A boxer is running through the city. He heads down a street with tall buildings on either side, darts between parked cars, runs diagonally across a junction, down a bike path, crosses a bridge and follows the curve of the tram tracks. Anyone passing would think he was in training. But he’s running faster than usual. His breathing is out of control. His eyes are wide.
His boxing boots fly silently over the pavement. Fragments of sentences echo around his head, accompanied by the ringing of a bell. Disconnected words thud against his eardrums, buzzing sounds, distorted, far away. Then suddenly they become clear.
Stop.
He lands a punch.
Stop that!
He lands another punch. Again he hears a bell, sharper and louder than before. Stop, someone screams. He feels a hand on his shoulder, fends it off with a jab of his elbow. He throws a left hook, hits the man square in the face and turns back to his opponent.
Stop that! he hears again. He lands another punch, and another, and another.
He crosses a busy main road and runs into a park. He comes to a patch of grass with a bronze statue in the centre, a woman holding a child in the air as though she wants to entrust it to the clouds.
The boxer slows, panting, and looks at the statue. He sits down on a bench. The bushes and trees stand motionless between him and the street with the tramlines. Dark grey clouds slide past behind the trees. There are no birds, not even pigeons.
He feels fine drops of rain on his face. The leaves on the trees move gently in the breeze. A man in a denim jacket is standing on the other side of the park, beneath the awning of the cigar shop on the corner. He’s looking in the boxer’s direction. Another man comes out of the shop, lights a cigarette, and says something to the man in the denim jacket, who replies without taking his eyes off the boxer. The smoke dissolves in the air. The boxer looks down at his legs and at the wood of the bench, as it slowly darkens in the rain.
He hears footsteps. For a moment, he seems resigned to his fate. He waits for a deep voice to say something, to speak his name, to pin him to the bench. When it comes, the tone isn’t what he expected: Hey, you’re Danny Clare, aren’t you?
The man walks over and stands in front of him, turns up the collar of his denim jacket. The other man stops behind his friend, off to one side. With no expression on his face, the boxer looks at the two men.
You are him though, aren’t you? The boxer?
Danny gets up.
We saw you, says the man in the denim jacket. He tugs at his collar again, trying to shield his neck from the rain.
Against that big blond guy, it was. The Hungarian.
The other man corrects him: Bulgarian.
Danny doesn’t react. He just clasps his hands.
Good fight, that was.
The cigarette falls to the wet gravel and the man crushes it with his foot. The two men smile at the boxer. The man in the denim jacket says something else, but his voice fades away and Danny looks down at the cigarette butt, which is still smouldering, and then at his feet. Now he can hear words from his conversation with Pavel, at the boxing school. And there’s that click in his head again, when it all fell into place, and the click that came afterwards when everything around him imploded and went black.
I don’t know what you’re talking about, he says. He runs to the park exit, leaving the men and the statue behind. He goes through the gate, crosses the tramlines and races along the brick wall and around the corner. Finally, he reaches a busy dual carriageway, with an endless stream of cars flowing out of the city. That’s the road he wants. The rain sweeps against his face. He runs past a supermarket and sees a black kid pushing a line of shopping trolleys inside. He passes beneath a viaduct with drops of rainwater clinging to its solid metal girders. Reflections of the posters on the walls ripple dimly in the puddles. He stops in the shelter of a tree by a big roundabout. On his right, a railway line hangs high above the street. He sees the station just beyond the roundabout. A long train is pulling in, its wheels screeching. The boxer puts his hands in his pockets. His keys, his loose change, his mobile – it’s all still in the changing room at the boxing school.
The traffic spins around the roundabout and fans out along the roads leading to and from the city. He takes the road to the motorway. He crosses over, walks through the long grass in the centre of the roundabout, waits for a gap in the traffic, crosses again, stands by the roadside and raises his thumb. A car soon stops for him. There’s an old man at the wheel. I can take you a few kilometres down the motorway, he says.
The boxer nods and gets in.
I’ll drop you off at the petrol station. You’ll be able to get another ride from there, no problem.
The man accelerates gently, navigates a few bends and heads onto the motorway. Opera plays on the radio. The voice pierces through the noise of the engine. When Danny looks at the radio, the man turns the knob and the music becomes louder. The voice grates on his nerves. They sit in silence for a few minutes. Then the man takes the exit for the petrol station. When they reach the pumps, Danny thanks him and steps out of the car into the smell of petrol.
You’re welcome, says the man.
Danny slams the car door.
*
He walks over to the verge just beyond the canopy of the petrol station. The rain is coming down harder now. His hair is plastered to his forehead and his T-shirt is sticking to his chest. Cars race past, just patches of colour on the other side of the crash barrier, all heading in the direction he wants to go. Half-heartedly, without looking at the drivers, he holds up his thumb at every car that drives back onto the motorway with a full tank.
He sees a big estate car. A family car. Automatically, he raises his thumb again. When the car stops, it’s a moment before he realizes he can now walk over to the open door and ask the question he needs to ask. He reaches the car and leans over, but not too far. The roof hides his eyes from the driver.
Where do you want to go? A hurried voice.
He straightens up, glances over his shoulder. The rain beats down on the roof and the windscreen wipers squeak. He shows his face to the driver and says: I’m heading that way.
He points down the motorway, just as the wind picks up and the rain starts rattling on the bonnet. The man tells him to get in, says he shouldn’t be standing out there in the rain.
Beyond the canopy of the petrol station, he sees silhouettes of buildings huddled together in the distance, where the cars are coming from, where he came from. A few office blocks rise up above a serrated horizon. For a moment, he thinks about saying goodbye to that image, even though it means nothing to him. He stares at the silhouette of the city. Then he climbs into the car and shuts the door. There are scraps of paper on the floor, sweet wrappers. A plastic bottle without a top. The car moves onto the slip road, lets another car overtake and moves into the right-hand lane. Danny asks the driver if he minds his upholstery getting wet.
Not a problem. Just be glad you’re inside and dry, the driver says. Danny looks at him and tries to smile. The man is blinking, a tic.
