When I look back on that afternoon now it was too homely, too unpretentious a death to be violent. They were merely scrubbing a board, raking a lawn; it was housework, nothing more, and you were a figure of fun; there was nothing tragic about those tugs at the line. You had crossed the border of pity a long time ago, horror wasn’t far behind, and after that was the ridiculous – because now you were nothing; an object, ludicrous, staggering slightly; something to make men either laugh or throw up their lunch.
They pulled you back and forth, teasing the dogs, helping them out; it was only right, was how it was done, these final gestures, this inching away of life; jerked you from side to side for variety; set you right side out like a jumper, then once again turned your insides out.
In the last moments, what was a living creature became a blank space, an observer looking down upon itself. You, too, only astonished now at what they had done to you. Your eyes were wide with the thought of it and would never close. It was this that killed you, this miracle.
Once more – as if fondly – as if for old time’s sake – the man lifted you, and a dog came up too, the others mad with envy because he was close to you. Though it wasn’t you any more, I could see that now; just a piece of something; a mat; road kill; a ludicrous tatter with goggle eyes.
Because I was silent, now I speak. And what can I say? That I loved you. That the spectacle swallowed me whole. That I went inside it. Horror sucks you inside. That I would murder now too, if I could. That I have dreamed many times since then of what I could do.
When they had gone I buried what was left of you in the open field with my hands, and for three days and nights after, in the new room, in that unfamiliar place miles from here, where I remain but can never return to, I lay with you in the belly of the earth and imagined we both had never been born.
Now, though I am older, and each day the universe is a mighty stranger, I occasionally glimpse you sometimes at the borders of vision. You appear for a moment then evaporate.1
I first saw you trotting along at the top of the cornfield as the sun rose. I could not speak because you were beautiful, and afterwards I went and walked. I thought there must be some sign you had been, some proof of your presence. But there was none.
You left no trace and nor did you wait. You went on ahead and I followed as best I could, grasping a knowledge available for a certain time only.
You went into the woods where the thorn trees grew thickly. Into the woods and out of my sight.
A BIRD, HALF-EATEN
* * *
NIKESH SHUKLA
I LOOP THE WRAP over my thumb and across the back of my hand. It goes over my hand three times, tight, and then around my wrist, three times, tight. There’s a ritual to this. I bring the wrap up from my wrist in between my little and ring finger and then back down to my wrist. Up again, between ring and middle, and back down. Up again, between middle and index, and then back down. Each time, the wrap forms an X across the back of my hand. I loop it between thumb and index and then across the palm of my hand, to lock it in. I wrap the remainder of the cloth around my wrist and then Velcro it closed. I flex my hand, open and closed. It feels tight, taut, tethered.
I repeat the ritual with my weaker hand. This one always feels looser. I love watching people perform this ritual quietly, meditatively, with ease, in changing rooms and on YouTube videos. I look at my own fingers, shuddering slightly under the wrap, and clench my fist.
When I have wrapped both my hands, I pick up my gloves and take three shallow sips of water, heading to the thin sweaty alcove of heavy bags. I’m the only one in here. I come when it’s quiet so I can concentrate.
When the bell rings, I hold my fists up over my face and I drop my chin. I am hunched, and standing with my feet a shoulder apart.
The bell ring is a short sharp electronic burst, like when you’re called forward at the bank. I always choose the bag in the middle. It’s milk-chocolate brown with a silver strip of gaffer tape that acts as a waistband around its middle. It’s the heaviest bag here.
For the first three minutes, I punch quickly and lightly, jab-cross, repeatedly. First at your nose. Then at your stomach. Jab-cross nose, jab-cross stomach, jab-cross nose, jab-cross stomach. I try to maintain a consistent speed so that I’m working my arms, ensuring that the muscle memory is kicking in. I don’t want to fling my arms out at you uncontrolled. I want my body to be seasoned to swivel from the hips, the turn of the foot, so that the power is coming from my entire body, and my arms are giving me the necessary distance from you, and my fists can carry the full force of my core.
The first time I got punched, I was intervening in a theft. Some guy was pulling on my friend Rachna’s bag, which she had slung over her shoulder, while I was oblivious, trying to hail a cab. I heard her shouting, ‘You can’t do that, you can’t do that,’ and turned around. The guy was pulling the bag so forcefully that their heads were nearly colliding. It was over her shoulder, securely, so she’d need to take it off for him. He wrenched her so close as she was shouting, I saw her accidentally bite his nose. I ran towards her and pulled on the bag myself. The bag-snatcher let go, and for a pregnant second, I saw something in his eyes that wasn’t aggression or frustration or anything – it was powerlessness.
He punched me on my nose. And he ran off.
I don’t bruise very easily, but I felt the imprint of his knuckles on my face for days.
It was the first time I’d been punched.
I’d been in scraps before, but the thing about scraps in the boys’ school I went to, they were all about grabbing each other by the shirt on the shoulders and pulling, like a strange undressing wrestle.
