05 - The Fight of the Millennium
By Saïd
Translated from the French by Miguel Jacq
“Come on my boy, faster!”
The coach’s firm voice echoed in the gym. The immense room was plunged in darkness. Only the boxing ring, in the centre, shone under neon lights.
In his golden shorts, red gloves over his fists, Michael Smith struck the focus mitts as quickly as possible. Upon impact, drops of sweat running from his body were thrown off and sparkled in the light.
Right, right, left, right, left , left, dodge, left hook…
“Alright, that’s good! That’s what we’re talking about!”
Six zeroes appeared on the skin of the trainer’s left hand. The countdown was finished.
“Stop!”
Michael stopped and let out an enormous groan. He took two steps and pressed himself against the cords to catch his breath.
The coach stopped the stopclock. He approached the dangerous animal that once again became his protégé when he passed his arm across his shoulders, untroubled by the sweat. In any case, he too was covered in it, in his old sweater.
“So?” asked the boxer.
“One hundred and twenty-one. It’s a bit worse than yesterday.”
“Shit!”
“What’s wrong, Mike? Don’t tell me you’re stressed?”
Michael sighed. For several days, he was plagued by nightmares. Not only was he sleeping badly, but their frequency had ended up keeping him in a state of alertness prior to trying to drift off. He spent long minutes with his eyes open, laying in his bed. He was stressed, yes, but not about the fight. He was afraid of going to sleep… and he was ashamed of it.
“Listen, we already talked about this”, said the coach. “This fight is the most anticipated of all time. Better than the fight of the century, it’s… the fight of the millennium. So I want you to be stressed, but first of all, transform this stress into rage, like you did to become champion of the world, yeah? And secondly, my god, it won’t be a human facing you! I know that you grew up with posters of Ahmal everywhere, and me too! But this guy died thirty years ago, Mike… in the ring, it’ll only be an imitation.”
Michael threw himself into the lie rather than confess his fragility. The opportunity being offered by his trainer was only too easy to take.
“I know, coach, I know. But even if it’s just a clone, it’s still the biggest champion of all time. And others were beaten …”
“Hey. I don’t mind that Jordan’s clone had everyone in basketball again… but he had a team of real players with him! For example, Bolt’s clone got beaten!”
“Yeah, but, Fosbury won.”
“We can go through the whole list like that, it won’t change anything. Do I really have to redo your CV? Everyone believes in you. Your family believes in you, I believe in you. And it’s not by being defeatist like that that you’ve won so many bloody belts. People are ready to pay a fortune to see this match, Mike. You can retire and assure four generations of your descendants live the good life having five children each, with this cash. Think about it!”
The champion nodded. They got down from the ring and disappeared into the darkness of the gym to go back to the locker rooms.
Mike would’ve liked to call his family, but he knew very well that they wouldn’t give him back his telephone. The last week before a match was the time to concentrate, to recharge the batteries. No distraction was permitted.
Once showered, Mike got dressed and set off for his accommodation. Outside, it was cold, very cold. The gym and the adjoining small houses were perched on the summit of a mountain, like intruders in the middle of the wilderness. All around, plunged in darkness, rocky peaks pointed towards the sky, in which Michael could not yet see the stars.
He closed the door behind him, added some wood to the burner. He hurried to get a blanket, open the fridge, and took out today’s meal under its cloche. All nutritional intake had been carefully evaluated. Mike pressed the lid button to heat up the food and sat down on the couch.
Life was tough, here. No media, no contact with humans other than the coach. There was only him, the trainer, and the ring. Refuge, the calm before the storm.
The storm was the fight, the most important one of his career, no doubt the most important of anyone’s career. In a bit less than two days, the league helicopter would come and find him at the top of the mountain and take him into town, where he would face his idol Hamza Ahmal, whom a journalist had said during his lifetime had rendered the combined careers of Ali and Mayweather merely anecdotal. An exaggeration, no doubt… but the reputation had outlived the man.
The cover beeped, Michael started to eat. He thought for a short moment about Ahmal’s clone, who must be somewhere in the final conception phase, in a jar, electrostimulated to regain the musculature of the original. Or had they already taken him out of his bath? Its accelerated growth would be followed by accelerated degeneration. Some days after the fight, the clone would already have aged… then it would die like the others.
As he ate, Michael noticed something strange in front of him. There was a mirror, at the other end of the room. He stood up, walked around the coffee table, leaned forward… and saw the face of Hamza Ahmal looking at him instead.
