The Fighter Read online

  He leans over the sofa and extends a hand. He begins to lower it; then draws back. He is weighing it up. Now that he’s come so far he cannot retreat. He extends his hand again and lowers it to her cheek.

  He has not quite touched her, yet she knows. She knows. She has always known.

  She sits up, enraged, her eyes uncomprehending, wild. She slaps his hand away and screams.

  ‘Get away from me, get out.’

  Her hair is dishevelled, her mouth tight. She draws in short, sharp breaths.

  Leon steps back. He is not about to give up. He scans the room, eyes a pair of scuffs. They lie on the linoleum beside the sofa, discarded when she lay down. He picks one up. The leather sole is thin and hard, but the upper is pliable and soft. He rubs it on his cheek. He presses the sole to his lips and kisses it.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she shouts.

  Leon doesn’t let go of the scuff.

  He returns it to his lips. He takes his time, aware of the lie of the room. He is emboldened by Henry’s presence.

  She snatches at the scuff.

  Leon steps out of reach. He is methodical, calm.

  Henry moves forward. The boys stand side by side. The two are as one and they are not about to give up. They want to comfort her, to relieve her pain, but they have long known they can’t help.

  Her face is crumbling. She cannot endure the yearning in her sons’ eyes. Their longing is an accusation. She stands now, in front of her boys, bewildered. She too wants to reach out, but the voices are returning, crowding all reason out, compelling her to stand her ground.

  Then, as abruptly as it had flared, her rage subsides. She returns to the sofa, and rolls onto her side. She hunches her shoulders, draws up her knees and holds them close to her chest. She buries her head in the pillow, and presses her hands to her ears. Touches elbow to elbow, and squeezes tight.

  Leon and Henry know the voices are back. They know when she is captive to other worlds. They have known for the better part of their lives.

  They are distraught. They want to comfort her but they don’t know how. There are mysteries that cannot be explained, and energies that cannot be controlled.

  They turn and leave the room. The house is cramped, and the passage narrow and dark. The bedrooms are small, hard up against each other. They walk in unison. Step in step. They glance back. She is receding. Her back is turned to the world.

  The boys are at the front door. Henry opens and closes it gently. They step onto the tiny porch. It is barely a metre from the door to the front fence. They unlatch the gate and step out. They have returned to the familiar, the comfort of the streets.

  4

  Henry’s shift has ended. The sun is rising; the river is a ribbon of gold. He makes his way to the Hyundai and opens the boot. He strips off his fluoro jacket and throws it in beside the kit. The sun reflects off city high-rises in sharp jabs as he drives from the dock. It lights the rims of the broken-down ferris wheel, a phantom presence over the port.

  He turns right into Footscray Road and left into the parking lot. He pulls up by the grass verge well clear of the trucks. The air is thick with dust and windswept exhaust. He heads to the Port Diner, ducking under the railing by the door. He orders a milkshake and joins me as we had arranged.

  Workers are hunched over hot breakfasts, and Henry is talking of the Reads’ backyard gym, and his well-worn route from the side-lane entrance, up the stone steps, past the scissor-sharpening workshop, out into the backyard. The walls of the garage are brick, lined with fibreboard and corrugated iron. Two timber gates back onto a lane.

  The ring occupies the entire space except for a toilet cubicle and shower, and a one-metre-wide strip around the edge, between the rope and wall—room enough for trainers issuing instructions, and for punching bags; and an improvised target made from a tyre supported by an iron pipe and a second tyre to steady its base.

  The twins train seven days a week, all year round. Each day the same routine: a warm-up in the pocket-size backyard predawn, before starting out on a ten-kilometre run. The streets are empty bar early morning workers trudging to the Rathdowne Street bus and the Lygon Street tram.

  The boys jog across Lygon Street and along the grass verge beside the cemetery fence. They veer right into Princes Park and set out on the three-kilometre gravel track. They run under eucalypts and oaks, round Bowen Crescent and then straighten up on Royal Parade, an elegant boulevard lined with elms. They turn from Royal Parade into Cemetery Road along the wrought-iron fence. They pick up pace past the sandstone colleges flanking the university grounds back to Lygon Street, the home straight.

