The Power of One (65 page)

“What did you offer him to make him agree?”

“It is not necessary, he has boxing business same like me.”

“How many boxers have you got, Mr. Nguni?” “All,” Nguni replied simply.

“You're not bullshitting me, you control all township boxers?”

Nguni turned to me and said in Zulu, “Your friend has no respect,
inkosi.”

“I apologize for him, Nguni. He acts only like a white man from the city.” I turned to Morrie. “Turn it up.”

Morrie shook his head. “Sorry, Mr. Nguni, no hard feelings, hey? This fight you want—it's just that it doesn't bloody well make sense.”

Nguni turned to me and spoke in Zulu. “I will have to explain it in Zulu. This man, I think he does not understand the ways of the People.”

“Mr. Nguni's going to explain the reason to me in Zulu, it's evidently pretty complicated,” I said to Morrie.

“You are Onoshobishobi Ingelosi,” Nguni began. “This is very powerful among the People. The People see you box only against the Boer, and always you are winning. The People think you are a great chief of their tribe. The Sotho think this, the Shangaan think this, the Zulu also, all the People.” He paused. “I think this also. It is witnessed that you can make the stars fall from the heavens.”

“It is not true, Nguni. I am not a chief of the People,” I said quickly.

“Who is to say what is true and what is not true? The People know these things, it is not for you to say,
inkosi.”

“It's about the Tadpole Angel, we were right,” I said to Morrie.

“There is a woman who has thrown the bones and made a fire to read the smoke,” Nguni said suddenly. “The bones say Onoshobishobi Ingelosi who is a chief must fight him who is also a chief among the People.”

“A witch doctor? She said this?”

“This is so,
inkosi.”

“This chief. Who is this chief I must fight?”

“He is the great-great-grandson of Cetshwayo.”

“Pssh! Many such Zulus exist. Cetshwayo has surely many, many great-great-grandsons.”

“He is the one,” Nguni said quietly. The Zulus do not inherit titles, but it is known who has the blood. “One day he will be a chief.”

“Why is it necessary to fight this person who will one day be a chief?”

“The people must see if the spirit is still with you. You are a man now, the People knew the spirit of a great chief was in the small one, but now they must know if it is still in the man.”

“You mean if I lose to him who will be a chief, then I will no longer be Onoshobishobi Ingelosi?”

“This is so,
inkosi.
The woman says this is in the bones and in the smoke.”

“Then I will lose,” I said suddenly. “That way the legend will be dead.”

Nguni shrugged his shoulders. “It is not for me to say,
inkosi.
You will lose only if you are not Onoshobishobi Ingelosi.”

“But if you can arrange the fight it will be good for you as a promoter?”

Nguni looked down at the palms of his open hands, which were almost yellow, the color of Sunlight soap. “This is true, but it is expected I should do this thing. Have I not led the People to all your fights?”

“This is true. You are the one,” I said, ashamed of myself.

“Then you will fight?”

“First we must talk to Morrie. He is my brother in this matter.”

“I understand. It is right that it should be so.”

Morrie was clearly impatient to get a translation, and when I told him what had been said he shook his head. “Christ, it's witchcraft, Peekay. This is 1949!”

“Ja,
I know, but it might as well be 1849. Some things don't change.”

“So what do we do?” he asked.

“We fight. We have no choice.”

“I don't understand. Why?”

“It's difficult for you, but the People believe in the Tadpole Angel. I've never said this before, but it's a symbol, a symbol of hope. There is a story among all the tribes that a chief will rise who is not of them but who will unite them against the oppressor.”

“It is so, Mr. Levy,” Nguni said.

“And this is the test to see if you're kosher?”

I laughed despite myself. “Morrie, I didn't start this, it just happened. I don't want it any more than you do. If the young Zulu chief Mandoma gives me a hiding, it's all over. But I can't

walk away without the fight. That would make a fool of the People all these years. I couldn't do that.”

“What a shit of a possie to be in, but it's not a good enough reason to throw the fight.”

“You know me better than that, Morrie.” I turned to Nguni and offered him my hand, “Mr. Nguni, tell the People I will fight this one who will be a chief.”

“I will tell the People,” he said.

I set about preparing for the fight with Mandoma the Zulu bantamweight with all the vigor and purpose I could command. While I longed to be rid of the concept involving the Tadpole Angel, it was quite impossible for me to bring myself to the point where I would throw the fight. I had steeled myself to win so often that, in my mind, a single loss in the ring would have meant that I would not become the welterweight champion of the world. A childish preoccupation, but nonetheless one that was bound with steel wire through my resolve. I had even taught myself never to consider the consequences of losing a fight. Too much cross-referencing of consequences robs the will of its single-minded concentration to win. While this fanatical resolve never to be beaten may have been a sign of immaturity, in later years I was to see the sophistication I had brought to the task of winning adopted by sports psychiatrists throughout the world. The mental exercises adopted first behind the Iron Curtain and then worldwide in an attempt to win that endless cold war called the Olympic Games or any of the other master race events were all familiar to me.

The greatest difficulty confronting me with the Mandoma fight was information. We knew nothing about the Zulu bantamweight. I always felt awkward going into a fight with an unknown opponent. It was like entering a dark room having been told to beware of the trapdoors. If you know everything there is to know about an opponent, your mind will do the fighting for you, triggering the bodily mechanism to do the things it needs to do a fraction faster. It is this fraction that makes for a winner.