The driver’s older than him. Maybe mid-forties. And he’s a lot smaller, with narrow shoulders and pale, thin arms. He’s wearing white trousers and a white polo shirt and Danny can see the beginnings of a paunch.
You been there long?
He doesn’t know. Could have been a couple of minutes, could have been quarter of an hour. He spots a digital clock between the speedometer and some other dial with a needle. Not too long, he says. The two dots between the digits blink and he realizes that, even though the man is asking him questions, the answers don’t really matter. The numbers on the clock change. He stares at them until they change again. Then his gaze falls on a frame stuck to the dashboard. There’s a photo in it. A woman with long, straight hair. Two children standing in front of her, a boy and a girl. The woman’s hand rests on the girl’s shoulder.
He turns away, swears at the window and says her name, his breath steaming up the glass. Damn it, Ragna. It’s as though she’s sitting in the back seat and he’s whispering to her.
The car passes beneath a flyover and for a moment the window darkens and he’s looking at his reflection. He turns his head again. As the car drives back into the grey light, he stares at the bonnet, at the white line stretching ahead of the car, shakily trying to maintain its course, scratching away at his thoughts.
They overtake a lorry. Splashing circles of rainwater spray out around its huge wheels. The driver has a roll-up in his hand. He looks down at Danny. At his wet clothes, his hair. His face. They accelerate and Danny watches the lorry growing smaller in the wing mirror. When it’s disappeared, he leans against the window. He shivers.
Need a towel?
I’m almost dry.
There’s one in that bag behind you.
On the back seat are a few carrier bags, a sports holdall, a rucksack and a big red grocery bag lying on its side. He notices a wholemeal loaf, a packet of biscuits, a bottle of mineral water. In that green one, says the man. Danny pulls over the sports bag, unzips it and takes out a towel. He dries his hair, presses his face into the towel. It smells of fabric softener. He hangs the towel over the back of his seat and leans against it.
The driver says: Better now?
He’s not very comfortable, but he nods.
Could you put your seatbelt on?
What?
Would you put your seatbelt on?
Danny pulls the belt and clicks it shut. His cold T-shirt is sticking to his body. Something is pressing into his lower back. Something hard and pointed. He doesn’t move.
The motorway is wide, three lanes and a hard shoulder. They cruise along in the middle lane for a while. The driver occasionally glances over at him.
I often pick up hitchhikers.
Danny remains silent.
Not many people stop for hitchers nowadays, but I do. The driver coughs. I’m just interested. To hear what they have to say.
Danny looks at the driver, who continues: It doesn’t matter whether they’re in the car for a few hours or just a few minutes, they all tell me something. About their work. About home, relationships, pets. All kinds of things. Their lives, the stuff they get up to. And sometimes it’s not the nicest stuff. I mean, it’s not that nice to listen to.
Who says I’m going to tell you anything?
The man blinks and smiles.
*
He switched off the fluorescent lights, walked down the corridor to the changing room, sat on the bench in his usual spot and pulled a towel around his shoulders. He was still panting. He bit through the tape on his right wrist, clasped the end of the bandage between his teeth, pulled it loose and freed his other hand. The bandages spooled onto the tiled floor between his feet. He stood up, walked over to the sink, turned on the tap and drank. Then he cupped his hands, filled them with water, washed his face and splashed water onto his hair and neck.
Danny?
Richard Rosenberger’s face appeared around the door. A bunch of keys dangled against his thigh. His hair was swept back.
Hey, Rich.
The others all gone home?
Well?
Danny nodded. Looking good. He sat back down and undid his laces.
I only saw the first fifteen minutes.
Against that black guy?
Yeah.
He’s lighter.
Not much.
But then he’s taller.
Yeah, a bit. My dad always said you shouldn’t pay attention to that sort of thing. Height. And it’s only the scales that should be paying any attention to your weight. That’s what he always said.
When’s your brother get back?
You missing him?
He’s good to train with.
He’ll be back in a week.
Neither of the men spoke for a while.
You ever seen that Bulgarian fight? Danny asked, breaking the silence.
Once, in Germany. That’s where he trains. At Azzopardi’s.
Danny nodded. Rich sat down on the bench opposite him, resting his elbows on his knees.
The time I saw him he was fighting a Russian. I was with my dad. One of the last fights he saw. The Russian guy had won twenty-one fights in a row – and then he came up against Hristov.
Okay, said Danny. He took off his boots and wiggled his toes.
What about tonight? The other guy no good?
He’s got more power than that black guy, but he’s slow. Spent too much time standing still.
Hristov’s slow too.
Not that slow.
No, not that slow, Richard agreed. He stood up, ran his hands through his hair and said: Just stay cool.
That’s what your dad always said.
Yeah, why do you think I took over this place?
*
There’s a red van in front of them with PVC pipes on its roof. All he can see in the wing mirror is wet tarmac and a few cars. Then a flash of colour on the floor, orange and yellow, a couple of letters. An A and a G. The wet floor. A bare leg lying in a puddle in the corner. The lights above him reflected on either side of the leg like small yellow globes.
Where do you want to go?
He nods at the windscreen and says: That way.
That way?
Yes.
The driver looks over at him.
I need to know where to drop you off.
I’ll get out whenever you want me to.
The man leans forward a little, blinks a few times, and says: I won’t be stopping any time soon.
He steers into the left-hand lane, grips the steering wheel and accelerates. I’m just going to keep on driving for a while yet.
That tic again. Everything is still, except for his eyes.
You mean you’re going to drive through the night?
Yes, if I can. The driver blinks a few more times. Then he says: I get the feeling you’d rather not say where you’re going, but you’re in my car, so you might at least tell me what’s up.
A sign beside the motorway indicates an exit just over a kilometre away.
You can drop me off there.
They drive past the sign. The exit looms in the distance.
There?
Yes.
That’s where you want to get out?
Danny rests his large hands on his thighs and hangs his head. His breath quickens. He closes his eyes and everything goes dark. For a moment, all he can feel is the hum of the car and the beating of his heart. The two rhythms slowly synchronize. The sound and direction of the car remain the same. When he opens his eyes, they’re passing the sign with the white arrow and he sees the rain pelting against it. The turning and the white line curve away from them.
