Girl Who Played with Fire, The - Stieg Larsson [191]
He was in the biggest battle of his life. He was hitting with his brain as much as with his fists. He managed to avoid every punch his opponent threw at him.
He landed a right hook clear as a bell to the jaw that felt like he had broken a bone in his hand and that should have made his opponent collapse in a heap. He glanced at his knuckles and saw that they were bloody. He could see bruises and a swollen area on the giant’s face. But his opponent seemed not even to feel the blows.
Paolo Roberto backed up, breathed as steadily as he could, and took stock. He’s no boxer. He moves like a boxer, but he can’t box for shit. He’s only pretending. He can’t block. He telegraphs his punches. And he’s as slow as a tortoise.
In the next instant the giant got in a left hook to the side of Paolo Roberto’s rib cage. That was the second time he had connected well. Paolo Roberto felt pain shoot through his body as a rib cracked. Again he backed away, but he tripped over a pile of scaffolding and fell on his back. He saw the giant towering over him, but he flung himself into a roll to the side and staggered to his feet.
He squared up, trying to gather his strength, but the man was on him again. He ducked, ducked again, and backed away, feeling terrible pain each time he parried a blow with his shoulder.
Then came the moment that every boxer has experienced with dread. The feeling that could turn up any time in the middle of a bout. The feeling of just not being good enough. The realization that you are about to lose.
That’s the crux of almost every fight, the moment when the strength drains out of you and the adrenaline pumps so hard that it becomes a burden and surrender appears like a ghost at ringside. That’s the moment that separates the pros from the amateurs and the winner from the loser. Few boxers who find themselves at the edge of that abyss manage to turn the match around, turn certain defeat into victory.
Paolo Roberto was struck by this insight. He felt a roaring in his head that made him dizzy and he experienced the moment as if he were watching the scene from outside, peering at this giant through a camera lens. This was the moment when it was a matter of winning or disappearing for good.
He backed in a wide semicircle to collect his strength and buy time. The man followed him steadily but slowly, precisely as though he knew that the outcome was decided but he wanted to draw the round out. He boxes, but he can’t really box. He knows who I am. He’s a rank amateur. But he has a devastating power in his punch and he seems insensitive to all punishment.
These thoughts rattled around in Paolo Roberto’s head as he tried to decide what to do.
Suddenly he was reliving the night in Mariehamn two years before when his career as a professional boxer had ended in the most brutal way. He had met the Argentine Sebastián Luján, or rather, Sebastián Luján met him. Paolo Roberto had walked into the first knockout of his life and had been unconscious for fifteen seconds.
He often thought about what had gone wrong. He was in tip-top shape. He was focused. But the Argentine had landed a solid punch and the round had been transformed into a raging sea.
Watching the video afterwards, he saw how he had staggered around the ring, as defenceless as Donald Duck. The knockout came twenty-three seconds later.
Sebastián Luján hadn’t been any better, or better trained than he was. The margins of error being so small, the bout could have gone either way.
The only difference he could detect later was that Luján had been hungrier. When Paolo Roberto went into that ring in Mariehamn he was set on winning, but he wasn’t dying to box. It did not mean life or death any more. A loss was not a catastrophe.
A year and a half later he was still a boxer. But he was no longer a pro, and he took on only friendly sparring matches. He went on training, and he had not put on weight or gone soft in the gut. He was not as well-tuned an instrument as before a title bout for which his body had been drilled for months,