Slugger

by Martin Holmén

  ‘Don’t think about that now.’

  Every match must be more important than life and death. I have pissed blood for weeks afterwards and never had to ask myself if it was worth it. Without that attitude, fear takes a hold of you, and then you are in serious danger.

  His legs carry him, but the young man moves as though in a trance. I make him jog from one wall to the other and throw uppercuts into the air. I look him over. Loneliness swells in my breast. I light a cigar just as there is a knock and the door opens.

  It is time.

  I throw a towel over my shoulder and grab a bottle of water. Expectancy flutters inside me.

  This is fucking it.

  It is about damn time to fucking show them.

  Kvisten has still got it.

  I walk behind the boy. We are met by a wall of humid heat. I take a deep breath through my broken nose.

  I am finally back where it all went belly up, but this time it will end differently.

  Hasse stops in the doorway and paces on the spot a few times before stepping into the room. The Kungsholm club has no seating but there is a gangway running through a black mass of people. Fifty-odd men turn to look at us in unison. They are fanning their mugs with daily newspapers and hat brims.

  I smile internally.

  I am home.

  We start making our way through. Various situations and strike combinations flash through my mind accompanied by the public’s cheers, as if I were the one about to go into the ring.

  We have what it takes. I’ve never gone down, never even taken a fucking count. I don’t intend to start now. We’ve got this in the fucking bag, with sequins and bells on.

  It has gone quiet. The buzz has subsided, as has the sound of clinking from smuggled-in Pilsner bottles. I look up. The lights from a dozen glowing cigarette tips intensify only to immediately fade into darkness. In the gloom I see a white summer dress, and a pair of round cheeks with a straight nose and rosy mouth in between. Her front teeth are biting her lower lip. She has a bunch of flowers in her arms and a couple of other young women on either side. That must be Josefin, Hasse’s girl.

  Smoke and solemnity hang heavy in the room. My heart starts pounding. I take a deep drag on my cigar. Our shoes make a lonesome echo on the floor tiles. The ten metres to our destination feel horrendously long.

  What the fuck is going to happen?

  A wave of noise seems to push us forward. As we move towards the ring we hear a ripple of whispers following behind our backs. Someone coughs, someone else scrapes their foot against the floor, a couple of people laugh quietly. With every step the noise levels intensify.

  We have almost reached the ring when a scrunched up cigarette packet flies past the brim of my hat and hits Hasse in the back of the head. A few men laugh.

  ‘Who let that fucking queer in?’

  A guttural Skåne accent cuts through the room. The laughter multiplies. I clench my fists. The vein in my forehead begins to throb and I swallow several times. I place my left palm between Hasse’s shoulder blades and push him gently ahead of me.

  ‘We’ll show them. We’ll show them in there.’

  I point at the ring with my cigar. The referee is already standing in the middle of the square but the opponent hasn’t shown up yet. I slap Hasse on the back.

  ‘Step into the ring with your left foot first. Always helped me.’

  ‘Take the boy to a dance instead!’

  That same Skåne bastard. Hideous memories blaze in my brain. It’s as if the insults sink down to the sludgy bottom of my consciousness and unearth recollections I thought I had drowned in schnapps years ago. I shrink under the jeers; my whole body seems to contract.

  I step up onto the platform, move away a three-legged stool with flaking paint and part the ring ropes. They are wrapped in dingy material so as not to chafe the boxers’ skin. The referee nods at us. He has all the characteristics of a fighter himself. His nose is crooked, his ears are battered and violence has carved its marks around his eyes.

  He stares at me. Maybe I met him during my down-and-out years. Chiselled my hobo symbols into his mug.

  Who the hell knows.

  Doesn’t matter.

  Not now.

  When Hasse is about to step through the ropes, he stumbles and is close to falling face first. Laughter patters like hailstones behind my back. The redness of shame creeps across the young boxer’s cheeks, which are shining with sweat. His knees are shaking; his eyes are darting around for something to latch onto.

  ‘Keep moving, keep yourself warm and supple, and listen to me. Look at me.’