Mike cried out, waking up with a jolt. He was sitting on the couch, and must’ve fallen asleep. He swore when he saw that he had knocked the tray of food on the floor. Nothing else was planned for the meal. Tonight, it would be a diet.
Before even cleaning up, he stood and went to observe his reflection in the mirror. He saw his own face, obviously. Judging that he must be exhausted, he picked up the food and went off to bed.
The next day, Michael felt like rubbish again. It was getting worse and worse. The coach chose to say nothing, and took him for his jog in the forest, following him on a bike. Deep in his thoughts, Michael didn’t say a word during the course. The day continued practically without an exchange between he and the trainer. It finished in the dark and the cold, like the day before. And again, it was punctuated by a nightmare.
Michael woke up with the sense of drowning, battling in the sheets in the search of air that nonetheless surrounded him. Sitting on his bed, in sweat, he took several seconds to regain his spirits. Images returned to him, bit by bit… he remembered liquid surrounding him, green, luminous. Fine bubbles slid down his body. He remembered having stretched out his arms, hands placed against a wall, and seeing silhouettes observing him, silhouettes that weren’t in the liquid. He started to choke because the water was entering his mouth. He took in a breath, his throat filled with water…
Mike stood up and went to the bathroom. What was happening to him? He splashed cold water on his burning face. It was there, in the light of the mirror, that he noticed a gray hair upon his left temple.
“C’mon my boy, faster!”
Michael struck as hard and as fast as he could.
“You think he’s not going to try to have you, huh? C’mon, faster! Faster, damn it!”
The coach ended up rolling his eyes and threw a focus mitt on the ring.
“What’s going on Mikey? Huh? I get the impression you’re slipping away from your objective here, it’s your last match, goddamn it! I’m having to push you around like a beginner when you’re the best boxer the Earth’s ever had!”
Gloves on his knees, Michael caught his breath.
The trainer threw a towel to his protégé.
“Go get dressed, and come outside with me. We’ll talk about it.”
“Coach, I…”
“That’s an order.”
The boxer obeyed. Five minutes later, shivering in their outerwear, the trainer and his champion met outside, facing the mountains. The sun was starting to disappear behind them.
“I don’t want you to think I don’t care about the match, coach. Far from it.”
“Then are you going to tell me what’s going on, for god’s sake? The match is tomorrow!”
Michael sighed. He really would have to say something. The trainer continued:
“How long have we known each other, son? Twenty-five years? And anyone would think you don’t trust me.”
“Of course I do.”
“So tell me! What’s happening to you, Michael?”
The boxer swallowed, watched the sun disappear definitively behind the rock.
“I’ve been asking myself some questions”, he finally said.
“What sort?”
“About the clone.”
The trainer looked annoyed.
“The clone, the clone.. who cares about the clone. You shouldn’t trouble yourself with…”
“But I want to know!” he interrupted.
“OK. I’m listening. But I don’t necessarily have answers for all your questions, you know. I’m not a damn chemist or whatever.”
“The clone”, Michael began, “it lives for a few days, right?”
“Yes, at its peak on the day of the fight, then it ages and dies.”
“And to grow it, it’s electrostimulated, yeah?”
“You know it very well. With the same sort of shit that you did the ads for last year, you remember? To sell it online.”
Michael didn’t respond, he continued directly with his questions.
“Coach… for the few days that it’s alive, is it kept in isolation?”
“I… I think so. I imagine…”
“So that it doesn’t disappear into the wild?”
“It would die in a few days anyway.”
“Why, though? Is it because it doesn’t even know itself that it’s a clone?”
“I don’t understand what you mean..”
“Coach”, continued the boxer, “the clones wake up with memories artificially implanted in them. We isolate them, they don’t know that they’re clones. They fight, a fight like any other for them, or a match like any other. Then they go back somewhere I don’t know, and we let them die peacefully…”
“Mikey, good god, what do you want from me?”
“Nothing.”
Silence. It took several long seconds for Michael to break it.
“I just find it sad for them. They’re locked up, a bit like me here. Except they don’t know that they’re clones, nor that they’ll soon die.”
He turned towards his trainer.
“What do you think about it, coach?”
The old champion wasn’t really comfortable behind his three day beard. He stammered out an incomprehensible response. Then he said:
“I think that you should get some rest, son. And that you stop thinking about all that. Go to bed early, it’ll do you good.”
