The Triple Goddess (114 page)

The school’s budget would have permitted the acquisition of electrical equipment, which would enable the four judges, who in classical fencing matches were positioned to left and right of each contestant, to be replaced by a scoring box with green and red lights and a buzzer that recorded hits and non-hits. In electrically scored fencing, which still required the officiation of a president, at the back of both ends of the piste was a drum on which was spooled a spring-loaded retractable cable that was clipped to the back of a wire-mesh vest, covering the target area, that each fighter wore over his jacket. From this a wire ran down the sleeve of his leading arm and along a groove on the foil’s blade to the pressure-sensitive tip.

Hits were registered whenever a connection was made between the point of a competitor’s blade and the lamé filigree of his opponent’s vest.

But Stölwiesel was not interested in making such an investment, because the automatic scoring of the electrical box would have eliminated his bias as president in arbitrating the decisions of the judges. There was not much that 2739J could do, however, as 4285Q heel-and-toe advanced and retreated in the approved fashion with equal facility in both directions. His enemies, for he thought of them as such, grimaced behind their masks, grateful for anonymity, and onlookers shivered at the accuracy and intensity of his lunging and how his blade curved minimally downwards—a concave bend did not score—so as to effect the hardest possible hit and leave a mark that would be visible as a badge of defeat afterwards in the showers.

While others sniggered at the man behind his back, Bonvilian adored his coach, Bedřich Blotto 2182V. Blotto was a wreck of a one-armed war veteran with pebble-thick glasses held together with sticky-tape, and his yellow calloused fingers trembled from shell-shock as he rolled his single-handed cigarettes. But 2182V had once been a formidable antagonist who was rumoured, fifty years before, to have demanded satisfaction from a scar-faced Moldavian who had impugned Blotto’s Czech mother’s morals in absentia—Bedřich was refreshing himself with beer in an inn while touring Rumania on foot with a tent; alone: his mother was at home in Prague, but the Moldavian said he could tell a lot from a face—to a duel with sabres…young Blotto carried a couple with him at all times…and without seconds.

The weapons had rusted a bit with the dew while camping, he said, but they could be honed with the carborundum stone and drop of oil that he had in his haversack; and, after all the trouble he had had getting them through various border checkpoints as he travelled round Eastern Europe, it would be a good opportunity to put them to use.

The Moldavian, a well-known champion, in courteously accepting, and having invited his adversary for one night’s bed and a last early breakfast at his Gothic ancestral home, requested that they might instead opt for mediaeval double-edged broadswords, a cutting and slicing weapon, which he kept polished and sharp hanging on the wall over his baronial fireplace.

Blotto, who in his youth had equal proficiency with any weapon except his tongue, but had no thought of suggesting a retraction, particularly when bath and bed were on offer, acquiesced to the arrangement.

At dawn in the mist in a clearing amongst the pines on the Moldavian’s estate, assuming fencing’s first position, Bedřich formally and crisply saluted in the approved manner by making a circular motion with his forty-five inch long, three inch wide at the base of the blade, five pound weight basket-hilted weapon—from rear to front, and from low to high, with blade and arm forming a straight line parallel to the floor—then sweeping the blade into line with his opponent’s chest.

Still as part of the salute, he flexed his elbow and brought his arm, which in those days was still one of a pair, back towards his body so that forearm and sword formed a vertical line, with the guard of the weapon level with his chin, and with the blade in front of his left eye—he was left-handed—extended the arm and sword towards his opponent again, returned them vertically to the body, acknowledged the non-existent officials on the left by partly extending his arm and weapon diagonally towards them with his elbow bent and hand in fourth position, returned them to the body to form a vertical for a final time, acknowledged the non-existent officials on the right in similar fashion, returned his weapon smartly to his hip, and went
en garde
.