The power of one is above all things the power to believe in yourself, often well beyond any latent ability you may have previously demonstrated. The mind is the athlete; the body is simply the means it uses to run faster or longer, jump higher, shoot straighter, kick better, swim harder, hit further, or box better. Hoppie's dictum to me, “First with the head and then with the

heart,” was more than simply mixing brains with guts. It meant thinking well beyond the powers of normal concentration and then daring your courage to follow your thoughts.

Saturday arrived. The fight was to take place in a ring set up in an African school soccer field in Sophiatown. We arrived about four-thirty on the outskirts where Mr. Nguni was waiting for us.

The roads were dusty, and it had been a hot day. Dust clung to the whitewashed walls of shanties and shops and everywhere there were advertising signs for Gold Seal Cooking Lard, Blue Light Paraffin, Primus Stoves, Drum Tobacco, and Sunlight Soap. There were a few trucks on the road, and we saw one native taxi and several buses crowded to the point of bulging, though hundreds of people were on bicycles. The chauffeur kept an almost constant hand on the horn, which only seemed to add to the sense of excitement. As we drew closer to the school, people were lining the dusty narrow streets, which seemed to weave haphazardly in among shanties built from every conceivable kind of material. Mr. Nguni requested I roll my window down so the People could see me. Blushing, I complied. “You are very famous in this place, Peekay. The People have come for many, many miles to see you.”

“Why are they all women and children?” Morrie asked.

“It is the men who will see this fight. The women, they have come to see the Onoshobishobi Ingelosi.”

“Christ, I had no idea. You're more famous than Johnny Ralph, Peekay.” Johnny Ralph was the reigning heavyweight champion of South Africa and a household name among whites.

Mr. Nguni laughed. “Johnny Ralph, they do not know who is this boxer in Sophiatown.”

“Mr. Nguni,” I said, “you must tell the People I am not a chief. I have no power. You must tell them that Onoshobishobi Ingelosi is only a name, a name I was given at the prison in Barberton. It was for nothing.”

Mr. Nguni turned to me in the backseat. He was clearly shocked. “I cannot do this thing,
inkosi.
It is not for me to say who is Onoshobishobi Ingelosi. Tonight we will see. We cannot change this thing, it is in the bones and in the smoke.” He turned back to the chauffeur to give a direction.

“Shit! He believes it himself,” Morrie said out of the corner of his mouth.

We turned into the school grounds and were met by a sea of

Africans. The Buick was forced to inch its way through the crowd. It was an hour and a half before the fight and the soccer ground was totally full, with only a narrow aisle leading to the ring in the center. There must have been ten thousand spectators, with more pouring through the school gates.

“I thought you said it would be a fight in a school,” Morrie said to Mr. Nguni. “I thought you meant a couple of hundred people in the soccer field, like the fights at school. The whole of Africa has come to see the bloody fight! What if there's trouble, a riot or something?”

“No, no! No trouble here, Mr. Levy. The woman, she will speak to the People.”

“You mean the witch doctor?” I asked.

“It is she, Peekay, she will speak to the People.”

Morrie grinned nervously. “It's got to be the first time a female witch doctor has ever announced a fight. Are you sure you've told me everything there is to know about you, Peekay?”

I grabbed him by the shirtfront. “Don't
you
start now!”

We were taken to a shower block to change. Solly Goldman was waiting for us. “They're doing it kosher, orright, they've got Natkin Patel, the Indian referee from Durban, to handle the fight. Blimey! ‘Ave you seen the crowd?”

I changed, and we walked along to the school hall for the weigh-in. Morrie looked at the scales. They'd been borrowed from a local trader and were the kind on which bags of mealie meal are usually weighed. “What's the bloody difference, we're going to fight him anyway, even if he's over the limit,” Morrie said.

“It is very important, Mr. Levy. The People must know everything is correct,” Mr. Nguni said.

Standing in the middle of the school hall beside the scale were a dozen or so Africans, all neatly dressed in suits and ties. Though the suit parts were not always of the same parentage, they were clean and pressed. Standing to one side was Gideon Mandoma, the Zulu bantamweight I was to fight.

I broke away from Solly and Morrie and walked over to him and extended my hand. “I see you, Gideon Mandoma,” I said in Zulu.

Gideon Mandoma took my hand, barely shaking it. He did not look up as he replied, “I see you, Peekay.”

“I hear you come from the Tugela River Valley. It is where my nanny came from when I was a small infant. Her name was Mary Mandoma. Was she from the same chiefs
kraal,
perhaps?”

Gideon Mandoma looked up at me, his eyes wide, a shocked expression on his face. “The one you are asking about is my mother. She is dead now five years.” He pointed a finger at me. “You are the one of the night water?”

It was my turn to be shocked. I stood in front of the Zulu fighter, completely stunned. I was going to fight Nanny's son, the infant she had had to leave to look after me. It was I who had stolen the milk from her breasts when she had been hired to be first my wet nurse and then my nanny.

Gideon was the first to recover. “They say you are a chief but must prove you have the spirit of Onoshobishobi Ingelosi. I know I am a chief and have the spirit of Cetshwayo and before that of Mpande, Dingaan, and even of Shaka the king of all the kings.” His eyes grew suddenly hard. He had waited a long time, and now he would fight the one who had taken his mother from him so that he had not known her until he was six years old. It was not meant to be like this, but for him there was now an added reason to win. To the Zulu there is no such thing as coincidence. I knew this would be a certain and powerful sign for him. Gideon Mandoma had a reason greater than my own to win, a resolve made of harder steel. For the first time in my boxing career, I was afraid. I knew Mandoma could beat me.

We weighed in in front of Solly, Mr. Nguni, Natkin Patel the Indian referee, and the other Africans. Both of us made it into the bantamweight limit, though I had five pounds to spare and Gideon was right on the limit.