He stormed away. Dad carried on smoking. He hadn’t moved. When the landlord left Dadgot up,shut thedoor,andwentbacktohischair.Wedidn’tsayanythingtill Mum returned.

TWO

WE HAD NO idea how serious Dad was with his boxing. He began to train dementedly. Sometimes he would wake up at night and bob and counter-punch, hit and jab, swing punches and lash out at imaginary adversaries. In the mornings, before he chewed on his chewing stick, before he ate, he would work out all around the room. He would wake me up with his footwork and laboured breathing. I would look up fromthemat andseehisgiantfeetjumpingaroundmyhead,hiselbowsprotecting his face. He punched at the clothes-line, till the line snapped. He punched at flies and jabbedat mosquitoes.Hespecialisedinfightinghisownshadowasifitwerehismost hated antagonist. He would get me to stand on the bed and hold a folded towel for him. He would punch it from all angles. His movements became crab-like, and he developed the oddest upper cuts. The more he became involved in boxing, the more he ate. His appetite got so large that Mum pleaded with him to stop. We couldn’t afford the money, she said. Dad ignored her. We cut down on what we ate so he could build his body. He didn’t know that we did.

Itgotworse.Dadtooktosparringwiththeaironhisway towork.Onhisway back he did the same thing, shuffling, performing fancy footwork, executing kink jabs, throwingcombinations. Webegan to think somethingterriblewas happeningto him.

‘Poverty isdrivinghimmad,’Mumsaid.

People began to look at us as if we were freaks. The room became too small for Dad topractisein.Hehadby thenpunchedpractically everythinginsight.Hehadmade my matthreadbareby standingitagainstthewallandthumpingit.Hehadpunched holes in the mattress. He burst the bottom of one of Mum’s basins. He stopped listeningto anythinganyonesaid. Hebecameso engrossed in his obsession. We couldn’t understand it. But it was when he took to boxing on the verandah that we abandoned all attempts to comprehend what had seized hold of his brain. Something had changed in him. His eyes became cool, serene, fierce, and narrowed, all at once. He seemed to look at people as if they were transparent, insubstantial. His knuckles becamebigandrawfrombashingthebackyardwalls.Oneday Istumbledonhimin thebackyard. Hehad acloth round his fists and hewas hittingthewallwith allhis strength. He went on hitting till the white cloth was covered with his blood. Then he stopped.

‘To be a man is not a small thing,’ he would say to me.

His shadow-boxing, however, began to attract attention. When he punched walls in the backyard the women would appear round the well, on the slightest pretext. Fetching water without using it suddenly became fashionable with the married and unmarried women. Hedidn’t mind performingto thecrowd of women and children. But he got dissatisfied with the backyard because the water spilt on the floor made it difficult to do his footwork. One day he slipped and fell. The women laughed. The next eveningheshadow-boxed down thepassage. And that night, when hethought theworld was asleep, heresumed trainingin thecompound-front.

On thosenightsDadhadthebestsparringpartners.Hefoughtthewind,themidges, and the mosquitoes that rose from their millions of larvae all over the swamp of the road. I would wake at night and be aware immediately that he wasn’t in the room. It was the absence of his restless energy. I would rise, tiptoe out of the room, and go to the housefront. Like a hero of the night, alone, invincible, and always battling, Dad boxed all over the grounds. He always fought several imaginary foes, as if the whole world were against him. He fought these foes unceasingly and he always knocked them out. When they had hit the floor he would throw up his arms triumphantly. For me, then, he was the king of the ghetto nights. I would watch him for a long time. The night became safer for me. And while he trained I would wander our road. When he was around the night turned everything familiar into another country, another world. What a new place the night made the ghetto! The houses were still. There were no lights anywhere. The forest was a mass of darkness, a deep blue darkness, deeper than the surrounding night. The houses, the trees, the bushes, made of our road a curious mountain range. Thehouses werehumped likesleepingmonstersinthedark.Isolated trees were a cluster of giants with wild hair, sleeping on their feet. And the road was no longer a road but the original river. Majestically it unfolded itself in the darkness, one step at a time. It was when I wandered the road at night that I first became aware that sometimes I disappeared.

At first it frightened me. I would be walking along, never able to see far, and then I would pass into the darkness. I would begin to look for myself. I became a dark ghost. The wind passed through me. But when I kicked a stone, or tripped, or when a light shone on me, I would become miraculously reconstituted. I would hurry back to our housefront, where Dad was still training, unaware of my presence.

He seemed so solid on those nights. The darkness became his cloak and friend. His eyes burned bright. He talked to the wind and his voice was powerful; it had weight, it was the voice of a new man. When he had finished his training he would skip and shuffle about in fascinating footworks, calling himself Black Tyger. The name began to fit. I never saw him so radiant and so strong as when he practised at night. And it was through his night training that his name began to spread. When he shadow-boxed he began to attract strange kinds of attention. I was watching him one night, with mosquitoes swarming all over me, when I saw a single light come down the road and stop not far from him. The light was by itself. It was smaller than a matchlight, but it stayed there and watched Dad box with the darkness. As time passed the number of lights that watched him increased. One day I counted three of them.

‘Dad, therearethreelights watchingyou,’ I said.

‘What?’

He was startled to hear my voice. I guess it was the first time he realised that I was there.

‘What lights?’

I showed them to him, but he couldn’t see them.

‘It’s your eyes,’ he said, and went on with his boxing.

The lights watched him till he finished. They didn’t move. The wind had no effect on them whatsoever. When we went in I looked back. They were still there.

On another night Dad was training with a peculiar ferocity when I saw a bright yellow pair of eyes come from over the swamp. It stopped not far from Dad and watched his moves. Dad ducked, shuffled sideways, switched from an anchor punch to a right cross, from an upper cut to a hook punch and ended with a jab. I saw the eyes following him. The eyes studied him as he changed from orthodoxto southpaw stances. I went over to theyellow pair of eyes and found nothingthere. I went back to where I had been sitting and the eyes reappeared. They stayed watching Dad till he finished for the night. We left, I stole back, and the eyes were gone.

AnunusualthinghappenedthenextnightthatIstayedup watchingDad.Thelights turned up, one by one, as if they had a meeting, as if they were forming an earthly constellation. Then the yellow eyes came over from the swamp. And when Dad was taking a short break after the night’s first session, a huge man stepped out of the darkness. He was too big for me not to have heard his footsteps. It seemed he had stepped out of nowhere, out of a different space. I couldn’t see his eyes.

‘Who are you?’ he asked Dad. Dad sized him up.

‘My name is Black Tyger,’ Dad said, fearlessly.

‘Good.’

‘And who are you?’ Dad asked in return. The man chuckled.

‘They used to call me Yellow Jaguar,’ the man replied. ‘Good.’

‘So you will fight me?’

‘Yes,’ Dad said.

The man chuckled again.