The Distance

  Remember when we were Americans? I asked him once. Nate Simms and his brother Harv.

  Were? he said. You mean you’re cured? I’ve still got mine. It comes and goes like a chronic infection.

  In times of stress.

  Exactly.

  The commemorative inserts and photo features appear in the papers, the souvenir editions of the magazines are published. I package the mags and inserts in plastic covers and put them on the shelf. Something else to look at when I’m done. The full-length books will come soon, those that have been years in the making and those conceived when the news of his death broke. One may be the definitive biography. Another might start a craze. Or maybe not.

  I go on writing, like a slugger who isn’t smart enough to stay in his corner when he’s beaten, who wants to go the distance. The problems with Joe’s book are obvious. There’s too much of him in it and not enough of me. It’s as if I never grew up. In all my brother’s musings, there’s no mention of me as a grown man. Not a word about our so-called collaboration. My part is no better. What’s become of Sylvie? She was the first person I called when Joe died and I’ve forgotten all about her. I should make space for her in the text. It was meant to be about our lives, not Joe’s, and if it’s turned out otherwise there’s no one to blame but me. I can’t see the past clearly any more. It’s a dark, bewildering place. When I do battle with it, sometimes I’m Ali, floating and stinging. ‘The hand can’t hit what the eye can’t see.’ More often I’m Henry Cooper, looking out of one good eye while the other, the suspect one that always goes at the crucial moment, fills up with blood.

  Jordan thinks it’s cool that I’m trying to finish Joe’s book. He says it’s a special kind of bromance like Butch and Sundance. Rita isn’t so kind. She wants me to be done with it, to get back to my real work and bring home the bacon. She doesn’t understand why it’s taking so long. Are you waiting for someone else to die? she asks. Must George Foreman kick the bucket too?

  I say: You only know who Foreman is because you bought one of his bloody grillers from Verimark.

  Now that Ali is dead and buried, every channel is clogged with the American election. The endless buildup. It’s been going on, month after month, like a series of Survivor, and it’s reached the point where I couldn’t care less who leaves the tribe.

  Last night I’m watching TV and here’s Trump in his mogul-size suit with the big red arrow of his necktie pointing to his dick, shooting people in the audience with little finger guns, his little five-shooters, his connections, you, yes you, it’s going to be tremendous, people. And here he is with someone else. It’s Don King covered in lapel badges and clutching an armful of flags, and he looks like a vendor outside a sports stadium, or the ambassador of an impoverished country, a place with one telephone that no one’s ever heard of.

  Sources of chapter-title illustrations

  1. Sunday Express, 14 March 1971

  2. IMDb.com

  3. Republican Press, Durban

  4. Pretoria News, 28 June 1972

  5. Pretoria News, 18 May 1975

  6. Sunday Times, 27 January 1974

  7. Cassius Clay in 1964, Associated Press

  8. (?) Hoofstad, May 1975

  9. The Star, 2 April 1973

  10. (?) Pretoria News, 1971

  11. (?) Pretoria News, August 1974

  12. Pan Books, London, 1952

  13. Sunday Express, 14 March 1971

  14. Pretoria News, 1 October 1975

  15. Time Magazine, 8 March 1971

  Acknowledgements

  This novel draws on a collection of newspaper and magazine cuttings from 1971 to 1975. I am indebted to the sportswriters, local and syndicated, of the Pretoria News, The Star, Sunday Times, Sunday Express and other publications, and especially to the inimitable Alan Hubbard. Quotes taken from these cuttings are set in gray, and many of the sources are named in the text. I wasn’t always able to identify sources but a list of the known details and best guesses can be accessed at www.ivanvladislavic.com

  I am grateful to Jenefer Shute for her meticulous editing; and to Jill Schoolman, Zoe Guttenplan and the team at Archipelago for bringing so much flair to this edition. My thanks also to Isobel Dixon and Minky Schlesinger, who are always in my corner.

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