The boxer left him, went back to his cabin, high up in the mountains. He felt like sleeping, but knew it wouldn’t come. He put a bit of wood in the burner to heat up the place, then went out to walk for a bit. It couldn’t do him any harm.
Michael took the same path on which he practiced jogging, every day since the start of the refuge. When his thoughts became too troubled… he went running to try to silence them.
He was there, alone in the mountain, running between the trees. Nearly a week and he hadn’t come across another human other than the coach. No internet connection, no phone. What prevented him from sleeping was the constant wondering whether his memories were real. All his prizes, all his childhood, all his training with the coach… what if none of it had ever really existed?
Michael began to sprint in the dark, between the pines. He ran fast, faster and faster, and ended up falling. After a few rolls in the brambles which scratched him all over and tore his clothes, he decided to go back.
Miraculously he didn’t take the wrong path… except near the end. He arrived on the training site via the back of the gym. He had to go around it to get back to his cabin. It was while going around it that he stumbled across his trainer, his back to him, on the phone. Michael recoiled a step, staying hidden behind the corner of the building.
“… listen”, he was saying, “I’m telling you he’s losing it. He’s asking all sorts of questions…”
Michael’s heart was beating faster than before a match.
“I’m worried he’ll get distracted and do something stupid.”
There was a pause, but the boxer was too far away to make out the voice at the other end.
“Yes.. I understand, yes… no no, he will fight. We’ll do everything to ensure he fights, obviously.”
The coach heard a noise behind his back. He turned around, but saw nothing. He approached the angle of the wall… there was no-one on the other side.
“I’ll call you back later”, he concluded, before hanging up.
He looked left, right. He ended up heading off to bed.
The next morning, Michael had disappeared. The coach entered his protégé’s cabin while, behind him, near the gym, the league helicopter was just landing. Mike wasn’t in the small room. The trainer feared the worse. He ended up finding the boxer in the bathroom, in the process of inspecting his hair.
“Good god, Michael! What are you up to?”
“I have a grey hair.”
“You’re thirty-nine years old, that’s normal! Come on, gather your things.”
The coach had never seen him so distracted. It was six in the morning. In fourteen hours, he would climb into the ring to fight, and there he was inspecting his hair…
The two men finally took the helicopter, which after over one hour’s flight landed them directly on the roof of the building where the match would take place.
At last, Michael made contact with other people. Only the technical team was present. All were intimidated by the champion. Arriving from the top, a passage through the beams was crucial. The boxer and the coach were accompanied by a technician, in a black t-shirt, a headset on his head. He led them along a footbridge which rose forty metres above the ring. The room was huge, the largest of Michael’s career.
“How many seats are there?” he asked.
“Sixty thousand.”
The ring looked so small…
“Everything alright?” asked the man with the headset. “No vertigo?”
He grabbed a cable which had a clip hanging at the end of it.
“It’s via this that we’re going to drop you onto the ring.”
He pointed at a light at the end of the footbridge.
“You see that? When it turns green, that’s the signal that means you can join me. I’ll get you attached, let you descend. A bit stressful before a match, but you’ve known worse!”
“That should be alright, huh Michael?” the coach interjected.
The boxer didn’t reply.
“Mr Smith needs some rest before his match”, assured the coach to the technician. “Can you tell us where we can find his rooms?”
“Certainly.”
They went back the way they came and descended several sets of stairways.
The dressing room was a luxurious suite, eighty metres squared. Ornate pillars supported the mirrored ceiling. The coach left Michael settle in on a gigantic couch, facing a large semi-transparent screen, and brought him a beer.
“I’m going to have to go meet the press, Mikey” he told him. “Stay here, rest.. take a bath in the jacuzzi, it’ll be good for your muscles. We’ll come get you to get you ready tonight.”
“OK coach.”
The trainer left his champion. The door closed, Michael buried his face in his hands. He tried to turn on the screen in face of him, but it didn’t work. He took a tour of the suite: no computer, no radio, no phone. He was alone.
He lay down on the couch and tried to convince himself that all these thoughts that were obsessing him were unnecessary. He massaged his eyelids.. then opened his eyes and met his gaze in the reflection. He peered at his left temple, but it was too far away. The boxer stood up and went to the bathroom. Pressing against the marble that bordered the sink, he leaned towards the mirror. He had a second grey hair.