When the bell rings, I take off my left glove. The knuckles on this hand always throb after each round. I practise the swivel in my hips. One of the trainers has told me I’m too stiff, I need to relax into my shots. Keep my knuckles on top. Every movement is still alien to me. You watch the way fights are choreographed in films, and each punch is syncopated to a stirring score, each movement, every duck and weave, is a seamless piece of a dance. Here in this gym, the walls drip with the splatter of several people’s sweat. Here in this gym, the old hi-fi that still has cassette decks spits out Ed Sheeran or whoever is big on Radio 1 at that time. Here in this gym, the most balletic of boxers are the ones under eighteen. Here in this gym, you see interlopers like me. We who need this bag to represent something to us. Each sound is like tapping a sofa – flat, undramatic, clunky. Usually, the bag is a manifestation of ourselves. The implication, when we shadow-box, is that we look at ourselves in the mirror, because the first person you have to defeat in the ring is yourself. You box yourself in the mirror. You visualise your face on the bag.
Most people are here because they never defeated that person in the full-length mirror. You can tell, we’re the ones whose eyes never leave our reflections as we move around the gym.
The bag, you are never allowed to let drop, not if you want to be quick.
I put my glove back on.
When the bell rings, I launch at the bag with power this time. I jab, jab firmly, then follow it up with a powerful cross, a pow to the centre of your face. Immediately I duck and arch my entire body in a semicircular movement to the left. As I rise, I meet the side of the bag with a left hook. My left hooks are telegraphed from miles away. It’s as if I need the duck and weave, and the big powering up of the arm to act as my inner force. I need those movements to make my hook an effective one.
When we eventually fight though, you’ll see it coming from miles away and step out of it, and I’ll drop my guard and you can strike everywhere.
You and I train at different times. I’ve chosen my hours to coincide with when I think you’ll be at work. My lifestyle allows me to be here at unsociable hours, when the club first opens. All the while, you’re at work.
I wonder if you think about me as much as I think about you.
I vary the combo this time and follow the left hook up with a right hook
. The bag is swinging about on the chain wildly.
I saw you in the city centre last week. It was the first time I’d seen you in your normal clothes, not your boxing gear, and it shook me. Not that you looked like a regular person. More that you being a regular person made it harder for me to visualise your face on this bag. You wore a white shirt. Polyester. I could see through to the outline of a vest. You wore grey trousers, and worn black shoes. You had one hand in your pocket, and the other held your phone to your ear. You were listening intently and looking up at the sky as you paced. You didn’t see me. I stopped and waited for you to notice me. But you didn’t. When I saw you had breezed on past me, I turned and followed you. I wanted to see where you went when you weren’t at the gym. Who you were in your real life. I got twenty steps before I realised I was exhibiting problematic behaviour. And I only realised I was exhibiting problematic behaviour because I walked into the path of a bike as I crossed the road behind you. The cyclist swore at me – unnecessarily probably – but it was enough to shake me.
What did I observe in those twenty steps?
That you walked with confidence.
That you had to look upwards in order to concentrate.
That your entire body seemed relaxed. You looked like you belonged in that body, you owned that skin, no one had ever given you a reason to doubt yourself.
It made me angry. That you were seemingly at one with yourself.
I told the cyclist to go fuck himself, and turned around, returning to my office, to my desk. I stared at a half-drunk mug of coffee and picked it up. The cold of the handle against my fingertips as I gripped it tightly was a comfort. My colleague Chloe passed my desk and looked at me quizzically. I put the mug down and smiled at her, banging at the space bar on my laptop to wake it up.
‘You OK?’ she asked.
I shook my head. ‘No,’ I replied, quietly, and with enough finality to show her that she was not to enquire any further.
The second time I was punched, I was on a train coming home from London. It was late and I was drunk. I played a film on my laptop and pointed myself at it while I ate chicken strips, dipping each one deep into a small carton of barbecue sauce. I was too drunk to concentrate on the film, but it was action-packed enough to catch my attention occasionally. When I finished my McDonalds, I shoved all the detritus into the paper bag and shoved it under my seat in an effort to pretend the entire shameful transaction never happened.
The barbecue sauce must have slipped out of the bag because I felt a shuffle in the seat behind me turn into a shouting man.
‘There’s shit on my shoe,’ he bellowed to the empty carriage.
I looked up at him. He was greying, wearing a blue raincoat of the kind that only businessmen with no imagination seem to purchase, and clutching a can of Fosters.
I looked down at his shoe. He wore black dress shoes. I could see a speck of burgundy on the right one. Presumably some of my barbecue sauce.
‘Sorry boss,’ I muttered and offered him a napkin.
He launched himself at me with his fists. He punched me twice in the face before I could react. In launching himself at me, he lost his balance and fell on me. I was so shocked. I sat there flinching and cowering, waiting till he regained his balance and stood up.
I cried.
I could feel his knuckles embedded in my cheek. I could feel the slime of his neck sweat by my mouth. I turned back to the laptop and carried on watching my film. As if nothing had happened. He straightened himself up and apologised, before picking up his bag and disappearing down the train.
I sat there, rooted to the spot till my station arrived. I ran off the train, down the steps, and up the other side to the exit. I ran out of the barriers and I ran to the taxi rank. I jumped into a car. As the car pulled away from the station, I saw him emerge, eating a chocolate bar and staring at his phone as if he had not a care in the world.