Hey, let me know when you really want to get out.
Thanks, he whispers.
The car’s speeding up now, the blinking becomes faster too, and the boxer looks at his forearms, at the bulging veins. He stares over the top of the wing mirror. Square buildings line the motorway, huge toy blocks in the watery landscape. He sees a showroom with a gleaming new car in the window, like a trophy in a display cabinet. They stay in the right-hand lane for a long time. Now and then, the wheels brush the solid white line and the high-pitched sound that buzzes through the car reminds him that they really are moving. They’re heading somewhere else.
*
The windscreen wipers swish backwards and forwards. Road signs appear within the glass rectangle as it is wiped clean over and over again. They approach Utrecht, leave it behind. A fat black fly buzzes against the window behind him. It twitches nervously along the rubber strip. They overtake a line of cars. Each of the back seats is occupied by a gaggle of young boys, about ten years old. Some of them are wearing football shirts. Yellow shirts with black stripes. There’s a boy in a goalkeeper’s shirt in the front car. As they go past, he pushes two big goalie gloves up against the window, waggles his head between the gloves and pokes his tongue out.
The driver rests his hands on the steering wheel. Is your T-shirt dry yet?
Yes.
There’s a dry one in that big bag behind you. You can wear that if you like.
I’m almost dry.
The man reaches out to feel the sleeve of his T-shirt.
You’ll catch cold.
Danny shifts in his seat. Something’s poking into him again. He shifts forward, reaches behind him and pulls a blue toy car from the crack of the seat.
My son’s, says the driver. It’s got opening doors.
It’s an Alfa Romeo 1300. Danny turns it over. Through the tiny window, he can make out a plastic steering wheel and seats. The car has a tow bar and a number plate. It even has suspension. Front and rear. The blue paint’s worn off in places, down to the grey of the metal beneath. He pulls open the driver’s door with his fingernail. Then closes it again.
Pretty cool, eh?
Danny opens the door on the driver’s side again. Then he flicks open the passenger door. I used to have an Alfa, he says.
Like that one?
No, but it was still an Alfa.
Silence. Then the driver says: My name’s Robert.
The boxer looks at the man out of the corner of his eye. Robert, he echoes, closing the toy car’s doors with a click.
What about you?
Daniel. But everyone calls me Danny.
Danny.
Robert takes his right hand off the steering wheel. It looks as though he’s about to shake Danny’s hand, but he doesn’t. He puts his hand back on the wheel, leans forward and studies Danny. Then he looks back at the tarmac. I’m in insurance.
Danny nods.
What about you? What do you do?
Danny puts the Alfa on the dashboard. The toy car rolls from one side to the other, gets stuck on a bump, goes into reverse, bounces back and hits the bump again. He says: I’m a boxer.
A boxer?
Yes.
He hesitates, then says: I just fought my last fight.
Are you well known?
Yes.
What’s your surname?
Clare. Danny Clare.
Robert looks at him. Yeah, now that you mention it. You say you’ve just had your last fight?
Yes.
Well? Did you win?
He sees Ragna’s face again. Her eyes are closed and her hair is spread out over the pillow. The white moonlight is shining through the roof window, illuminating one of the corners of the pillow. He looks away and takes hold of the soft fabric of his trousers, squeezing it between his thumb and index finger.
Yes, I won, he says.
Robert doesn’t ask him any more questions. A bird flies low over the meadows, its shadow gliding beneath it like a dark patch on the wet grass. Danny winds down the window, rests his elbow on the door and feels the fresh wind on his face and his arm.
*
He began training at seven o’clock. At that hour, there were only a few lads at the Rosenbergers’ boxing school, working with their stocky Turkish trainer. Richard said he’d once been the Turkish army welterweight champion. He’d been living in Amsterdam for ten years and he certainly wasn’t a welterweight any more.
Danny stood in his usual corner, beneath the steamed-up windows. The boys worked through their programme. Every time the bell went and they took a breather, they looked over at Danny. When the bell rang for the next five minutes, they carried on training. Danny warmed up with some stretches, followed by a few strength exercises on the mat.
Then Ron arrived. He and his brother Richard were almost like two peas in a pod. The only difference was that Ron was completely bald – and he’d once been a boxer himself and had broken his nose at some point. He was bigger than Danny and must have outweighed him by twenty kilos. Danny said hello to them and when Ron had got changed into his training gear he helped Danny put on his gloves. Ron took the boxing pads out of the cupboard. The junior boxers had all gone home by then and the seniors were trickling into the room one by one. Ron set the clock and they worked through a few jabs and combinations. They trained for over seventy-five minutes. Danny held back because the other boxers were all amateurs. He gave them the occasional pointer. He sparred with a guy from Russia who’d trained at boxing schools in Tula and Kiev, and who didn’t say a word, just smiled whenever Danny explained something to him. Towards the end of each interval, Ron stepped things up, clapping to set the tempo and to encourage the boxers to keep it up until the bell rang. Ron’s T-shirt was damp and his bald head was beaded with sweat.
Danny went off for a shower after the training session and then headed to the canteen. One of the younger boxers was sitting there with a bowl of water in front of him. He was a tough-looking Surinamese lad with drowsy eyes and he was wearing a padded jacket with a huge hood. Ron came out from behind the bar with a plastic mouth guard in his hand. He dropped it into the warm water. His first gum shield, he said to Danny.
When’s your fight?
Two weeks, said the boy.
His first match, said Ron. He squeezed the mouth guard to see if it was soft enough. Then he shook the water off it and told the boy it wasn’t going to hurt.
The boy nodded. Ron told him to open his mouth and said: If it fits okay, just bite down on it.
He held the back of the boy’s head with one hand, pushed his head against his hip, and pressed the mouth guard onto the boy’s top row of teeth with his other hand. The boy closed his eyes and put a brave face on it.
Don’t worry. You’re in the hands of an expert, Danny said.
The boy just groaned.
Bite down on it for a while, make sure it fits properly.
