“You stupid ass,” he says, “you damned halfwit, you selfish little shit,” he says, hitting me again and still harder now, and I stand with my back against the table and can go no further and have to make a decision pretty quickly. I hit him back. Right on the chin. Maybe not that hard, but just hard enough. It feels good. He jumps back, and I hit him once more. In his stomach this time. I do not know what he had expected, but he did not expect this. He bends over with his hand round his chin, and I slip away from the table to the middle of the room with my hands clenched and raised in front of my chest before lunging out again like my father did in the photograph above the radio at home when the world was young and he was still younger; his crazy body naked to the belt with its shining shoulders and dancing feet and dancing curls and his left arm straight out in a punch like a battering ram. Or as in the picture cards I found in a bundle in a box in the attic; one card for each position with arrows for foot movements and arrows for the angle and direction of the arms, like a dancer’s beginner’s course, really, foxtrot, waltz and cha-cha-cha, but here on small cards with descriptions underneath in tiny writing: straight left, left hook, right hook, uppercut, and so on, there were at least ten of those cards in all, and I can see them clearly before me now, and once or twice some years ago I tried them out for myself, step by step, blow by blow, behind a closed door and felt like an idiot. Maybe that’s what I am now, but I do not feel like it. I dance round my brother who straightens up with a confused look in his eyes. He coughs after the blow in the stomach and tries to catch my eye and twists round as I keep on dancing, and I hit out a few times into the air.
“Selfish. Am I selfish? What about you trying to get out of everything and leave me alone. What about David? You fucking prick,” I shout, and he lets out a roar and throws himself at me, and neither right hook nor straight left or any other blow I know is of any use, for he lands on my chest and I go down with him, and we fall on his elegant floor and roll around. I go on hitting out while he wraps his arms round my chest so hard I can scarcely breathe. My side really hurts and I am close to howling. I twist as much as I can and roll us on until we meet one table leg and push the table along the floor right over to the bench where it stops and starts to crack, and then the leg breaks, and the table tips down over our heads. My brother lets go, air comes squealing into my lungs, and he screws himself into a sitting position holding on to the edge of the table and shouts: “Have you any fucking idea how much that table cost me?”
I sit up with a hand to my side and push myself out from under the table. Carefully I breathe as deep as I can, but it is not easy, for my heart is beating wildly, and with each lungful of breath I feel a stab to my side.
“How much did it cost?” I weakly ask.
He looks at me, and then at the table, he is breathing as hard as I am, and then he says: “Fuck the table,” and gives it a kick, and it tilts up and stops on its edge, and the broken leg comes right off and falls to the floor with a sound like a bamboo bell in the forest, one early morning, in China or someplace. “I’ve never really liked it. It is too posh. It is just that I can’t afford anything new right now. It is starting to look empty in here.”
“I have the old kitchen table from Veitvet in the cellar,” I say. “You can have that.”
“The one with the stylish chairs from the forties?”
“Yes.”
“God. That would have been great. I thought we had sold that.”
“That was the idea. But I took it. I thought you had enough.”
He looks round him at the walls of his house. “I probably had,” he says, and rubs his chin, shakes his head and says: “Fuck me. Where did you learn that boxing stuff?”
“From the old picture of Dad that used to hang above the radio. I’ve got it in my bedroom. I always look at it before putting out the light.”
“You’re joking.”
“Yes,” I say.
“I don’t remember that picture. Are you sure it hung above the radio?”
“Of course I am.”
He shakes his head again and stays sitting on the floor brushing dust from his shirt front and smoothing his tousled hair back with his fingers. He does not look like he has seen the Light any more, but neither does he look like Jesus on the Cross just before crying: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
He says:
“Are we done with all this now?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Good. I am too old for this sort of thing. But you always had a big mouth.”
“Yes,” I say, feeling oddly pleased. It is easier to breathe, I can take in air without trouble now, only the knuckles on my right hand feel sore.
“Look,” he says, “I don’t feel like going out any more. If we are going to drink we can do it here. I have a bottle I’ve kept.”
“Under the bed.”
“No, not exactly.” He smiles slightly.
“That’s fine by me,” I say. “Can I smoke?”
“Of course you can.”
He gets stiffly to his feet. His legs are trembling. He brushes dust from his trousers. Then he rubs his face.
“You just stay there,” he says. And then he turns and walks out of the kitchen and downstairs to the basement room. His steps are not so light, but not so heavy either. I lie down on my back and stretch my body until it creaks and look up at the ceiling. I suck my knuckles. I could join a boxing club. They just might have a class for old boys. I could cut down on the smoking. Let’s say, with five cigarettes a day. There’s a lot of health to be gained right there. I sit up again and bump along on my behind and lean back against the cupboard smoking a cigarette and listening for my brother’s steps. Here he comes.
He has a three-quarters-full bottle of Famous Grouse in his hand. He opens the cupboard above my head and takes out two kitchen glasses and gives me one. He sits down with a groan and leans his back against the fridge and unscrews the bottle. He fills my glass and then he fills his own.
“I’m selling out my share in the firm,” he says. “It’s a long time since I did my bit anyway. It’s no fun any more. Besides, I’m broke.”
“So what will you do?”
“I don’t know. Actually, I like it like this; cleaned out, rock bottom.”
“Welcome to the club,” I say. He smiles, but his eyes are shining. He raises his glass.
“Rock bottom,” he says.
I look down. I see my hand round the glass, the glass is full, but at least it is not gin. I raise my glass.
“Rock bottom,” I say. I lean forward and let my glass touch his, and then we take the first mouthful, and I do not say anything about Mrs Grinde, or Naim Hajo for that matter. That would have been selfish.