The Beginnings of Fezzik's Training

Fezzik

Turkish women are famous for the size of their babies. The only happy newborn ever to weigh over twenty-four pounds upon entrance was the product of a southern Turkish union. Turkish hospital records list a total of eleven children who weighed over twenty pounds at birth. And ninety-five more who weighed between fifteen and twenty. Now all of these 106 cherubs did what babies usually do at birth: they lost three or four ounces and it took them the better part of a week before they got it totally back. More accurately, 105 of them lost weight just after they were born.

Not Fezzik.

His first afternoon he gained a pound. (Since he weighed but fifteen and since his mother gave birth two weeks early, the doctors weren't unduly concerned. "It's because you came two weeks too soon," they explained to Fezzik's mother. "That explains it." Actually, of course, it didn't explain anything, but whenever doctors are confused about something, which is really more frequently than any of us would do well to think about, they always snatch at something in the vicinity of the case and add, "That explains it." If Fezzik's mother had come late, they would have said, "Well, you came late, that explains it." Or "Well, it was raining during delivery, this added weight is simply moisture, that explains it.")

A healthy baby doubles his birth weight in about six months and triples it in a year. When Fezzik was a year old, he weighed eighty-five pounds. He wasn't fat, understand. He looked like a perfectly normal strong eighty-five-pound kid. Not all that normal, actually. He was pretty hairy for a one-year-old.

By the time he reached kindergarten, he was ready to shave. He was the size of a normal man by this time, and all the other children made his life miserable. At first, naturally, they were scared to death (even then, Fezzik looked fierce) but once they found out he was chicken, well, they weren't about to let an opportunity like that get away.

"Bully, bully," they taunted Fezzik during morning yogurt break.

"I'm not," Fezzik would say out loud. (To himself he would go "Woolly, woolly." He would never dare to consider himself a poet, because he wasn't anything like that; he just loved rhymes. Anything you said out loud, he rhymed it inside. Sometimes the rhymes made sense, sometimes they didn't. Fezzik never cared much about sense; all that ever mattered was the sound.)

"Coward."

Towered. "I'm not."

"Then fight," one of them would say, and would swing all he had and hit Fezzik in the stomach, confident that all Fezzik would do was go "oof and stand there, because he never hit back no matter what you did to him.

"Oof."

Another swing. Another. A good stiff punch to the kidneys maybe. Maybe a kick in the knee. It would go on like that until Fezzik would burst into tears and run away.

One day at home, Fezzik's father called, "Come here."

Fezzik, as always, obeyed.

"Dry your tears," his mother said.

Two children had beaten him very badly just before. He did what he could to stop crying.

"Fezzik, this can't go on," his mother said. "They must stop picking on you."

Kicking on you. "I don't mind so much," Fezzik said.

"Well you should mind," his father said. He was a carpenter, with big hands. "Come on outside. I'm going to teach you how to fight."

"Please, I don't want—"

"Obey your father."

They trooped out to the back yard.

"Make a fist," his father said.

Fezzik did his best.

His father looked at his mother, then at the heavens. "He can't even make a fist," his father said.

"He's trying, he's only six; don't be so hard on him."

Fezzik's father cared for his son greatly and he tried to keep his voice soft, so Fezzik wouldn't burst out crying. But it wasn't easy. "Honey," Fezzik's father said, "look: when you make a fist, you don't put your thumb inside your fingers, you keep your thumb outside your fingers, because if you keep your thumb inside your fingers and you hit somebody, what will happen is you'll break your thumb, and that isn't good, because the whole object when you hit somebody is to hurt the other guy, not yourself."

Blurt. "I don't want to hurt anybody, Daddy."

"I don't want you to hurt anybody, Fezzik. But if you know how to take care of yourself, and they know you know, they won't bother you any more."

Father. "I don't mind so much."

"Well we do," his mother said. "They shouldn't pick on you, Fezzik, just because you need a shave."

"Back to the fist," his father said. "Have we learned how?"

Fezzik made a fist again, this time with the thumb outside.

"He's a natural learner," his mother said. She cared for him as greatly as his father did.

"Now hit me," Fezzik's father said.

"No, I don't want to do that."

"Hit your father, Fezzik."

"Maybe he doesn't know how to hit," Fezzik's father said.

"Maybe not." Fezzik's mother shook her head sadly.

"Watch, honey," Fezzik's father said. "See? Simple. You just make a fist like you already know and then pull back your arm a little and aim for where you want to land and let go."

"Show your father what a natural learner you are," Fezzik's mother said. "Make a punch. Hit him a good one."

Fezzik made a punch toward his father's arm.

Fezzik's father stared at the heavens again in frustration.

"He came close to your arm," Fezzik's mother said quickly, before her son's face could cloud. "That was very good for a start, Fezzik; tell him what a good start he made," she said to her husband.

"It was in the right general direction," Fezzik's father managed. "If only I'd been standing one yard farther west, it would have been perfect."

"I'm very tired," Fezzik said. "When you learn so much so fast, you get so tired. I do anyway. Please may I be excused?"

"Not yet," Fezzik's mother said.