Ron left the boy sitting there while he went to the bar. He poured himself a coffee and then took a carton of fruit juice out of the fridge for Danny and poured him a glass. Danny downed the juice in three gulps. Ron topped him up.
That long enough? the boy grunted.
You have to keep it in all night, said Ron. Oh yeah, and all the way through Christmas dinner too.
The boy laughed. He carefully removed the guard and studied the imprint of his teeth. Then he thanked Ron and left him alone with Danny.
Ron poured out a bowl of peanuts and joined Danny at the bar.
Right, mate, he said. If you fight like that, he’ll be down within three rounds.
Ron stuffed a handful of peanuts into his mouth.
I heard someone else was scheduled to fight him.
That’s right.
What happened? Did he drop out?
Don’t know. Rich sorted it.
Danny took a swig of juice, put the glass down on the bar and looked out at the sky through the tall windows. The clouds were grey.
Do you know why Aaron’s not boxing?
No idea.
When I heard there was a fight coming up with the Bulgarian guy, I thought he’d be doing it.
Don’t ask me, Ron said with a shrug.
Aaron’s a good boxer and he’s younger than me. I thought he’d fight. Or that other guy. What’s his name? The one who always wears those red shorts.
Sando?
He’s in my weight class too.
You seen him recently?
No. Has he stopped coming?
I don’t know.
Is he back inside again?
No, it’s not that. Rich bumped into him somewhere or other not long ago. He was off to another of those salsa parties of his.
Salsa?
Haven’t you heard? He goes to these salsa parties. To pick up women.
He’s never told you? said Ron. He goes along to the parties, but it’s certainly not for the salsa. It’s just for the birds. They all want to shag him.
What? Sando? Sando from here?
You really didn’t know? They pick him up and they take him home. And they actually pay him for the pleasure.
What? They pay him for sex?
Yeah. Rich said he was all done up like a dog’s dinner. Because he’d had such a good night the last time. Know how much they pay? You’ll never guess. A hundred a go. He made four hundred in one night the last time. With the same woman. Then another hundred in the morning. Says he’s at it like a bloody rabbit.
Bunch of madwomen, said Danny.
Rabbits, the lot of them, Ron said. He looked at Danny and grinned. Hey, I can see the cogs turning. If that tosser gets a hundred a go, reckon I could ask two hundred.
More like three.
Ron smiled and said: All I know is they wanted you to fight the Bulgarian.
Danny shifted on his barstool.
You ever done any work for him?
Who? Gerard Varon? Ron cupped his hands around his coffee. Training sessions, he said. Only after Dad was gone though. He wasn’t that keen on him.
They say he takes good care of his people.
You’d have to ask my brother about that, Ron replied. He knows about that sort of thing. All I know is I’ve never had any problems with him. Can’t say the same about Dad though. He always called Varon a dirty old man, but that’s what he called everyone who wasn’t wearing training gear.
Danny slid down from his stool and stood there, looking at Ron. I seem to remember seeing your dad in a suit from time to time. With a tie and everything.
Yeah? Well, that must have been when he was off to visit the queen.
*
They’re driving along a concrete section of the motorway, the car thudding over the ridges between the slabs. The blue Alfa 1300 rolls from one side of the dashboard to the other. Danny picks it up, spins the wheels, tests the suspension and plays with the doors. Robert says: Did I tell you where I’m going?
No.
Spain. Pamplona. His voice is lower now. To the bull running. Ever heard of it?
Of course, Danny lies.
But you’ve never been to Pamplona?
No.
Then you can’t possibly understand it.
A long silence. They drive past fields that are crisscrossed by straight drainage ditches. Danny sees a row of willows leaning over a ditch, their roots in the water.
He rolls the toy car across his palm. He slides over to the window and says: So you’re going to Pamplona?
Yeah, for the twelfth year. It starts tomorrow morning. I’m going to run with the bulls.
Robert holds his breath and his chest swells out over his belly. He coughs. Between the blinks, Danny sees a sparkle in Robert’s eyes, like a little boy who’s about to do something naughty.
Tomorrow morning, I’m going to come face to face with a bunch of bulls, Robert continues. He taps the steering wheel. I’ll be standing there on one of those streets in Pamplona, in my white shirt, together with all those other people in their white shirts. Then they let the bulls out and you’d better start running.
Running? Danny asks. It’s hard for him to find a neutral tone, but he manages.
Robert nods. Yeah, as fast as you can and as far you can. He blinks. Down those narrow streets, in your white shirt and white trousers. With a red handkerchief around your neck. Which is also somewhere in one of those bags.
A thought flickers at the back of Danny’s mind. He grips the Alfa tightly. One of the wheels pricks his skin. He says: You actually let a herd of bulls chase you?
Yes. Six massive bulls, each of them over five hundred kilos. He points at the car in front of them. See that car? One single bull is more powerful than that. So imagine six of them coming for you.
Robert waits for the cars in the left-hand lane to pass the Volkswagen. Then he overtakes too. The motorway curves uphill.
Danny pulls at the seatbelt and lets it spring back into place.
So why exactly are you going there?
What?
Why are you going all the way to Pamplona to let a bunch of bulls chase you?
Yeah, I know. You’re probably thinking: What the hell’s he doing? A man like him, driving all the way through France and down to Spain, just for that. You wouldn’t be the first to wonder. Plenty of people think I’ve got a screw loose. But I still go. Every single year.
He looks in his wing mirror and overtakes a lorry, an old Scania with a long bonnet. He chuckles to himself.
So do you do it for the kick?
Danny puts his hand on the window winder.
Try to imagine, Robert says, what it feels like when they release the bulls. The noise is incredible. Your whole body’s shaking. It’s like your heart’s racing but standing still at the same time. And then, when the people around you start moving and you know the bulls are coming, it just gets worse and worse. You hear the bulls coming closer. You feel the ground shaking beneath your feet. And when you see that first bull and it’s time to run, everyone starts screaming. You can’t even think. All you can do is run as fast as your legs will carry you.
Robert tilts his head back and stares up at the roof of the car. Then he glances over at Danny, gives him an awkward wink and looks back at the road.
Danny clenches his teeth and looks in the wing mirror, at the grey clouds. A thin strip of blue sky is appearing at the top of the windscreen.
