The Berlin Boxing Club Read online

  “Three minutes?” Max laughed. “It was about fifty seconds.”

  I couldn’t believe that. It had felt like I had been in there for an eternity.

  “Every second in the ring feels like a minute, and every minute can feel like an hour. That’s why conditioning is so important to a fighter,” he explained. “It’s an endurance test. Today you had a very important lesson on taking punches. A lot of people will tell you that the first thing you have to learn is how to take a punch. But I believe the first thing you should know is that you can take one and survive. A punch won’t kill you. Conquering your fear is the first step to becoming a powerful fighter.”

  He took a small red book out of his back pocket and handed it to me. It was Boxing Basics for German Boys by Helmut Müller.

  “This book should help you. But remember, you can’t learn the fight game from a book. Experience is the best teacher. Read the book for some basics, and the next time we’ll learn some skills.”

  Pandora’s Box

  I FLOATED HOME FROM THE GYM THAT NIGHT. NOT ONLY had I not run away or wet my pants like a coward, I had taken punches and landed one of my own. I had entered a new world, a world of men and warriors. I was Max Schmeling’s protégé. And a dream of becoming German Youth Champion began to crystallize in my mind.

  When I got home, I went right to the basement to shovel the evening coal into the furnace. I enthusiastically dug into the coal pile and got into an easy shoveling rhythm, replaying all the events of the day in my head.

  “Back at work again, Vulcan?” Greta’s voice called from behind me.

  I turned to discover her holding a large cardboard box that she had retrieved from her family’s storage locker. She wore a tight gray sweater and had her beautiful blond braid draped over one shoulder. While typically the sight of Greta left me a blabbering mess, that night I felt calm and confident. Since our last meeting I had studied up on ancient mythology.

  “I prefer to be called Hephaestus,” I said. “The Greeks are better than the Romans any day.”

  “Oh, really?” she said.

  My adrenaline and testosterone were at a full boil, so I boldly walked toward her.

  “Yeah, you know that Hephaestus created the first woman, right?”

  “Hera?” she asked, unsure of herself.

  “Hera was a goddess—Zeus’s wife. What do they teach you at that school of yours? I’m talking about Pandora.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” she said, recovering her composure.

  “Zeus ordered Hephaestus to create Pandora to punish mankind for stealing the secret of fire. So if I’m Hephaestus, I guess that makes you Pandora. She had a box too,” I said, gesturing to the cardboard box she carried. “Her box released all the evils of mankind—vanity, greed, envy, lust. . . .”

  I stared into her eyes.

  “Well?” I said.

  “Well what?”

  “What’s in the box?”

  “My dad’s winter pants.”

  “That’s not quite all the evils of mankind.”

  “Well, some of his pants are really ugly,” she said. “So I think they’re evil.”

  We both laughed.

  “What are you doing down here anyway?” she asked.

  “Training.”

  “Training to shovel coal?”

  “No, it’s strength training. Max Schmeling is teaching me how to box, and this is part of the training to get my upper body in shape.”

  At last. I had been hoping for an opportunity to brag about my new life as a fighter. Surely this would impress her.

  “Boxing?” she said. “Why would you want to do that?”

  Her response caught me so off guard that I couldn’t come up with a quick reply and just stood there staring at her for a moment.

  “Lots of men are into boxing,” I finally managed to say.

  “Lots of dumb men,” she said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Running around a ring, trying to hit each other—seems pretty dumb to me.”

  “Boxing’s a noble sport.”

  “What’s so noble about it?”

  “Boxers fight with honor, skill, courage.”

  “Organized fighting doesn’t make sense to me,” she said. “Why would you want to let yourself get hurt if you didn’t have to? And why would you want to hurt an innocent person who you’re not even mad at, who you don’t even know?”

  Again I couldn’t come up with a response. Somehow I had lost control of the conversation. I started to feel the strange self-consciousness I always felt around her.

