La Tercera

LA TERCERA Kitchen, Guadalajara. Seven in the morning. The leg up on the other chair because Sofía has told me twice. ———————————————— I know the third thing. I am putting it at the top because the last two journals began with what I had not done, and this one does not have to. It was this one. Pryce. It was this one that told me the truth. ———————————————— LA LLAMADA I called him. The second morning. I did not wait for nine days and I did not wait for ten. I have spent two losses waiting to find out which of us knew, and this time I knew, and a man who knows a thing and sits on it so that his father has to be the one to say it is not being careful. He is being a coward politely. He picked up on the second ring. He was already awake. He is always already awake. I said: Papá. Fue ésta. It was this one. He did not say anything for a while. I could hear the radio in the other room. Then he said: ya. Only that. Ya. Already. Finally. It means all of those and I think he meant all of those. Then he told me something he has never told me in all the years he has been asking me the question. He said his own third thing came with his back, in a gym in Zapopan, lifting a boy who was too heavy for the drill. He said he felt it go and he knew in that second exactly which one it was. And he said he did not listen to it for two more years. He trained through it, he worked through it, he told everybody it was within tolerance. He said the two years cost him more than the back did. He said: you heard it in two weeks. I took two years. You are already better at this than I was. Then he asked if I had eaten. I told him I had. I had not. I have now. ———————————————— LO QUE ME DIJO So that it is written down correctly and not just felt. Against Cortez I was early. Eleven frames. A habit. A habit can be fixed, and I fixed it, and against Pryce I was not early once in twenty-two minutes. I was on time. I was perfectly on time. I have watched it now — I watched it the same night, this time, with the sound on — and there is a moment at nineteen minutes where his weight goes back an inch and I do not move, and I am right not to move, and that is the best I have been in a cage in this building. And then at twenty-one minutes I shot, correctly, and the left knee did not drive. That is the truth. Not that I was solved. Not that I was early. I did everything right, at the right time, and the body did not come with me. The first loss was a man being solved. The second was a man being early. The third was a man being correct and finding out that correct is no longer enough on its own. That one tells the truth. The others were information. This one is the answer. ———————————————— LA PUERTA After Cortez I touched the frame and did not remember doing it, and I wrote that I could not tell which man had touched the door — the one who accepted the loss or the one who refused it. After Pryce I did not touch it. I want to write down why, because the desk did not say and I am grateful to him for not saying. My hand went up on its own. Fifteen years of my hand going up. I felt it go and I stopped it an inch below the wood, and I held it there so that I would know I was the one holding it. After Cortez my body touched the door without me. After Pryce I did not let it. I wanted, one time, for the deciding to be mine. That is not a rule. I will touch the frame again. I will touch it the next time I win, because my grandfather did and because I want to. But I wanted to know that the hand belongs to me, and now I know. ———————————————— LA RODILLA The left knee. The doctor here is a man I have known for twenty years. He does not use the word I was afraid he would use. He uses a different word, one I have heard said about other men in locker rooms, quietly, while they were in the shower. He says four weeks to walk without thinking about it. He did not say fight. I asked him. He said: Tomás, you did not ask me what you wanted to ask me. And he is right. So I asked it properly, and he gave me a number, and I am not writing the number here, because it is mine and because there is a man in this company who reads. I will say this much, because it is true and this journal is only worth keeping if what goes in is true: it is not a small number, and it is not the end. ———————————————— CASA Ana watched the match. She has been watching all of them since she decided to be a referee, and she watches them differently now. She watches the hands. She said: you tapped correctly, Papá. I asked her what that means. She said: three times, flat hand, on his leg, where the referee could see it. Not on the mat. Not fast. So nobody had to wonder. She has been practising watching for it. She is very serious about it. Camila's building with no front door is on the refrigerator. I look at it every morning while the coffee is going. The people who live in it have to decide for themselves where to go in. I have stopped thinking it is wrong. Sofía has said nothing about any of it. She brought the second chair over for my leg without asking whether I wanted it, and she put a cushion on it, and that was the whole conversation. ———————————————— LAS OTRAS DOS My father's question has three parts and for fifteen years I could only answer two of them. Now I can answer the third, and I find that the other two have changed underneath it. How many years you have left: fewer than I would have said last spring. I am not going to put a number on it. My father put a number on his and was wrong by two years, in the wrong direction. What those years are still good enough to win. I do not know. That is a different not-knowing from the last journal. Then I did not know which of my losses was the true one. Now I know, and the knowing has told me roughly how much is left and not one thing about what it is for. I was the first champion of this company. I lost it to a man who flew eleven hours to have one detail corrected. I have not spoken to him. Not once, in this building or out of it. I watched him on the last broadcast in a room under The Foundry, counting in Japanese, losing his place at a hundred and something and going back to one. I know what that is. I did not want to know it. ———————————————— PROOF There is a card at the end of the year and you do not get on it unless you ask for something by name, out loud, in the building. I have not asked anybody for anything. I am not going to. That is not pride. I have three losses and a knee and a doctor's number, and I do not think a man in that position stands up in a cage and announces what he is owed. I am not owed anything. I said that about the championship when I had it and I meant it, and I mean it more now. If the second thing exists — what these years are still good enough to win — then it is going to have to come and find me. I will be in the building. I will be on time. I know the third thing. — TRM