Boswell (18 page)

The Reaper advanced toward me. I circled along the apron. He pursued me.

“Missouri rules, Missouri rules,” I said plaintively.

“Natural law, natural law,” he answered.

“Three for Reaper. Thirteen for Playboy.”

“Not by default, you bastard,” I shouted. I jumped back inside the ropes.

“Four for Reaper.”

“Famine, Flood, War, Pestilence,” I hissed.

He came through the ropes and the referee stood between us. When Sallow was standing inside the ring the referee clapped his hands and stepped back.

I held out my hands again. I was ready to bring them down powerfully on his neck should he try to go under them. He hesitated, looking at my long fingers.

“Games?” he said. “With me?”

Slowly he put one hand behind his back. He thrust the other toward me, the fingers spread wide as a net. He was challenging me to use both my hands against his one in a test of strength. The crowd giggled.

“Both,” I said, shaking my head.

He slid his arm up higher behind his back. He looked like a cripple.

I shook my head again. The crowd laughed nervously.

He bent one finger.

“No,” I said. “No.”

He tucked his thumb into his palm.

I stepped back angrily.

He brought down another finger.

“Use both hands,” I yelled. “Beat me, but don’t humiliate me.” ,

He closed a fourth finger. The crowd was silent. The single finger with which he challenged my ten pointed at me. He took a step backwards. Now he was not pointing but beckoning.

“Don’t you like the odds?” someone shouted. The crowd applauded.

“You stink like shit,” I yelled at The Reaper.

“Take my hand,” he said quietly. “Try to force it down.”

I lost control and hurled myself toward Sallow’s outstretched finger. I would tear it off, I thought. He stepped back softly, like one pressing himself politely against a wall to allow someone else to pass through a door. The crowd groaned. I looked helplessly at The Reaper; his face was calm, serene, softly satisfied, like one who has spun all the combinations on a lock and can open it now at his leisure. I braced myself too late. My body, remiss, tumbled awkwardly across the ring. The Reaper had brought his fisted hand from behind his back and now smashed my unprotected ear. I fell against the rope with my mouth open. My teeth were like so many Chicklets in my mouth. I bled on the golden canvas. The Reaper stalked me. He took my head under his arm almost gently and held my bleeding ear against his chest. “I am old,” he whispered, “because I am wily. Because I take absolutely nothing for granted—not the honor of others, not their determination, not even their youth and strength.”

He would kill me. He had no concern for my life. It was all true—the legends, the myths. Until that moment I hadn’t really believed them. He had killed the man in South Africa—and how many others? In all those years how many had he maimed and murdered? He wrestled so that he could demonstrate his cruelty, show it in public, with the peculiarly desperate pride of one displaying his cancerous testicles in a medical amphitheater. His strength, his ancient power, was nothing supernatural. It was his indifference that killed us. And it had this advantage: it could not be shorn; he could not be talked out of it. Our pain was our argument. In his arms, my face turning and turning against the bristles in his armpit, I was one with all victims, an Everyman through loss and deprivation, knowing the soul’s martial law, its sad, harsh curfew. Our pain was our argument and, like all pain, it was wasted. What was terrible was his energy. He lived arrogantly, like one who you know will not give way coming toward you down a narrow sidewalk. To live was all his thought, to proliferate his strength in endless war. The vampire was the truest symbol in the give and take of the universe.

I screamed at the referee. “Get him off.”

The referee looked down at me helplessly. “It hasn’t lasted long enough,” he said. “You’ve only been at it ten minutes. You can’t quit now.”

“Get him off, God damn it!”

“These people paid for a main event. Give them a main event.”

“Get him off. The main event is my death. He means to kill me.”

“Take it easier with him, Reaper,” the referee said. “Work him toward the ropes. Let him get away a minute.”

“Sure,” the Reaper said mildly.

“No,” I shouted. “No. I quit.” I tried to turn my neck toward the crowd. “He’s killing me,” I yelled. “They won’t let me quit.” They couldn’t hear me above their own roar.

The Reaper gathered me toward him; he grabbed my body—I wasn’t even resisting now—and raised me over his head. He pushed me away like a kind of medicine ball and I dropped leadenly at the base of the ring post.