  “I wouldn’t expect a girl to understand.”

  “I understand more than you think, Karl.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “Like what?” I said, trying hard to maintain my composure.

  “Like I understand how much you really want to kiss me,” she said, with a sly look in her eye.

  Did she really just say that? I felt the heat of the furnace on my back spreading out across my whole body. She stared at me with an amused little grin, and sweat formed along the back of my shirt. Before I could think of anything to say, she stepped forward and gave me a small kiss on the mouth.

  CLANG!

  We jumped apart as the shovel I had been holding fell to the floor. We both laughed, and then Greta put down the box she was carrying and leaned in and we kissed again. It was a warm, wet kiss, and just like the punch I had landed on Johann earlier in the day, it sent an electric thrill through my body.

  She wrapped her arms around me, rubbing the back of my neck. Goose bumps spread down my spine, and our kisses became more intense as she pressed her body against mine, so close that I could feel the pulse of my heart beating against hers.

  We both breathed heavily. Then I heard her breathing become even heavier, and the sound struck my ears strangely. For a moment I thought she might be wheezing, but then I realized that it was the sound of someone else breathing. Greta must have heard the same thing, because we both stopped kissing and listened. And there it was: the distinct sound of heavy breathing.

  We both turned to see Herr Koplek, standing in the shadows at the entry to the boiler room.

  “Don’t stop on my account,” he said with a sickening grin.

  A look of panic swept across Greta’s face.

  “I’m enjoying the show,” he continued.

  Greta quickly grabbed the box at her feet and ran past Herr Koplek and back up the stairs. He watched her ascend the stairs, his eyes firmly planted on her backside. He let out a hoarse chuckle.

  “Nice. Very nice.”

  After Greta had disappeared up the stairs, he turned back to me and said: “Hope she tasted good, Stern. I’ve had my eye on that for a long time.”

  I felt the strongest desire to punch Herr Koplek in his fat red face. I took a step toward him, but something held me back. A warning went off in my head. I knew he could get me in big trouble. Or was it my old cowardly instincts kicking back in? Before I could deliberate much more, he slipped back into his room and closed the door, like a snake slithering back into a hole in the muddy soil of the garden.

  • • •

  Greta and I didn’t run into each other for another week. Because we attended different schools, our opportunities to see each other were limited to chance meetings at the apartment building, and I figured she wouldn’t dare venture down to the basement again. We both knew I could not publicly court her. Even before the Nazis, gentiles rarely dated Jewish boys. And now the Nazi propaganda rags constantly published supposedly true stories about perverted Jewish men taking advantage of pure Aryan girls. What if she regretted kissing me and would never talk to me again?

  I considered slipping a note under her apartment door but worried it would be intercepted. The day after the kiss, I passed her coming into our building with her mother as I came down the stairs. My heart rose up in my chest, but she just looked down at her feet and wouldn’t meet my eyes.

&nb
sp; A few days later I stood waiting around the corner from our apartment building near Greenberg’s Art Supplies for her to walk home from school. When she finally approached, she was with another girl. Her eyes went wide when she saw me, but though I tried to signal her with my eyes, she just looked down and walked right by. A sour rumble formed in the pit of my stomach as I watched her move off down the street. I wanted to call out her name, but the words caught in my throat. I already had my answer: She wanted nothing to do with me. But then I heard: “I forgot. I’ve got to pick up some pen nibs. I’ll see you tomorrow, Liesel.”

  “Okay, Greta. Auf Wiedersehen.”

  Her friend continued on, and Greta turned and walked back toward me. She silently signaled me to follow her into Greenberg’s.

  Inside the store, old Herr Greenberg stood behind the counter, arranging a new display of paintbrushes. A religious Jew, Herr Greenberg always wore the same shabby black suit and a yarmulke. His body curved in a permanent stoop, and he had a long gray beard and tired but kindly eyes. I was a regular customer, and he waved hello to me as I walked in.