  Hasse obeys and begins to jog on the spot.

  ‘Not a single one of them… no, look at me, I said! That’s right. Listen! Not a single one of them would dare step into the ring with you. Keep warm!’

  I pinch the cigar in the corner of my lips and massage Hasse’s neck muscles with both hands. I am trembling but I hope he doesn’t notice. He rolls his muscular shoulders back and punches a few tired strikes into the air.

  ‘Once you’re in there, nobody exists but you and your opponent. Do as we have trained and show those bastards.’

  Thunderous applause tears my attention away. I chew on the cigar and peer over my shoulder. I swallow tobacco.

  I can tell a man’s weight to the kilo, whenever, wherever, and I’ll be damned if our thick-necked opponent falls within the welterweight division. He must have had to angle himself sideways just to fit through the door, and his powerful shoulders slope sharply inward to his waist. There are a whole lot of weight cheats at this level. Still, you’ve got to handle the heavier opponents just like any other: knock them in the chops and say goodnight. Nothing else to do, even if you’re bound to receive the odd blow on the way.

  There is a knot in my stomach. I have never been so nervous before a match. In a few minutes the referee will raise Hasse’s hand to the ceiling and it will feel as if it were my own. I take the cigar out of my mouth and turn to face the boy.

  ‘Movement and speed, in and out the whole time. You have a good hook. Use it. Even if you miss, you’ll get him with your elbow with a bit of luck.’

  ‘What is Kvist saying?’

  ‘In the clinch you hold his head down with one hand and give him an uppercut with the other. And why not cut his eyes up with your glove laces while you’re there.’

  Our opponent steps into the ring amid whoops from the crowd. He is grinning so widely his mouth guard is about to burst out of his gob. I grab hold of my boy’s neck and pull him close to my face.

  ‘When you have the referee on the wrong side, give him a body punch. Make sure you make contact just below the hip. It stuns the leg lame like hell. Gives you a few seconds to do whatever you want. Headbutt him if worst comes to worst but make it look like an accident.’

  The bell rings and the referee waves the boxers into the middle. The sound of the bell fades, but it has struck something inside me.

  I fought my first proper match a few months after I had signed off for good, soon after the end of the war, with no other qualifications whatsoever. Ever since my time as cabin boy, I had fought bouts with my fists wrapped in sailcloth for bets. Countless hours with a shovel in the boiler room and at the turning wheel made my shoulders and arms strong and my wrists as hard as steel. The instinctive desire to cause harm also helped. I was probably born with liquid violence in the veins.

  I won that first time, though just barely. I had a good couple of years, climbing over bodies on my way to the top. I was somebody. The people at home believed in me. People wanted to buy me a beer, pat me on the back and shake my hand. I got a reputation as something of an artist, with knockout power in both my right and my left, and as a thoroughly entertaining boxer who could also take a hell of a lot of blows.

  This isn’t the first time the odds have been against me. I was tipped to lose against Tord ‘Hässelby’ Thulin out in the Fjäderholmarna Islands early in the summer of 1920 but won despite a broken hand. I
t cost me a place in the Olympics a few weeks later. Another Harry, a Brit, won the middleweight gold.

  Everybody said it should have been me.

  Then the legendary Axel Albertsson took me under his wing and formed me into a true technician. He said that a good boxer has to be shrewd, and that I had everything it took, with a mind as quick as my fists.

  I often danced around with ravenous ferocity to break the opponent’s mind before I unleashed my combinations to break his body. It was more entertaining that way, for me and the audience. I didn’t go for the light switch earlier than necessary. The audience loved it.

  They loved me.

  If everything hadn’t gone to hell in the autumn of ’23, I would have gone professional. Maybe I still would be today. Thirty-nine is no age for a fighter, but it’s impossible to know for sure. Some have a hundred matches in them, others have ten. No one can know in advance.

  I open my eyes when Hasse comes back to the corner of the ring. I pour a little water down his throat. My own trainer’s words echo through me.

  ‘Move and keep moving. Finish your combinations with a hook.’

