The Berlin Boxing Club Read online

  Max stood up, and his height and the sheer physical force of his presence awed me. He extended a hand.

  “Karl, good to see you again.”

  I was so dazed, I reached out the hand carrying the folded money. Max chuckled.

  “You are already trying to pay me! That’s good. A trainer should be well paid.”

  My father laughed and reached over and plucked the bills from my hand.

  “Karl was just picking up some cash for me that I had left at the gallery.”

  “Hello, Herr Schmeling,” I said, finally shaking his hand.

  “I owe you an apology,” he said. “I got so caught up in preparing for the Uzcudun fight and other things, I forgot all about our deal. Anny reminded me because just this very week we finally hung the portrait of me by Grosz in our country house. Are you still interested in the lessons?”

  PART II

  1935–1937

  “To truly succeed in the ring, a boxer must live for the sport. You must train yourself to eat, sleep, and breathe boxing, no matter what else is going on in your life.”

  Helmut Müller, Boxing Basics for German Boys

  The Berlin Boxing Club

  MIST ROSE OFF THE COBBLESTONE STREETS AS I MADE my way by a row of tall industrial buildings along the Spree River. As I walked, I anxiously fingered a piece of paper with the Berlin Boxing Club’s address written on it, although I had long ago committed it to memory. Something about the piece of paper anchored me, as if it were some sort of magical pass. It was a rough neighborhood. Garbage, horse manure, and broken glass filled the gutters, and rats scurried in and around the alleyways. Despite my being intimidated by the environment, it also thrilled me, and filled me with excited anticipation about the type of fearless man I would become through my boxing training.

  I finally arrived at an old brick factory that took up half a city block. The Berlin Boxing Club occupied the top floor. Frosted glass laced with steel wire covered the windows, so I could see only vague shadows of activity inside. A textile company that manufactured wool blankets filled the bottom three floors, and as I climbed the wide iron staircase, I heard the loud whir of weaving machines and the deep thumps of pounding mechanisms smoothing rough-hewn cloth into fine fabric. I reached the top floor and paused outside the door, which featured faded gold letters:

  THE BERLIN BOXING & HEALTH CLUB

  ESTABLISHED 1906

  MEMBERS ONLY

  I tried to hear what was going on inside, but any noise was drowned out by the sounds of the machines on the other floors. The mechanical pounding seemed to match my heartbeat as I took a deep breath and opened the door.

  Inside was a hive of activity. Two full-size boxing rings dominated the center of the main room. In each, pairs of men sparred with each other under the watchful eyes of trainers. In one corner stood a row of heavy bags and speed bags, and on the other side were weight-lifting apparatuses and barbells with men training in all areas. Posters and photographs of fighters of the past and present lined the walls. Some of the posters dated back to the early part of the century and featured fighters with strange mustaches standing with their bare fists cocked, while others depicted recent champions, including Jack Dempsey, Gene Tunney, Max Dieckmann, and, of course, Max Schmeling.

  The sounds of men hitting speed bags and jumping rope mingled with the guttural grunts of exertion and blended into a strange primitive symphony. The place also had a very distinct animal smell that was warm and damp like a butcher shop on a summer day.

  I wandered inside unaware of the short, bald man sitting behind a counter near the door, chewing on the stub of a cigar. Beside him, a huge, thick-headed man with small eyes folded towels. A large fighter covered in sweat leaned against the counter drinking from a water jug. He looked as if he had just finished a training session. The short man with the cigar called out to me with a heavy Polish accent: “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “I’m here to box.”

  “You a member?”

  “No, but—”

  “Didn’t think so. Look, you’re too young for this club. We don’t have a youth program here. This gym is for real fighters.”

  “I could use this kid to pick my teeth, right, Worjyk?” the fighter said to the bald man with a laugh.

  “Yeah,” Worjyk added, “or you could fold him up and use him to wipe your ass.”

  “Nah, he’s too thin for toilet paper.”