They’ve been doing it for over four hundred years. Can you think of anything we’ve been doing for that long in the Netherlands? Except maybe for boxing.
The two men look at each other for a moment.
It’s a tradition, Robert continues. It’s a celebration. It’s danger. It’s real life.
But why would you want to do something like that?
Why would I want to do something like that? Robert laughs. He pauses before continuing: I have a family and a house and a nine-to-five job, he says. Five days a week, all year round. Except for that one week in Pamplona.
So Pamplona’s your escape?
It’s more than an escape, Robert replies. And it’s not just about the kick. You’ve got to have your own reason for running with the bulls. I once spoke to this man in Pamplona, a Spanish guy, who said he went every year. He was wearing this long white robe thing, so I asked him why he was going around in a dress. It wasn’t a dress, he said. It was a penitential robe. And Pamplona was his pilgrimage. He went there to wash away his sins.
And is that what it is for you? A pilgrimage?
Robert hesitates. I don’t know, but there’s something true in what he said. I work all year for my family, but half the time I don’t even know why I’m doing it. You get what I’m saying? Let’s just say I’m not the easiest of people. Bit of a naughty boy sometimes, if you know what I mean. And, somehow, Pamplona helps. When you’re standing there and those bulls are coming for you, you forget everything else. You don’t even need to be wearing a dress.
You could just join a monastery.
But these Spanish guys, their religion is on the streets. At least that’s the way it was for that one man I met. He doesn’t need to crawl through Spain on his knees the way people used to. He just goes to the fiesta once a year. It’s like an express pilgrimage: three minutes of running have the same result as months of crawling. You get it?
Robert’s driving faster now. The car’s flying down the motorway. Danny sees the meadows whizzing by and the trees flicking past and realizes that he really has left it all behind. The car is pushing ahead and, all around him, everything is rolling and moving. He swears to himself. Crawling, he thinks, down on your knees.
And that’s what it’s all about, says Robert. But you have to experience it for yourself. When you’re running through those streets and the bulls are coming after you, that’s when you really feel it. You run because you’ll die if you don’t. I’m telling you, that’ll clear your mind in an instant.
Danny doesn’t move. He listens to the hum of the tyres. In his mind, he can see the bulls coming, all six of them, hurtling down a narrow street. They advance on him as a single unit, a snorting, steaming herd, their hoofs stamping on the cobbles. The horns coming closer and closer. Pamplona, he thinks. He feels the name in his mouth and repeats it a few times, the echo reverberating around his head, like a sigh in three parts.
Pam-plo-na.
He spins the Alfa’s rear wheels and says: How far is it to Pamplona?
*
Robert weighs up his words as he answers. It’s in the north of Spain, he says, just over the French border. If I keep on driving and don’t stop for too long, I’ll get there early tomorrow morning.
They’re at the highest point of the bridge now, which has no water underneath it, just another motorway. A few cars and a minibus disappear under the flyover. They descend slowly and see the landscape after the bridge lying flat and green beneath a grey sky.
Do you want to come with me?
That was what he was waiting for. He looks at Robert. He really wants to say yes, right away, but he holds back and manages to say nothing. He keeps quiet and he waits, as you sometimes have to when you want to get results. He slowly opens and closes the Alfa’s passenger door, open, closed, open, closed.
Robert says: For a man who doesn’t have a specific place in mind, Pamplona is a great destination. Maybe the best destination of all.
Yeah, maybe.
You’re welcome to come. If you like.
Pamplona, Danny thinks, flicking the door shut.
If you’ve got the guts.
Robert takes his foot off the accelerator. Then he presses down again and lets the engine roar.
Danny snorts. It’s not about guts, he says.
Yeah, I’ve heard that one before.
I’ll come with you.
Good, says Robert. You’d better put on one of those T-shirts before you get pneumonia.
He points at the bag on the back seat.
Danny struggles out of his wet T-shirt. He slides his arms from the sleeves and drapes the T-shirt over one of the bags. Then he takes a white T-shirt from another bag and puts it on. It’s too small for him. The material feels tight around his chest and his upper arms.
Tomorrow we’ll be bull runners, says Robert.
Danny nods. He toys with the car door again, pulls it open. There’s a snap and he feels the door give way. It comes off and drops onto his lap. He glances over at Robert, who is staring at the car in front. Danny picks up the door and slides it inside the toy car, which he then hides in the glove compartment.
After a while, Robert says: I saw that.
It was an accident.
I know.
Danny doesn’t respond. He looks at the boy in the photo and hears Robert say: Don’t worry about it. These things happen.
Danny looks at the motorway and clenches his jaw; his head feels heavy and a nerve is twitching in his temples. The snap of the door coming off the little Alfa echoes around his head, along with the sound of his fists pounding the body lying before him, limp and twisted. Hitting the spleen, the liver, again and again, swinging back and hitting again. Now the stomach.
The lanes of the motorway are wedged between concrete noise barriers, which are the same grey as the tops of the buildings rising above them. Robert tells him that the start of the route that the bulls will run tomorrow morning looks just like this, but much narrower, and with no tarmac, of course, and no greenery. An alleyway between high, windowless walls, with cobbles underfoot that are slippery with rain or early-morning dew. Danny stares at the concrete and feels the bulls coming again. After the noise barrier, there’s a village. A few houses line the road beyond. Then the landscape is empty for a long time. Danny’s head empties too and he feels a little calmer.
Pamplona. He has a goal and someone to take him there. He is on his way. There’s nothing to see in the wing mirror now, just the hard shoulder, the crash barrier and the green of the fields.
It’s stopped raining. The windscreen wipers are still. They’re approaching another bridge. The road is suspended on two enormous white metal arches, with a river flowing beneath, calm and wide. They cross the river and the landscape changes, becoming even more bare, with just the occasional house or a farm with a few outbuildings. They pass a local bus with dirty windows. The driver’s the only person on the bus. Robert speeds up, moves into the left-hand lane and overtakes a car. As they drive past, Danny sees a big black dog jump up against the back window. It rests its front paws on the window and barks silently. White slobber flies from the corners of its mouth and drips down the glass. The old man at the wheel keeps his eyes on the road ahead.
