He made as if to spit, then went on talking about the war. He described how two of his uncles and an aunt had been shot dead.
“They got on a boat, hoping to get from Santander into France, but the captain had been bribed and, under cover of night, he changed course and landed in Pasajes instead. The following day, all three were shot.”
In his opinion, San Sebastián was a city full of fascists, although a lot had quickly put on a democratic mask when the dictator died.
“The usual thing,” he said.
I noticed that the dressing on his neck was becoming stained with red, then it began dripping blood, thick drops that spattered the floor. I pointed this out to him, and he pressed the button to summon the nurses.
They put another bandage round his neck and whisked him away.
I went over to my father. His eyes were open, but had a somewhat glazed look about them.
“When I was young, there were always fights at fiestas, but it was simply a matter of knocking your opponent down, not punching him,” he said, talking slowly and clearly. “But Uzcudun would insult people, saying, “Your mother is a whore,” and things like that. His rivals would get furious, of course, and put up their fists, and then he would give them a terrible drubbing. He was an animal. So was his father.”
He smiled wanly.
“But he eventually got a taste of his own medicine. In one of his first fights in America, his opponent broke all his teeth. From then on, he wore gold dentures.”
STEAMBOAT SPRINGS
After seeing the photographs of Paulino Uzcudun in Guy Clifton’s book Dempsey in Nevada, and knowing they had been taken in the Steamboat Springs training camp, I tried several times to locate the place. I looked on the computer and there was a black dot next to that name on the road between Reno and Carson City, but when I drove there, I found nothing. Just a small church, an ordinary building that would have gone unnoticed but for the pitched-roof porch and the metal cross.
Everything seemed to indicate that this was the place I was looking for, and Ángela agreed. After all, as still further proof, there was the hot spring that gave the place its name. It was, besides, a rather beautiful place, a shady garden cooled by a small stream. It wasn’t hard to imagine a boxer training there, but it had been more than eighty years since Paulino Uzcudun fought Max Baer, and perhaps there was no trace of the camp left. They must have pulled it down to build the little church. That, at least, was what we thought.
At the beginning of November, we started taking Izaskun and Sara to a ranch where they could learn how to ride, mainly to fill their time, because they had been without friends for three months, wondering where “American children” went to outside school. When we found a ranch a few miles from Steamboat Springs, we used to drive through there every week, going and coming back. I would see the column of steam and the small church and again wonder about Paulino Uzcudun’s training camp.
One day, we were driving back from the ranch, when Ángela spotted a car parked next to the church and drove over to join it. She passed the car – I saw a man with a white beard at the wheel – and stopped a few yards further on, immediately opposite the column of steam. It suddenly seemed to me a very neglected place. An old engine had been dumped at the edge of the spring, as if someone had wanted to get rid of it by throwing it in. A little further on, next to some bushes, the ground was littered with broken beer bottles.
The man with the white beard went over to the door of the church and invited us in, arms outstretched and palms uppermost. He had the somewhat old-fashioned look of a priest in civvies, but his neatness was in stark contrast with the otherwise neglected air of the place. He made this welcoming gesture rather half-heartedly, knowing we wouldn’t take him up on it.
I apologised, then explained the reason for our visit. We were looking for the training camp used by a boxer called Paulino Uzcudun. That was all.
“Well, you’ve found it,” he said.
I wasn’t expecting such a straightforward response, and I stood there, not quite sure what to say, rather moved to have found what I was looking for. I pointed to the small church. That’s what had confused me. It didn’t seem appropriate for a boxing camp.
“We built it ourselves when we took over the place,” he said.
“It’s very nice,” I said.
Sara called to us from the car. She was bored with waiting.
The man with the white beard looked at us sadly. I asked if we could take a few photographs. We wouldn’t be long. He again held out his arms, palms uppermost, as if to say: “It’s all yours.” He then took out his keys, opened the door and went into the church.
