The Fighter (14 page)

“Who posted Wisniak here? Is it you?”

“Yes, Herr Blockältester….”

“On your knees, shitbag, and turn around!”

He gives him a vigorous kick in the ass.

“Herr Wisniak should not be on night duty! Do you understand?”

I don't like this. Such a sudden vodka-tinged affection seems highly suspect to me. When Bill wakes up in the morning with a dreadful headache, he'll see me differently. He'll punish me for presuming to be his friend. What's
more, the deputy will make me pay for the kick he got because of me.

Bill turns toward me.

“Do you have a wife, Wisniak?”

“Yes, Herr Blockältester.”

“Call me Bill…. Do you know that your son, Élie, is the same age as my daughter? Let's go and drink a toast to our kids!”

My heart knocks wildly in my chest. If he knows the age and the name of my son, it means that a letter arrived from France. Rachel and Élie are alive! I feel so elated that I am able to swallow a glass of a nauseating vodka that someone brought up from the mine.

The next day, as soon as I come back from the mine, I hurry to the camp's office. Rachel has sent not only a letter, but also a parcel. The commander's secretary, Karl Grimmer, is a German condemned for fraud. He is a very unusual German: he doesn't hit us or call us shitbags. He tells me I'm fortunate.

“The parcel is nearly empty, Herr Wisniak, because the Auschwitz postmen took their share, but at least it made it here. The postmen probably thought you were Polish, like them, because of your name. Your comrades are not so lucky.”

It is true that I have a Polish name:
wisnia
means a cherry tree.

“If you want,” he adds, “I can write in your file that
you're a
Mischling
(a half blood), born from a Catholic father and a Jewish mother. You never know. It could save your life someday.”

This favor never helped me, as far as I know, but it stands as proof that there was at least one humane German.

The Polish miners talk about Christmas, then the New Year, so we know that the year 1944 is beginning. The German papers that we read in the round chamber become less precise. According to Karl Grimmer, the secretary, the Red Army is advancing slowly but steadily. They recaptured Kiev, the capital of the Ukraine, and are moving toward the Polish border. The English and the Americans have forced the Germans out of North Africa. They landed in Sicily and have already reached Naples.

The camp has a new commander. Even though I try not to go anywhere near the SS, I think I know them, after a year and a half. They don't really look like human beings, more like bad guys in a puppet show. Well, this new commander, Herr Remmele, amazes me. He gives new meaning to the word
vicious
. He lives with his wife and his daughter in a small house that looks over the camp. He
comes out on the balcony, holding the hand of his six-year-old daughter, a blond angel dressed in a white frock. He shows the camp to her: here are the blocks, there is the infirmary, and that's the kitchen….

“Look at these Jews! See how slow and clumsy they are. This is just plain laziness. I'll show you that they can move much faster….”

He draws his gun from his holster and starts shooting at the prisoners. His drunken laughter is nearly as noisy as his gun. I run for cover, like everybody else. So I can't see if the blond child enjoys the game as much as her father does.

Herr Remmele is a boxing fan. He asks the SS to set up a fight. The SS ask the kapos. One of the kapos volunteers. He is a gigantic Pole, a former boxer whom we call Double-Nose because his nose is broken in a way that makes it look like he has two of them. Other kapos recommend me. My reputation as a boxer has followed me since the day I refused to kill a Muselman in Auschwitz. I also broke two teeth of a deputy a while back, I can't remember when exactly. I don't remember his name, either.

Thus, on a Sunday, while I'm talking with Brod, a kapo calls me out.

“You, Jew, do you know the kapo Double-Nose? He wants to fight against you. The camp's commander bought boxing gloves.”

“Double-Nose is three times my size and my weight. In
boxing, there are weight categories. A flyweight can't fight a heavyweight.”

“So you're scared? That doesn't surprise me. Boxing is a sport for men, not for Jews.”

“Okay, I'll think about it….”

“Yeah, why don't you think about it! For thinking, you're the best, but for fighting you're the worst cowards.”

He shrugs and walks away. Brod smiles.

“I hope you'll accept, just to show these shitty Poles that Jews can fight.”