  The gong sounds again and the boxers begin to circle one another. Hasse is trying to bite his bottom lip through his mouth guard. Our opponent rushes past the centre of the ring and meets him a few metres from our corner.

  Not a good sign.

  The other bloke does a double jab, finds the right distance and follows up with a hard right. Hasse takes the blows on his guard. The strikes’ dull thuds resound through the premises, and the crowd jeers. A left in the belly makes Hasse stumble backward. My knuckles whiten around the ropes.

  ‘Move, I said!’

  A similar combination concludes with two hard blows to his body, and Hasse tumbles towards the rope to the left of me with his hands firmly covering his face. The opponent is above him immediately and raining down punches. It is as if he has ten arms. A vicious ancient Indian god.

  ‘Counter for fuck’s sake! Move!’

  I can tell the quality of a boxer’s footwork just by listening to the squeaks and swishes of his feet against the canvas floor. This time it seems totally damn quiet. For one moment the opponent stops hitting and appears to be considering his options. Light feet and a light heart, a small superior smile on his lips.

  Devil take him.

  I have a good mind to climb into the ring myself, but instead I scream: ‘Now! Now!’

  Hasse doesn’t hear me; he just stays with his feet nailed to the floor. I can’t for the life of me understand what is wrong with his bloody ears. He just has to do what I say.

  His opponent is on him again, with strikes so swift they make the ropes sing. His muscles move like well-fed snakes under his skin, and his fists drive into Hasse’s trunk over and over again. Hasse stands pressed against the rope, about as dynamic as a sea stack, and absorbs them. It is only a question of time before he drops his guard. The crowd roars with excitement, the scent of blood in their nostrils.

  ‘Go in red-hot! Clinch the bastard!’

  Tobacco flakes and saliva spray out of my mouth as I shout. It is as hot as a fucking Turkish bath and he is varnished in sweat. The opponent jabs at his head and chest, smacks a straight right into his guard and twists a left into his liver.

  Those bastards will have hurt.

  Hasse’s elbows slip down. I instinctively raise my hands in front of my face. The next right hook hits him hard in the eye. His neck muscles surrender. His head practically hits his shoulder before bouncing back.

  I grab hold of the ropes and squeeze them. It feels like every damn blow I’ve ever taken hits me in one single strike. I gasp, and my cigar almost falls out of my mouth, but I manage to catch it.

  Hasse slumps diagonally forward, already out of the game. His opponent seizes him by his left forearm and heaves him towards the ropes. Another right meets his beautiful jaws and smacks the mouth guard clean out of his gob. The left misses because the boy crashes to the floor nose first. A deafening cheer raises the roof, and I close my eyes and sink my head.

  We didn’t even get a single punch.

  Not even a fucking jab.

  At last, the mob keeps their mouths shut and the count inhabits the same ghostly silence it always does. At three I am back, at five I lift my head, at seven I open my eyes. I let the chewed-up cigar fall towards the canvas and stamp on it. The darkness of brewed disappointment wells up in my breast. I kick the stool with a clatter.

  I step down from the platform. By number ten cheers explode and I reach Hasse. He is still unconscious. A trickle of blood is running from his nose.

  I reach for his limp left arm. His body makes a shuffling sound against the floor as I drag him under the ropes.

  I turn the youth over onto his back. It hurts when I lift him into my arms, in my back and my soul. I swing around holding the hot, limp body and direct my gaze at the door on the other side of the passageway between the men. I grit my teeth and start walking.

  The corridor of bodies smells sharply of sweat, liniment and cheap tobacco. I walk. Life gradually returns to the boy’s numbed body. His legs twitch, he moves his head slightly and groans.

  ‘Like a bride over the threshold.’

  The Skåne bloke again. A guffaw ripples through the audience. Someone leans forward and spits in front of my shoes. Soon the insults are flying thick and fast through the air, as quick, dark and unpredictable as bats. I slow down and look into the crowd’s eyes. There is hatred there.

  ‘Off to the bedroom.’

  I attempt an insolent smile but fail. Several gobs of snuffspotted spit land in our path. Mouths are gaping wide open from sunburnt faces, mouths full of broken poor men’s teeth: a gauntlet of jeers.

