Heart of Scorpio Read online

  As he waited for the next round to begin he thought about the little laminated image of Saint Jude that his wife carried everywhere. Milton clung to Ángela Iguarán’s prayers. At the start of the eleventh round Olivella attacked King with the certainty that his wife’s prayers would give him the victory. It was his chance to get his life back. Both fighters gave and took punishment giving no quarter. Milton could feel his punches getting weaker. He didn’t know if the same thing was happening to King’s because he didn’t feel them. The pain in his ribs was killing him and he knew that he was going to go down at any minute, not by any specific punch, but because his body had nothing left, nevertheless he decided to hold nothing in reserve and kept hitting with everything he had left.

  King did the same. He punched without bothering to keep his guard up or looking for an opening. Boom, he punched, boom, he took, boom, he punched, boom he took, boom, he punched, boom, he stuck, without rest. The crowd shouted in approval of the bravery of the fighters and heaved up phrases of encouragement.

  Milton threw a right hook not just with the strength of his arm but with the force of his entire body. The punch felled King who appeared to be unconscious and Olivella himself almost fell to the canvas from sheer exhaustion. The referee started the count. Milton doubted that he could keep himself upright for the ten seconds that King would be on the canvas. The referee got to six in the count before King started to barely react. At the count of eight he seemed like he was getting to his feet but he staggered. Milton saw the stumble as confirmation of his victory, raised his hands and saluted the crowd. Nonetheless, when the count got to ten King was standing, the referee held his gloves, and signaled to continue the fight.

  As soon as the combat renewed the two fighters clinched. Once the referee separated them they couldn’t manage much of a fight. Both were trying to recover, but Milton felt like his strength was sapped even though he hadn’t done any work. King, on the other hand, seemed to have recovered and appeared to be the stronger fighter. Olivella stopped a pair of King’s jabs but felt like it took everything he had just to keep his guard up. King seemed to understand the situation and he attacked. Milton slipped toward the ropes and from there to a corner. King followed him to press the fight. Milton kept avoiding until King corralled him in a corner. Milton tried to defend himself with a jab that bounced off King’s defenses. King counterattacked with a hook to the side that further damaged Olivella’s ribs. Milton arched his body in pain and saw an uppercut coming toward his face. He tried to raise his left arm to protect his chin but he wasn’t sure if his arm was reacting or not. He felt like he was coming back from Cuba, healed and seeing his wife and son waiting for him in the airport.

  Julián

  Papa arrived late, just like I expected.

  How are you, I say.

  Fine, son, recovered, responded Papa, fighting the disease. Thanks to God, son, and Mama’s prayers, it’s been some months since I used, since I went into the hospital. Take care of your Mama, son, take care of her, she’s a saint who doesn’t deserve the life that I give her, but you know what, son, your Mama’s faith is going to save me, I know it. Life is like a title fight and even though I’m behind on points, thanks to your Mama’s faith the fight is not lost.

  I know it’s a lie; that he used just a little while ago. I can tell. Papa is the biggest liar on earth. The waiter comes. Papa orders a cold soda and I do as well. He says I’m not having beer because I don’t want anything with alcohol. He says that right there’s where you fall into the grip of addiction all over again and you’ve got to keep your guard up all the time. They bring us the drinks and we sit in silence for a while.

  I have the papers here, I say.

  Explain it to me again, son, says Papa. I do this for you and for your Mama, you know because I love you a lot and I want to make up for all the mistakes I’ve made, to start over, you understand, you know how it is, son, you know.

  I take out a pack of cigarettes and I offer him one.

  A cigarette, yes, son, says Papa taking one, it calms me down. I’ll tell you something, it’s easier not to use if I smoke, a screwed up thing because it’s like choosing the lesser of two evils. That’s how life is: screwed up.

  I take out another cigarette and the lighter. I offer him a light and then I light my own. I snap the lighter closed and take out the papers.

  These are the papers to authorize Mama to cash the government pension, I say.

