The Berlin Boxing Club

by Robert Sharenow

  I also dutifully continued my training regimen, increasing my limits on the three hundred.

  “I’m going to teach you skills, but you’ve got to keep up your training,” he said. “Jumping rope, running, push-ups, all that stuff you do on your own is just as important as the technical skills you’ll learn. All the calisthenics are meant to improve your breathing. Remember how winded you got fighting Johann? That was nothing. Imagine going twelve rounds like that. Always try to breathe through your nose when you’re doing your workout. You have to have your mouth closed when you fight because you’ll be wearing a mouthpiece.”

  When we were together, Max was a font of information, and I ate up his words like they were my personal gospel and he was my savior. Beyond just the physical training, boxing provided me an entire system of living that I was more than happy to adopt.

  “A boxer must lead a disciplined life,” Max counseled me. “No late nights. No tobacco. No coffee or tea. No booze—none of the fun stuff. You’ve got to structure your day so it builds up your strength for battle. That means you’ve got to eat differently from other boys, think differently from other boys, sleep differently from other boys. No fatty foods or too many sweets. You should avoid unripe fruit or anything with too much spice in it. Boxers eat like animals, simple stuff, whole grains and lots of vegetables. Chicken is good, and red meat, but try to get lean cuts. Too much fatty meat gets in your blood and slows you down. I eat at least two eggs every morning. Eggs are good for strength and energy. You need to put some weight on, so eat lots of cheese and drink milk. Milk, milk, and more milk. Cows are a fighter’s best friend. Most fighters I know drink up to two quarts a day, especially when they’re trying to gain weight.”

  We never talked about anything besides fighting, but that was okay with me. In fact I noticed that all Max ever talked about at the club was boxing. He never revealed anything about his personal life or his opinions. If politics ever came up, he diplomatically dodged voicing any point of view. One day in the locker room, Johann and Willy, one of the club members I knew to be a Nazi supporter, were discussing Hitler’s diet as Max and I were getting ready for a training session.

  “I’m trying to cut down on my red meat,” Willy said. “Hitler is a vegetarian, you know.”

  “I don’t think Hitler would make a very good boxer,” Johann replied. “I’ve never met a fighter who didn’t love steak.”

  “You should watch you say about the Führer, Johann.”

  “All I’m saying is—I don’t think he’s going to challenge anyone for the welterweight title, right, Max?”

  Max lifted an eyebrow and paused before replying: “I think Hitler would probably compete in the light heavyweight division.”

  “But he would make a great fighter, right?” Willy asked.

  “Well, if he were to box against the other world leaders, he’d probably do quite well. Roosevelt is old, and Mussolini is horribly overweight. Must be eating too much of that nice fatty Italian salami, right?”

  The two men laughed, and Max guided me out into the gym.

  Several months went by, and I tried my best to follow every word of Max’s advice to the letter. Every day I worked out, ate, drank, and slept according to Max’s teachings. And sure enough, I started to notice changes in my body. My upper chest and shoulders broadened out, and my forearms and biceps had more definition and mass. I spent hours studying myself in front of the mirror in the bathroom, practicing my stance and punches and flexing different parts of my body, trying to discern any muscle growth. I weighed myself every day and recorded my weight in my journal, along with an exact accounting of what I had eaten and my daily workout statistics.

  Sometimes I enlisted Hildy to help me measure my biceps and chest with a tape measure, and then recorded those results too. One day she caught me staring at myself in the mirror and said: “You’re definitely getting bigger, Spatz.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  “Well, your head is getting bigger. You want me to measure that too?”

  I grabbed a hand towel off the rack and threw it at her, as she ran away giggling.

  Neblig and Joe Palooka

  AS THE MONTHS PROGRESSED, I SPENT LESS TIME WITH with my classmates and more and more time training. Besides Max, my only real friend at the club was Neblig. Despite his speech impediment, he turned out to be much brighter than most of the other fighters. While Max was my teacher, Neblig was my confidant, friend, and cheerleader. He kept an eye out for me and always seemed to be there with a word of encouragement when I needed it most. Some of the other members of the club reveled in cutting me down and played little pranks on me, particularly Willy, who seemed to thrive on pointing out my weaknesses.