Then, disdaining Fortune, Bedřich—the name means “ruler of peace”—dispassionately unseam’d the Moldavian from the nave [navel] to th’ chops [jaws], (or “chaps” in the variant), as did brave Macbeth the rebel Macdonald, along both diagonals with his brandish’d steel, |Which smok’d with bloody execution; cut off his adversary’s head, walked to the nearest railway station and trained it home to Prague, leaving his host to provide the forest ants with the second complimentary breakfast that he had served that day.

In his dotage Coach Blotto gave fencing lessons. He never wore a mask or a fencing jacket, but cupped his hand over the point of his pupils’ blades when they landed on the distressed and ancient leather cuirass that hung round his neck like a breastplate. Between his lips the fag-end of a roll-up cigarette trembled, wreathing him in sweet Old Holborn tobacco smoke. With minimal movement of his upper body, he wore his students out with an agonizing twenty minutes of lunging, thrusting, and parrying that left them unable to raise their arms or bend their legs one more time.

Under Blotto’s tutelage 4285Q became a coiled spring, possessed of a silent relentlessness that frightened the other boys, even those who were older than he. As he saluted with his blade at the commencement of a match, mask under arm, his opponent saw a look that itself was as keen as a rapier. When play commenced, onlookers gathered to be amazed by Bonvilian’s technique in probing his opponent’s weakest spots, and unflagging energy in changing his guard in a variety of attacks, until he found an open square inch in the target area and planted his blade point in it.

He was unemotional in victory, which he usually achieved without a single hit against him. He never congratulated the defeated party as he took off his mask, or shook hands as was expected of contestants at the end of their matches; so that instead of relief that the bout was over, the loser was even more discomposed by his defeat, and resolved to double the ferocity of his hacking tackles when he next encountered 4285Q playing for the other side of the football field of battle.

But fencing was only twice a week. On other weekdays, in winter, Bonvilian dreaded being forced to play soccer or rugger on cold muddy pitches, and having to endure the barging, fouls, and piling-on of heavy sweating bodies, and shin-splitting kicks from studded boots. “Back” was the only position that he was good for, because all he had to do was send the ball in a straight line; but when he took goal kicks it always seemed soggily uninflated and more reluctant to travel than when the forwards placed their lazy graceful curves.

In rugby, he could never bring himself to tackle a player by diving at his legs, but got plenty of exercise staying far enough away from the action to ensure that he was never required to. He was expert in looking eager in empty parts of the field, and for the most part managed to keep out of the way, despite the occasional panic when players threw long passes to him for the pleasure of seeing the fright on his face.

In summer, football was replaced by cricket, the
England, Their England
game of A.G. Macdonnell that was supposed to be a gentlemanly and leisurely game, involving no great effort as leather cracked off willow and bees hummed in the long grass at the boundary. And so it was, to watch from under a sun-hat with an open hamper at one’s side and a glass of cold white wine in hand.

Participating was a different matter. Although 4285Q was always so low in the batting order as to usually avoid an innings, if the term can be used to describe his brief appearances at the wicket, on the rare occasions when he was to bat, his team-mates took it for granted that he would quickly be bowled out, or leg before wicket: demises for which he gladly offered himself up because he was afraid of getting hit, in these pre-helmet days, by a fast ball.

Being caught would have been, for him, a glamorous ending, but it required an ability to hit the ball.

Fielding was more problematical, for though the captain would place him deep on the off side where there was least action—the opposite strategy to that of the football games, owing to the inevitability of his bungling—sometimes he could not help but be in the way of a shot that came streaking through the covers, which he would fail to stop, or underneath a high ball that he was unable to catch, or reluctant to try because it would sting his hands or might break a finger.

The worst situation would be if he were ever to be put close to the batsman in the aptly named silly point position, or silly mid off or on, and a bullet of a ball hitting his head; but it was a position for only the best players.

When it came to hockey, not only was the ball as hard as in cricket, but the all-weather pitch was too, which added the hazard of bruises and scrapes were one to fall. Plus, whereas in cricket the bats were instruments of projection, hockey sticks were also used as weapons, and shin pads afforded little protection against vicious cuts.

