The Atlas

RED AND BLUE

Past the restaurant lazed a corridor of water-marked concrete, whose righthand wall curved, being the edge of the stadium where I was going to see how proud garlanded warriors beat each other down. A Siamese cat pursued a rat. Another cat sat on the concrete wide-eyed with ears raised, forepaws demurely together. A man was filling a chest with a bucket of ice. A woman emerged laughing from the storeroom from which workmen were wheeling water jugs on trolleys past the stand where soft drink bottles stood as colorful as Christmas trees, and bottlenecks grew from baskets of shaved ice, shining with incredible purity. Soon there'd come a storm of punches and kicks, gloves slapping on the side of the head, because the steel gates were open, and the million-cratered concrete, walled by yellowing whitewashed slats, crouched ready now to let Red and Blue into the ring whose whirly fans now vivisected the overcast sky and made the concrete rings of corrugated metal of which the ceiling was comprised seem to tremble. But it was only four-thirty, and the rotation of the fans was just for practice. They died; the beer and soft drink signs faded; and the sticky air fell back upon my shoulders like a moldy blanket.

Because the concept of two men punching and kicking each other for hire is not unattended by conceptual and ethical difficulties, I'd paid for the privilege of entering the realm called Ringside, founded eons ago by King Money and dedicated to the proposition that others should not be able to get what they haven't shelled out for. Ringside, in short, cost 600 baht,* but within its circular dominions, practically against the ring, lay a special section for family, trainer and friends, who would soon be leaning their heads back open-mouthed, prancing, shouting ooooh! pushing each other's shoulders; they'd be gloating, applauding, slamming their hips against the stands, bouncing on their feet. I don't know how much, if anything, they paid.

Ringside was surrounded by a thick-meshed fence through which the middle-payers (320 baht) could see, more or less, and behind and above that zone was another mesh fence which demarcated the outer limbo of the 120-baht masses. The early enthusiasts were already there. They gripped the fence like prisoners. The middle zone was still almost empty. Two skinny boys danced there, embraced, kicked high gently at each other's faces while a third boy clung to the mesh netting. They were the ones who a few years later would be working out in the park of sweating flowers. Maybe they already were. Their heads shot up and lurched. They smiled as they struck each other. One boy overpowered another, forcing his head down just as the authorities turned on lights, fans and music, and the boxers entered to be taped up. Cats still wandered about the ring. At ringside the smiling young usherette in red came like an airplane stewardess to take orders for soft drinks and to peddle videos: Thai Boxing: The Hardest Sport on Earth. Perhaps the sport of rape or torture is more difficult, at least for the loser, but kickboxing is certainly hard enough. I could see that on the boxers' faces as they finished getting ready and the men in green came in — men in green vests, that is, with a giant golden jewel on the back of each, and white Thai writing. I never figured out why they were there. The music gradually became louder and more martial. All rose for the anthem. When it was over, all bowed. Then they stood craning and glaring at the ring.

The two boxers entered the ring wearing garlands and yellow-bordered blue robes. They began to sweat almost at once. They bowed to Buddha. Then they threw off the robes, showing their trunks — Red and Blue. While someone tinged cymbals and someone else blew an instrument as cavernously loud as a Tibetan horn, they knelt and stretched, each in his corner, drinking water held out by his trainer who afterwards hung the garland on the corner pole. The boxers then quickly knelt and touched their heads to the floor.

I thought I might have seen Blue a week before in the park of sweating flowers where men lay knees up on phony-granite benches, breathing steadily, some with wrists infolded across their hearts so that steel watchbands caught the cloudy light, others with their fingers hanging over the edges of the benches; in this park of sweating flowers, a man with what looked like an astral map tattooed across his back (thrashing lines, quartered circles, and captions of Chaldean incomprehensibility) was working out, bending and lifting. He was not Blue. In fact, that night at Lumpini Stadium I did not see a single tattooed boxer. Another man who was not Blue, sporting differently quartered circles on his chest, lay on the press bench by the ginkgo tree, lifting weights. His pectorals were as big as his thighs. He had great muscular tattooed breasts. A third, who now took his turn, carried a great world-circle on his back blessed by many notations. The weights rode up and down. He yelled: Ho! ho! ho! ho! A fourth, now lying on the bench, lifted a hundred and fifty pounds, crying: Euh! uh! uh! A fifth stood over him, frowning, his neck gold-chained, and they changed places. The frowner's quartered circle glistened as he began. Across the sand, other brown men stood silently swinging fists over each other's heads. Weights rolled silently up and down on pulleys. And then a slender man in a T-shirt walked by. He stopped and watched and smiled slightly. Then he went away. I think he was Blue.

Slender dancing knees, the sharp slap of a foot against a rib — how different this was from the boxing I had seen in the U.S.A., where they only punch — and yet also so similar, because here too are the ones who clap whenever their hero gets in a blow, and here too there has to be a loser, and I hate seeing anyone lose.

At the round's-end bell they sat Blue down in a chair, poured water into a big saucer, laved it over him, encouraging and caressing him. Then he bowed to his garland.

At the end of the second round he shivered as they poured water over his head. They were working at him, supporting his face, massaging his ribs. He was limper now.

At the end of the third round he gazed at his feet on the dirty canvas while they rubbed him down. He barely moved when they poured cold water over his head. He breathed heavily through his open mouth. When they stood him up, he clung with both hands to the greasy ropes.

At the beginning of the fourth round he got in a knee to Red's groin, and then a knee to the hip. Red did not cry out. The boxers never did. They wore the face of someone enduring pain: resolute, it scarcely distorted; it only tightened upon itself.