  Four metres left.

  Hasse’s girl is covering her face in her hands. Her shame implants itself in me, runs red-hot under my skin. The flowers lie strewn on the floor. One of her girlfriends has her arm around her and whispers something in her ear.

  What the hell is there to say?

  I don’t know.

  All sixty-five kilos of the boy begin to make my arm muscles ache. He sniffs and hides his face against my breast. I peer down at him and hold him tighter around his torso. He is quiet but his shoulders are twitching slightly and my shirt front is damp with blood and tears.

  When I look up again I am looking straight into a pair of familiar green eyes. Memories whirl in my head. Nausea pinches at my guts. My intestines coil like reptiles.

  It’s been over a decade since we last saw each other, in a boxing club much like this one. He is standing at the farthest end of the final row of men. His hairline has crept up a bit, and age has broken furrows in his high forehead, but his bulky boxer’s physique remains. I gasp for air but do not break eye contact.

  Two metres.

  He opens his mouth as if to speak and I stand up straight, like before the village priest back home. I don’t know what I am expecting, maybe one of the long harangues of equal parts praise and scolding that he used to deliver, but he says nothing. Then he looks away, as though in disgust, and I pass by with my fighter in my arms.

  I’m not about to give up on my own, not again. I’ve got him.

  Whatever happens.

  I hold him tight.

  Four labourers get on at Kungsholmstorg. One of them is holding a rolled-up newspaper, another has an unica box. The wooden benches creak as they spread themselves out in the window seats and the conductor calls for departure. As the tramcar rolls slowly forward, a bearded man in a dirty, collarless shirt and notched braces tries to hail it.

  ‘Hey!’

  The conductor reaches through the front door and locks hands with the tramp, who manages to swing himself up into the car with considerable effort. He takes off his cap and bows before looking around. Slowly he starts to make his way across the dark carriage floor littered with white tickets. The ceiling straps above his head sway with the lurches of the tram.

  Hasse and I are sitting on the le
ngthwise seat at the back. He is leaning his elbows on his knees and hanging his head. The driver pushes the front crank and we rattle at full speed down Hantverkargatan. In one hand I am clutching the green scrap of cloth from my desk drawer. God knows why I took it. Supposed to be lucky. It wasn’t. I put it away.

  I wrestle with my words for a while before speaking.

  ‘I saw my old trainer in there. When I was dragging you out. Haven’t seen him in over a decade.’

  Hasse turns his head, to hear me better perhaps, but doesn’t look at me. He hasn’t looked me in the eye since he regained consciousness.

  Just as well.

  ‘I’m sure you’ve heard the rumours.’ I clear my throat. ‘Now I’m going to tell you what really happened.’

  Hasse scrapes his foot against the floor. I lean back against the backrest so that he can’t see me, tip back my hat and take out a cigar. My body is crying out for tobacco. Non-smoking carriages are an invention of the Devil.

  The conductor goes around taking fares from those newly boarded. The tramp is limping behind him and presenting something to the passengers, who all shake their heads guardedly or stare out the window. I push my hat farther back and carefully touch the wound on my forehead with the palm of my hand. Sweat stings in the stitches. Each word is a struggle, but I force myself to continue.

  ‘Axel Albertsson.’

  I focus on one point on Hasse’s neck. His skin is sunburnt and peeling. He has spent too much of this summer bent over shoes. The cigar aches between my fingers. I hold it under my nose and inhale its scent. The conductor leans against one of the poles, removes his cap and dabs his face with a handkerchief.

  ‘I was already a hell of a fighter when I signed off but it was Albertsson who taught me to box. We spent many hours together, sweating half to death.’

  The tram rattles and jerks into the next stop. I pinch the cigar between my lips, remove the elasticated strap off my wallet and take out a photograph. Creased grooves criss-cross the yellowing image like whiplashes. My little girl was only a couple of years old when I was carrying her on my shoulders in this picture. She is mainly her mother’s daughter but I think she has my nose, or the nose I used to have once upon a time.