  One day, as I suited up in the locker room, I saw Willy and another fighter watching me from a distance. When I put on my boxing glove, my hand slid into something cool and mushy, and I discovered the glove had been filled with shaving cream. Willy and the other fighter doubled over with laughter as I removed my cream-covered hand. Just then Neblig entered the locker room.

  “You should tell your little friend that you’re not allowed to play with yourself in the locker room,” Willy said to Neblig as he and the other fighter exited.

  Neblig shook his head and threw me a towel to wipe it off.

  “Why is he always picking on me?”

  “He’s only g-g-g-giving you what he got h-h-h-himself when he first joined the club. Here, I’ll help you rinse th-th-those out.”

  In addition to boxing, Neblig and I shared a passion for comic strips and cartoons. He had a big collection of boxing magazines that he kept at the gym along with a vast stash of comic strips he had cut out of newspapers and pasted into notebooks. Neblig had a cousin in America who would cut out and mail him all the latest comic strips along with the most up-to-date boxing magazines. He particularly liked American strips such as Mutt and Jeff and The Katzenjammer Kids, and we both loved Ham Fisher’s Joe Palooka, about the adventures of a big, kindhearted heavyweight champion. Something about the Joe Palooka character reminded me of Neblig. They were both big, strong men who were also sensitive and kind.

  I developed and drew dozens of my own ideas for comic strips, which I shared with Neblig, including Fritz the Flying Fox and Herr Dunkelheit: Gentleman Spy. My personal favorite, though, was Danny Dooks: Boy Boxer, about the adventures of a plucky orphan boxer who rises from nothing to become a champion. I used the Danny Dooks strip to mirror my own fantasies about my personal evolution and transformation, giving him not just success in the ring but a beautiful girlfriend, a loyal manager, and lots of friends and supporters as well.

  I had never really shared any of my original comics with anyone besides Hildy, and I was nervous the first time I showed them to Neblig. One afternoon we went to the corner store and each had a vanilla shake at the lunch counter as he read over several Danny Dooks strips. He nodded with approval.

  “He’s a g-g-g-good character. And I like your line w-w-w-work. It’s like a cross b-b-b-between Joe Palooka and Little Orphan Annie.”

  “Oh, it’s not very original, I guess,” I said, dejected.

  “No. It is. All the best s-s-s-stuff in comics b-b-b-builds on what came before. The Katzenjammer K-k-k-kids is just a c-c-c-copy of Max und Moritz, right? It’s really good stuff, Karl. Honest.”

  “Thanks, Neblig,” I said, feeling a deep sense of satisfaction. It meant a lot to me to have Neblig praise my stuff, as I knew there were very few people as expert in the field as he was.

  But our passion for comics was second to our passion for boxing. We spent most of our time comparing and contrasting the leading boxers of the day. Through overheard conversations at the club, I learned Neblig had been a promising fighter as a teenager but had given up boxing years ago and no one really knew why. He was in good shape, and sometimes he worked out on the fitness equipment, but I never saw him sparring with anyone. Some of the fighters made fun of him behind his back, but he was so large and powerful
looking that they rarely openly taunted him. It hurt to hear them joke about him and imitate his stutter. One day we walked out together, and I finally asked him.

  “How come you don’t fight anymore?”

  “It’s a l-l-l-long story.”

  “You’re the biggest guy in the whole gym, probably the strongest too.”

  “I’d get clobbered by anyone.”

  “No, you wouldn’t.”

  “I c-c-c-can’t fight,” he said. “I’m b-b-b-blind in one eye.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “That’s okay. I always t-t-t-t-talked like this. So my father taught me how to b-b-b-box, so I could defend myself against the other k-k-k-kids. Boys from my school d-d-d-didn’t like me. I was not the most p-p-p-popular k-k-k-kid.”