  “Guten Tag, Herr Stern. Help you find anything?”

  “Just looking around.”

  Greta pretended to browse through a display of sketchpads toward the back of the store. As casually as possible I joined her. We walked together to the end of the row, where the high shelves blocked us from Herr Greenberg’s view. Anger still boiled inside me from the way she had been ignoring me. It was one thing if she didn’t want to be my girlfriend, but she could at least have the decency to treat me like a human being. As I tried to find the words to express my outrage, she leaned in and quickly kissed me on the lips.

  “I’m sorry I haven’t been able to talk to you,” she said.

  “You used to at least say hello to me.”

  “I know. But I’m afraid. My father is very strict, and Herr Koplek might’ve said something to him about us.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Out of the blue the day after we kissed, my father asked if I had been talking to boys. I said no, but then he said that he doesn’t want me talking to strange boys.”

  “I’m not strange.”

  “Well, maybe a little bit,” she joked.

  “Is it because he knows my family is Jewish?”

  “I didn’t even know that.”

  My mind suddenly froze. I couldn’t believe I had just let it slip out that I was Jewish, because I typically tried so hard to guard that fact. I already felt an ease and openness with Greta that I had never experienced with anyone else. Now I might have ruined it.

  “You didn’t know we were Jewish?”

  “No.” She shook her head.

  I attempted to read her expression but couldn’t tell what she was thinking.

  “Does it matter?” I said, holding my breath.

  “Not to me,” she said, with a small smile. “But it would to my parents. Look, I don’t know if my father knows anything about you. I’m not even sure he knows anything happened. But Herr Koplek has been looking at me funny ever since he caught us in the basement, and my father said something to me the very next day. The timing seems too strange to be a coincidence. Any boy is strange to my father. We’re Catholic, so he doesn’t want me talking to Lutheran boys either.”

  “So that’s it?” My voice rose. “We never get to see each other anymore?”

  “Keep your voice down!” she whispered.

  “You need help finding anything back there?” Herr Greenberg called from the front of the store.

  “No, that’s okay,” I said.

  “We just have to be careful.” She continued. “I take piano lessons on Tuesday afternoons at a lady’s house near my school. You could meet me at the park across the street. No one would see us there.”

  My heartbeat quickened at the fact that she wanted to see me again and at the prospect of secret meetings. She leaned in and kissed me again, but before I could get too swept up, she broke away.

  “I’ve got to go now. Meet me on Tuesday at four in the park across from my school.”

  She grabbed a small packet of pen nibs and paid for them on the way out.

  I moved to the window and watched her walk away down the street, feeling a rush of both satisfaction and a powerful longing to be with her more. When she was finally out of sight, I turned and saw Herr Greenberg staring at me with an arched eyebrow.

  “Found a muse, Herr Stern?”

  “Uh . . . she’s just my neighbor.”

  “Quite a beautiful one at that.”

  I blushed. “Guten Tag, Herr Greenberg,” I said, quickly exiting the store.

  Learning to Stand, Breathe, and Eat

  FOR THE NEXT SEVERAL MONTHS, MAX TRAINED AT THE Berlin Boxing Club and lived at the Excelsior Hotel on Stresemannstrasse in preparation for a rematch with Paulino Uzcudun in Berlin. I had my lessons with him once a week, on Wednesday afternoons. On other days I trained at the club just like the other fighters. Being the only “junior” member under eighteen years old, at first I was a novelty. Whenever I walked in, the others would laugh and make comments, mostly about my skinny physique. Worjyk had taken to calling me Knochen, or Bones, not the most flattering nickname but a step up from Piss Boy or Spit Bucket. Many of them would watch me train, chuckling and picking apart my poor technique. I wrongly assumed that they might have shown more restraint in front of Max or that he would say something to shoo them away, but he never did.