The photo on the dashboard glints in the light. Danny leans forward to look at their faces. The little boy’s smile is forced and the girl and the woman are scowling into the lens. A word is printed on the plastic of the dashboard just beneath the photograph: AIRBAG. There’s a Volkswagen in front of them. The VW logo on the back of the car is getting closer. Airbag, he thinks. Again, he tries to imagine the dangers of Pamplona. He tries to picture himself facing the bulls. And suddenly he sees how everything in the car is designed to take Robert safely to Pamplona. And back home again.
*
Music was blaring out of the speakers. As he walked past, he turned his head to escape the noise, but even when he reached the corridor to the changing room the din was still thudding away in his temples. The air was ringing, his ears were ringing. Ron walked beside him. He had slung his nylon hooded gown and towel over his arm and was carrying a sponge bucket and a drinking bottle. He held out the bottle to Danny.
In a minute.
They went around the corner and into the changing room, where Richard was leaning against the wall. Well done, mate, he said.
Danny sat down on the bench.
Four rounds, said Ron, repeating it a couple of times. He put the bucket on the floor and the bottle on the bench, dropped the gown and towel beside it and clapped his hands a few times. Then he started pacing across the changing room from the bench to the door and back.
Four rounds, he said again. He went over to Danny and started to unwrap his hands. His right eyebrow was cut. They’d used something to seal the wound between the second and third rounds, but it had bled pretty badly and he had blood on his gloves, his chest and his shorts. Ron wet the sponge, wrung it out over the bucket and wiped Danny’s face. It made the wound sting.
You got any more of that stuff?
Richard shook his head. You’d better get some stitches put in that.
Now?
I’ll go and fetch someone who can do it for you, Richard said. He got up and went back to the sports hall.
Danny stood up. His legs had felt heavier after other fights.
You could go another four rounds right now, easy, said Ron, unlacing Danny’s boots.
Leave it, said Danny. He sat down against the wall and breathed in deeply.
Someone knocked on the open door. A man in a wheelchair appeared in the doorway. Ron looked up and said: Mr Varon.
Rosenberger Junior.
Everything okay?
Couldn’t be better, said the man. Ron walked over to him and they shook hands.
Come on in, said Ron. Congratulations.
The man looked at Danny and said: Yeah, I think congratulations are in order.
He rolled into the changing room, headed straight for Danny, shook his hand and said: Gerard Varon.
The man in the wheelchair had to look up at the other two men, but he was still a formidable presence. It was me who organized all this, he said.
Ron came and stood beside Danny.
That brother of yours wasn’t exaggerating.
Ron said: We know what our boys are capable of.
True enough, said Gerard Varon. And so did your dad. Good old Rosenberger.
He was still looking at Danny. They were sitting opposite each other: Danny on the bench, the man in his wheelchair.
I used to have a lot of lads from Rosenberger’s. But there weren’t many like you.
No, said Ron.
That Bulgarian was no pushover.
He didn’t have a cat in hell’s chance.
Maybe he was tired from the journey. He only got here yesterday.
Our Danny’s still good for another few rounds, said Ron.
Danny listened to their conversation. His heart was thumping. It was thumping harder now than during the fight. He looked at the man, at his grey hair and his coat and the shirt he was wearing underneath it. The collar was long and pointed. Two white patent-leather shoes sat on the wheelchair’s metal shelf.
I heard this was your twenty-ninth fight.
That’s right.
He’s modest, our Danny, said Ron.
But most of them had an early finish.
He doesn’t like doing things by halves.
Or are you not keen on counting points?
You could say that, said Danny.
Someone tapped on the door. It was a metallic sound, maybe a ring. A woman with long black hair appeared in the doorway. She looked Asian, Thai perhaps, or Filipino.
Here you are, she said. Her skin was dark, like copper. The make-up around her eyes accentuated them. Green eye shadow.
Gerard turned briefly to look at her and beckoned her in. Then he looked back at Danny and Ron.
This is Ragna, he said. She works for me.
Danny watched her as she came into the changing room. She had long legs and was wearing calf-length trousers. She appeared not to walk but to glide across the floor. When she reached the wheelchair, she stopped. She didn’t shake hands. A bag hung over her shoulder and both of her hands stayed firmly on the bag.
Hello, Ron mumbled. Danny did the same.
Ragna’s impressed, said Varon. And she knows what she’s talking about.
Danny lowered his head and breathed in. Then he sat up straight, pushing his shoulders back against the cold brick wall.
In fact, everyone’s impressed, the boxing promoter continued. He signalled to Ragna. She took a slim metal case from her bag, popped it open, slid a card out of it and handed it to the man, who passed it to Ron.
Will you give that to your brother? We should have a chat. Maybe we can work together again.
As the man spoke, he looked at Danny with tired eyes that had dark red veins running through the white.
Thanks, said Ron.
Get him to call me, eh?
I’ll pass on the message, Ron replied. Gerard gave him a tight smile. The woman had stepped away from the wheelchair and was running her fingers through her black hair. She was looking either at Danny or at the wall behind him. Her eyes were dark and shining.
I hope to hear from him soon.
The man shook hands with both of them, turned his wheelchair around and rolled himself to the door. As he passed the woman, he placed one hand on her back, and she allowed herself to be guided out into the corridor without saying a word. When they’d gone, Ron said: How about that? I thought he might have something for me.
Danny was breathing heavily.
Richard came back into the changing room. The doctor will be here soon, he said. He looked at his brother, who was waving the business card in the air. What have you got there?
They like the look of Danny, said Ron. He passed the card to his brother. He left this for you.
He was actually here?
Yes.
Varon himself?
Yeah.
Richard stroked his cheek with the card, rasping it against his stubble, and slowly said: Very good. Very good indeed.
Danny didn’t say anything.
Richard laughed. Very good, he repeated. And at least that guy pays.
He wants you to call him.
Yeah, very good indeed, said Richard, tucking the card into his pocket. I tell you, this is going to be a great year.