  After school it’s back to the gym. There is no need to stop off at home; their gear is packed in their bags. They are bursting to get to work, shadow boxing with Peter and Mick, then pounding medicine balls and a vest strapped to Peter’s midriff, an innovation of old Mick’s—and his most fearsome improvisation, a punching bag so heavy it requires body and soul to move it an inch.

  Boxing is the art of the immediate, of shifting tempos and manic energies tempered by discipline and craft. Boxing bookends the boys’ days, at daybreak and dusk, for months on end. They are finding their feet in the rhythms of the ring. Growing in fitness and strength.

  There are times on their morning runs when they are exhilarated. Tram commuters are met by the sight of identical twins rounding the cemetery bend under a rising sun, accelerating on the downward slope. Taking flight.

  There were differences, apparent early on. Leon was the boxer, Henry the fighter; Leon the thinker, his twin reliant on steely resolve. Leon boxed his opponents round the ring, and waited patiently until he wore them out. He was more cautious than Henry, light on his feet, more adept at slipping a punch, and he had greater ring sense. He listened intently to his trainer’s instructions and learnt to hold back that second longer to create an extra sliver of space. He weighed up his options, calculated on his feet. When on song, he was sharp, evenly poised between evasion and attack.

  Henry was a hustler and brawler out to beat his opponent into submission, brawn over thought. He charged out at the bell, imposing his physical presence, carving out his space. He was not a crisp puncher, but he nullified his opponent’s skill with relentless attacks. He rarely took a backward step. He had the mongrel in him. But no hard feelings, he claims. There were no grudges in it, he says. No need to psych himself up.

  His motivation was uncomplicated. Simple, he says. He did not want to be defeated, to lose face. He’d been a loser long enough. In boxing he’d found his métier, a whiff of a chance. He would train to exhaustion and fight till he dropped, if that’s what it took to make his mark.

  His philosophy was basic: hit and don’t allow yourself to be hit, but don’t inflict unnecessary pain. In the ring it’s one or the other—you or your opponent—and no way out. He was in it to win, but once on top, he tended to pull his punches, allowing his opponent to hold on. His passion was spent.

  He once drove his trainer to distraction at his reluctance to come in for the kill.

  ‘Hit him! Don’t feel sorry for the poor bastard. Just hit him!’ Peter yelled. ‘I don’t give a shit what you do, just hit him. Damn it. Hit him!’

  5

  It is still early when Henry is off in response to a call. Our conversation is over. The story can keep; there is work to be done. He hurries from the Port Diner, eases the Hyundai over the gravel and out into Footscray Road. It’s a familiar route, the fifteen-minute drive from the roadhouse to the legal district in town.

  Sara is waiting outside the Magistrates’ Court. She is dressed in low-heeled shoes, a blue shirt and black pants. A pack of cigarettes is tucked inside her cuff. She wears lipstick and mascara. Her hair falls halfway down her back. She lights a cigarette and paces. There is an awkwardness in her movements. She is a sixteen-year-old trying to match it with grown-ups.

  Henry greets her with a hug. He ushers her up the steps and through the revolving glass doors. She has committed a
series of thefts to support her drug habit and is scheduled to attend a bail extension hearing. If she doesn’t get it she will be jailed.

  ‘Let’s hope luck is on your side today,’ Henry says.

  ‘Been off crack for months,’ she replies.

  He keeps an eye on her as they proceed through security. ‘Haven’t seen you in ages,’ says the officer stationed by the conveyor belt.

  ‘Always a pleasure to see you,’ says Henry.

  A woman greets him in the foyer. She is ecstatic to see him and he overjoyed to see her. They first met on the steps beneath the station clocks, when she was twelve, twenty years ago. Henry was serving in a soup van, and she was hanging out with friends, one of whom was to become the father of her three kids. She is in court to support him. He is on trial, and back in jail.

  ‘Haven’t been in trouble for years,’ she says.

  ‘Glad to hear it,’ says Henry.

  ‘I want to become a youth worker.’