On the drive back to Reno, I remarked to Ángela how very different the inhabitants of one house could be. If the stories I had heard throughout my life were true, Paulino Uzcudun and the new owner of Steamboat Springs could not have been less alike.
THE FIGHTER
THE STORY OF PAULINO UZCUDUN’S FATHER
It was a velvety summer’s night, and the trees in the wood were lit by the gentle light of the big, round moon. However, the all-pervading calm failed to touch the man’s heart. He was walking along the path, oblivious to everything around him, and with just one thought in his head: there had been no fighting at the fiesta held in Mugats. He could understand no-one wanting to start a fight initially, but it infuriated him that hours had passed without one of those lads taking a swing at him, and there were at least a hundred of them, all a good thirty years younger than him and stoked up on drink. He couldn’t bear it. How could they be so cowardly, so lily-livered! Giving them a shove or insulting them had no effect whatsoever. Instead of confronting him, they would slip away among the couples on the dance floor, like lizards on a wall, joking with the girls to hide their fear. And it was a long walk too, a whole hour from his house to Mugats, and longer still on the way back, because most of it was uphill. What a waste of time. Besides, it wasn’t just that they didn’t want to take him on; they didn’t start any fights among themselves either, for fear he might get involved and begin dealing out punches.
Leaving the woods behind him, he reached the edge of a stream. Grass and roots hampered the flow of water, so that it slipped silently, slowly along, adding to the dense calm of the night. Despite this, his mood remained unaltered. He was wondering what would have happened if the lads at Mugats had started fighting; if he would have hurled himself on them as he had when he was twenty or twenty-five, him against five, six or more opponents, and if he would have beaten them all, smashed in their faces and himself ended up with nothing but a bruise on his back from being punched in the kidneys by one of those opportunists who always attack from behind.
This thought only made him grumpier still. More than twenty years had passed since those big fights, and he was no longer the same man. He noticed this when he was working with the axe. He could still fell five trees one after the other, but would have to sit down afterwards. His older brother had warned him that once he passed forty-five, any slight over-exertion, even an ejaculation, would affect him and leave him feeling weak. But then his older brother was already sixty, which was quite a different matter.
There was a fountain next to the stream, protected by a little wall on which stood a statue of the Virgin, surrounded by flowers. He drank some water from the metal bowl provided, then set off again. From there the path rose steeply.
How many young men could he take on and still be confident of winning? The question lingered in his mind, and the answer wasn’t easy. He had grown more cautious, more calculating. If there had been a fight among the lads in Mugats that night, he wouldn’t have taken them all on, unless provoked.
Behind his doubts lurked the final and most insidious of questions: had his decline already begun? There was the nub of the matter, the anxiety underlying all the others.
The hill was so steep that the oxen used in the mines had great difficulty coming down it with heavily laden carts. He suddenly decided to test his strength and walk up the hill as
quickly as possible, as if it were a race. He started running and his body responded. He could feel his strong thighs and knees, the air smoothly filling his lungs. The lads in Mugats would have had difficulty overtaking him. And even if they could, they would not have dared. That would have been a snub to the best fighter in the province of Guipúzcoa.
The mine-workers were afraid of him too. He had challenged them before, sometimes in Mugats, but usually on their own territory, in the big hut near the mine that served as their dining room. He would go over to them and, without saying a word, grab hold of one end of the table, leaving plates and bottles of wine in danger of sliding off. But no-one got angry; on the contrary, they would invite him to join them.
He burst out laughing. One of the mine-workers was an evil-looking fellow called Ayerra, a nasty man who would whip out a knife at the slightest provocation. One afternoon, Uzcudun had deeply offended Ayerra simply by ruffling his hair, and Ayerra had lunged at him.
The memory of what followed made him laugh even louder. As soon as Ayerra was within reach, he had grabbed his wrist and twisted it so that the knife fell to the ground. Then, putting his arms around his waist, he had picked Ayerra up, carried him out of the hut and thrown him some twelve or fifteen feet as if he were a sack of potatoes. “What do you expect, you stupid fool?” he said and slapped him across the face so hard that he split his lip.
