El Video

EL VIDEO Hotel, two nights out. The laptop on the desk and the sound turned off. ———————————————— I have not watched it. I want that at the top, because after the first loss I wrote that I had not written anything and that it was not avoidance, and I believed that when I wrote it. This time I am not going to make the same claim. This time it was avoidance. I lost to Shawn Cortez on the last show and I have had the file on this machine since the following morning and I have not opened it once, and I have told Sofía I watched it, and I had not. So. Tonight. ———————————————— EL SILENCIO He did not call. After the first one, nine days of nothing, and I wrote down that it was the most careful thing anybody had done for me in years, and it was. This time I do not know what it is. That is the whole difficulty and I am putting it here plainly so I cannot pretend later that I did not notice it. The silence is the same length and the same shape and it is coming from the same man in the same chair, and I cannot tell whether it is the careful silence, the one that leaves the third thing for me to find alone, or whether it is a different silence — the one a man keeps when he has already found the answer himself and does not want to be the one who says it. I did not call him either. The first time I rang on the tenth day. This time it has been longer than ten days and I have not. I think we are both waiting to see which of us knows. ———————————————— LA CINTA Minute one to minute twelve: correct. I watched it at normal speed and there is nothing in it I would change. He fought my grip instead of my takedown, as the woman who manages him told him to in writing, and he threw almost nothing, and I made the room smaller and he let me, and it looked like the match I had planned because it was. Minute thirteen: he stops. At the time I thought he had made a mistake. Flat feet, the centre of the cage, inside my range, not moving. I took the grip because it was offered and because a man who has spent fifteen years taking grips does not refuse one. I watched it back tonight at quarter speed and it is not a mistake. He is looking at my hands before I reach. He is waiting for them. I have been doing this since I was nine years old and I did not see a man invite me. Minute eighteen. I watched this part eleven times. He gives one step. Off the lead foot, backward, small. And I follow. I counted the frames. From his foot leaving the mat to mine leaving the mat it is eleven frames. A third of a second. I did not decide anything in a third of a second. Nobody decides anything in a third of a second. My body saw ground being given and went to take it, the way it has taken ground ten thousand times, and it was wrong, and by the time the part of me that decides things arrived, it was over. My father has told me since I was a boy: your body is not lying to you. It is only ever early or late, and you have to know which. At eighteen minutes I was early. I have never in my career been early. I am the man who is on time. I am the one who waits. I have written in this journal that I do not chase, and I have said it to the federation, and I have been proud of it, and on the tape a thirty-six-year-old man chases a younger one by a third of a second and loses a match that he had under control for twelve minutes. ———————————————— EL MARCO DE LA PUERTA There is one more thing on the tape and I did not know it was there. After, when I had shaken his hand and he had declined to say the thing he says, I walked to the door. And at the door I reached up and I touched the top of the frame. My grandfather did that every time he left a ring. I have done it every time I have entered one, and every time I have left one after winning, for as long as I have been working. I have never done it after losing. After Kuramoto I did not. I remember not doing it. I remember deciding. After Cortez I did it, and I have no memory of it at all. It is on the tape. My hand goes up, it touches the wood, it comes down, I leave. The camera holds on it for a moment and I understand now why the desk mentioned it. I do not know what it means. I have sat here with the frame frozen on the screen for longer than I watched the match, and I have two readings and I cannot choose between them. The first is that my body has accepted this one. That some part of me that does not keep a journal and does not do arithmetic has already filed it — this one counted, this one was real, you touch the frame on your way out because you were there. The second is that my body refused it. That the hand went up the way it goes up after a win, because the part of me that does not keep a journal does not believe I lost. One of those is a man doing the third thing correctly. The other is a man who has not lost yet. I do not know which man touched the door. ———————————————— LO QUE ESCRIBIÓ CORTEZ I have to write this and I would rather not. Before the match he wrote that when a man with one loss decides it was not the one, what he has actually decided is that he has not lost yet. I read that and I was irritated, and I did not answer it, because I had said I would not answer him in public and I keep my word. He was right. Not about the second loss. About the first. I sat in my kitchen in Guadalajara and told my father "not this one," and my father said bueno and asked if I had eaten, and I took that as a verdict. I think now it was a man letting his son have the answer he needed that week. Which is also a kind of care. It is not the same kind I thought it was. So I have two. And the honest answer to the third thing, for the first time since I was nine years old, is that I do not know it. Not "not this one." Not "this one." I do not know. I am writing that down because a man who does not know and says so is still doing the arithmetic. A man who picks an answer so that he can sleep is not. ———————————————— PRYCE Saturday is Desmond Pryce. I watched his last match instead of mine for most of last week, which I recognise now was the avoidance again. He did not tap. The official took his wrist twice and let it fall and ended it for him, and he lost the championship lying there with his eyes open, having refused. I have been doing submissions for fifteen years and I have never understood a man who will let the structure fail rather than agree to it. I tap when it is gone. I have always tapped when it is gone. I thought that was wisdom. I watched him refuse for twenty seconds and I did not know, watching, whether I was looking at the bravest thing I have seen in this building or the most expensive. He does what I do. He makes the room smaller. He does not chase. There will be nobody in that cage giving ground, and so nobody following it, and so no third of a second for anybody to be early in. I think it will be the hardest match I have had here, and I think it will be very quiet. And I think, if I am honest, that he has read what I wrote about my knee. ———————————————— CASA Camila sent a drawing. A building with no front door. She says it is "wrong in a good way" and that the people who live in it have to decide for themselves where to go in. I have looked at it for a long time. Ana has abandoned architecture. She is going to be a referee. She wants to be the one who decides. Sofía has not asked me anything. She put the shelf back up that I rehung in August, because it fell down, and she did not mention that either. ———————————————— EL CUERPO, HONESTAMENTE The knee: talking. Louder than it was. I wrote that it was within tolerance and it still is, and I am aware that I have now said so in public twice and that there is a man on this card who reads. I am not going to stop writing it down. It is true, and this journal is only worth keeping if what goes in is true when it goes in. Hips: good. Still the last thing that will go. Shoulder: right. The eleven frames: I have them now. I will be on time on Saturday. I know that the way a man knows a thing he has watched eleven times in a hotel room with the sound off. I do not know the third thing. Saturday I go and find out whether I am going to be made to know it. — TRM