Irish blood in my veins too. My grandfather Tommy Reilly arrived in Pretoria via Birmingham before the Great War. When he was asked about his name, he always said: I left the O in Ireland.
Crowds turned up to watch Ali spar and he kept them entertained with his call-and-response routines:
Who is the greatest?
You are!
Are you for bad old Blue Lewis?
No.
Are you for Muhammad Ali?
Yes.
Said Hubbard: The pantomime season has arrived five months early in Dublin. On stage every day at Croke Park, Muhammad Ali is giving a matinée performance as a big, black Buttons. (Hubbard was referring to the servant in the Cinderella panto who always insults the ugly sisters.) Blue Lewis, kept waiting in the wings for an hour and a half, was not amused: Listen to that crap. He’s not a fighter, he’s an actor.
Ali told reporters he was the only man alive who could stop under a lamppost in any city on earth and the kids would know who he was. That may not sound humble. But it’s hard to be humble when you’re as good as I am. The story echoed an earlier one from his childhood. His father had shown him a telephone pole where Joe Louis once leant for five whole minutes talking to the people. The great champion of the 1940s was always a marker. Ali joked that he looked just like Joe Louis in his cradle.
The Irish were not quite ready for a global boxing extravaganza. The timekeeper, a bespectacled old man with an ancient stopwatch, kept allowing the rounds to run on past the three minutes. Whether he needed the extra time or not, Ali toyed with Lewis and in the eleventh round the referee stepped in. Gracious, or grateful, in defeat, Lewis followed Ali to his corner and lifted him up into the air.
Hubbard’s series fills the last pages of my first scrapbook. In these articles, Ali talks about being ready to fight Frazier. He also mentions South Africa. See how everybody wants to meet me. Black, White, Jewish, Muslim, Protestant or Catholic. They want me in Peking. They want me in Estonia, Russia. They want me in South Africa. I’m just blessed to draw crowds.
Branko
Goofy attaches himself to us on the road to East London, easing in through the car window along with Mickey, Minnie and other furry animals. Every year when white families head for the coast on their Christmas holidays, the petrol stations hand out cheap collectables to the kids to attract business. Last year when we went to Margate it was pictures of Formula 1 cars and drivers. The year before – Margate again – tinny medallions showing the high points in the history of aviation, from the Wright Brothers to Apollo 11. This summer, with the Munich Olympics coming up, it’s stickers of Disney characters representing the sporting codes. I was half interested in the medallions, but I’m too old for ducks in tracksuits. Sylvie, as Mom keeps saying, has only one interest and that’s boys. So we leave Goofy and the gang to Joe.
East London is Dad’s idea. The rest of us want to go back to Margate,
to the same old caravan park and the same old beach. We’re quite happy with the shows at the Palm Grove, where Tony Feeb and the Forbidden Fruit play all the stuff on the hit parade and a comedian does ‘I’m My Own Grandpa’ and ‘Jake the Peg’ just like Rolf Harris. Last year Sylvie entered Miss Lucky Legs and came second. We were proud of her even though it’s a bit scaly checking out your own sister. The main beach has a grass terrace where Dad can sit on a camping chair and not get sand between his toes. When Joe and I go to the beach on our own we put our towels by the wall so I can sit up and watch the girls in bikinis and also keep an eye on my brother in the water with his hired bellyboard. He’s got to be watched every second because he can’t swim properly, but half the time I’m lying on my stomach to hide my boner and I don’t have eyes in the back of my head (like Mom). Once he vanishes completely and I think he’s gone and drownded hisself, but then I spot him way out beyond the breakers, not waving for help or anything because that would be embarrassing, just stuck to the bellyboard like a leech. I’m no banana boy and the thought of going so far out to save him is scary. Just when I’m about to call a lifesaver, a long-haired surfer takes him in tow and paddles him back towards the shore. He comes out of the surf shivering like a half-drowned puppy, but he says nothing and I can’t even shit on him in case he tells the folks.
