1985 - Stars and bars (4 page)

T
he gym was down by the East River in the basement of an old building between Queensboro Bridge and F.D.R. Drive. It was the only place in Manhattan where Hender-son had been able to find a sabre coach and so he charitably attempted to ignore its less salubrious qualities.

The basement windows were heavily barred and opaque with grime. The basement well was brightened by drifts of wax-paper cartons and aluminium beer and soft-drink cans. The studded and battered double steel doors were luridly and professionally graffiti-ed with futuristic names and numbers.

Henderson went in. An ancient man behind a grille scrutinized his Queensboro Health Club membership card.

‘Is Mr Teagarden here?’ Henderson asked.

‘Yep.’

Henderson walked along a passageway and turned into the humid locker room. Thin avenues of grey lockers took up most of the space. Low benches ran between them. Three Puerto Rican kids in boxing gear smoked in a line near Henderson’s locker.

He tried to undress with nonchalance. Then he pulled on his white socks and white polo neck jumper and stepped into his white knickerbockers. He heard the chuckles and jibes break out behind him.

‘Hey, what that shit you wearing?’

Henderson laced his gym shoes.

‘Some kinda fairy, man?’

He slung his sabre bag over his shoulder. Sticks and stones.

‘Snow White. He Snow White!’

May break my bones. He picked up his mask, gloves and padded waistcoat. But names will never harm me.

‘Spiderman! He Spiderman!’

He strode out of the locker room with as much dignity as he could muster.

The low-roofed gym area was surprisingly large. There was a boxing ring; a scrapyard of fitness machines—chain and pulley systems, canting seats and legrests, short conveyor belts with dials and handrails—and the usual barbells and weights for the glistening, walnut-brained beefcakes to toss around. There was a large padded that area for the martial arts enthusiasts and behind a door at the far end, a steam room and plunge pool.

In the far corner he could see Teagarden marking out the fencing piste with chalk.

‘You’re late,’ Teagarden said.

‘Busy day,’ Henderson apologized. ‘And I’ve got to be out of here by half six.’

‘Ain’t no reduction.’

‘Oh no. I wasn’t suggesting…’

Eugene Teagarden was black. The only black sabreur in America, he claimed, which was why he charged such high rates. He was slim and dapper with a tidy wide moustache and a manner that vacillated erratically between hostility and scorn. He was, as far as Henderson could tell, a brilliant swordsman. He taught, moreover, not fencing but ‘zencing’. The raw technique came with a heady garnish of philosophy and consciousness-expanding routines. Impelled by the continuous exhortation in America to exercise, Henderson had plumped for fencing, the only sport he had vaguely enjoyed while at school. It wasn’t so much the exercise he was after as the topic of conversation it provided him with at dinners and parties. When the talk inevitably moved to working out, aerobics, discussions of the stride-length factor in jogging, Henderson could chip in with a fencing anecdote.

He took a sabre out of his bag.

‘Don’t want to waste no time, then,’ Teagarden said. ‘Masks on. On guard.’

Henderson slid on his mask, the big Cyclopean fly-eye. He liked the mask; it made his head as featureless as a light bulb.

‘Remember the drills,’ Teagarden said.

Controlled relaxation, Henderson intoned, controlled relaxation. This was the key to the Teagarden approach; this was the core of zencing. And this was why he persisted with Teagarden’s abuse and truculence: it did him good, he hoped. He didn’t need to exercise, he needed the therapy.

‘On the toes.’

Henderson rose on his toes, legs apart, left hand perched on his hip, the sabre held angled in front of him.

‘Feel that blade,’ Teagarden said, now masked and on guard opposite him. ‘You are that blade. There is only the blade. You do not exist. What are you?’

‘I, um, am the blade.’

‘Controlled relaxation.’

Henderson relaxed and tried to stay in control.

‘Take your measure.’

The sabres made contact. A tinny scratching sound.

‘Feel it?’

‘What?’

‘The
sensation du fer
.’

‘Oh yes. I feel it.’

‘OK. Fleche attack any time you like.’

The fleche attack was a sort of mad scampering charge that often took the attacker thundering past his opponent. At some point during the attack one was meant to deliver a cut to the cheek or the flank.

Henderson swayed. Teagarden was poised and immobile. Henderson thought he might fall over he felt so relaxed.

He sang a song to himself, another of Teagarden’s drills. For some reason he always sang ‘Nymphs and Shepherds’.