“That won't be so easy. The man is a former boxer. In a real fight, if one of the boxers weighs five pounds more than the other, it is already a huge advantage. Here we're talking about a hundred pounds more. He's going to turn me into ground meat.”

“He may have boxed, but I bet he was lousy. Otherwise, nobody would have broken his nose. I've seen you fight. You're quick, you can dodge his blows.”

“Maybe, but if he lands just one, I'm dead.”

“You've got to try. You risk your life every day, so it doesn't make much difference. Do you know the story of the Jew who is the caliph of Baghdad's buffoon?”

“No.”

“The caliph condemns him to death because one of his jokes offended him. As he remembers with some fondness the many times the Jew made him laugh, he allows him to choose his way of dying. ‘O great caliph,'
the Jew says, ‘your humble servant chooses to die of old age!'”

Brod talks to the comrades. They all say I should fight. Those who traffic with the miners promise to bring me the most precious foods: eggs and onions, even if it means risking their own lives. The soup and the pieces of sausage I receive in the kitchen barely keep starvation away. I need more food if I want to build strong muscles. Onions are even more useful than eggs, because they contain good vitamins. I've worked in the mine for eighteen months. The gangway I was digging with the old miner and his partner has reached the coal vein. Now I work at extracting the coal with Vitek, a Polish miner. The vein is two feet high. I crawl, I move on my hands and knees. I spend so much time kneeling that my knee joints are inflamed and quite sore. The prisoners suffer from all kinds of aches due to the lack of vitamins: abscesses, boils, carbuncles, pustules. If I do not eat some onions, I won't be able to move when I face Double-Nose.

I tell the kapos I accept Double-Nose's challenge.

“But you should promise not to retaliate and punish me if I win.”

“Why would we punish you? It will be a fair fight. The stronger one will win.”

They're so confident their guy is going to beat me that they're ready to promise anything.

Now I must train. The cooks let me jump rope with a
length of string. I shadowbox or I ask Brod to be my sparring partner. My reflexes are still there. Boxing is like swimming or bike riding—something you never forget. First of all, I have to improve my breathing so I can fight long enough to wear out my opponent. I wish I could run when we bring the soup to the digging kommando. This would be good training. Of course, I can't just decide to run in front of the SS who's watching us. I must wait for him to bring it up.

“Hey, you, the boxer. Aren't you training?”

He lets me hop on the path instead of walking. I am careful not to go too fast. If I catch up with his horse cart, he might not be able to resist the temptation of shooting me just for fun. “The Jew tried to escape….”

The kapos choose a Sunday in February. It is too cold outside, so they set up the ring inside a block. Everybody says “ring,” but it consists of four stools in the middle of the block. The whole camp is crammed inside the block, I think. Some prisoners are sitting on the beds; most are standing in the central aisle. The kapos sit around the ring. Fat and rosy, they tower over a flock of skeletons. It looks like they have absorbed all of our body fat. They shout, they joke, they laugh loudly.

I sit on one of the stools. Brod, who acts as my trainer, tries to encourage me.

“You're going to win for sure. All the comrades support you. Don't forget, you're fighting for them!”

Six or seven years have passed since the last time I stepped
into a ring. I recognize a forgotten feeling: a knot that tied my entrails before a fight. Except this time, the knot ties every fiber of my body. I don't fight for some tin medal, but for my very life. What's more, I defend the honor of my comrades and of my people.

Double-Nose sits down in the opposite corner. He wears black satin boxing shorts and sneakers. I've removed my striped jacket. With my pajama pants and my winter boots, my small size, and my meager body, I feel utterly ridiculous. I look like Charlie Chaplin trying his hand at boxing.

I hear a kind of hubbub behind me. The crowd parts suddenly. The camp's commander and his assistants have come to see the show. At least he hasn't brought his daughter.

We're just waiting for the referee. Here he comes. He enters the ring, turns toward me, and grins in an exaggerated fashion so as to show me his teeth. Two are missing from his lower jaw. He is the deputy I knocked down! I remember his name now: Mandelbrot. He calls us into the ring and introduces us.