We always go to the South Coast with the rest of the Vaalies: the Cape is another country and we don’t want to discover it. But we need to learn more about our beautiful land, Dad says. This year it’s East London or nothing. It’s very nearly nothing. Dad has bought a new caravan, a new second-hand Gypsey at a good price, voetstoots. The bargain becomes clearer when we put up the side tent in the back yard and discover that it has a canopy but no walls. Now what? The van only has four berths and I’m supposed to sleep on a stretcher in the tent. No problem. Dad goes off to a factory in Pretoria North and buys thirty yards of striped green canvas.
Pats, can you run something up for us? he says. It can’t be all that different to making a dress.
For two days and two nights Mom sits at her sewing machine. The canvas is too thick to fit under the foot of the machine and she breaks a dozen needles. Most of it has to be done by hand. In the end her fingers are bleeding from forcing a darning needle through the fabric. We all pitch in with Dad supervising. He’s found a gadget for punching holes through canvas and attaching brass eyelets.
I challenge anyone to find fault with this tent, he says. Five gets you ten they’ll say this one was made in a factory.
The tent looks a bit weird because the walls don’t match the roof, but it doesn’t really matter in the municipal caravan park at Orient Beach because there are half a dozen home-made caravans around us, including one that used to be a horsebox. Some of the makeshift tents make ours look very professional, as Dad promised.
What the hell is that? It must have been made by a drunken Bedouin.
Who needs a Winnebago when you’ve got a tent like this?
It rains. The canopy leaks and I wake up soaked. After a couple of miserable nights, I move into the van and sleep on a lilo in the space between the wardrobe and the galley. It’s so cramped no one can get out to pee in the ablution block. It also ruins my plan to sneak out when everyone is asleep and screw some suntanned girl in the dunes. I have a beach towel rolled up and ready to go: Porky Laing says if you get a single grain of sand on your cock it feels like a boulder, so you have to take precautions. In the middle of the night, with the rain drumming on the skylight and the wind rocking the van on its landing legs, the occasional spray of salt water blasting in through the air vents, it’s like we’re on a boat somewhere, tossing about in a storm.
It’s not beach weather. The wind whips sand against your legs and into your eyes. Dad uses the ploegskaar braai in the side tent even though Mom says he’s going to splash fat all over everything. Sometimes we get pies for supper from the beach caffie and sometimes we eat at the Wimpy. The same waiter helps us every time.
He’s adopted us, Mom says. We’re like a family to him.
Ja, he’s giving us extra ice cream in the banana splits.
It’s a lovely gesture, especially because he’s a deaf mute.
When Dad tips him a ten-cent piece, he claps his hands and sticks the coin in the middle of his forehead, where it stays while he’s clearing off the table. We all laugh like crazy. How does he do it? Mom won’t let us try it in the restaurant, we’re not a bunch of gommies from Gezina, but when we get back to the caravan she gives us each a coin from her purse and we try sticking it on our forehead. After a few seconds it falls off.
It’s a special skill, Mom says.
East London is a terrible place. The only people who go on holiday there are poor whites from Stutterheim and King William’s Town who can’t afford to go to Durban. We’ve never had such a pathetic time. We drive around to the sights. There aren’t that many: after we’ve been to the lighthouse and the lagoon, and twice to the harbour to see the ships, Dad takes us out to the industrial areas to look at the factories. South Africa is making great progress in manufacturing. Especially in the border areas, although there’s not really a border there.
Then we come back to the caravan and sit around. Sometimes we play rummy and general knowledge and sometimes we listen to the radio. If the sun comes out for an hour we go to the beach and by the time we get there it’s clouded over. The caravan park is a flat field of kikuyu with some stunted trees growing sideways into the interior. There’s a recreation room with a ping-pong table and one day I meet a girl there from the horsebox caravan. Her name is Estelle and her brother doesn’t like me talking to her. She’s got beautiful legs, as far as I can see, she could easily be in the Miss Lucky Legs competition if there was such a thing at Orient Beach, it’s just a pity she broke one of them playing netball. She can’t go anywhere, so I sit there talking to her. She’s got her plaster cast up on a chair and I see her panties with Mickey Mouse on them. On the second day of keeping her company she lets me kiss her and puts her tongue in my mouth. I’ve practised French kissing on the back of my hand but I didn’t imagine it would be like a small wet animal over your lips. I put my hand on her thigh, on the smooth skin above the plaster cast, which has a peace sign on it and messages in Afrikaans, and she doesn’t seem to mind. But just as I touch the soft warm cloth where the Mouse must be, her brother comes in and challenges me to ping-pong. He beats me hollow and calls me a useless rooinek. I’d like to punch him one, but I just slink back to the caravan. At least we’re not living in a bloody horsebox.
