The Power of One (63 page)

Morrie pulled out his wallet and opened it. “Just a second!” Geldenhuis said suddenly. He withdrew his wallet again, took the guarantee from it, and proffered it to Morrie. “I got a condition of my own. Without it we got no deal, man.”

We both looked at Geldenhuis with surprise. “What's the condition, Jannie?” I asked.

“Well, first of all, I'm only agreeing to set up the Helpmekaar side of the betting because you're in this, Peekay.” He jabbed his finger in Morrie's direction. “I don't do business with a Jew-boy!”

“Hey, now wait a minute!” I was suddenly angry. “Morrie and I are in this together. No Morrie, no deal!” I turned to Morrie. “C'mon, let's piss off.”

Morrie put his hand up in a conciliatory manner. “Now, hang on a sec. Take it easy. We're a partnership. If Jannie here wants to deal with you, that's fine.” He had moved so as to get out of Geldenhuis' line of sight and gave me a knowing wink, then turned again so Geldenhuis could see him and removed five ten-pound notes from his wallet. “Here, Peekay, you pay the man.”

Before I could take the money Geldenhuis said, “That's not the condition.” The beginnings of a smile played at the corners of his mouth.

I was still angry. “So what's the condition, Geldenhuis?”

“Fight me.”

He must have seen the surprise in my face. “What, here? Now?”

“I just turned featherweight, you still easy a bantamweight. I want a last chance to get even.”

“And if he says no?” Morrie asked.

Still looking directly at me, Geldenhuis said, “No deal! You can stick your fifty quid up your Jewboy arse! What do you reckon, Peekay? Box me three rounds here in the gym?”

“Christ, and to think I liked you, Geldenhuis. You're on! But I haven't got any gear.”

“I already thought of that, I got stuff for you.” Geldenhuis paused and then shrugged his shoulders. “Hey, no hard feelings, man. You a
rooinek,
I'm a Boer, I won't be happy till I beat you,” he said simply.

“You may be a long time unhappy, man! Where do I change?” “Who's going to referee?” Morrie asked. I noticed he was still holding the five ten-pound notes.

Jannie Geldenhuis pointed to the Witwatersrand University campus, which was only a couple of hundred yards from the school. “We got a guy from Wits just in case you said yes.”

Geldenhuis put the guarantee back into his wallet and I turned to follow him out of the toilets, but Morrie stood his ground.

“Just a moment, Geldenhuis!”

We turned to face Morrie, who held the five ten-pound notes up in his hand, just the hint of a smile playing over his face.

“I bet you fifty quid Peekay smacks your arse!”

Geldenhuis stood, his arms held stiffly as though at attention; he was rigid with anger. Morrie had outfoxed him and avenged himself at the same time.

“You got your bet, Jew!” he spat.

Geldenhuis took us over to the shower block and pointed to a brown paper bag on a bench. “Everything's there. I'll see you in the gym.” He turned and walked away, presumably to change elsewhere.

“Christ, what a turnup for the books,” Morrie said.

The gear fitted well enough, and the boxing boots were nicely worn. We left the showers and walked down a long corridor toward the gym. I entered ahead of Morrie. Suddenly the hall resounded with clapping and whistling. It was packed to the rafters with Helpmekaar guys.

“Holy shit!” I exclaimed, turning to Morrie.

Morrie glanced at the grinning faces looking at us. “Keep calm, pretend you're not surprised. We don't want him to have the psychological advantage.” Morrie, as usual, was thinking on his feet. We climbed up into the ring and Morrie gloved me up. Geldenhuis was already in his corner, throwing punches into the air. As usual I sat on the pot and waited.

The referee, a chap in his mid-twenties, called us into the center of the ring. “Okay, boxers shake hands! Break when I say break. A knockdown takes a compulsory count of eight, I don't start counting until you're in a neutral corner. Three warnings on a foul, and the fight goes against you.”

Neither of us was listening to him. “This time I get you,
rooinek,
” Jannie Geldenhuis said out of the corner of his mouth.