“On my left, Herr Korzeniowicz. On my right, Herr Wisniak. The fight will last three rounds of three minutes each.”

The kapos and the SS laugh when Mandelbrot introduces me. The comrades are not laughing.

Mandelbrot bangs on a tin cup with a spoon to start the fight. Without waiting, Double-Nose rushes at me and tries to hit me with both hands. My fear vanishes instantly. Brod
was right: this guy really can't box. He seems to throw punches at random. His steps are as heavy as a bear's. He shouts like a lumberman wielding an ax. I may not jump around as lightly as I did ten years ago, but I move faster than he does. I dodge his punches by twisting my body, by moving my head back, by bending down to slide under his guard, by stepping aside. My relieved supporters begin to laugh at him. I'm not worried anymore. Double-Nose becomes angry. He puts all his energy into a punch that misses. He loses his balance and falls forward. Even the kapos and SS can't help laughing. He stands up slowly, muttering and swearing, then puts up his guard again.

The first round is over. I look at Double-Nose on his stool. His breathing is labored. He looks like someone who is learning to swim and just swallowed some water.

“He's done for,” Brod says. “He won't last until the end of the second round. But you, Wisniak, you should be careful. Keep your distance.”

The referee bangs on his tin cup. I stand up. Double-Nose jumps at me like a tiger. His strength is back. He isn't breathing like a drowning man anymore. He hits lower, so I can't slide under his guard. His trainer gave him some advice, obviously. He's still so slow that I can run circles around him. My comrades' laughs make me so confident that I laugh, too. I think that I'm keeping my distance, but I forget that my opponent has longer arms than me. He succeeds in hitting me on my side, near the liver. I wasn't
tightening my abdominal muscles enough. Or maybe he caught me with a low hook. A sharp pain cuts across my stomach. I feel I'm falling to the ground. I think about death, my familiar companion in Auschwitz. A stranger saved my life when I had lost my will to live. Brod kept me from running to the fence. I've seen thousands of corpses. If I don't get up, I'll become one of them. Get up, Maurice! Gather the shards of your will and stand up. You've got to. While I'm talking myself into controlling the pain, I discover that I'm actually standing up. My body responded to the Auschwitz reflex and stood up without consulting me. My legs wobble; I start to swing as if I had drunk too much. Instead of finishing me off with a flip of his finger, Double-Nose gapes at me without moving. He can't believe I survived such a blow. I don't need more than a few seconds to collect my thoughts and step back.

After ages, Mandelbrot bangs the end of the second round. I wonder how he counts the three minutes without a watch. I think he waited for at least six minutes, leaving Double-Nose plenty of time to crush me.

Brod gives my poor body a vigorous rub.

“He got you good. Does it hurt?”

“I'm okay….”

“Breathe deep. The massage will pep you up. You can make it. I'm sure you were hit even harder when you boxed in Paris.”

“Don't worry. I'll be more careful.”

“Double-Nose is exhausted. Now's the time to attack. Give him your all. This is the last round of your life, Wisniak! Look at the kapos and the SS. They're as white as bedsheets, because they know they've lost. We're counting on you….”

At the bang of the spoon, Double-Nose rushes once more, but he doesn't know where he's going. He raises his arms in front of himself like a blind man. He wants to catch me so that I can't escape him again. He's pathetic. His arms drop down. He's so weak he can't keep his guard up anymore. I begin to throw hard punches to his body, then to his face. I put more power into them. Jabs, hooks, uppercuts. What's obvious is that he's used to being hit. He resists, he stays up, he tries to hold on to me to avoid falling. I push him away. He slides down gently and sits on the ground.

The referee doesn't know whether I'm allowed to knock out a kapo. He counts to ten as slowly as if he didn't remember the numbers. He could count all the way to a hundred—Double-Nose won't stand up.

The comrades shriek wildly. Whereas the kapos keep silent, wondering how to react, the SS applaud me and shout: “Bravo!” The kapos, following their masters' example, applaud shyly. I'm amazed when Double-Nose, standing up eventually, pulls me into his arms and pats my back in a friendly manner.