Nymphs and shepherds, come away, come away
. I am the blade, he reminded himself, I am the blade.
Come, come, come, come away
. He was going to make a fleche attack on Teagarden’s left side—unorthodox—but administer a cut to the right side of the face—even more unorthodox. So fingernails of the sword hand down, sword arm straight behind the guard, breathe out, relax, a feint to the right and charge!

He felt Teagarden’s stop cut jar on the inside of the right elbow and, almost simultaneously, the thwacking cuts to the head and left cheek as he galloped by, skewering air.

‘What you doing, man?’ Teagarden shouted, as Henderson caromed into a wall ladder. ‘You was wide open. You was fuckin’
slashin
‘, too.’

He wandered over, mask perched on the top of his head. ‘The cut is a twitch of your little finger.’ Ping, bock, rasp, scratch, ping. Teagarden’s sabre administered five cuts to Henderson’s mask in as many milliseconds.

‘You ain’t Errol fuckin’ Flynn. Is all wrist, man. You’re like chopping meat.’ He swished madly in the air in illustration. ‘You ain’t a butcher, you a artist. You’re a art-man, it should come natural.’

‘Sorry,’ Henderson mumbled.

‘OK. So just breathe.’

They breathed for a couple of minutes.

‘Controlled relaxation,’ Teagarden said.

Henderson relaxed.

‘Let’s do it this way,’ Teagarden said. ‘You’re on top of a mountain, OK?
In
a white room. You was born there. You lived there all your life. Why? ‘Cause you’re the king of fencing. The lord of sabreurs. People come from all over to your mountain to watch you in your room. To watch your fleche attacks. Why? Because you fleche attack
purely
, man. Pure. Got that?’

‘Mountain, white room, pure. Yes.’

‘Shut your eyes.’ His voice dropped a tone. ‘You are the lord of sabreurs in your white room on the mountain. Think about it. Imagine it. Be there. What are you?’

Henderson opened his eyes and looked about him edgily. Nobody appeared to be listening. He shut his eyes again.

‘I’m, ah, the (little cough) lord of sabreurs.’

‘Louder.’

‘I am the lord of sabreurs.’

‘Louder.’

‘I am the lord of sabreurs!’

‘Louder!’

‘I AM THE LORD OF SABREURS!’

Henderson opened his eyes. People had stopped exercising, a small crowd had gathered. For some reason he felt curiously elated, almost lightheaded with embarrassment. Only Teagarden could make him behave like this. Only in America would he have complied.

‘OK. I’m going to feint at the head and you parry quinte. Got that?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then parry at flank with seconde and riposte at right cheek.’

‘OK.’

Then I’ll cut at flank, parry tierce on the lunge, make a counter riposte to head and we’ll take it from there.’

‘Fine.’

‘And do it purely, for God’s sake. Pure.’

In the locker room afterwards Henderson and Tea-garden towelled down after their shower. Henderson tried not to look at Teagarden’s long thin cock and attempted as best he could to preserve his own modesty. Ever since leaving his boarding school he felt ill-at-ease being naked with other men. What made this occasion worse was that Teagarden was the first black man he had ever seen naked, outside of books and
National Geographic
magazines, and Henderson was concerned not to seem curious. He hummed ‘Nymphs and Shepherds’ quietly and appeared unduly interested in a corner of the ceiling. Teagarden did a lot of unselfconscious walking around, his towel slung about his neck, but eventually put on his underpants.

Henderson told him he was going away for a few days and probably wouldn’t make the Wednesday lesson.’

‘That’s up to you,’ Teagarden said aggressively.

Henderson pulled on his shirt. Really, the man was impossible. The most neutral exchange of information denigrated into some sort of offence.

‘Where you going?’

‘The South. Georgia, I think. To start with. I’ve got to go to Atlanta first.’

‘Shit. What you want to go there for?’

‘It’s for work.’

‘Hell, you don’t want to go down there.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s bad, man.’

‘Worse than here?’

Teagarden shrugged. ‘Maybe not. It’s different, that’s for sure.’

‘How? How do you mean?’

‘Shit, I don’t know…Well, maybe everyone’s the same everywhere. Dishin’ out the same shit.’ Teagarden looked intensely at him. ‘Dishin’ the shit. That’s what it’s all about, ain’t it? Dishin’ the shit?’

Henderson was perplexed. ‘Well, not all the time. Some of the time, but not
all
the time, surely.’

Teagarden sat down to lace up his shoes. ‘That what you think?’