“This fight comes to you with the compliments of the Jewboy, Boer bastard!” I spat back.

“Ready, timekeeper? Seconds out of the ring!” The bell went, and we danced toward each other.

I could see Geldenhuis meant business. He had five defeats to avenge and, except for the very first fight, they'd all been tough fights, every one of them a close decision. His eyes were hard as we circled each other. Fighting in the enemy camp in front of a hostile crowd, I wasn't going to let him have the satisfaction. He was a naturally aggressive fighter, and I wasn't going to give him the opportunity of landing a few good punches early, so I spent the first half of round one on the back foot, using the ring and staying clear of the ropes. Later Morrie told me the Helpmekaar kids were yelling their heads off, but it was as though I was fighting in a vacuum, my concentration was complete. Geldenhuis threw a lot of leather, but most of it landed on my arms and gloves, though he did score with two punches, a beautiful uppercut as he caught me briefly on the ropes and a right under the heart. Both punches hurt like hell. It was sheer luck that I hadn't had any lunch. Sinjun had had me for a tutorial that had gone on an extra half hour, and so I'd missed lunch. I was willing to bet Geldenhuis hadn't eaten since morning.

I caught Geldenhuis a beautiful punch on the jaw that stopped him in his tracks. He had come at me with a careless left lead, and I brought my right hand across his lead to hit him hard on the side of the jaw. Jannie was a sucker for repeating a mistake, and later in the round he led again with a sloppy left. This time I came under the blow and caught him with everything I had under the heart. I could see his eyes boggle and he staggered back into the ropes, where I hit him with a left-right combination in the gut, expecting his gloves to open so that I could get an uppercut to the jaw. Instead, anticipating the uppercut, he defended his head, leaving his gut exposed. In went the Geel Piet eight-punch combination, and he grabbed at the ropes just as the bell went. The first round was mine.

Morrie had noticed the same thing as I had; Geldenhuis had developed a peculiar habit. In order to set himself for a left hook, he held his right elbow high, opening up his rib cage, and I'd given him a lot of punishment in the area right under the heart. The eight-punch combo was just what I needed to soften him up for later in the fight. As Geel Piet would say, “If you hit them enough in between the heart and the belt, the legs will soon melt.”

To my surprise, in the second round he continued to be the aggressor. I'd never seen him fight better. His punches were crisp and finding their mark disconcertingly often. In the middle of the round I changed to a southpaw stance. This confused him enough to get me through the round with no more punishment. And while Fd put a lot of hard work into his body, he'd won the round, I felt sure. When a fighter gets set and is able to move his opponent into the corners, he can do a lot of harm and look very good.

I hated to lose the second round. It gives your opponent the psychological advantage, knowing he's going into the last round with his tail up. Besides, it gives the referee a chance to call a draw if the final round isn't convincing. The extra weight Jannie had gained had increased his strength, and he had seemed to take the punishment I'd given him in his stride.

Jannie knew he had to make the final round look good, and I knew I had to make it look great. As a fighter he had the edge over a boxer; an aggressor moving relentlessly forward is a crowd pleaser, and a partisan crowd is apt to forget that the winner is the guy who lands the most clean punches. I hoped the ref was good enough to call it correctly, but with a home crowd like this a close decision in my favor would get us lynched.

Jannie began the final round by circling me, boxing clever. I had switched back from a southpaw stance, and he was no match for me as a boxer, provided I stayed in the center of the ring and off the ropes. I held him off easily enough. He kept moving in close, trying to throw the left hook to the head, the punch he'd decided would take me out. I could have kept him off with a straight right, just jabbing away and scoring, but I felt I was fast enough to keep my head out of the way of his vicious left hook which, every time he threw it, lifted his right elbow and made a delicious target for me to plant a hard left uppercut under his heart. To a percentage boxer like me, this was money in the bank.

Geldenhuis threw another hard left hook which caught me a glancing blow on the side of the head. I didn't even have to look; the right elbow would be way up in the air, and I drove a left hook in as hard as I could. The light suddenly left his eyes. Geel Piet was right as usual; his head had gone.