Fortunately hockey afternoons were also fencing afternoons, and Bonvilian only had to play a few times, when Ben Blotto 2182V’s emphysema got the better of him and the class had to be cancelled.

On hot summer days, cricket was followed by the boys being allowed, as a privilege, to swim in the outdoor pool. Young Bonvilian had never attempted more than a cautious breast-stroke, on the occasional Sunday visit to the beach with his parents, which had the advantage of allowing him to keep a dry head, and to breathe normally instead of having to take the sideways gulps of air that real swimmers did when forging ahead in their crawls. Because swimming was accounted a bonus, it was not compulsory, and 4285Q gratefully declined to participate; which, in addition to his fear of drowning, would have meant displaying the slight hump of a scoliosis of his spine.

He was envious of the other boys, though: the smell of the water, and watching them doing bombshells and shouting and screaming with delight, while he sprawled on the grass and sweated in his woollen uniform pretending to read a book, made him miserable.

But on one occasion he was required to swim a single length of the pool as part of a medley of inter-House relay races. Unable to let his team down, and because the ignominy of balking was worse than trying to do what was expected of him, Bonvilian dived in, which he had never done before. To his great surprise, he enjoyed the sensation of being briefly submerged and propelling himself forward, and the surge of competitive adrenaline as he scooped his way to the other end in what turned out to be a respectable time. It came as a great disappointment when, upon his emerging dripping and proud onto the hot concrete at the other end, no one congratulated him.

Although the ease with which he had found himself capable of performing made him feel even more of a coward than usual, fearing his fear, he was relieved that his team’s performance was not good enough for him to have to go through the ordeal again.

Bonvilian’s fear of games was made worse by Stölwiesel’s assigning the best and worst players to their respective teams according to ability, from the élite First to the stigmatic Sixth. He did this in the most public way possible, by placing round tags with the boys’ names on them on the pins of a large wooden board, which was hand-painted into columns for each of the six divisions and with the positions they would play running across—the soccer backs being at the bottom. The board hung on the wall of the central hall between classrooms that served as a gathering point for pupils, after they had lined up outside the kitchen and drunk the compulsory small bottle of milk and eaten the fruit bun that were provided at mid-morning Break.

Bonvilian hated straight milk, especially when it was warm.

Because Stölwiesel changed the players around every day, in recognition of any improvement or diminishment in their performance throughout the seasons, it was impossible for Bonvilian to avoid the mortification of everyone noting his invariable assignment to the sixth team, which was the one that comprised the swots, the fatties, the short-sighted, the uncoordinated, and those who shambled or walked pigeon-toed or duck-footed; and then having to spend the next couple of lessons until lunch agonizing about the forthcoming afternoon’s game, and how he was going to be able to fit in sufficient piano practice afterwards to satisfy his equally Nazi-like piano teacher the following day.

The First Eleven or Fifteen was refereed by Stölwiesel, and the Sixth by a sadistic cove with a red-veined bulbous nose called Maxwell Payne 1029O. Payne had a mucous and unpleasant wife, Griselda, who apparently had nothing better to do with her afternoons than stand on touchlines or sit at boundaries as a spectator. The pair was known to the boys as Nasal and Effluvia, and Bonvilian felt a double indignity at being observed failing by a woman as he floundered and flailed about the pitch.

Lastly, Bonvilian never forgot his inadequacy on cross-country runs, the wheezing of his asthmatic lungs as he forced his leaden limbs across wet clayey fields, and the embarrassment of being checked in across the finish-line at the back of the stragglers.

Even when games were over the hatefulness continued, for the boys had to stand naked in line waiting to take their turns in two open showers. 4285Q had never seen another unclothed person before, including either of his parents, and the distinguishing features of the other boys’ bodies were an unwelcome revelation, because they were as memorable as their faces. For a youth who was intensely conscious of his weedy body, hunched back, and exposed membrum virile, this was traumatic; but only marginally preferable to being accused of having avoided showering by hanging back in the smelly changing-room and getting dressed before the others started coming back, snapping their towels at each others’ buttocks.