[click to read the first chapter]
3
He fought through the heat that summer at Wembley Stadium, on the temporary bridge laid out across the Empire Pool. He fought through the crushing incompetence of the judges and referees—36 of whom were eventually banned by the Association Internationale de Boxe Amateure—and he fought through the skepticism of the very trainers and handlers who had accompanied him to London. They knew he was good, ferocious at times, and technically brilliant, but they knew also that he could falter, suddenly losing focus as if transported momentarily into another world far away from the brutal world of the ring. They had seen it happen more than once, Jerzy losing to lesser fighters, then unable or unwilling to explain what had happened at the crucial moment.
He fought through the requirement that he bring his own food to the Games, with England hesitant to undertake feeding the entire Olympic contingent, and through the necessity of lodging for the duration at an army camp in Uxbridge. He fought, in fact, into the 4th and final round of the bout that would separate silver from bronze, farther than almost anyone but he himself had imagined him able to fight. In the end though, he could not fight through the bodies. He saw the bodies a lot, every day, and in many restless nights. When he was fighting, when he was in the ring, always.
Every time he fought he carried the images with him into the ring. He saw them now, as usual, with the surreal clarity only true horror can bring to human experience and memory. Before going to the courtyard that day he had sensed the likelihood that what he would see would change him forever. He had heard of the cruelties of the advancing troops, and now that they had finally arrived he had become angrier than he had ever thought possible, more focused in his determination to do something at the same time that he was more unsure than ever of what he could actually do. And though he fled shortly thereafter, willing what he had seen to remain behind, and outside of him, that was never really a possibility. He had seen what he had seen.
He knew he would get nothing from the referees, nothing from the judges. They had been notoriously unreliable throughout the competition, rewarding poor boxing and overlooking brilliance at such a rate that already ten of them had been sent home. So, when he finally saw the opening, the small weakness he could explore and use to bring his opponent down, he knew he had fixed on something that he alone was seeing. It was just after the left jab—a hard, precise jab that had been punishing him for over 3 rounds now—and it was a misstep so small and so quick that it had taken him that long to find it. His opponent’s right hand would drop from the guard, just a fraction, a little lazy dip, as the left hand was returning after each jab. Was it enough? He moved forward, circling, taking a few more jabs as he timed the return, and then just before the next left hand reached him he stepped inside and delivered his own left, a counterpunch straight over the right hand of the other fighter, a clear shot to the face, a shot that could have been, should have been, the first in a short, furious series of finishing blows.
[Click to read the fourth chapter]
Losing the Bronze is Copyright ©2009 Nigel Hinshelwood
