When Dad emerged from the compound I understood why the odds were so high against him. Dad looked puny compared to the Green Leopard. Dad’s appearance drew cries of derision. He came out and jumped around, snorting, shadow-boxing. Green Leopard regarded him with an expression of purest scorn and, in a powerful voice, asked:

‘What is your weight?’‘I have no weight,’ Dad replied.The crowd broke into laughter.‘The man has no weight,’ they said.

Ifelt sorry forDad.IstartedtogoovertopullhimawayfromtheringwhenAde held me back.

‘My father gave me this strong spell,’ he said, waving a dead frog in my face. ‘Throw it into the ring,’ he added, giving it to me.

I aimed at Green Leopard’s head, and threw the dead frog. And missed. It landed on the head of one of his followers, who turned, saw the mischief on our faces, and pursued us. We ran to the burnt van, circled it twice, ducked under a stall, and dashed to the forest. He went back to the spectators. We followed cautiously. When we got to the crowd, and wriggled our way to the front, the two men had begun warming up. Music from the party van was strident over the loudspeaker. Green Leopard had limbered up and worked himself into a great sweat. He was a veritable Titan. He seemed to have been carved directly from the core of a granite mountain. His muscles glistened in the evening sun as if he had bathed in oil. Dad looked lean and tough, but nowhere near as mighty as I had imagined before I had anyone to compare him with. I feared for him and began to feel quite sick.

‘So you have no weight, eh?’ Green Leopard asked, dancingaround heavily, aiming a few trial punches at Dad’s head from a short distance.

‘No,’ Dad said, hopping like a mudskipper, moving like a crab, a defensive animal, ‘but I will beat you and disgrace your philosophy.’

Green Leopard laughed contemptuously again and Dad struck him full in the face with a lightning jab. Green Leopard’s head rocked backwards. His laughter stiffened into a mask of pain. Blood appeared on his mouth. He was completely surprised by the speed of Dad’s jab. The crowd gasped. The loudspeaker fell silent. For a moment the wind howled over our hungry heads. The blind old man fidgeted excitedly on his chair and broke the silence with a few strains from his ancient instrument.

‘The first blow has been struck!’ he said.

Then the Green Leopard mounted a ferocious attack of punches on Dad, swinging wildly, using his elbows, throwing crosses and hooks, shouting. Women in the crowd screamed. Dad disappeared under the fury of punches and was sent reeling into the crowd. The people pushed aside for him and as he got up a few hands propelled him back into the fray. One of the people who had pushed him was our landlord.

‘The first attack!’ cried the blind old man.

I hated him intensely.

‘Have you got another frog?’ I asked Ade.

‘No. But I’ve got this.’

He brought out a catapult. I snatched it from him, found a little stone, loaded the catapult, and fired a shot at the blind old man’s face. I hit his red hat instead. Someone conked me. The old man squealed. The crowd gasped again. Dad had been sent flying with a barrage of crude, heavy-handed blows. The thugs helped him up and, smirking, shoved him back into the fight.

‘Successful attack number two!’ the blind old man announced, and hid his face.

I searched for another stone. Someone snatched the catapult from me. The crowd yelled. I saw Green Leopard staggering backwards. Dad pounced on him and unleashed a cascade, an avalanche of punches so fast his hands seemed like a machine. Dad’s speed was marvellous, his hands were a blur, and the Green Leopard was sent sprawlingon his buttocks. His followers started to move. But Green Leopard picked himself up. The blind old man winced in his chair.

‘Finish him off!’ I cried.

My voice disappeared in the noise and murmurings of the spectators. Dad waited for his opponent to get up. He began to dance, to perform his fancy footwork. He skipped, he even pranced a little. He looked very defined. His power had all of a sudden grown. His skin shone. And there was a look on his face I had never seen before. It was the look of a man at home with the great hinterlands and energies of his spirit. There was no fear on his face. He seemed both serene and insane at the same time.

‘No weight! No weight!’ he cried. ‘But I am the Black Tyger of this forest.’

Green Leopard rushed him. But Dad wasn’t there. So deftly had he jumped out of harm’s way. He stood behind Green Leopard. He waited for the famed terroriser to turn round. Green Leopard was confused. He looked for Dad and couldn’t seem to find him. When he turned round his face was all squashed and swollen, beaten out of shape like a tin car in a bad accident, his eyes narrow, blood streaming from an ugly cut at the corner of his nose. It seemed as if Dad’s fists were made of something more unpleasant than metal. When Green Leopard turned, blinded by his swellings, Dad struck him again. And again. Then proceeded to unravel a combination of hooks, upper cuts, right and left crosses, and body punches, so savage and methodical that the crowd was breathless with amazement at the sheer nerve of the smaller man. Green Leopard looked dazed, bewildered, trapped in the higher mathematics of a thorough beating. Dad, with all of his might, smashed him on the nose. Then ended with a roundhouse punch to the ear. But the Green Leopard refused to fall.

Then suddenly the blind old man let out the strangest laughter that ever proceeded from the mouth of a living human being. Dad stopped. And turned. The blind man grinned.

‘Don’t look!’ I cried.

It was too late. Green Leopard caught Dad with a punch of such malevolent power that I heard bones snap in his neck, I heard the base of his skull protest, and felt his entire world-view undergo several revolutions. Dad was sent flyingand went crashing into the blind old man. The old man and Dad disappeared into the bodies and the feet of spectators. Green Leopard rushedhim,lashingoutatthespectatorsinhisway.He suddenly became uncontrollably mad. He threw people about. He tossed women and children out of his path. He unloaded vicious hooks at shadows and faces. He spat blood on people and cursed and grabbed the blind old man and hurled him into the scattering crowd as if he were a mere dummy. He grabbed the wheelchair, and brutally smashed it to the floor, then he caught Dad by the neck, jerked him up, and proceeded to trounce him with maniacal viciousness. There was wailing and pandemonium everywhere. The fight had lost its rules. It had gone crazy. Green Leopard had swung off into an orbit of purest insanity. He raged, pounding Dad’s body, as if his brain had become flooded with the ecstatic liquids of tyranny. He finished his barbaric attack with a punch to the stomach that should have indented it for ever and again Dad disappeared into the crowd. When he reappeared I couldn’t recognise him. His face was swollen beyond description, bloodied, mashed, and pulped; his nose was cut; blood spurted from underneath an eye; a cut had widened on his forehead; and his mouth was so monstrous it resembled an obscene fruit. Blindly, he flailed about in the crowd, his arms everywhere, his legs wobbly. He kept staggering, but he didn’t fall.

‘Dad!’ I screamed with all the power of my lungs.

He stopped, turned, looked around with eyes that couldn’t seem to focus. Then he vanished. I thought he had fallen. I ran there. The crowd had swarmed the place I had last seen him. We looked for him among the feet of people, among the fallen. He wasn’t anywhere. Green Leopard stood in the middle of the ring, his arms outstretched as if hehad won animportantchampionship fight,hisfacepouringwith blood and a mess of gore.

‘Where is the man with no weight?’ he asked.

The crowd replied:

‘He has run away!’