  Worjyk and the fighter laughed harder. The third man folding towels shook his head with a small smile. My face burned. I had hoped that my training had added enough bulk to my frame to pass for “normal,” but I was still skinny as a rail.

  “I’m supposed to meet—”

  “Verschwinde!” Worjyk gestured with his cigar toward the door. “I don’t have time for this.”

  Worjyk turned away to continue his conversation with the fighter. The big thick-headed man folding towels finally spoke. Despite his bulk, he had a soft voice and spoke with a stutter.

  “Thh-there are youth clubs that have b-b-b-boxing around. You should be able to find wawawa-one.”

  I scanned the gym to see if I could find Max, but he wasn’t there. I couldn’t believe he had let me down again. I turned to exit, and just as I reached for the door, Max entered, carrying a small gym bag. When the fighter slouching against the counter saw Max, he immediately straightened as if coming to military attention, and Worjyk’s face opened up into a smile.

  “Max, welcome back.”

  “Good to see you, Worjyk.”

  The two men shook hands. The other fighter offered a hand to Max, and they shook too.

  “Herr Schmeling, it’s an honor.”

  “Are you going to be training with us again, Max?”

  “Training and teaching,” Max replied. “I see you’ve met my protégé, Karl. He’s going to be the next German Youth Champion.”

  He placed a hand on my shoulder, and I felt myself puff up as if my body were being hoisted by a pulley.

  “We were just welcoming him to the club,” Worjyk lied.

  “Good,” Max said. “I need to get him signed up for a membership right away. He’ll be training here.”

  “Not a problem, Max.”

  Max turned to the big man folding towels.

  “Neblig, help get Karl set up with a locker and some gear.”

  “Sh-sh-sh-sh-sure, Max.”

  Neblig came around and walked me back to the locker room to the left of the entryway. He led me to my own small locker and gave me a key, a towel, and some tape that I assumed I would use to wrap my hands. At the end of the lockers stood a rusted metal bin, filled with discarded white towels spilling over the top. Some of the towels were smudged with light pink bloodstains, and I thought: This is where real men challenge themselves. Real men aren’t afraid to bleed.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “Am I supposed to have gloves?”

  “Th-th-they don’t allow bare-knuckle f-f-f-fighting,” Neblig replied with a laugh. Now even the janitor was laughing at me. I cursed myself for not thinking of gloves. I guess I had assumed there would be a supply of them on hand. I certainly didn’t want to have to ask Max for anything; he was already being so generous by just showing up.

  “Is there a place here I can buy—”

  “N-n-n-n-not here. You’ve got to go to an athletic s-s-s-supply store.”

  Neblig read my disappointment and walked over to a small janitor’s closet nearby, filled with brooms, mops, buckets, and other cleaning supplies. He moved aside some boxes of powdered soap on the top shelf and extracted an old pair of boxing gloves.

  “H-h-h-here,” he said, tossing them to me. I caught the gloves and felt the cracked brown leather, soft yet hard at the same time. These were not toys but fighting instruments.

  “Th-th-those are my old ones,” he said.

  “How much do you want for them?”

  “You can b-b-b-borrow them. J-j-j-just remember me when you’re a champion, ja?”

&nbs
p; “Thanks,” I said, meeting his eyes with a serious nod. “I will. I’m Karl,” I said, extending my hand.

  “You can call me Neblig,” he replied as we shook.

  Neblig returned to the closet, grabbed a broom, and went to work sweeping the floor by the toilets. Nervous and excited, I tucked the gloves under my arm and walked out to the main room, wondering what I would learn first. Maybe Max would demonstrate how to properly use the speed bag. Perhaps he would show me how to work out with the weights. Or maybe he’d start by testing me on my mastery of the three hundred. This thought filled me with anxiety, as I was still well shy of that number. I found Max standing beside one of the boxing rings, where two men sparred. Max cheered encouragement and comments as the men circled each other, trading punches.

  “Good, Johann, give him that jab.” Max noticed me approaching. “Ah, Karl, come take a look. See how Johann circles his man. That’s good footwork. Too many people go to the fights just to see the punches, when the real action is happening with the legs. Just watch his feet for a while.”