I knew my man now. To treat flesh as though it were leather or lead was his only intention. To find the common denominator in all matter. It was scientific; he was a kind of alchemist, this fellow. Of course. Faust and Mephistopheles combined.
Fist!
I lay still.

“Fight,” he demanded.

I didn’t answer.

“Fight!” he said savagely.

He could win any time, but he refused. This was a main event for him, too. He had thrown me away to give me a chance to organize a new resistance.

“Will you fight?” he asked dangerously.

“Not with you,” I said.

The crowd was booing me.

“All right,” he said.

He backed away. I watched him. He was bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet in a queer rhythm. His shoulders raised and lowered rapidly, powerfully. His arms seemed actually to lengthen. He stooped forward and came toward me slowly, swinging his balled metallic fists inches above the canvas. It was his Reaper movement, the gesture that had given him his name. I had never seen it and I watched fascinated. The crowd had stopped booing and was screaming for me to get up. The closer he got the more rapidly his fists swept the canvas, but still his pace toward me was slow, deliberate, almost tedious. He loomed above me like some ancient farmer with an invisible scythe. Now the people in the first rows were standing. They rushed toward the ring, pleading with me to get away. At last my resolution broke. I got clumsily to my knees and stumbled away from him. It was too late; his fists were everywhere. They caught me on the legs, the stomach, the neck, the back, the head, the mouth. I felt like some tiny animal—a field mouse—in tall grass, trampled by the mower. I covered my eyes with my hands and dropped to the canvas, squeezing myself flat against it. I squealed helplessly. A fist caught me first on one temple, then on the other.

I heard the referee shout “That’s enough” just before I lost consciousness.

I was unconscious for only a few seconds. Oddly, when I came to my head was clear. I could have gotten up; I could have caught one of those fists and pulled him off balance. But I didn’t choose to; I thought of one of those phrases they use for the wars—to struggle in vain. They were always praying that battle and injury and death were not in vain—as though anything purchased at some ultimate cost ought to be worth it. It was a well- meant prayer, even a wise one, but not practical. Life was economics. To be alive was to be a consumer. They made a profit on us always. There were no bargains. I saw that to struggle in vain was stupid, to be on the losing side was stupid, but there was nothing one could do. I would not get up, I thought, I would not even let them know I was conscious. I lay there, calmer than I had ever been in my life.

“He’s dead,” someone screamed after a moment. “He’s dead,” someone else shouted. They took it up, made it a chant. “He’s dead. He’s dead. He’s dead.”

The police rushed into the ring. They made a circle around The Reaper and moved off with him through the crowd. They were protecting him, I knew. He was not being arrested. What he did in the ring was all right. He was immune to law; law itself said he was immune, like someone with diplomatic status. What did that reduce my death to, I wondered. What did that reduce my death to if my murder was not a murder, not some terrible aberration punishable by law? Missouri rules and natural law worked hand in hand in an awful negation of whatever was precious to human beings. Oh, the dirty athletics of death!

Lying there on the canvas, in the idiotic nimbus of my blood, no longer sure I feigned unconsciousness, or even whether I still lived, one thing was sure: I would not fight—ever again. It was stupid to struggle, stupider still to struggle in vain—and that’s all struggle ever amounted to in a universe like ours, in bodies like our own. From now on I would be the guest. I would haunt the captain’s table, sweating over an etiquette of guesthood as others did over right and wrong. Herlitz knew his man, who only gradually, and after great pain, knew himself.

If only it isn’t too late, I thought; if only it isn’t too late to do me any good, I thought, just before I died.

Part Two

FROM THE JOURNALS:

March 19, 1949. St. Louis.

At first the voice was simply conversational, pleasant to listen to there in the dark. I settled myself comfortably and tried to guess what the speaker was like. This mattered more than what he was saying, though it wasn’t very important either. Nothing was. It probably wasn’t important for the old speaker either. (I pictured him as very old.) I imagined him to be as comfortable as myself. We might have been in Purgatory together, or on some battlefield after the noise and terror of the day.