Just as well Dad’s not here to see it, Ron replied.
Yeah, Richard agreed. He sniffed and wiped his nose on the back of his hand. Then the future wouldn’t look quite so bright, eh?
Danny glanced over at the doorway, where her image was slowly fading.
*
Now that he knows his destination, his thoughts have calmed, appearing one after another as though in a slideshow. He sees the yellow and orange of the slippery floor as a blurred mosaic, liquid, sweat. People all around him. He straightens up. The crowd shrinks back and he takes one last look at the floor, sees an arm lying there, bent and motionless.
Robert lets a Renault overtake. Then he says: So, boxing. Is that much of an earner nowadays?
Depends who you’re boxing for.
No idea who you box for. I’m just asking if you can make a good living.
Good enough.
Do you need to have another job?
No.
Do you get paid per fight?
Per drop of sweat. Satisfied?
Robert’s gaze passes over Danny’s face, over his body, to the car’s bonnet. He hugs the steering wheel, pushes back into his seat. The only sound is his finger tapping on the wheel. Danny nods, the smallest of gestures.
Maybe bull running’s a bit like boxing, says Robert. But with a whole load of people against a bunch of mad bulls instead of just two men.
Danny shakes his head. Boxing’s completely different.
Yeah, sure. But I mean maybe the sensation in your body’s the same.
Danny doesn’t respond.
How many times have you fought?
About thirty.
Right. So you’ve been doing it a long time.
A good few years.
Robert overtakes a car. When they’re back in the right-hand lane, he says: Why did you stop?
What?
Why did you stop?
I just did, Danny manages to say. He swallows. He hears the sound of the people watching, so close by. A man shouting: Stop. A woman screaming something over and over, her voice so high it could shatter glass. Something falling to the floor with a thud, like a stone, and then bouncing up again before landing and splintering into hundreds of pieces with a smash as clear as the bell between rounds.
You won your last fight, did you?
That’s what I said.
I once heard that boxers always give up boxing after they’ve lost a fight.
Danny stares at the white line between the car and the crash barrier. He doesn’t respond.
They pass beneath a flyover and a shadow falls over their faces. When they plunge back into the light, Danny glances over at Robert’s twitching lashes. They pass a petrol station with a few cars and caravans in the car park behind the building. Danny tries to work out where they are. They’ve been driving for less than an hour, but he feels like he’s been in the car all day. He tries to picture Pamplona and the long drive ahead of them, but he has no mental image of the city. His thoughts keep returning to where he came from, to the chaos, to the lights, to the chrome chairs and the small tables, and the blind fury that seized him, fuelled by the sounds all around him. Now that fury is shivering up his spine again, to his neck, to his head. The fury was what made that fight different from all of his previous fights, when he kept his cool and watched and waited, just as he is forced now to wait in the car and to watch the motorway, to keep himself calm.
*
The fly buzzes high up against the back window. It hums and twitches its way along the window towards him, until it settles on the glass and Danny can get a closer look at it. Its head is big and bloated. It drops down and disappears behind his seat.
Mind if I put on some music?
It’s your car, says Danny, looking at the radio, at the buttons and the tuner.
Let’s see if we can find something decent, says Robert, pressing a button. The radio lights up, the speakers on the parcel shelf crackle. The sound of a guitar and a man singing, applause, cheers slowly becoming quieter and fading away. The music continues.
Haven’t heard this one for a long time, says Robert. Our first holiday. We played it the whole time.
The song finishes and a man starts talking. He’s rattling on about something he read in the newspaper. For a moment, Danny freezes in his seat. His left hand shoots out and hits the button. The man’s voice disappears.
Don’t you want the radio on?
Not that crap.
Well, you could have just said.
Robert slides his hands around the steering wheel, nodding his head up and down as though the music’s still playing.
That was a good one, says Robert. Now that the music’s stopped, he hums the tune to himself.
Danny coughs.
Want some water?
Yeah.
In that bag.
Danny takes the bottle of mineral water out of the grocery bag. Robert says he doesn’t have any glasses, so he unscrews the cap and drinks from the bottle. He has another swig, hands Robert the bottle, and then takes the bottle back, screws the cap on and puts the bottle between his feet.
Robert looks over the edge of the steering wheel and hums. He frowns. That was our first holiday, he says. With that music. And with our first car.
Danny isn’t listening. Ragna appears in the rear-view mirror. He retreats inside his head and struggles to make sense of what happened. He closes his eyes, sees her lying there on his bed. On a coloured sheet. She’s sleeping. The other side of the bed is empty.
The traffic in front of them is slowing down. Robert brakes, joins the vehicles in the right-hand lane, swears a couple of times. They slowly approach a lorry lying on its side in the verge. A red car is parked on the hard shoulder behind the lorry, its door open. A man stands directing the traffic into the left-hand lane. The sounds from outside filter through into the car. Someone shouting. As they get closer, Danny sees chickens all over the road. Hundreds of chickens are huddled together on the tarmac and there are wooden crates all around, with chickens inside. Another man is trying to chase the chickens onto the verge. In one single movement, he kicks two of the birds onto the grass. Then he bends down and flaps his hands to drive the creatures along.
Lucky we can get past, Robert says as he joins the left-hand lane. Damn lucky. The whole motorway’ll be clogged up before long. There’s going to be a huge tailback.
He sees flashing lights approaching from behind them, moving along the hard shoulder. No siren though – that’s just in Danny’s head. A police car, followed by a fire engine. The blue lights dance over the toppled lorry, over the feathers and beaks and eyes peering out between the slats of the boxes.
Even when they’re past the chicken lorry and driving along in the right-hand lane, the siren’s still blaring in Danny’s head. The sound slowly changes into a human scream. Danny narrows his eyes and the motorway becomes a thin grey strip. His heart beats faster. He takes a few deep breaths. He can hear the high-pitched sound clearly now. It surrounds him, like the noise of two cats fighting in a courtyard at night.
Danny clenches his fist and winds the material of his white T-shirt around his knuckles, like a hand wrap. He closes his other hand around the white fist and squeezes hard.
