The Column

Yesterday, what I could wrench from Figueira - besides his sniffing sounds, more frequent - was that he was going to try to act more and more like a gentleman and not to talk during his matches anymore.
"You won't want me to have a hankie too, will you?", he said sniffing and smiling. Figueira is handsome when smiling, too bad he smiles so little.

I'm on the Internet now. Writing about these things. Thinking of Figueira and how strange he can be. The call to fight, as described, funny how it would stick to my memory. It lends the event an almost epic dimension, that of a brave young man forming others in bravery, calling them to do what they had never done: celebrate the fight, for all it means that concerns power, not the power of submitting whatever walks on the earth, but the power of those who have conquered their innermost fears; it doesn't matter whether it's real or not, what matters is that it is fascinating; something, however, I must keep to myself, because whatever is against the rules of wrestling I'll have to help the kids cut out. It's not like saying what they must do or how they must behave on the mat. What it boils down to is that I need to help them see and reinforce the reasons why they've chosen this sport. And being it what they really want, they'll have to increase their commitment with it more and more. This is the least they can do for a sport they like so much. Once this is granted, all else follows.

My eyes glance at the book on the coffee table. The Making Of A Thousand Gods, by Elisa Gold. That epic dimension I wanted to lend to the situation I'm living is maybe the strong impression I got from this book, the dense way Gold describes those supreme efforts to immortality. I think of the two situations, the kids training at Corporal and what she describes and the day grows unreal, the kind of day where nothing seems to fit. The feeling begins. At the end of the book, I see there are blank pages, pages I hadn't noticed before. As if they needed them to set the whole binding correct and even with the pages in the beginning. What more strangeness can I find here?

"Did you talk to him?", queried Coach Rodrigo when the pratice was over.
We were at the gate of Corporal. Watching the cars in motion along Conselheiro Nébias Avenue and talking. I told him about the talk with the kid. He heard me with attention. He said he had no clear idea what Figueira said during the matches, until he asked Galhardo some time ago. He put the words together with things and events he had seen at tournaments and meets and got the picture. He has had a strange impression from Figueira since then, that the kid was really different, though he still couldn't say how.
"I must say something in favor of Figueira. He is combative. Very combative. As the other kids here he doesn't surrender to anti-fight, never gives up the fight, never simulates techniques, has never had passivity down in his records."
"Yes, and he seems to be a very authentic person."
"Yes, a bit too much sometimes", sighed Coach Rodrigo.
He seemed to want to tell me something. I felt he hesitated to speak. I had an interrogative expression on my face. Ele stared at me, undecided.
"You want to say something, don't you, Rodrigo? It's not difficult to see. What is going on?"
"Figueira... He is one of the best, Miss Grisam."
"Yes, yes, he does his best, I know."
Coach Rodrigo shook his head.
"No, this is not what I mean. I'm not talking about intentions. He sometimes hides what he knows. Figueira knows a lot. Much more than you imagine. He brought Galhardo, Zangrandi and the Column to wrestling. Even Panotti respects him. And it's mutual. Figueira admires Panotti a lot. He regards Panotti as a teacher. But he is on the verge of overcoming even his teacher and Panotti knows that. Figueira doesn't. This is exactly the difference between Panotti and Figueira: what one knows the other is ignorant of."
That hit me as a door on the head. Thinking back, I realize there is no direct interaction between Morales and Panotti and Figueira and it's not that it doesn't happen because they don't go out together. They always practice together anyway. It's Galhardo who handles him in the end. I was going to ask him to repat a name I couldn't identify among those he brought to wrestling, but he went on:
"Figueira can tear down a building if you tread on his right toe, Miss Grisam. And it's just a question of time to find the exact toe. Sometimes I'm afraid to work with him. I'm afraid of spoiling everything."
"How can you explain he's lost so many matches being so good? Besides, how can he surrender to the others so often and have simply no passivity and no anti-fight in his records?"
Coach Rodrigo smiled.
"He has allowed himself fall into so many silly traps. Mainly the most stupid, set up by fighters who were naïve, but as combative as him. Then, I was sure this came into play when I saw him look at me with a sorry expression before getting caught in a stupid, foolish headlock at a tournament. He surrendered to the same kid whom he had easily overcome two times before, when he saw his will to fight. After the match, he begged me not to tell anybody anything, I thought how he did it without the referee noticing, how he made it look so real when he practically tucked his head under the opponent's arm. This has been his art, the supreme one so far. And the other occasions, when he always made it seem so real, knowing that no one at Corporal would scold him, at least at the venue. Does it make any sense to you, speaking as a psychologist, that he never gives up wrestling in the match, but surrenders to others' will to fight?"
"I say he hands out prizes around", I said smiling, "it's more or less what I imagined when Zangrandi told me what was going on. I only think it happens to him in a subconscious level."
"Don't get me wrong, I didn't mean he's the greatest, I mean he can be. He's lost many matches for not being as good as the opponent, as in the matches he got pinned by the Column, whose name is Martins, from São Paulo. What holds him here is the fact he's very good. I mean there are tournaments he could have won. Corporal could already have had prizes as a team, but he hangs on to this view, as if he tried to encourage those who are beginning the journey."
"Yes, the Column. Who is he?"
"A fighter in an association in São Paulo, his real name is Martins, he was one of those Figueira brought to wrestling", he said. "The Column soon grew to be mighty and strong and ended up becoming an obsession for Figueira, you know. Like the creator and his creature who grows to be out of control. Defeating the Column is now Figueira's deepest dream, Miss Grisam."
"Has he never done that?"
"No. He'd always be pinned by the Column or be mounted. In his imagination, it's as though the Column collapsed over him."
"And he used to know better than the Column..."
Coach Rodrigo smiled.
"You don't know how much and he still does", he said, before groaning excuses and disappearing to the interior of Corporal for a shower.

A call to fight | Hell or high water

Radio Universal: The Making Of A Thousand Gods.