It’s not as bad as it sounds, actually, with the rain on the fibreglass shell of the van and the kettle boiling on the gas ring and the plastic coffee mugs decorated with the stamps of the world. We go on doing the things we do at home, but more carefully because there’s so little space, and it all feels more important. Everyone’s more considerate. We feel like a happy family: I wish we could live here for ever. Mom spends a lot of time on Sylvie’s hair, not rolling it up so that it will curl, which is what we’re used to, but stretching it out with tongs to make it straight in the sea air. Curls are out. She’s met a boy on the beach, a long-haired hippie who’s doing a BCom at Wits, and everything must be perfect. The weather gives Joe an excuse to read even more than usual. He finds three Simon Templars in the book exchange on the beachfront, rare ones he never saw in the Transvaal, and he swears they were left here by sailors on shore leave. It’s possible: the corners of the covers are curled up and the pages are covered with rust spots.
Dad lies on the stretcher in the tent with a Lion Lager balanced on the gas bottle beside him. The grass is wet and everything is standing on something else. This is the life, he says, this tent would stand up in a gale. He can live without the beach anyway, he doesn’t like getting sand in his shoes. Once he buys the Daily Dispatch, but it’s full of liberal rubbish and so he reads his Car magazine instead, studying the prices of new cars and used one
s, plotting his next purchase.
Christmas lunch is not as fancy as when we’re at home. Mom can’t make a trifle because the fridge is too small, but we have a slap-up braai. We pull crackers and wear paper crowns. Dad says the meal is fit for a king and we laugh like crazy because of the crown. Afterwards he makes a speech about how we should always take care of one another. Things are about to change: Sylvie has finished school and when we get back to Pretoria she’s going to work at the Perm. This is the last holiday we’ll all be together.
On 26 December 1971, Ali fights Jürgen Blin in the Hallenstadion in Zürich. For a change, Ali is actually boxing instead of clowning around: maybe someone told him it’s Boxing Day. He knocks the German out in the seventh round, his first knockout victory since returning to the ring. But we’re on holiday and no one is paying attention to the news. The fight comes and goes without a trace. And that’s why there’s nothing in my brother’s archive about Jürgen Blin. If he was here, I could explain it to him.
Joe
ALI II is another Eclipse drawing book with its pages separated by sheets of tracing paper. It’s slightly smaller than the first scrapbook and so the cuttings are even more elaborately folded and collocated. The tail ends of stories continued on an inside page are sometimes stapled to the main cutting. Occasionally the chronology has been broken to fill an awkward space and this makes it difficult to trace a story through the yellowed newsprint.
My handiwork on the cover is more ambitious: ALI II is printed in blocky Koki-pen shadow caps. The shadows stretch up and back as if a light is shining on them from the bottom left-hand corner. Beside the title is a laminated sticker showing Goofy in boxing gear. He has his gloves up and is leading with the left. His white trunks have a red stripe down the side and his boots each have three stripes on the instep. You might expect a boxer to show a bare torso, but he’s wearing a red T-shirt, as befits a cartoon character. Questions of modesty aside, cartoonists usually obscure the anatomical details of their anthropomorphic critters. What on earth would Minnie Mouse have under her blouse? In place of paws the half-humans have hands with opposable thumbs, so they can answer the telephone and eat with a knife and fork. Under the boxing gloves Goofy must be wearing another pair, white and three-fingered.
The Distance Page 7
