Dick.
Something of this tonic sangfroid was with him now. To be eaten by a lion on the banks of the Congo — who could fail to notice that it was Hemingway’s own lion waiting down these years for the flesh of Ernest until an appropriate substitute had at last arrived?
They laughed back at Ali’s villa when he told them about the roar. He had forgotten Nsele had a zoo and lions might as well be in it.
Ali looked tired. He had run another mile and a half, he would estimate, three miles in all, and had sprinted uphill for the last part, throwing punches, running backward, then all-out forward again, and was very tired now. “That running,” he said, “takes more out of me than anything I ever felt in the ring. It’s even worse than the fifteenth round, and that’s as bad as you can get.”
Like an overheated animal, Ali was lying on the steps of his villa, cooling his body against the stone, and Bingham, Patterson and Ali did not talk too much for a while. It was only 4 A.M. but the horizon was beginning to lighten — the dawn seemed to come in for hours across the African sky. Predictably, Ali was the one to pick up conversation again. His voice was surprisingly hoarse: he sounded as if a cold were coming on. That was all Ali needed — a chest cold forthe fight! Pat Patterson, hovering over him like a truculent nurse, brought a bottle of orange juice and scolded him for lying on the stone, but Ali did not move. He was feeling sad from the rigors of the workout and talked of Jurgin Blin and Blue Lewis and Rudi Lubbers. “Nobody ever heard of them,” he said, “until they fought me. But they trained to fight me and fought their best fights. They were good fighters against me,” he said almost with wonder. (Wonder was as close as he ever came to doubt.) “Look at Bugner — his greatest fight was against me. Of course, I didn’t train for any of them the way they trained for me. I couldn’t. If I trained for every fight the way I did for this, I’d be dead. I’m glad I left myself a little bit for this one.” He shook his head in a blank sort of self-pity as if some joy that once resided in his juices had been expended forever. “I’m going to get one million three hundred thousand for this fight, but I would give one million of that up gladly if I could just buy my present condition without the work.”
Yet his present condition was so full of exhaustion. As if anxiety about the fight stirred in the hour before dawn, a litany began. It was the same speech he had made a day and a half ago to the press, the speech in which he listed each of Foreman’s opponents and counted the number who were nobodies and the inability of Foreman to knock his opponents out cold. Patterson and Bingham nodded in the sad patience of men who worked for him and loved him and put up with this phase of his conditioning while Ali gave the speech the way a patient with a threatening heart will take a nitroglycerin pill. And Norman, with his food still undigested and his bowels hard packed from the shockof the jogging, was blank himself when he tried to think of amusing conversation to divert Ali’s mood. It proved up to Ali to change the tone and by the dawn he did. After showering and dressing he showed a magic trick and then another, long cylinders popping out of his hands to become handkerchiefs, and, indeed, next day at training, still haranguing the press, Ali ended by saying, “Foreman will never catch me. When I meet George Foreman, I’ll be free as a bird,” and he held up his hand and opened it. A bird flew out. To the vast delight of the press. Ali was writing the last line of their daily piece from Kinshasa today. Nor did it take them long to discover the source. Bundini had captured the bird earlier in the day and slipped it to Ali when the time came. Invaluable Bundini, improvisatory Bundini.
Still, as Norman drove home to the Inter-Continental and breakfast, he measured Ali’s run. He had finished by the
Something of this tonic sangfroid was with him now. To be eaten by a lion on the banks of the Congo — who could fail to notice that it was Hemingway’s own lion waiting down these years for the flesh of Ernest until an appropriate substitute had at last arrived?
They laughed back at Ali’s villa when he told them about the roar. He had forgotten Nsele had a zoo and lions might as well be in it.
Ali looked tired. He had run another mile and a half, he would estimate, three miles in all, and had sprinted uphill for the last part, throwing punches, running backward, then all-out forward again, and was very tired now. “That running,” he said, “takes more out of me than anything I ever felt in the ring. It’s even worse than the fifteenth round, and that’s as bad as you can get.”
Like an overheated animal, Ali was lying on the steps of his villa, cooling his body against the stone, and Bingham, Patterson and Ali did not talk too much for a while. It was only 4 A.M. but the horizon was beginning to lighten — the dawn seemed to come in for hours across the African sky. Predictably, Ali was the one to pick up conversation again. His voice was surprisingly hoarse: he sounded as if a cold were coming on. That was all Ali needed — a chest cold forthe fight! Pat Patterson, hovering over him like a truculent nurse, brought a bottle of orange juice and scolded him for lying on the stone, but Ali did not move. He was feeling sad from the rigors of the workout and talked of Jurgin Blin and Blue Lewis and Rudi Lubbers. “Nobody ever heard of them,” he said, “until they fought me. But they trained to fight me and fought their best fights. They were good fighters against me,” he said almost with wonder. (Wonder was as close as he ever came to doubt.) “Look at Bugner — his greatest fight was against me. Of course, I didn’t train for any of them the way they trained for me. I couldn’t. If I trained for every fight the way I did for this, I’d be dead. I’m glad I left myself a little bit for this one.” He shook his head in a blank sort of self-pity as if some joy that once resided in his juices had been expended forever. “I’m going to get one million three hundred thousand for this fight, but I would give one million of that up gladly if I could just buy my present condition without the work.”
Yet his present condition was so full of exhaustion. As if anxiety about the fight stirred in the hour before dawn, a litany began. It was the same speech he had made a day and a half ago to the press, the speech in which he listed each of Foreman’s opponents and counted the number who were nobodies and the inability of Foreman to knock his opponents out cold. Patterson and Bingham nodded in the sad patience of men who worked for him and loved him and put up with this phase of his conditioning while Ali gave the speech the way a patient with a threatening heart will take a nitroglycerin pill. And Norman, with his food still undigested and his bowels hard packed from the shockof the jogging, was blank himself when he tried to think of amusing conversation to divert Ali’s mood. It proved up to Ali to change the tone and by the dawn he did. After showering and dressing he showed a magic trick and then another, long cylinders popping out of his hands to become handkerchiefs, and, indeed, next day at training, still haranguing the press, Ali ended by saying, “Foreman will never catch me. When I meet George Foreman, I’ll be free as a bird,” and he held up his hand and opened it. A bird flew out. To the vast delight of the press. Ali was writing the last line of their daily piece from Kinshasa today. Nor did it take them long to discover the source. Bundini had captured the bird earlier in the day and slipped it to Ali when the time came. Invaluable Bundini, improvisatory Bundini.
Still, as Norman drove home to the Inter-Continental and breakfast, he measured Ali’s run. He had finished by the
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