He stopped laughing and carried on up the hill, more slowly now. The images from that memory continued to parade through his mind. The foreman had whispered to him: “You’d better watch out for Ayerra. He’ll stick his knife in you one day when you’re not looking. He’ll never forgive you for what you just did to him.” Uzcudun went and sat down on the ground next to Ayerra and put his arm around his neck. “Ayerra, we’ve got to be friends, otherwise, you know what will happen.” He tightened his grip. “You do know, don’t you? You know what will happen if you start following me around, hoping to take me by surprise?” Ayerra let out a moan. His face turned scarlet. “I’ll break your neck.” Ayerra tried to say something, but couldn’t get a word out. Uzcudun loosened his grip. “I promise you one thing, Ayerra, for your own good. I won’t tell my sons that you drew a knife on me. If they ever find out what happened, they’ll be after you like a shot,” he said.
He had nine children, five of them boys, the oldest thirty-two and the youngest twenty. They would not hesitate to defend a member of their family. “But they’re friends of mine,” gasped Ayerra, rubbing his neck with his hands. “You’re friends with my sons, are you?” Uzcudun had said. “Ah, now I understand. You were just joking when you threatened me with your knife …” And he laughed and slapped him on the back. Ayerra did not respond.
Halfway up the hill, the terrain flattened out. The mine-owners had widened the path to create a level area for loading up the minerals onto the carts. To the left was a rough stone cross bearing a metal plaque in memory of a murder that took place there. In 1898, the landlady of the inn at Mugats had fled into the hills after seeing her son kill his father, but the son had caught up with her on that very spot and killed her as well.
He could not recall the details of the crime, but he was sure that the son had murdered his mother by smashing her head in with a rock and had killed his father with a knife, as Ayerra had wanted to do to him.
He snorted like a horse and stood looking at the cross. The murderer must have been a complete imbecile! All he could think of doing after killing his parents was to go off to the Copacabana nightclub in San Sebastián and make a spectacle of himself there, buying champagne for all the girls and singing to his captive audience. If he hadn’t made such a scene, the police might not have suspected anything. However, when they heard about it, they immediately arrested him: “You were just making sure that people would know you were in San Sebastián and not at home,” they said. He soon confessed and was garrotted the following year in the square in Azpeitia.
Uzcudun’s eyes, nimbler than his thoughts, had lost interest in the metal plaque on the stone cross. Someone was standing a few feet away, leaning against a wooden fence, his arms outspread. Although only a shadow, he was clearly defined by the light of the moon: the image of a crucified man. The vague idea flitted through his mind, as if in a dream, that it could be that same Mugats murderer, condemned to stay like that for all eternity; however, he immediately rejected this idea and took a few steps towards the figure.
“What do you want?” he asked, and the question rang out in the silence of the night. There was no reply.
The figure seemed not to move. For a moment, Uzcudun thought it was a tree trunk that the loggers had left there as a joke, with its two branches resembling arms, but when he moved still closer, he rejected that idea too. The figure was the size of a man, a big, strong man like him, and his arms were real arms, not branches.
“Ah, I know who you are!” he cried, going closer still.
The previous year, he had gone with his five sons to watch a bout of catch wrestling in San Sebastián, and the wrestler they had all liked best was one who called himself the Masked Man. Suddenly the scene made sense. The figure before him also wore a mask, a piece of black cloth covering his whole head. He had adopted the same pose as the wrestlers had when standing in the corner of the ring. Yes, he was hanging on to the fence just as the wrestler had hung on to the ropes. There was no doubt about it: the shadow was imitating the Masked Man.
He advanced another step, and the figure straightened up.
“What do you want?” he asked again.
It was obvious. The faceless man wanted to fight. He suddenly let go of the fence and gave Uzcudun a shove. Uzcudun weighed more than 240 pounds, and yet even so he had to take a step back to steady himself. The man wasn’t going to be an easy opponent to beat. He wouldn’t be able to lift him in the air and throw him down like a sack, as he had with Ayerra.