  ‘I’ll write you a reference,’ he replies.

  He holds both her hands. ‘You’d make a great youth worker,’ he says.

  ‘I know,’ she replies. ‘I’ve been there.’

  Henry is dressed in a dark-blue windcheater, worn jeans and runners, in contrast to the formal attire of the barristers, solicitors and clerks. He greets friends and strangers. He leans in towards them, and engages in banter.

  He knows them all, the lawyers and magistrates, youth workers, and the conveners of prisoner support groups. This is familiar terrain. He’s been coming here for thirty years and knows every courtroom, cubicle and interview room, each branch of the court. He knows the holding cells down a flight of stairs, round the corner on Lonsdale Street, and he knows the jail interview rooms where prisoners attend hearings by video link. He’s been coming here so long he’s now supporting the children of those he first met when they themselves were kids.

  He has spent hours waiting for cases to be heard, sitting in the foyers and corridors with an arm around a distraught friend. He’s had urgent conversations with confused relatives, eased their anguish and their weary resignation to fate. He has helped as many as ten defendants in a single day, rushing from courtroom to courtroom, from one sitting to the next—while justice proceeds at its sluggish pace, prone to sudden adjournments, rescheduled hearings, hours of deliberation and talk.

  He stops to speak to a barrister, and kisses him on the cheek.

  ‘Still at it I see,’ says N.

  ‘Except now they’ve stopped paying me,’ says Henry.

  He takes Sara into an interview room and, after a briefing with her lawyer, accompanies her into court.

  ‘What can we do for you Mr Nissen?’ the magistrate asks.

  She has known Henry since she first worked here as an articled clerk. They chat before proceedings begin. Sara sits anxiously by Henry’s side as her case is heard; he rests an arm on her shoulder and puts her at ease.

  Henry is called on to provide a reference. He extols Sara’s efforts to go straight. He argues she’s on the right track and that prison will set her back. He outlines the extent of her support network. She deserves a break.

  ‘That’s what you always say,’ the magistrate replies with a bemused smile, and she extends Sara’s bail.

  Sara’s relief is obvious. She unclenches her fists and takes deep breaths. She is unburdened. Light. And disoriented; Henry reminds her to bow as they leave the court.

  ‘I’m happy,’ she says. ‘I’m rapt.’

  ‘You’ve got a couple of months to sort things out,’ says Henry. ‘Another chance.’

  ‘Grab it and make good use of it,’ he adds.

  He accompanies her back to the street, hugs her, and then returns to the car.

  He is back on the move, the white rabbit, always out and about. His mind is on overload, thinking ahead, calculating who needs what, where to get it, where to find donations of food, furniture and clothes, where to store them, and how to dole them out.

  His wallet bulges with business cards—his name attached to a network of agencies: Kids off the Kerb, Emerald Hill Mission, Open Family, the Father Bob Maguire Foundation, the First Step Program, Beacon of Light. The entire city is his beat.

  He knows the short cuts, along Wurundjeri Way to the southern suburbs where he lives, back to the city at dawn on a Saturday morning to run round the Botanical Gardens, and to the Domain Cafe for a coffee with his jogging mates. Mid-afternoon, he leaves for South Melbourne, his main youth-work territory for the past thirty-five years. He steps out of the Hyundai, hurries up the stairs of a public housing high-rise to deliver a carton of vegetables and fruit. He stops for a quick chat, and dashes back down to the Hyundai; the port company has called, and hired him for the night.

  He heads for Docklands, and drives past the sculpted white eaglehawk standing on a black pedestal that rises from the grass verge. He turns left into Footscray Road and pulls up at Appleton Dock. Opens the boot and changes into his work gear, then trots by the cyclone fence. He works through the night, and returns to the Port Diner the following morning, parking the Hyundai beside a road train.

  He orders breakfast and sits down. He spreads out photographs, newspaper clippings and magazines: Fighter Book, Fighter, Boxing Illustrated, The Ring. He has kept every scrap written about him: excerpts from anthologies of boxer biographies recounting the exploits of the Nissen boys; news snippets and fight previews, post mortems on every bout; features and magazine specials on his street work. He has photocopied the yellowing originals many times over and laminated them, just in case.