I didn’t tell my wife I’d been assaulted. I don’t bruise, and so apart from my cheek being tender to touch, there was no sign of the impact of his fists on me. I got off the train in fear. I hurried to the ticket barriers. I prayed for a short queue for taxis. I couldn’t rationalise the casualness of the assault. I couldn’t bring myself to comprehend the escalation from a dab of barbecue sauce to a full-blown attack. All I knew was that I was attacked, and ultimately that it was my fault for being careless with my rubbish and for not reporting the unnecessary reaction sooner.
The day I signed up to the boxing gym, my wife asked me what had brought on the sudden interest in the sport.
‘I just want to protect myself,’ I said.
‘Then take up self-defence,’ she replied. ‘I’d love to do that too.’
I couldn’t explain to her that boxing would help me take up room. Boxing would give me space to occupy unapologetically, and no one would think twice about hitting me. I would have the confidence to dodge, to take a punch, and if required, hit back.
My first class, a technique one, was when it started.
I felt out of place the entire time. People had brought their own equipment. I was lost. I couldn’t skip. I took some gloves from a bin next to the toilets. The communal gloves stank of the sweat of many people. I was dripping with sweat myself, from ten minutes of skipping uselessly and shadow-boxing self-consciously. I put the gloves on without wraps and flexed my fingers. It stank.
You were my partner. The first thing you told me was that you’re a Southpaw. I didn’t know what that meant until I was unexpectedly hit repeatedly. You leaned in, and, due to your height and reach, you were able to deliver shots I couldn’t block with my elbows. Also, you were happy to use force. We’d been instructed only to tap each other while we were learning the techniques. That didn’t deter you from hitting, hard. And asking me to hit you back hard.
‘It’s OK, harder,’ you kept telling me.
The sensation of being hit when it’s part of the game, the sport, it was confusing. It hurt. It also niggled at something else in me. Why was I not learning self-defence? Maybe my wife was right. Instead, I’m learning to hit but also be hit.
I observed you everywhere around the gym. You took up space. From the way you left your wraps in a heap on the floor after a session, through to hogging the middle of the gym when you skipped, through to the way you winked at everyone.
And after a while I wanted to take that space away from you.
The moment came at the end of our second technique class. I’d tried to avoid partnering up with you, but you sought me out.
‘I like to train with the new guys,’ you told me between rounds. ‘See whether you’re tough enough to stay or you’ll just stop coming cos you like box-fit but not boxing. Which are you?’
Why does it matter so much? I said, in my head. ‘Dunno,’ I mumbled aloud.
The instructor shouted out another combination before I could muster up the courage to say it out loud.
Before I could drop my chin and put my fists up, you jabbed twice, pushing me back, and gave me a left hook that caught me on the ear.
It caught me by such surprise that I dropped to the floor.
The instructor rushed over.
‘You OK?’ he asked. He looked up at the room. ‘You better defend those shots or you’ll be dropping as well,’ he bellowed to the rest of the class.
You took your glove off and gripped me under my arm, pulling me up.
‘Hit me,’ you said. ‘Hit me.’
So I hit you. As hard as I could. You were that space on the heavy bag we aimed for, pretending it was a nose. You were ready, and used your left glove to bat my shot away as hard as you could.
‘Hit me,’ you repeated.
I repeated my movement. You did the same parry, this time harder.
‘Hit … me,’ you said, slower, quieter.
This time, I was slower, and I tried a shot, but you ducked and pushed me back.
‘I said hit me,’ you said, laughing.
I unVelcroed a glove and put it in
my armpit. I undid the other. I looked at you and shook my head.
‘Box-fit’s on Tuesdays,’ you said. ‘See you then. Fly away bird, fly away. Before I eat you. There are lions here, and we’re hungry.’
I cycled home, raging, turning over and over in my head the perfect argument with you, the perfect shots, the perfect retaliation. At home, my wife asked me how the class was, and I shrugged. ‘It was OK,’ I said. I didn’t want her to know I felt humiliated because she was right. I didn’t have the stomach to fight. Only the desire for self-preservation.
What was it about you that made me obsess over your words? There was something, a gauntlet, a challenge.
As I worked the bags by myself on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, I noticed you in the sparring club. Here the more amateur-level boxers gathered, to spar with the one or two pros training for matches. I worked the bags, quietly in the corner. I wondered if you noticed me. You waited your turn like everyone else, but were never chosen to spar.
Different strands of different pecking orders, I wondered. You were nobody here, so you were somebody there.
One day you saw me, and I flinched. I was between rounds, peeking out of the corridor of heavy bags at you. You smiled and flapped your arms like a bird, giggling to yourself. People turned to see who you were gesturing at, and all they saw was me, the chubby person, trying to get in shape. Someone shook their head at you, which made you drop your grin.
You kept looking at me, and gestured to the ring.
The day we spar, I leave work early for a meeting that doesn’t exist. I go for a run around the harbourside, and then a jog to the gym. Outside, I wrap myself.