June

A shy boy has just arrived in town. He arrived after he had dated his first girl and finished watching his first movie, “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” starring Clint Eastwood in a robe and guns. Well, the truth is that I was a little dismayed when that horse seemed to come forward, but Claudia was amused. Our hands together in the dark. I felt better than Eastwood when the blonde hugged him after killing four bandits and then rewarded him with a kiss. I know Claudia is not blonde, but her eyes were lighter than the sunset in a cowboy movie.
We left the show. We bought Coke and hot sandwiches at the corner of Bab Al Shams, then a bus took us home. Claudia was my neighbor. There was a boxing hall in our neighborhood called “Iron Boy.” Our passage coincided with the departure of a group of boxers. One of them, a tall and muscular young man, began to bother us. At first he made fun of me, then he started wooing Claudia with nasty words, and that was the spark. At that point I forgot my height, which was only five foot four, and that this boy was a punch press. I was only thinking about my girlfriend and the redness on her face. return. With my eyes closed, I jumped on that black mass of muscle. I hit it over and over again. First it was a wall, then I became piercing the void. I opened my eyes: Yes! I shot it down. The whole street looked at me in amazement. An old man who was coming out of the corridor at the time helped the young man up while cursing him and hurling insults at the others. Then he came over and asked me to visit him the next day in the hall, and called me “hero.” I like that. My girlfriend was very proud. I breathed and blew my chest like a warrior, but I didn’t really think about going to the hall, and I didn’t take it into consideration until Claudia asked me while I was saying goodbye so I wouldn’t forget to tell her what the coach was telling me.
I didn’t tell them anything at home about the fight. My parents decided, after many years of working away from me, to bring me to the city. It was a new chance and I didn’t want them both to worry or think that I was just a troublemaker. The next night, I walked into the hall. The old woman brought me in and introduced me to the fight boy, who apologized from under his molars and told me that he didn’t understand how he could knock him down. It was a stroke of luck, I replied. But the coach confirmed that for years he had not seen Kimini’s oath and had expressed his desire to coach me. I explained that I didn’t know anything about boxing. However, he replied that he spent his life within the walls of this room and does not doubt that it is a good material. The young man shot me a scornful look and went to make me feel like a dwarf compared to him. The look bothered me so much that I accepted the training and started that night. When I told Claudia, she was very happy. She said that her boxing champions travel the world and earn a lot of money, they are famous and respected by all. When I told him I was just a fan on probation, he replied that he was sure I would be a hero. I attended the exercises in fifteen days. At first they were opposed at home, but my Uncle William emphasized that it was the best for me, and men should know how to fend for themselves. It occurred to him that he had come to train several times to see me and say, “This is my brother’s son.” He was finally here the day of my first game. My competition was shorter, but stout. I felt strong. I had tried very hard. There, among the spectators, were my uncle William and Claudia: the look of the firefly that he possessed illuminated the arena more than the large floodlights.
The first round was well thought out. I saw on TV what Kid Bambili and Sugar Ray Leonard do. The opponent hit me several times, but I dodged them gracefully. Claudia let out an excited shriek that rose among the loud voices of the boxers, canceling the battle phrase: “This is my nephew”, you already know who owns it.
In the second round, I outsmarted my opponent, hit him in the face and a thin line of blood flowed from his nose. Then a strange movement made me confused. While trying to regain my cool, I received a direct hit on the chin. I saw yellow spots when I turned and then fell. Claudia screamed in horror. Some boxers next to her made fun of her. This excited me so I got up in fifth gear and attacked my opponent until I put him on the ground, bleeding from his nose and mouth. Claudia clapped and made fun of her neighbors. I heard my uncle William also say that I am the best in the world, that I carry his blood and that I am the best of his nephews.
All of this was new to me and touched my heart. But as the days passed, and the series of competitions, I began to feel that this was not what I was looking for. Bali was concerned about the adversaries he had thrown, and the emptiness and hatred in his eyes. The old coach expelled some of them and did not return to the hall.
The “Iron Boy” was a damp place and the sand was worn. Everything was poor, and the only thing that made the place so happy that it attracted attention was Claudia, who shouts at every game. We were poor kids who dreamed of powerful stereos, new shoes, and original jeans. Actually, he was not interested in boxing. I was there because I was just going with the flow, and my current was Claudia and my Uncle William.