  “Name-calling is a part of fighting,” he said. “The weakest punches are thrown with the tongue. You’ve got to thicken your skin against that kind of attack just the same way you thicken your muscles to throw hard punches.”

  After a couple of weeks most of the fighters lost interest in me, partly because the novelty had worn off. And also because once I had mastered the basic skills, there wasn’t as much to laugh at.

  Max taught me the fundamentals of boxing, from how to make a fist to how to stand to how to throw all the basic punches: the jab, the straight right, the uppercut. Some of this came naturally. Max said that from the moment I was first in the ring with Johann, he could tell I had a natural jab and the makings of a decent hook. And once I was exposed to other fighters, I could tell I did indeed have good reach, just as Max had told me all those months ago.

  Yet some of the most difficult things to master seemed to be the simplest. It took me several days just to learn the right way to make a fist. I had an instinctual tendency to position my thumb over the top of my knuckles, as opposed to tucking it below, which left the thumb exposed to impact. Max was a physical guy and always reinforced his teachings with an active demonstration.

  “You hold your hand like that and you’re just as likely to break your thumb as break your opponent’s nose,” Max said. “Here. Punch my hand with your fist like that.”

  I punched his hand, and sure enough, I felt a sting along the top of my thumb.

  “It hurt a little,” I said.

  “You see, you’re feeling it after only one punch. I barely felt anything. Imagine what your thumb would feel like after dozens of punches. You’d snap it right off your hand. You’ve always got to tuck your thumb like this.”

  He showed me the proper way to make a fist, with the knuckles in a straight line and the thumb parallel and protected behind the fingers and then had me punch his hand again, several times.

  “You see, this time no pain, ja? Your fist is your weapon, so you’ve got to keep it tight and strong like the head of a hammer. It’s got to be able to give a lot of pounding and not show any weakness.”

  Each night in my journal I drew sketches of the things I had learned; they helped me to both process and memorize each bit of new knowledge. I drew my own fist in both the proper and improper positions, posing with the left hand while I sketched with the right. I used thick lines to make my hands look rough and manly, like the hammer Max had described. I also made quick illustrations of the basic punches, trying to capture the proper motion as well as ha
nd and arm position.

  In addition to making a fist, I had trouble learning how to stand properly. I couldn’t believe even this turned out to be such a challenge.

  “Your feet are way too far apart. You’re making yourself too easy to knock down,” he said. “Here, put your feet even wider apart and try to stay on your feet when I push you.”

  I spread my legs wide, and Max gave me a hard shove. I fell onto the floor, bruising my tailbone. I was surprised at how much force he had used, and my backside stung. A twitch of anger rose up in me until he reached out a hand and pulled me up.

  “Okay, now stand with your feet all the way together, like you’re standing at military attention.”

  I placed my feet together, and Max pushed me again. I tried to brace myself but again lost my balance and fell down hard, letting out a small groan.

  “See, that’s no good either. Now position your feet somewhere in the middle, with your left foot in front about fifteen or twenty inches from the right.”

  I did as he instructed, careful to position my feet just the right way. This time when he shoved me, I was able to able to resist the force and stay standing.

  “Good,” he said. “Now keep making adjustments an inch or two one way or the other until you find your greatest point of balance. Think of your body like a building. The other fighter is trying to knock down the building, and you have to position your body so it has the best chance of staying up. When you’re in the ring, always look for your opponent to be off-balance, because that’s when a fighter is most vulnerable. Practice your perfect stance in front of a mirror, and then remember to always fall back to that position. If your body is a building, your stance is your foundation. A good building needs a strong foundation, ja?

  “There’s a science to boxing, and so figuring out the equations is important. I know lots of bruisers who could punch a lot harder than I could but never went anywhere because they had lousy balance and footwork. You’ve got long, skinny legs, so you’ve to be careful not to make your movements in the ring too wide. Short, quick steps. Just a few inches each time. And always make sure your feet are planted when you throw a punch; that’s where the power comes from.”