“Just a moment,” he said and went over to the stone cross, where he urinated. Never fight on a full bladder. When he came back, his trousers were tightly fastened at the waist and his shirtsleeves rolled up.
Side by side, they walked over to the loading area. Before they got there, Uzcudun stuck out his leg and tripped the masked man up. The man stumbled, but did not fall.
“Who are you?” Uzcudun asked.
Again he received no reply, and so he aimed a punch at his opponent’s head. His faceless adversary dodged the blow with a slight movement from the waist.
“You move well, Mr Wild Cat!” Uzcudun said and laughed.
The man might dodge him the first time, the second and possibly the third, but Uzcudun would eventually manage to tear the hood from his head. Then a lot of things could be cleared up. Who was this man trying to beat him, and why had he not challenged him at the party in Mugats, in front of everyone else, as was the custom? Catch wrestling was always done before an audience too, that way everyone knew who the champion was. The man with no face jabbed him in the ribs with his left fist.
“Steady, wild cat!” Uzcudun said, butting him like a ram.
Utter silence reigned, apart, perhaps, from the rustling of leaves, the frogs in the stream and the night insects, but otherwise, nothing, as if the big, round moon had absorbed all the noises and cancelled them out.
The silence did not last. A dog started barking furiously, and, a moment later, another dog barked just once, striking a deeper note. They could hear people shouting.
Five or six other dogs joined in from the hills round about, near the mine. A confused clamour of barking briefly disturbed the silence; then the dogs grew bored and fell silent, first the one in Mugats, and then the others. The final bark came from far off and immediately died away.
The fight lasted almost as long as one of those catch-wrestling matches, and when it ended, Uzcudun watched his opponent stride off up the hill.
“Don’t leave without telling me who you are,” he shouted after him from where he was sitting on the ground.
He had not succeeded in removing
the man’s hood; he didn’t know who he was, that man who had beaten him so soundly, and who, for the first time since Uzcudun was fifteen, had left him sprawled on the ground.
Whenever he went to Mugats or into some bar, there would always be someone who shouted out: “Here comes the strongest man in Guipúzcoa!” And he would answer “Hungry!” or “Thirsty!” and a bottle of wine or a plate of stew would appear on the table. If the other customers were playing cards, they would make room for him and invite him to join them. From now on, though, he would have to behave with more humility. There was a better fighter than him in Guipúzcoa. The man who could strip him of his reputation had finally been born.
He staggered over to the stone cross and sat down on the base. He was very tired and felt-lightheaded and dizzy from the blows he had received. His thoughts, though, were perfectly clear. If someone in a bar greeted him with the words: “Here comes the strongest man in Guipúzcoa!” and he accepted the greeting, then the worst could happen: someone – the masked man – might call out: “That’s not true. I’m the strongest man in Guipúzcoa!” And then he would have to fight him in front of everyone, knowing that he would lose, because the stranger was better than him, of that there was no doubt.
He felt a wave of heat rising up his neck to his face. He felt ashamed to have lost like that. How easily the masked man had landed punches on him! How nimbly he had walked up the hill when the fight was clearly over! He moved just like a wild cat, both walking and fighting. That’s why Uzcudun had been unable to remove his hood, despite trying again and again.
He bent forward, rested his head on his folded arms and closed his eyes. He again thought about what had happened. After spending all evening and part of the night in Mugats, the stranger had chosen to fight alone. Uzcudun could not understand why.
When he woke in the morning, he could feel precisely the points on his body that had received the hardest blows. His top lip hurt, as did his nose, but the ribs on his right-hand side hurt most of all. The skin on his right knee felt tight. He rolled up his trouser leg and saw that the skin was broken and covered with a bloody scab. He took a few steps and was relieved to find that he could still walk. He was also hungry, which was a sign that he was alright inside. He touched his lip, then probed the inside of his mouth with one finger. His lip was swollen, but all his teeth were intact.
Nevada Days Page 10
