The Fight Read Online Free PDF Page A

wind, it drops.”
    A diversion is attempted. It is suggested that Ali must have a heart of iron. Ali shows surprise. He sees himself with a heart of gold. Now silence follows the reading.
    “These are fine sermons,” Norman says. “When you takeup a career as a minister, they will be perfect for what you want to do.” His intestines punish him immediately for such hypocrisy. Moreover, this lack of direct comment does not improve Ali’s mood. It turns into a morning without focus. Since there will be no training later today, Ali is restless. “Maybe I will warm up a little,” he says. “These people in Africa like to see me, and the postponement has been a shock for them. Maybe it’ll relieve their feelings if they see I am still training.”
    “Do you intend to stay here until the fight?”
    “Oh, I have no desire to move. My place is here with my people.” There had been rumors that neither Ali nor Foreman were being allowed to leave Zaïre. It was certain at any rate that soldiers surrounded Foreman’s villa. In the hour after the Champion was cut, Mobutu’s man in Nsele, Bula Mandungu, tried to keep the story quiet, only to discover that word had already gone out to America from the one Telex machine his assistants had neglected to put out of order. Bula, whose small eyes offered the small welcome of a man who has packed a holster on his hip for twenty years, now scolded the press. “You must not publicize this,” he said. “It will be improperly understood in your country. I suggest you forget about such a story. The cut is nothing. Go for a swim. Foreman should be able to train again tomorrow.” Bula had put in three years in East Germany and four in Moscow, which may have given him his conversational style. “Americans are hysterical,” he said. “They always dramatize things.”
    A brave official in the State Department now loaned his black American Embassy limousine to a few reporters sothey might drive to Foreman’s villa four miles away. But, on arrival the reporters were not allowed to get out of the car. On the porch, Foreman’s manager, Dick Sadler, kept waving for them to come up and visit, but the security man who halted the car was quick to say, “You are bothering the Champion.”
    “We’re not. Can’t you see that his manager is waving to us,” said John Vinocur of the Associated Press.
    “You are bothering
me
,” said the security man, and signaled to his security guards. They now came forward with Uzi submachine guns, product of an old flirtation with the Israelis. Since Mobutu had also been known for his Nationalist and Communist Chinese pagoda, his private homes in Belgium, Paris, and Lausanne, his Swiss banks, his current Arab flirtation, and the remarkable good favor of the CIA in Kinshasa, who were reputed to have pulled off the coup which first brought him power, it was not unfair to think of the President of Zaïre as an eclectic. (Truth: he was one centerpiece of an eclectic!) The reporters paid their respects to such virtuosity by withdrawing this official American limousine with its attached American flag from the Israeli Uzis in the hands of the Black Mobutu security guard. Now the joke at press tables was that the U.S. Marines would have to bust into the Congo before Ali could be liberated.
    But time passed uneventfully in the room with the High Schlock furniture. People came into the villa and went. Ali sat on one of the green velveteen chairs and gave an interview, then another. He analyzed Foreman’s cut plus its effect on Foreman. “He’s never been cut before. He used tothink he was invincible. This has to hurt him.” When analysis was satisfied, Ali went through an interview with an African reporter and expatiated on his intention to travel through the country of Zaïre after the fight. He spoke of his love for the Zairois people. “They are sweet and hardworking and humble and good people.”
    Time to go. If one would catch one’s plane, it was time to