  I watched the two fighters and found it hard not to concentrate on the punches being thrown and blocked. Their muscled arms snapped back and forth, looking for an opening and then coming back to defend the body. But when I turned my attention down, I saw their feet were engaged in a battle of their own, circling and dodging with surprising deliberateness, almost as if it were some sort of dance.

  “How many fights have you been in?” Max asked me.

  “Boxing matches? None.”

  “No. I mean real fights. With other boys in the schoolyard.”

  I considered the question. I had not really been in any fights. Max knew I had been beaten up from the way I had looked on the night he first met me. But that was nothing I would consider a fight, because I had not fought back.

  “None really.”

  “Then we’ve got to get you fighting right away,” Max said.

  He rang the bell attached to the side of the ring, and both men stopped sparring.

  “Hey, Johann,” he called to the shorter man. “Would you mind letting Karl step into the ring with you for a couple of minutes?”

  Johann was a lean fighter with dirty blond hair and a large nose that was bent to one side and looked as if it had been broken more than once.

  “Sure, Max,” he said as the other man stepped out of the ring.

  “You’re kidding, right?” I said.

  “No,” Max replied. “I want to see what kind of instincts you have. Here, get your gloves on and I’ll get you a mouthpiece.”

  Max walked away toward the locker room.

  Instincts! My only instinct was to run and hide or cry. I couldn’t believe he was putting me in the ring. And this guy Johann wasn’t another kid; he was a grown man and a real fighter. I had been certain we would start my training by my demonstrating my mastery of the three hundred, or maybe jumping rope and learning how to hit the punching bags, not actually fighting. My body went cold. It was all I could do to stop my teeth from chattering and my knees from clacking together like a frightened cartoon character’s.

  I watched the muscles ripple on Johann’s back as he raised a bottle and took a drink and spat into a metal bucket in one corner of the ring. I looked closely at his face, and in addition to the broken nose, he had a couple of visible scars, one on his chin, the other on his forehead. I was a couple of inches taller than he was, but I felt like he would destroy me with one punch.

  Max came back and handed me a small mouthpiece made of black rubber.

  “Here, put this in and step into the ring.”

  “But I don’t know how to box,” I whispered.

  “There is an art to boxing and plenty of skills to learn, but at the end of the day, boxing is just fighting, plain and simple. Right, Johann?” Max winked at the fighter, who nodded back to him.

  Several of the men in the gym stopped what they were doing and gathered around the ring to watch.

  I pushed the mouthpiece into my mouth. It tasted bitter.

  “Bite down on that, but not too hard or you’ll give yourself a headache,” Max advised me. I tried to loosen my grip on the mouthpiece, but my jaw kept tightening in a nervous pulse, as if I could bite away the tension.

  I pulled myself up to the outer rim of the ring and tried to navigate my lanky frame between the ropes. It was not as easy as it looked. I ducked my head under the top rope and pulled myself through to the other side. Yet my foot caught on the bottom rope as I was coming through. I lost my balance and tripped into the ring, falling face-first onto the mat. I tried to break my fall with my gloved hands but wound up knocking over the spit bucket, which spilled everywhere. The men laughed.

  “Well, Max, he knocked out the spit bucket with no problem,” one of them said.

  “Let’s call him Kick the Bucket Karl!” Worjyk called over from the counter.

  “Or how about the Spit Bucket Kid’” another fighter quipped. More laughter.

  I almost gagged from the humiliation. After being dubbed Piss Boy by the Wolf Pack, I couldn’t bear another demeaning nickname. Neblig appeared with his mop and cleaned the small mess and set the spit bucket right. He saw the fear in my face.

  “D-d-d-don’t worry,” he whispered. “You’ll be o-o-okay.”

  He stepped back out of the ring, and I was alone, facing Johann, who waited for me at the center of the ring, looking serious. He nodded and gestured for me to come forward.

  “Get in there and keep your hands up,” Max said. “Just try to hit him without allowing him to hit you. That’s really all there is to it.”