After a while the voice became a little husky. He may have been thirsty. That was too bad, I thought; he should either drink something or stop talking. The strain became more obvious, and though I could still hear him almost as clearly as before it was plain that he was making a greater effort. It occurred to me that he may have been in some peculiar position, and I thought, Why doesn’t he change it if it’s such an effort to talk from? As he substituted effort for momentum his speech became less objective, more urgent. I might have been able to learn something from this old man, I thought, if only he hadn’t become thirsty.

“She mustn’t see him,” the voice was saying. “Not after what he did to her. Why do you suppose I’m here now? It was the shock. What a shock that was. Never mind about that. I’ll see to it that he’s punished. She won’t have to be there. You promise me. Promise.”

He was probably right, I thought resentfully, there was no reason to expose the child. (I knew she was very young just as I knew he was very old.) But why did he have to shout? He seemed more convincing, I thought, when he simply stated his position.

“Stop that noise,” another voice, deeper, surly, said. “You’re unappreciative,” it added unexpectedly.

“Will everyone please be quiet?” a third voice said. This last voice seemed very near and I wondered if it was me who had spoken. It seemed odd that I should have said anything. None of this had anything to do with me.

“Oh, shut up,” said the second voice angrily.

“Are you talking to me?” I asked.

“Another county heard from,” said the second voice.

“Look,” said a fourth voice, “my head hurts very bad tonight, even worse than usual. But you never hear me complain.”

“You’re complaining right now,” the second voice said logically. “If your head hurts so bad why don’t you tell her?”

“Promise me,” said the first voice. “Promise me.”

“All right,” the third voice said wearily, “I promise you.” I listened very carefully. It wasn’t I who had spoken. It was somebody older.

“I’m sorry,” I said to the second voice when I realized he hadn’t meant me when he had said shut up.

“Sleep,” the fourth voice said, “if anybody had ever told me I’d be lying down for as long as this and not be able to sleep, I’d have said he was crazy.”

So that was it, I thought. That explains the peculiar sound of the first man’s voice. He was lying down. I was probably lying down also. Then I wondered why I was lying down. I wondered why it was so dark.

“Excuse me,” I said, “where are we?”

“Another county heard from,” said the second voice.

“He must be coming out of it. I’ll bet
he
has some headache,” the fourth voice said pleasantly.

“I’m James Boswell,” I said. It occurred to me that

if I introduced myself they might tell me their names, and where we were, and why it was so dark.

“How do you do?” the third voice said.

“Charmed,” the second voice said. “All right, everybody get some sleep. That’s the best thing.”

“Promise me. Promise me,” said the first voice.

“Tell him,” the third voice said.

“Buddy? Buddy?” the second voice said.

“Are you talking to me?” I said. I was the fifth voice.

The second voice ignored me. “He dropped off,” he said after a while. “I’m next.”

“Right,” the third voice said.

No one said anything else. I wasn’t tired. I hadn’t been asleep and couldn’t remember when I had been asleep, but I wasn’t tired. It was very dark. If I hadn’t been asleep I should have been able to remember how it had gotten dark.

I wondered if I could move my arms. I pushed them laterally away from my body. I was surprised how easy it was. Suddenly my hands touched something solid and metallic and cold. Bars. So that’s how they do it, I thought. I tried to sit up but couldn’t manage it. It was peculiar. I remembered the fourth voice had spoken of pain but I felt no pain. Probably the fourth voice didn’t either. Men tended to boast about pain. Most of it was just talk.

Then, suddenly, without any effort on my part at all, I understood what had happened. I started to shout. “I’m James Boswell. I’m James Boswell. I’m James Boswell.”

“Listen,” I yelled, “you can ask my uncle. Ask Herlitz. There’s been a mistake.”

Of course, I thought. I still had the mask on; they had sealed the eyeholes. That’s why it was so dark. The idiots, the lazy god-damned idiots—they had buried me as The Masked Playboy!

“I’m James Boswell,” I screamed. “I’m James Boswell!”

“Now, now, now, now,” a new voice, close to me, said.

“Not in a common grave,” I pleaded. “For God’s sake, not in a common grave. I have a name. I’m James Boswell! Take off the mask and you’ll see.”