  “Me neither,” I confessed.

  “A group of them cornered me one day. F-f-f-f-four or f-f-f-f-five of them. They had s-s-s-sticks. I just had my fists. I held th-th-them off good. But then one of them hit me in the eye, and it almost p-p-p-popped right out. The boys got scared and just l-l-l-l-left me th-th-th-there, passed out and bleeding. S-s-s-s-someone found me, and the doctors got my eye b-back in. But I c-c-c-can’t see anything out of it, just blurs. It’s okay not to t-t-t-talk in the ring. But you have to be able to see. P-p-p-people think I’m slow because of the way I t-t-t-talk, so it was hard to get w-w-w-work. Worjyk w-w-w-was one of the only people who w-w-w-would hire me. I know he acts like a b-b-b-b-bastard sometimes. But he’s got a good heart.”

  “He sure is hard on me,” I said. “Always picking apart my technique, calling me names.”

  “That’s because he’s p-p-p-paying attention to you. He thinks you have potential. If he didn’t, he’d l-l-l-leave you alone.”

  I doubted Neblig’s comment but hoped that it might be at least partially true.

  As my training progressed, I volunteered myself whenever someone in my weight class was looking for a sparring partner. Most of the fighters I sparred with were full-grown men who were aspiring professional fighters, so I not only absorbed a tremendous amount of blows but also gained invaluable experience each time I stepped into the ring. In my ever-evolving series of nicknames at the club, I started to become known as the Punching Bag. But unlike my other nicknames, this one was said with a certain amount of respect and even affection.

  At first I was little more than a punching bag, defensively holding up my hands and barely able to move or put up any sort of fight. But over time I learned how to navigate around the ring and evade punches with dexterity rather than by just covering up. Eventually I even started to make some offensive moves and try out my different punches, even a combination here and there. My skills evolved, and I gained a reputation for being tough and wiry.

  I sparred most frequently with Johann. Although he always controlled the action, I was able to score punches on him with increasing regularity. Even Worjyk complimented me after I landed a solid right hook to Johann’s solar plexus. As I came out of the ring that day, he and Max approached me.

  “Not bad, Knochen,” Worjyk said.

  “I think you’re ready,” Max said, nodding with a pleased expression.

  “Ready for what?”

  “A real fight,” Max explained. “Sparring is one thing, but you need to get in the ring with someone who really wants to hurt you.”

  “There’s a Youth Boxing Tournament next week that I signed you up for,” Worjyk said. “You’ll be representing the Berlin Boxing Club in the tournament, so you’d better not embarrass us, Knochen.”

  A Prayer

  “I STILL DON’T UNDERSTAND,” GRETA SAID.

  “What?”

  “Why you want to fight in the first place.”

  Greta and I met every Tuesday afternoon at the park near her school, where we could walk and talk together without much risk of being seen by anyone we knew. Although our meetings lasted only twenty minutes, they were the highlight of my week. We always met at the same bench and then walked around in the twilight. Sometime during the stroll, I’d take her hand and we would steal away behind some trees off the path for several minutes of heavy kissing.

  I opened up to Greta about everything that was going on in my life, and she did the same with me. Her father was an accomplished violinist who played in one of the city’s traveling orchestras. He brought her small gifts whenever he traveled, including the clover charm she wore, which he had picked up when his group had an engagement in Dublin. She longed to study music in Paris. As much as I had become fixated on the United States and its endless parade of boxers and comic strips, Greta dreamed of France, a place she imagined was filled with music, art, and fine food.

  We were sitting together on our bench when I told her about my upcoming fight. She was the person with whom I most wanted to share the news, but as I talked excitedly about the upcoming bout, her face grew dark.

  “It seems so stupid to risk getting hurt for nothing,” she said.

  “It’s not for nothing.”

  “Then what’s it for?”

  “To prove something.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. To prove I’m stronger, smarter, better than the other guy.”

  “But why does that matter?”