*
They pass a town and see a strip of football pitches running alongside the motorway, and a row of flats with glass balconies beyond. Danny looks out at a tower block and a tall structure that could be a radio mast. After the town, they drive past a farmhouse. The smell of chicken shit hangs in an invisible cloud over the motorway. The car battles its way through. As the smell slowly clears, Danny turns his face to the door, looks at the mirror. He remembers the wall of mirrors in the gym at the boxing school, the way they reflected the flash of his eyes as he circled the punch bag, jabbing in rapid combinations. His bandaged fists flashed too, against the leather, which was damp with his sweat.
A small, brightly coloured car overtakes them. A woman is driving; she has long hair and the same colour skin as Ragna. He watches her as the car becomes smaller and smaller and is finally swallowed by the horizon.
Get a good look? says Robert.
Danny doesn’t react.
Want me to follow her?
No need.
That was a fine-looking woman though, Robert says, shifting his hands to the bottom of the steering wheel and resting his little fingers on his thighs. He leans one elbow on the door and rubs his chin.
Know what struck me about that lorry?
What?
Those chickens. They just stayed where they were. He pauses. They could have flown away, but they didn’t.
Well, they could have walked away, says Robert. Anyway, they must be able to flap about a bit. Whatever, it just goes to show they’re already half-dead. Not like the bulls in Pamplona – they’re a completely different story.
Robert sucks on his bottom lip. It makes a squeaking sound.
Danny waits and listens. They’re zooming along in the left-hand lane, but it feels as though they’re crawling.
Don’t you think?
I don’t know, says Danny.
The monotone hum of the engine accompanies them on their journey south. Danny’s thinking about the bulls, not as Robert sees them, but as he sees them, as a static image.
Do you know what I think? Robert says. Chickens are stupid.
Danny looks straight ahead. The photo on the dashboard becomes larger. The woman and the two children nod at him. He feels like pulling the photo out of the frame and ripping it up.
Robert rests his hand on the gearstick, but doesn’t change gear. For a long time, they sit in silence. They cross the border. The motorway curves high above Antwerp. The houses of the city lie in a tangle beneath the road. He spots a gym. Cars jostle around the exits for the city centre, but Danny and Robert stay in the bypass lane, which slowly changes appearance as they drive on, leaving Antwerp behind. Robert says: Sometimes running away is the best thing to do.
Danny glances over at him, at the steering wheel, at the hand casually resting on it. The needle of the speedometer quivers between 120 and 130.
From the bulls, I mean, Robert continues. Running away from the bulls.
Danny wonders whether there are bulls running after him. It feels as though the bulls were released this morning and they’ve been chasing him all day.
He and Robert exchange a look. When they’re both staring ahead at the tarmac again, Robert says: Running away is a natural thing to do. It’s survival instinct. A reflex. Those chickens don’t have that reflex. They’re going to die. Whether they want to or not.
Tall lampposts line the central reservation, their bases thick with grime. Some have seagulls sitting on top. Robert revs the engine. The fields are strips of green and brown, slowly merging into a flickering patchwork. The sky is blue except for a single vapour trail, which spreads wider and wider and then evaporates.
Danny closes his eyes.
*
It was dark and cold and he was lying on his bed, staring up at the dark beams of the attic. He mumbled her name. She answered.
Danny.
Here, he said. He held his cock tight, squeezed it, made it grow. He put his other hand between his legs, tensed his thighs and said her name again. Yes, Danny. He thought of her face, of her eyes, of her dark hair and the way its colour contrasted with the ceiling. He felt her hand around his cock. She stroked it. He slid across the bed towards her, went onto his knees and leant forward. Resting one hand on the top of her head, he whispered something in the darkness. His hand twitched urgently. He swore and growled to himself and when he opened his eyes again all he could see was cold, dark beams and maybe a few puffs of his own breath.
At night she was with him, during the day he was alone, in the evenings he went to the boxing school. A dozen other guys trained there with Ron, including Aaron and the young Russian. He worked to maintain his fitness levels. Lots of skipping and running. Boxing in the ring, going at sixty per cent. Sparring with the amateurs who were preparing for their own fights. For some of the lads, these were their first matches. Danny could tell they were nervous. He talked to them during the training sessions. He was the last to leave the building and he walked home at night through snowy streets.
I’ve had Varon on the phone, Richard said to him one evening in the canteen after training. I tried every day this week, but he’s been in Germany. Finally got through to him tonight.
Well?
It’s good news. Fights in Germany, that’s what it’s all about.
He nodded. Richard gave him the card. He wants to talk to you in person.
Do I have to phone him?
Sooner the better.
Danny thought about her and the man who had put his hand on her back as they left the changing room.
He went home. He cooked some spaghetti, watched TV and lay on the bed. He thought about her the whole time and about the man called Varon, with his neatly combed grey hair. In the days that followed, he saw Varon’s name everywhere. No photos, just his name. In magazines and newspapers, on a poster for a kickboxing gala stuck to the door of an electricity substation. Even on the radio. The voice that had dominated the changing room after the fight with Hristov now came out of the tiny speakers in his attic. An item about boxing and the criminal world. Was she there too, at the radio station? Did she push him through the studio doors in his wheelchair?
He kept thinking about her, couldn’t stop whispering her name. If he could have behaved any differently, he would have done. The nights became carbon copies of each other until one evening a terrible screeching started up outside, between the blocks of flats. It sounded like a baby crying. He went downstairs, pushed open the window in the stairwell, looked down and saw a cat with white patches dart away over the fence of his downstairs neighbours, and a black cat on the roof of a nearby shed. He didn’t know if it was the cats or something else, but his mind was clear for the first time in ages. He went back upstairs, turned on the light, searched through the papers on his table. When he found the card, he smoothed out the creases and looked at it for a long time, as though he might discover something in the letters and numbers. A dark coffee stain marked one corner. He put the card down on the table, went to bed and slept well for the first time in weeks. His pillow lay beside him as he fell asleep and when he woke up he was hugging it to his stomach. There was a damp patch on the sheet. He slid out of bed and pulled on his jogging bottoms. The next thing he did was pick up the phone and dial that number. He knew it by heart.