I just wanted to be a pastor like Clint Eastwood in that first movie we saw, and Claudia behind me on horseback across vast meadows. But she was about boxing, records, and travel. She knew more about it than I did. And worst of all, we no longer went to the movies. I was fighting and winning, but the whole thing does not concern me. If my opponents weren’t cursing me and trying to hit me, I wouldn’t have countered them. If I had thought slowly, I would have realized that I was winning, looking for the kisses that Claudia gave me after each game. Fourteen games, fourteen kisses. The latter was not a pigeon movie, but rather wet and fierce with sweetness.
The fifteenth game arrived. My opponent was that boy I fought with that first night, the boy who changed the course of my life. Now we will face each other in the ring. He too had never lost a match (except for that casual fight). Whoever wins will participate in a local championship in a distant city, a place surrounded by mountains and where the rain does not stop. The name of that city seemed to come from the imagination.
Claudia seemed more excited than I was. She put on her best clothes and, before the game, all eyes were on her. Nobody looked at where we were preparing: she was the brightest of any international belt while I was a bit distant. My opponent seemed serious and measured, and there was no threatening move on his part. We enter the center of the ring and begin. Until the fourth round, everything was the same. I was glimpsing through the eyes of my Uncle William and my friend that they were talking to the spectators and pointing to the ring. I felt sadness around me, and the distant city of lights seemed like a ghost. He did not want to go to cold places, he wanted to go west to the cowboys, riding among the oxen.
My opponent punched me in the liver and I avoided him, but in an instant he turned like a snake and punched me in the face. I fell like lightning, but I didn’t lose consciousness. The blow, instead of hypnotizing me, made me see things with a strange insight. There, on my knees, I could see my opponent in a corner of the ring, my uncle and Claudia were silent and alert, and my opponent’s friends were counting on the referee: one, two, three …! I could get up, but I felt lost in that arena, watching movies whose days were over, and how Claudia was only talking about a future of drinks, gold belts and TV commercials, and she didn’t seem to realize that I was here, in the Present. He didn’t want kisses to win a match, he didn’t want kisses to fight.
Four, five, six … I could have easily knocked the boy down that night, and I suppose if I had gotten up I would have kept my chance to win, but no. There you are, on the felt ring. I saw my Uncle William lower his head and I saw her shut up. The trial reached ten. No one came to tell me anything, it was none other than my opponent, who came up and asked me how I was doing. Penalty fee. He asked me why I didn’t get up. I replied: This is not my command. The coach tried to push the button for me, but I told him I would not return. He said he knew, and he still saw me a great discovery, but I was missing the essentials.
– What is the main thing?
-The thirst, boy, the thirst. No one seeks water without thirst.
I did not understand and was not interested. He just wanted to get out of there, look for Claudia, tell her that he was in the ring for her, that he didn’t want to go to that distant city. I don’t want to be famous, I want to go see movies, walk the streets with her and go to the park to kiss her alone. But I didn’t find it in the hallway, or in the neighborhood garden. They told me at her house that she was not there. And that night too, he wasn’t close to anyone. She started avoiding and avoiding me, and eventually decided not to keep looking for her. And so I dedicated myself to being a lonely cowboy, without the blonde like Clint Eastwood. I think I had that thirst that the old coach talked about, and since I was not water, it was useless in my company.
It didn’t surprise me, not much, when I saw Claudia, months later, on a street with my opponent. He had won the local title. A friend greeted me and said:
You beat me once and you beat me twice.
Good, but the doorbell hasn’t rung yet.
We both smile. She looked the other way, if she knew you, I don’t remember. And the breeze ruffled her skirt. I walked away from them. The blocks of houses and square buildings looked like big, dirty sugar cubes: birds were poking out of some of the roofs. I didn’t feel as bad, or as bad as I was supposed to. I was pleased with the idea that the night was approaching and there were still many movies to see.

* John Jairo Junieles (1970), Colombian poet, narrator, novelist and journalist. He grew up in the city of Cartagena in northern Colombia. He published four collections, the last of which won the “National Poetry Prize” in Bogotá. He also published three short stories and two novels. He is a professor of journalism and creative writing at the National University of Bogotá.

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