  Let me see that stuff, he says, exhaling smoke.

  I pass him the papers and wait for him to look at them. He looks them all over and hands them back to me.

  It seems like it’s all right, says Papa. But explain it to me anyway so I understand it all. In life one has to be sure of the decisions that one takes. I’ve been sorry many times and I don’t want it to happen to me again, you know.

  It authorizes Mama to cash the pension checks that the government is giving you, I say.

  What do I have to do then, asks Papa.

  Nothing, just sign, I say.

  Then pass me the papers, says Papa.

  I pass him the papers and he looks at them again like he’s checking to see everything is in order. Meanwhile he takes out his pen and writes MILTON OLIVELLA in capital letters with the handwriting of a seven-year-old.

  There you go, says Papa, and he hands me back the papers.

  I see he doesn’t have his wedding ring on and I figure he exchanged it for drugs.

  Where’s your wedding ring, I ask.

  I’ve got it in a safe place, says Papa.

  Where, where’s the safe place.

  In a friend’s house, says Papa.

  What friend, I ask.

  Just a friend, says Papa.

  You traded it for dope, didn’t you, I ask.

  Papa doesn’t answer.

  You traded it for dope, I say.

  I’ve got it in a safe place, says Papa.

  Where, I ask.

  At a friend’s house, says Papa.

  What’s this friend’s name, I ask.

  You don’t know him, says Papa.

  It doesn’t matter, tell me his name, I say.

  Papa sits there without saying anything.

  You traded it for dope, I say.

  I haven’t traded anything, says Papa.

  Then where is the ring, I ask.

  I already told you, says Papa.

  In whose house, I ask.

  I already told you, you don’t know him, says Papa.

  Doesn’t matter, tell me who he is, I say.

  A friend from TV, he’s keeping it at his house in Bogotá, says Papa.

  Well, then, I know him if he works in TV, I say.

  No, you don’t know him, says Papa.

  Tell me the name, I say.

  He’s not an actor, says Papa.

  So what does he do in TV, I ask.

  Something else, says Papa.

  What, I ask.

  He writes telenovelas, says Papa.

  How did you give it to him if you haven’t been to Bogotá since way before you went into the hospital, I say.

  Papa doesn’t answer.

  Where’s the ring, I ask.

  A friend is keeping it at his house in Bogotá.

  How’s Ángela, asks Papa.

  Mama’s fine, I say, where’s the ring, I ask.

  You tell her I said hello, says Papa, tell her I miss her very much.

  Where’s the ring, I say.

  Tell her that soon I’ll be home to stay, says Papa, I just need to wrap up a few pending issues, you know how it is. If I can get this thing ready we can make a little money to start fresh, to get the life back that we used to have before. Tell her that we’re going to start a new life, you know, following the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ.

  Where’s the ring, I ask.

  Anyway, I’m going to call her on the phone before so she knows that at any minute I could be coming home for good, says Papa.

  I stand up and I grab Papa by
his shirt collar.

  Where is the goddamn ring, I shout.

  Papa pushes me and gets free of me. I go up to him and I grab him again by the shirt collar.

  Where, I say shaking Papa back and forth, is, the, goddamn, ring, I say.

  Don’t act like you’re better than me, says Papa and he pushes me, you need to respect me because you’re talking to a world champion, says Papa.

  You ain’t world champion of shit, I shout and I try to grab him again by the shirt collar. Papa doesn’t let me grab him and he pushes me. I hate to be pushed. I throw a punch and it explodes on his bottom lip. I can feel my knuckles smash his lip against his teeth. Papa doesn’t stop to see the busted lip I’ve just given him and he comes at me like a demon. He hits me in the eye and I go down to the ground. He tries to jump on me but I let loose a kick in his stomach that makes him fall down, too.

  Not even a phone call on my birthday, you son of a bitch, I shout.

  I get up and when I try to move toward him to try to punch him again I feel myself grabbed from behind: it’s the owner of the place. I look and a bunch of people have come out of nowhere and grabbed Papa. They keep us from continuing the fight that we want to keep fighting. I want to hit him I want to hit him.