  “To prove to myself that I’m not afraid.”

  “Afraid of what?”

  “Anything. Look, growing up, I used to be scared of getting pushed around by other kids at school, so I did whatever I could to avoid any kind of fight, always trying to stay back and not get in anyone’s way. And I don’t want to be like that anymore. Can you understand that?”

  She stared at me for a long moment and then nodded. “I guess I do.”

  “You’re going to think this is crazy,” I continued. “But in some ways I feel safer in the ring than I do at school.”

  “Safer?”

  “In boxing there are rules. You wear padded gloves. It’s always a one-on-one fight. You can’t hit below the belt or use a weapon. I may get beat, but at least I’ll always have a fair chance of winning. The rest of the world isn’t always like that.”

  “You really won’t back out?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Well then, I’ll have to say a special prayer for you on Sunday.”

  “I thought you weren’t sure if you believed in any of that.”

  “Well, it couldn’t hurt. And I’ll be in church anyway. So I might as well make use of the time, right?”

  Greta’s parents were devout Catholics, and one of her most daring confessions to me had been that she was not sure she believed in God at all, which I didn’t find too shocking, coming as I did from my own nonreligious household. The Nazis didn’t approve of the hierarchy of the Catholic church, which threatened their own ideas about being in charge of everything and everybody. Greta explained that their priest had forbidden his congregants to join the Nazi Party. Her father agreed with their priest, although many in the congregation did not.

  “Just promise me you’ll be careful,” she said, her eyes suddenly serious.

  “I promise.”

  She touched the side of my face with her hand, and then we slipped off the bench. As we stepped back onto the main path through the park, I saw Kurt and Hans coming toward us in the distance. Greta and I were holding hands, and I quickly released my grip as they came nearer. I hadn’t told them or anyone about Greta for fear of exposure. Had they seen us holding hands?

  “Karl?” Kurt said as they approached.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “What’s going on?” Hans asked.

  “Nothing. Just walking home.”

  They both stared at Greta for an awkward beat.

  “This is Greta; she lives in my building.”

  “Hans Karlweis,” Hans said, with a silly bow.

  “Kurt Seidler,” Kurt said.

  “We were both on our way home,” I said too defensively, “when we bumped into each other.”

  “Bumped?” Kurt giggled.


  “I’ve got to get home,” Greta said.

  “Me too,” I said. “I’ll see you guys tomorrow.”

  Greta and I hurried off as they watched us with suspicious amusement.

  “Gute Nacht,” I heard them sarcastically singsong after us.

  Uniform Shirts and Rotten Apples

  BETWEEN THE COMBINED DISTRACTIONS OF MY BOXING lessons, training, and Greta, I barely had time to worry, even as the rest of my life seemed to be crumbling around me. My father’s “legitimate” art-dealing business at the gallery had slowed to the barest trickle and then finally stopped. He now spent most of his time arranging surreptitious deals with private collectors. Some of these transactions took place at the gallery, but most happened in our apartment at odd hours. Typically a Jewish seller would arrive with his paintings or etchings concealed in a bag or some sort of wrapping, looking desperate, scared, or angry.

  Late one night a finely dressed man came with several etchings to sell. He stood very erect and had a haughty air as he presented them to my father, who studied the works carefully and praised their quality, condition, and beauty. Yet when my father made an offer, the man reacted furiously.

  “Are you kidding?” he yelled, pounding his fist on the table. “These are original Rembrandt etchings!”

  “I know what they are,” my father responded calmly.

  “You couldn’t buy a cheap wall calendar with what you’re offering.”

  “I’m offering what I can offer. I only mark up fifty percent. Most other dealers would give you less and mark up seventy-five or eighty percent. And I am assuming all the risk.”

  “I won’t be robbed right in front of my face!”

  “Suit yourself.”

  The man collected his etchings and indignantly stormed out of the apartment. However, just a few days later, the same man returned with the same pieces. When my father opened the front door to let him in, the man only said: “My family has to eat.”