Red shot a leg up to get Blue in the stomach. Blue did not flinch. Both kept their gloves above their faces. Red got an arm around Blue's neck, punched him behind, hissing tsss! and threw Blue down. Arising less than easily, Blue gripped Red in an expressionless embrace which somehow involved the side of a foot against a knee. This was life, was life's bitter sweat in the hourlong moments between intermissions when silver strings of water drip down the boxer's hair, the centurylong moments when knee meets knee and thigh meets stomach, when the heel finally scores the solar plexus. A leg shot up. Blue's wrist went under Red's knee and threw him. The crowd cried: Eh! Eh! Eh! — because that was rare; from few of these moments could anything be squeezed but continued clinging and struggling. Blue and Red were embracing at the neck, working their knees around each other's legs and buttocks. A glove in the side, but it was always an embrace. They locked knees around each other. More than anything else I'd ever seen, it was like some new and terrible way of making love.

At the end of that round Blue's arms drooped down around the ropes like wilting stems. He gazed wide-eyed as they washed him, flicked him with a wet towel, lifted his legs. He bowed to the garland. The grayclad judges sat with folded arms, almost unblinking.

In the fifth round Red got in a knee to Blue's kidney. They were head to head, dancing in their pain, holding on while mosquitoes bit silently. Blue thrust out his chin and raised his shoulder, flailing, and the young lady in red brought soft drinks to the spectators at ringside and a white cat came out from between everyone's legs. Red whirled him against the ropes and the referee separated them. Then they danced, but not so lightly. Ankles flashed high like swords. A foot struck a shoulder.

The boxer in the red corner wins the prize, said the announcer.

They took the garlands away. The winner shot both hands above his head, then bowed. The loser walked away.

The stadium was full now of people whose light-colored garments hung in the darkness like moths. A cop stood ready in helmet and jackboots. A fresh Red and Blue entered the ring, threw off their robes, bowed to their garlands; and I saw that the bodies and souls had never mattered; it was only Red against Blue forever, no matter who won; and one kicked but the other caught a knee in his armpit and pulled him down. When they'd come into the ring they were wearing circlets around their heads with stiff rods in back like the handles of frying pans; there was a long tassel that made each look feminine, especially with all the flowers of their garlands; and when they stretched and swayed and flexed, they were like dancing girls. But perfect dancing lasts only for the first round. Soon enough, arms upraised, mouth gaping, Blue leaned weakly on his helpers' shoulders. A dripping towel on his head while they pulled his arms and legs and chafed them, a caress, a shake — nothing could reach him. They boxed at him, trying to show him something, but, panting, he stared straight ahead. After each round, he spat out his mouthguard. They opened his pants and pulled something out. Now they were trying to massage energy back into his muscles. Lifting him, they sucked water from his ears.

Sometimes Blue was on the ropes. I didn't want to see much more. The trainer lifted Blue's slender legs above his head. He'd bowed to the garland at the beginning of each round, but that hadn't saved him from a knee to the balls four times. The man's face scarcely seemed to change, but he burst into sweat and swayed back almost proudly. At the end of the round his trainer looked in his pants, rubbed him down, slapping his hand to make him listen; his head flopped toward the trainer and he nodded. When they raised his legs above his head, he grimaced with pain.

They fell together; the crowd went ooooh! open-mouthed. They flailed at one another with spread fingers and the crowd cheered uh-oh! uh-oh! The fighters' wrists were above their heads as if they desperately strove to be birds.

From behind the middle zone's fence a man yelled advice, trying to teach Blue, his hero, how to punch. But Red threw Blue back down again and kneed him in the groin.

With each incarnation the air was hotter with crowd-sweat, more eye-watering with cigarette smoke. People were betting, fingers raised; people were crying out with deep ritualized shouts. Red won, then Blue, kicking Red in the pit of the stomach although Red kept swinging; Red won, and I sat illuminated by their flashes of pain, shock, rage and triumph — and, so often, just the dull gaze of endurance. They sometimes prayed while waiting for the verdict. Sometimes they ducked back from a blow. So often I saw the sudden mask of disappointment that falls across the loser's face (the winner raises a fist, bows); this mask was stroboscopic,* flashing each twist in this chain of violent beauty, the puncher's face merely determined, the victim's bobbing under his punches; each seemed about to cry but that was only the effect of grimacing; anyhow these faces were but workings in the molten flesh that worked itself like clay, each skull an anvil for the fisthammer or heelhammer to forge into that ultimate mask of loss as the crowd cried: Yao! Yao! Eeeeh! — Sometimes Red and Blue were a pair whom no one cared about or betted on; then the crowds leaned against the fences and grinned at one another, or watched expressionlessly, only chanting and chattering a little when a flurry of punches landed. Then a new Red and Blue would offer themselves. Now the shouts swarmed and rang like a flock of angels, celestial and horrible; but I could see no difference; it was still Red and Blue. Before they began I saw one contender talking with his trainer, the other stretching, balancing on one leg, lifting and flexing the other with all his toes apart, as if in illustration of the futility of stratagems; after him would come the next Red or Blue, nothing ever to be decided. What did Napoleon accomplish, or Genghis Khan? True, the world would be different without them, but the fortunes of the prizes for which they fought continue their shift and ebb.

A judge passed a slip to the referee. Red had won. Then it was time for time for a new head to be bouncing back against the ropes. They hadn't even gotten to the champion fight yet, but I'd seen enough.

When I came outside it was night and I saw a canal full of rising gray water caked with raindrops. I saw girls in yellow uniforms scurrying to work in massage parlors, and a drenched old man between stopped cars (eight abreast in the rain, and motorcycles darting in between) stood selling newspapers in plastic bags. And I thought: no matter who you are or what you do, life is war.

* In 1993 this was about U.S. $24.

* Or perhaps it was just the strobelike effect of the fans cutting across the light-tubes in the smoky humidity.