  * * *

  After his father got them to let him back into the gym, Olivella’s discipline was impeccable, Turk Samir had told Avski. Milton started to avoid anything unhealthy. When the fighters at the gym went out for a drink he’d order mineral water or juice. Every morning, even when he wasn’t preparing for a fight, he’d run twelve miles to start his day. In Chambacú, the poor neighborhood in Cartagena where he moved with his mother from Palenque, he had acquired the habit of smoking marijuana two or three times a week. He had continued smoking in moderation when he wasn’t preparing for a fight, but quit completely when he started to train seriously. He avoided staying out late at any cost and watched his diet and his temperament as part of his psychological training before a fight.

  The Mexican former champion Antonio García Madero says that Milton was always a gentleman out of the ring. In spite of the fact that he hadn’t finished school he never seemed out of place in any situation. He got along in any social circle and was capable of engaging in any conversation. But of course, at first, remembers Turk Samir, his good manners were an inconvenience in the ring. He’d punish his rivals until they couldn’t effectively fight back, but at the moment where he needed to finish them off he’d relax and let them recover. It was as if he considered it unsporting to hit a guy who was already beat up. Many times his opponents would end up recovering to the point where they could nearly come back and defeat him. Other times the crowd, seeing Olivella’s lack of killer instinct, would lose their patience and start to boo him. García Madero claims that if he hadn’t been able to get over that defect he would have never become world champion.

  It was a problem Turk Samir didn’t know how to manage. One night Milton’s agent, the businessman Ramón Saade, frustrated at Olivella’s passivity against a nearly-defeated opponent, unleashed a string of insults against his fighter. It was a reaction that you would have never seen from Turk Samir, who maintained his calm demeanor until the day he died and if he ever yelled it was, “Get your left up you’re unprotected.” Milton’s reaction to Saade’s tongue-lashing was immediate: he threw a devastating straight right that sent his opponent to the clinic for two days. Saade immediately understood the situation. At Olivella’s next fight he stood behind Turk Samir and when Milton started to back off of a hurt opponent Saade let loose a shout that could even be heard on television:

  “Nigger son of a bitch you ain’t worth shit!”

  Milton connected with a left that was so savage the other fighter immediately went down. When the referee restarted the fight after the downed fighter had been counted and regained his feet, Milton again failed to close the distance and finish him off.

  Saade renewed the verbal attack on Olivella, “You must be a faggot because you ain’t no fighter.”

  At that moment Olivella uncorked a combination that prompted the referee to run to stop the fight because the Olivella’s barrage of punches wouldn’t let his rival go down. Once the referee intervened Milton’s opponent fell to the canvas like a rag doll.

  After that night Saade continued to locate himself in his sponsored fighter’s corner, not to give technical advice, but to launch insults at opportune moments. On the night of October 28, 1972, when Olivella was being beaten in the second, and surely the last fight of his contention for the world title, Saade shouted the phrase that changed the history of the World Junior Welterweight class.

  “You wanna get paid, Olivella? Then you better turn them fuckin’ hands loose and start punching, you nigger son of a bitch, or I’ll send you back to eat shit in Palenque.”

  Olivella threw a combination so fast that the victim told the press that he never saw it. It was so powerful that it laid him out on the surface of the Nuevo Panama complex for much longer than the ten seconds that it took the referee Hernández to call the fight. Fifteen thousand people stood in silence, disconcerted by how the bout had ended. If you count the team that came with Olivella, the Colombians in the coliseum who saw him crowned world champion numbered less than fifteen people. The most important moment in the history of Colombian sports wasn’t seen by anybody because the television stations decided not to cover the fight, believing that boxing was a sport for blacks and people on the coast that didn’t interest people in the capital. While Milton Olivella was showing a pitiful and defeated nation how to win, the country stood in ignorance with its back turned. In those days the budget didn’t allow for Milton to bring either of his women or a single one of his friends. Olivella’s reign started in abandon and loneliness.