The hall was packed to the brim, noisy, full of people and light. The spotlights in the rafters swept the crowd while in the ring, the opening match preceding the main event was finishing. When the giant screens finally showed the face of the two combatants, gloves on their fists, the noise grew so loud that the technician on the footbridge had to cover his ears. Here they were, at last. Ahmal against Smith. The biggest boxing match of all time.
In the ring, facing the micro, the commentator in a white shirt and bow tie called up Hamza Ahmal first, who entered the scene via one of the corridors as a screen of smoke dissipated. The clone climbed onto the ring’s surface, muscles bulging, ready to do battle. The crowd went wild.
At the end of the footbridge, the light turned green. The technician gave a signal in the direction of the shadows on his right. It was time to harness up Michael Smith. Message in the earpiece:
“We have a problem.”
“What’s wrong?”
The commentator introduced Michael Smith, making the vowels last as long as possible. On the footbridge, under the heat of the spotlights, the technician heard none of his colleague’s response, the crowd drowning it out.
“What? What did you say?”
They ended up coming up to him and shouting into his ear.
The crowd roared, brandishing a fist with each cry: “Smith! Smith! Smith! Smith!”
The news passed in all the earpieces. The coach, on the edge of the ring, was finally brought up to speed:
“We can’t find Smith, sir!”
“What? What do you mean you can’t find him?”
“He’s not in his dressing room, he doesn’t seem to be in the building at all, in fact.”
The old man blinked, gulped.
“Sir? Sir, is everything ok?”
The trainer fell backwards, his hand on his chest.
“Mr Wilmont?”
The nurse received no response.
“Coach Wilmont?”
In his hospital bed, the trainer grumbled, then sat up. He seemed to make out his surroundings, from the room to the furniture and the array of devices he was attached to.
“Let’s stay calm, ok sir?”
“Did you find Michael?” he asked straight away.
“I’m not the police, sir. I don’t know.”
The old man made an attempt to get out of bed. The nurse stopped him.
“You need to rest.”
“My phone, where is it?”
He saw the device on the side table and turned on the screen. Eight hundred messages. Voicemail full. Device memory full. The sponsors, the organisers, the TV channels, the press… the police must’ve spilled the beans. He noted the date…
“Wait… I’ve been here for two days!”
“That’s why I’m telling you that you need to rest!”
A police officer ended the room. Given the impeccable state of his uniform and the stripes he had on his shoulders, he had to be someone important.
The nurse disappeared.
“Mr Wilmont, I presume?”
“That’s me. Where is he? What’s going on?”
The policeman took off his glasses.
“I’m the divisional commissioner Haquin. I’ve got some sad news to tell you.”
“What do you mean? You… you found him?”
“We found Michael Smith. He managed, on the night of the fight, to get himself to Saint John.”
“The hospital?”
“No, sir. The cemetery.”
“The cemetery?”
“The celebrity cemetery”, the commissioner added.
“And?”
“Sir, I’m sorry. We found him dead. He was… upon a grave which had his name on it. At first glance, it would appear to be a suicide.”
The coach burst into tears.
“It can’t be! It can’t be!”
He shouted louder and louder and cried out all the tears his body had. The policeman did what he could to console him.
Michael Smith had put an end to his days by opening his veins, convinced he was going to waste away in the days to come. But there were lots of “Michael Smiths”.
Somewhere far away, in the depths of a lab in an undisclosed location, the scientists let Hamza Ahmal’s clone die without giving him the slightest explanation. It didn’t last a week.
The fight of the millennium did not take place.
The coach lit up the gym and wept, facing the ring. He was still wearing the black suit from Michael’s funeral. After the ceremony, where Smith’s wife had openly accused him of being responsible for his death, he had come back here, to the scene of the final training.
“What have you done, Michael?” he asked out loud.
He walked through the hall, touching the ring from time to time. Boxing was his whole life. He had seen a champion in Michael Smith, very early on. He had pushed him as far as possible. And at the last moment, the boy couldn’t handle the pressure. He had lost it.
The coach sighed, and went to the locker rooms. Michael had left a pair of gloves there, training ones. From the inside pocket of his suit, the trainer took out a big plastic bag, hermetically sealed. He slid one of the gloves into it, and left the building to burn the other on the lawn.
He climbed back into the league helicopter, a sample of Michael Smith’s DNA held against him in the plastic.
The fight of the millennium might take place after all.