I changed onto the front foot and into attack. The sudden onslaught caught Geldenhuis completely by surprise, and gaps in his defense opened up everywhere. His concept of me as a boxer who worked mostly off the back foot was so completely fixed in his mind that he was unable to respond to the fighter who now brought the fight to him, hitting him seemingly at will. He dropped his defenses as he reached out too soon for a clinch and I caught him on the point of the jaw with a right cross that knocked him into the ropes, leaving his midriff exposed as his hands shot up into the air. I moved in with another of Geel Piet's eight-punch combinations, all of them clean, hard punches even though they were thrown at short range. He pulled me into a clinch and the ref separated us. I'd taken the stuffing out of him, and thirty seconds later he missed with a right and the left that followed and I hit him with the best punch I had thrown in my life, a right uppercut that packed everything I had behind it and caught him perfectly under the point of the chin.

It was the first absolute knockout I'd ever achieved. Jannie Geldenhuis went down like a sack of potatoes and lay sprawled on the canvas. I retired quickly to a neutral corner; while he hadn't moved, I fully expected him to take the eight count before getting up. The ref stood over him, counting; at seven Geldenhuis managed to get up onto his elbow, but that was all. At ten he slumped back onto the canvas.

The ref moved over and held my hand up. The audience was clearly stunned. After their initial shock, as Jannie got to his feet, they stood up and gave me a really big round of applause. Morrie jumped into the ring and held my arm up again, which was unnecessary. Jannie Geldenhuis, helped by his seconds, climbed through the ropes without coming over.

I grinned. “Christ, Morrie, what a preliminary for getting the punters ready to bet on a game of rugby.”

“Couldn't be better if I'd set it up myself,” he said.

We climbed from the ropes and the Helpmekaar chaps made way for us as we walked toward the door. “Promise me something, Morrie.”

“Yeah, sure, what is it?”

“Promise me you didn't set this all up?”

“Are you crazy? What about that anti-Semitic bastard?”

“You got your revenge. That was the quickest fifty quid anybody never had.” We had reached the privacy of the showers, and Morrie started to giggle. Soon we were thumping each other on the back and howling with laughter.

On the way back in the bus I turned to Morrie. “I ought to biff you one for not briefing me before we went to Helpmekaar.”

“You wouldn't have been in it if I had, would you?”

“No, I suppose . . . you haven't answered my question.”

“What question?”

“Was today a setup?”

Morrie looked down at his hands. “Technically, no. But when you bring the right elements together, intellectually you're entitled to expect a predictable outcome.”

“I ought to bust your teeth, Morris Levy! I ought to do it right now!”

We repeated the attractive odds at the Prince of Wales, and as we had expected the gentlemen Christians bet heavily on Helpmekaar to win the rugby match. School spirit was one thing, but money was quite another. Only the Wellington House boarders, Darby and Sarge, and the under-fifteen team itself bet on the Prince of Wales School. Setting the odds up as he had done had the result of inspiring the under-fifteens enormously. The David and Goliath syndrome was operating, and Morrie's psychology was perfect. By the day of the game we really thought we could win. At Helpmekaar, it was hoped, it would have a different effect, for while the Afrikaans punters had bet heavily on their team to win, the team itself should have felt a little uneasy. Why would we make the Prince of Wales School the favorite, when virtually the same team we were fielding had been beaten on four previous occasions? Like ours, their team contained a number of boxers in its ranks and they'd seen how we had improved out of sight in the ring, to the point where we had drawn the last boxing tournament with them. If we could do it in boxing . . . ? And Morrie and I were known not to be fools.

We hoped like hell Morrie's poison was working.

Despite being only an under-fifteens match, the game drew the biggest crowd of the season. The punters from both schools were out in full, and Morrie was still taking bets when the two teams were lined up on the field. He had even got the school pipe major to play “Scotland the Brave” out in the middle before we ran on. It was grand stuff.