  At the door of the coliseum Saade was waiting for him in a van. The first thing that Olivella saw when he stepped inside was a blonde that would be the first white woman to share his bed. Before leaving the place Milton asked if he could invite his defeated opponent to the party. Much later, in a brothel bedroom near the Panama City port, after Saade told the women to get out, Olivella received the first important sum of money of his career in front of his adversary.

  Johnny Pitalúa

  Then Efraim says hitting the sandbag while I hold it: “One, two, oofff, oofff. One, two, oofff, oofff. One, two, oofff, oofff. So what was it like, Ol’ Johnny? One, two, oofff, oofff.”

  And I, “Nothin,’ cuz, I used to train like crazy.”

  And Efraim: “One, two, oofff, oofff.”

  And I, “I’ll tell you something, though, nobody ever trained as hard as I did back in those days, I wanted to be good, the best.”

  And Efraim: “One, two, oofff, oofff.”

  And I, “Even when Milton was disciplined, cuz, he went out to smoke a butt at night and to see Ángela and I’d keep training.”

  And Efraim: “One, two, oofff, oofff.”

  And I: “Cuz, and when Milton would tell me, Hey Bighead, and came over to me, See you later, bro, I can’t do any more.”

  And Efraim: “One, two, oofff, oofff.”

  And I, “But I stayed there, getting after it, believing that someday I was going to be good.”

  And Efraim: “One, two, oofff, oofff.”

  And I, “It’s a hell of a thing, cuz, to want something so bad and not be able to get it.”

  And Efraim: “One, two, oofff, oofff.”

  And I, “It hurts you, it eats you up.”

  And Efraim: “One, two, oofff, oofff.”

  And I, “When Milton was on top, cuz.”

  And Efraim: “One, two, oofff, oofff.”

  And I, “There came a time when nobody could touch Milton and he knew it.”

  And Efraim: “One, two, oofff, oofff.”

  And I, “And that’s not good, cuz, that’s overconfidence.”

  And Efraim: “One, two, oofff, oofff.”

  And I, “All the Welterweight fighters who could have beaten him were either retire
d or dead.”

  And Efraim: “One, two, oofff, oofff.”

  And I, “He knew it, cuz, and he had this absurd confidence and there I was wanting to fight, wanting to make a name for myself.”

  And Efraim: “One, two, oofff, oofff.”

  And I, “Before the fights he’d be taking a nap just at the time when any fighter in the world would be about to have a nervous breakdown, he’d be sleeping.”

  And Efraim: “One, two, oofff, oofff.”

  And I, “While he was sleeping I was training, hoping that one day I’d get my shot, too.”

  And Efraim: “One, two, oofff, oofff.”

  And I, “I got better. A whole lot better. I eventually had a decent record that never included fifteen defeats in a row before turning pro.”

  And Efraim: “One, two, oofff, oofff.”

  And I, “But it was never enough.”

  And Efraim: “One, two, oofff, oofff.”

  And I, “I never got on the list to contend for the title. I never got to Milton’s level, not even with those guys he fought against, I wasn’t even on their level.”

  And Efraim: “One, two, oofff, oofff.”

  And I, “And after I saw him go down it was like I went down myself.”

  And Efraim: “One, two, oofff, oofff.”

  But it was better that we go down together than for me to have to go on putting up with the fire that burned me inside.

  And Efraim: “One, two, oofff, oofff.”

  It’s like watching some other guy screw your woman right in front of you and you can’t do nothing, just love her and hate her.

  And Efraim: “One, two, oofff, oofff.”

  And then I started bringing cocaine to his workouts and I would tell him I did it out of friendship; and I explained to him that I didn’t want him running around with bad people to try to get it and I told him to snort some, to try to quit it gradually, that he should snort a little less every day, that he was everything I wanted to be and that’s why I didn’t want him to destroy himself because it was like he was destroying me.