  No matter how many times he recounts his tale, he will tell it again, to anyone willing to listen, stranger or long-time friend. It can never be enough. He is desperate to show you who he is, who he once was. Driven by a fierce desire to be known.

  To be loved.

  ‘Mum, poor girl. Mum, poor girl.’

  Even now, ten years since her death, she is always nearby.

  6

  She lies on the living room sofa. Henry and Leon are approaching, but their voices are receding, drifting: ‘Mum, you’ve got to go. It’s for your own good.’

  The entire world is distant—beyond oceans and rivers, and fields of ice as hard as crystal. She is in flight from villages on the Black Sea coast to the Siberian flatlands and through cities reduced to rubble, in search of refuge. Until the vastness reduces to the tiniest of havens, a sofa with a view of a locked front door at the end of a passage.

  But the front door is opening and they are making their way towards her, medics and police. Even here, at the ends of the Earth, the threat is imminent. The uniformed men are coming for her, and Henry and Leon are in on it. They are twelve years old, becoming tougher and stronger, and she suspects them.

  ‘Mum, they’re here to help you.’

  They are trying to calm her, but she’s onto them. She knows they are complicit. Oh yes, she knows.

  Henry is stepping forward, reaching for her. He is confronted by her distracted eyes, her dishevelled hair.

  She is shrinking back.

  He takes her hand. He coaxes her to her feet. He is surprised by her lightness. His confidence is growing. He grasps her more firmly.

  The signs are promising. There is little resistance.

  And as she rises he sees her, as he has seen her so often: making a cheese sandwich after school, plain food, nothing fancy, serving it at the kitchen table with hot milo or a glass of lemonade. This is how Henry and Leon like it. She is preparing dinner. The pots are simmering. She is sweeping the floor; she is at work, forever at work. The boys are talking, their voices are loud and free, they are laughing, and she is laughing with them, but the laughter is rising, and their voices are getting louder, more strident.

  She is warning them, don’t talk too loudly. People can hear you through the walls. Don’t raise your voices. Don’t make so much noise. Be careful. There are people out to get you. Why were you late? You should come straight home from school. You should
n’t wander the streets. Who knows who is watching, who is waiting? Who knows who is out to fight you? Stay home. Don’t you know the world is a dangerous place?

  It is beginning, her eyes are narrowing, her face is changing from benign to suspicious; she is spiralling downwards, and moving away, backing into the living room.

  The boys are pleading, imploring, but in her eyes their faces are distorted, and she is sinking down onto the sofa, lying back, cocooned in the maroon fabric. The cushions are soft, and they enfold her, but Henry is extending a hand, drawing her up.

  Tricking her.

  Ah, she knows what they are up to, her boys and the uniformed men. She is no fool. She knows the ways of the world, and she knows the ways of men. Their appetites, their insatiable desires. She is on full alert. A warrior. A fighter. And she is not about to give up. She will not go quietly.

  She wrenches her hand free.

  Henry retreats. He doesn’t know what to do.

  ‘It’s for your own good, Mum.’

  They are her boys, and she loves them, but they’re on the other side. They are with the uniformed men. Their voices are rising, becoming sharper, and they are singing: ‘It’s for your own good, Mum.’

  The uniformed men are stepping forward. Taking over. They are taller and stronger than the boys. She watches them keenly. She turns from the sofa and darts across the room. She backs into a corner. There is no way out, and the men are closing in.

  She guards her space fiercely, but the men hold her and a medic injects her. She is swaying; the room is swaying. She wants only to sleep, blessed sleep.

  The medics are supporting her by the arms, holding her gently, and she is moving with them. They pass by the sofa and step into the passage.

  It is longer than she has ever known it. The walls are gliding by and the front door is approaching. It is gaping open, and she is led through it. Her feet brush the doormat, and she is guided into the night towards a whirl of blue and red lights, distant faces. For a moment the fight returns. She wrenches and twists, but the men are stronger. She is tiny and she is so tired, and the boys are behind her, pleading.