Read Max Baer and the Star of David for Free Online Page A

have his child—that we will not have his child … not, that is, until he has had a child by another, preferably a white woman to whom he is married. For that is the path of wisdom and safety.”
    “In this I do not think you should count upon having Dorothy serve as your accomplice,” I said.
    “For the honor of bearing Max Baer’s child, there will be no shortage of candidates,” she said. “ You can count on that. Do not fret more than is necessary, though, for as enraged as I can be, I can also, as you know better than anyone, be ruthlessly patient.” She came near to me again, breathing her words into my ear: “I can await the day when I will whisper to him as I now do to you: ‘O that thou wert as my brother, that sucked the breasts of my mother!’”
    “‘Jealousy can be as cruel as the grave,’” I said, speaking words that followed on those in the verse from which she had quoted. “‘The coals thereof are coals of a fire which hath a most vehement flame.’”
    “Ah—but ‘love is as strong as death,’” she responded, reciting a line I had, as she of course knew, taken care to omit. Her mouth on my cheek, her teeth scraping at the corner of my mouth, I knew well the words she would speak next. ‘“When I should find thee without, I would kiss thee—for yea, I should not be despised.’”
    Then, one hand holding fast to the back of my neck, she kissed me full on the mouth.
    On the eve of Max’s second bout with Schaaf, I recalled this moment, and doing so made me realize yet again that what drove Max above all—what enabled him to be the invincible fighter he could often be—were not merely his athletic gifts or his power, but, as with Joleen, the ferocity of his will: the desire, when roused, to triumph over and wreak vengeance upon anyone and everyone who had humbled him, or who threatened to humble him, so that he would not ever in the eyes of others, or, more tellingly, his own, be despised.
    Twenty months earlier, Schaaf had humbled Max. An all-services champion while serving in the navy, Schaaf was more a boxer than a puncher, but on that night, with Dorothy (still married to De Gerson y Baretto) at ringside, Schaaf had mauled Max. Max prided himself on never having been seriously hurt in a fight, and in the dressing room before the fight, in front of an entourage of reporters who doted on him for his style and flash, he had put on his usual show of good-humored nonsense, delighting reporters on that occasion—a first—by ramming into a radiator headfirst to demonstrate the thickness of his skull.
    Once the fight began, however, Schaaf made an increasingly confused Max chase him around the ring (Schaaf was one of the few left-handed boxers Max had hitherto faced), stopping only to sting Max with quick, telling right jabs. By the eighth round, Max’s beautiful face was unrecognizable, and I found myself pleading with him to let me throw in the towel. But Max would have none of it and, remarkably, remained game for the full ten rounds, thereby gaining the respect of many who doubted his courage and stamina simply by being in an upright position when the referee held up Schaaf’s right hand to award him the victory.
    This time, however, before a large crowd at Chicago Stadium, with a string of ten consecutive victories under his belt, and with Dorothy, his wife of seven weeks, at ringside, Max was ready. From the opening bell, he went after Schaaf, pounding him at will while at the same time withholding the ultimate blow in the way a bullfighter weakens a bull with many thrusts of his sword so that one final thrust above the eyes will bring the bull to its knees. After battering Schaaf without mercy for nine rounds, Max waited until there were but two seconds left in the tenth and final round before unleashing his most vicious punch, a brutal right chop to the head that floored Schaaf for the first time that night, and left him, like Campbell, unconscious.
    Max blew Dorothy a kiss