‘I suppose I do.’

Teagarden laughed. He seemed to find the notion genuinely amusing.

‘Then good luck to you, Mr Dores. You sure gonna need it.’ A little unsettled, Henderson said goodbye and left.

Henderson picked up a cab on East Fifty-ninth Street and gave the driver Melissa’s address. He sat back on the red leatherette seat and tried to forget Teagarden’s words and his laughter. He thought, with only second order guilt, of going south with Irene. He felt at once tired and invigorated after his exercise with the sabres. Perhaps he would sleep tonight.

He banished all thoughts of Irene from his mind as he approached Melissa’s apartment in the upper eighties. Neither of the women in his life knew anything of the existence of the other. Accordingly certain levels of concentration had to be maintained to prevent a careless slip.

He paid off the cab and paused for a moment outside the doorway of the apartment block. It was cool and he stood beneath the firmament of shining windows collecting his thoughts. He adjusted his tie and cleared his throat. It was like paying court; then he remembered he
was
paying court. Last week Melissa had allowed that they were on the point of becoming ‘unofficially engaged’ again. He was quite expecting her to demand a ring.

He had met Melissa at Oxford, in the mid-sixties, getting on for two decades ago now. He was subsidizing his Ph. D. by teaching at a summer school which various American colleges held in Oxford. Melissa had been one of his tutees. Even then, with his love affair with America not fully developed, Melissa—fresh, her dark hair tied back, her impossible aura of cleanliness—had seemed overpoweringly alluring. She, as was confessed in the third tutorial, was recovering from the unhappy termination of a college love affair. Henderson’s donnish affectations (French cigarettes, rumpled erudition) his utter dissimilarity to her previous lover (called, oddly, ‘Jock’, as far as he could make out) and the predictable student—teacher crush had propelled them swiftly into as fervid a romance as he had ever known. It started with picnic lunches and progressed to half-pints in hot summer-evening pubs then weekend trips to London. It moved quickly, with a strong momentum of emotion, because each saw in the other a timely and fortuitous answer to his or her particular requirements. They were married three months later in his college chapel (her daunting parents flew over for the wedding) and they rented a cold cottage in Islip. The momentum was still going a year later. Looking back on it now, it still seemed to Henderson to have been his life’s only sustained experience of true happiness. That next summer they had gone to France and Italy. They were in the final planning stages of their next trip—to the States, Henderson agog with anticipation—when, one November afternoon, she came home early from her job to find him in bed with the woman next door.

This woman’s name was Agnes Brown; its very drab-ness summed her up perfectly. It had been his sole occasion of marital infidelity and to this day he wondered how they had so fatefully contrived to find themselves in bed together.

Agnes was a faintly grubby woman who always seemed harassed and overburdened with, chores and extra work. She was somewhat older than Henderson, a divorcee with three young, noisy and potentially neurotic children. Henderson and Melissa had come to know her quite well—as next-door neighbours will—but he had never entertained even a half-hearted sexual or erotic fantasy about her, for, in Agnes, Henderson recognized a fellow sufferer: Agnes Brown was shy. She confessed as much to Henderson and Melissa on numerous occasions, bemoaning her disability and the obstacle it posed to her ever finding a new husband.

For such people often the only means to physical contact is a collision, and one rainy afternoon she and Henderson collided. She had come to borrow one of Melissa’s bright American magazines. Henderson picked it up, turned too quickly and bumped into her.

Why had he kissed her? In the intervening decade and a half that question had been asked hundreds of times, with no satisfactory answer. There was even less likelihood of explaining the fumbling embarrassed haste with which they had fallen on the sofa and the chilling, semi-clothed shuffle into the bedroom some minutes later.

At first he told himself that he must have felt like a final dose of European grime before exposing himself to the gleaming hygiene of the New World, but as a motive it rang a little false. He knew that he had done it because he was shy too—though not as shy as she was. In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. The same power-equation applies to the parish of the mild, he now knew. There the modestly emboldened exercises real sway. Modestly emboldened, he seized the opportunity: he simply didn’t have the confidence to say no. The truth was, he thought, remembering the wet, rather sore clash of mouths, she was keen on me and I was flattered and weak. This was the fearful side-effect of shyness. Because he lacked the confidence to disagree, to spurn, to go his own way, it was always easier to conform. He wasn’t making love with Agnes that ghastly afternoon when Melissa breezed in to discover them, he was conforming.