  I walked to the center of the ring like a prisoner approaching the gallows. I tried to tell myself that we would only be sparring and that he wouldn’t really try to knock me out. But I was deathly afraid of being hurt. The last time I had been punched, it had taken weeks for the bruises to completely heal.

  I finally came to meet Johann at the center of the ring. Max rang the bell, and Johann assumed a fighting stance.

  “Get your hands up!” Max shouted.

  I put my hands up, and Johann started to move around me. What was I supposed to do? My body froze in the same way it had when I’d squared off against Franz.

  “Now, try to attack!” Max said.

  Johann circled me, watching me closely from behind his raised gloves, waiting for me to make a move. The men surrounding the ring shouted catcalls and encouragements: “Come on!” “Let’s see some action.” “Come on, Spit Bucket—fight!” “Mix it up.” “We want a refund!”

  My heart raced in my chest, and sweat beads sprouted on my forehead. Somehow my body lurched forward, and mustering all of my will, I threw a right-handed punch at Johann. I aimed the punch directly at his chest, but he was moving, so it barely touched the side of his arm. The crowd roared.

  “Good!” Max said. “Attack!”

  I moved back toward him. This time my punch was better timed and landed near the center of his body. Johann was easily able to knock the punch away, but at least I had gotten closer to the target.

  Before I could think, Johann moved toward me, and in a flash he threw two quick punches, one that landed on my left arm and the other on the side of my stomach. I could tell he was not punching at full strength, but the punches had enough force to send me stumbling back, tripping over my feet. I desperately balanced myself and managed to stay upright. I felt small, tingly stings where the punches had landed, but my adrenaline was pumping so fast, I didn’t register any pain. The crowd whooped and hollered.

  “Keep your hands up!” Max shouted.

  I threw my hands back up just in time. Johann came back at me with another combination of punches. The first punch came at my head, but I managed to block it. The next two punches were jabs to the center of my belly that sucked all the wind out of me. I audibly gasped, and the men around the ring laughed as I struggled to suck in more breath. My gut ached, and it felt as if someone were sitting on my chest and stomach. I scanned the laughing fa
ces around the ring.

  Then something happened. Instead of getting more scared, I got angry. The feeling built inside me like a quick-boiling pot until it shot me forward at Johann like a jet of hot steam.

  Johann’s smirk melted into a look of surprise as I moved in and started throwing wild punches. None of the punches really landed, but he still had to constantly move his hands to defend himself. He danced away from me and quickly counterpunched with a couple of blows that landed on my body, though I barely felt them. I punched at him again, and this time I felt one of my fists penetrate his defenses and actually land on his body. I’ll never forget the feeling of that punch, when my fist actually connected on his exposed flesh and it yielded just a bit. I had often heard people talk about a punch “connecting,” and I finally understood what that really meant. The punch had mass and weight, and a wonderful electric thrill ran down my hand and across my body as I sensed his muscles tighten. He even gave a small grunt.

  The crowd gave a loud WHOA and laughed.

  Johann instantly moved forward and landed a couple of quick punches, including one to the side of my face. Up until that moment he hadn’t really been aiming for above my neck, and the punch sent my head snapping back. I stumbled backward but again was somehow able to stay on my feet. I saw him moving toward me, and I knew my hands were down and I was totally exposed. But then I noticed something wonderful. I wasn’t afraid. I was thinking: Get your hands up and move. Just as Johann was about to move in for some more, Max rang the bell, and Johann lowered his hands.

  The crowd let up a groan of disappointment.

  My heart beat so fast, I thought it might pop out of my chest.

  Johann came forward and put a glove on my shoulder.

  “Not bad, kid. You actually landed a punch on me.”

  “Good,” Max said as I approached. “You’ve got a nice natural jab. Some people never learn that. How do you feel?”

  “Fine,” I said, so out of breath I had difficulty getting any words out.

  “Do you know how long you were in there with him?”

  I had no idea, so I guessed. “Three minutes?”