The Harder They Fall

by Budd Schulberg

  ‘Maybe Nick won’t know you’re here,’ Ruby said. ‘But just the same you’re doing Nick’s work. You’re seeing that nothing happens to Nick’s property. Just like all the rest of his mob. Well, goddam all of you. That goes for Nick too. Leaves me out here all week, with no one to talk to but a punch-drunk chauffeur and a fairy butler.’

  ‘Ruby, I don’t care what you do. That’s your pleasure. I’m just trying to look after Toro.’

  ‘You can keep Toro,’ Ruby said. ‘Tell you the truth, I’m sick of Toro. I’ll admit I was a little curious about him at first, but you have nothing to worry about any more. If you came here to tell me not to lead your little boy astray, you can go back to your office and grind sausage about how your great Man Mountain is going to wipe the floor with poor old Gus Lennert.’

  ‘When’re you going to leave our fighters alone?’

  ‘You will please get out of this house at once,’ Ruby said with imitation hauteur, and then something gave way in her mind and she began to scream, ‘Get out of here, you cheap louse, you cheap, little louse! Get out of here, you bastard!’

  Ruby’s shrill profanity followed me through the house as I hurried to the marble hallway. But the butler opened the door for me and bowed me out with a wise smile.

  When I saw Nick a couple of days later in New York, having lunch at Dinty Moore’s with Jimmy Quinn and the Killer, he was in high spirits. Off the advance sale it looked as if we were going to get our $150,000 house, just as he had figured. Even the Garden fans who suspected Toro’s record was padded with tankers were curious to see how he’d shape up against a first-rater like Lennert.

  As part of the build-up, I brought an ex-champ down to the camp to be photographed looking Toro over. Afterwards I’d write up a little statement we’d plant in the papers about how he had visited both camps and picked Toro to win by a knockout because of his superior punching power and the streffis and the strallis and the voraspan.

  The joker on our junket was Kenny Waters, ex-heavyweight champion, but definitely a third-road-company champ, a clown who would have been back digging ditches if he hadn’t come along just at the time when the line on the heavyweight chart had flattened out. The title had been awarded to him while reclining flat on his back, crying foul. A year later he had lost his crown to Lennert, on a night when Gus still retained some of the vigour of youth. This defeat, ignominious as it had been at the time, still entitled him to speak with authority – no matter how counterfeit – about any contest in which his conqueror was involved. For this ex-champion it was a chance to bask for one more precious moment in the warm sun of publicity. To see his name in print just once more with his four-star civilian rank former-champion-of-the-world, I’m sure he would have been glad to pay us for his services.

  I was up in my room writing Kenny Waters’ eyewitness comparison of Toro and Lennert when Benny came in to tell me that some gee from Argentina was here to see me.

  ‘Damn it, I’m busy,’ I said. ‘I promised the Journal I’d have this crap in by four o’clock.’

  ‘Well, dis guy’s a big dealer,’ Benny said. ‘He’s got a car, it looks like they put wheels on a speedboat. He drove it alla way up from Argentina.’

  ‘Tell him I’ll be there in a minute. Keep him happy till I come down.’

  I finished up Waters’ piece in a hurry. This is great, I thought, a ghostwriter for a ghost, a stooge for a stooge. While I laughed at this idea, a thousand little gnats of conscience whined in my head.

  Waiting for me in the sitting room was a tall, swarthy, smoothly groomed fellow with two neat little mousetails of a moustache, in his early thirties, and a squat, dark-complexioned, stolid-faced, middle-aged companion in a baggy brown suit.

  ‘Allow me to introduce myself, Carlos de Santos,’ the younger man said, rising gracefully and speaking English with barely a trace of Spanish intonation.

  ‘This is Fernando Jensen,’ de Santos said. ‘He is the sports editor of our famous newspaper, El Pantero. We have come to root for our countryman in the big fight.’

  ‘In our country, there is very great interest in this fight,’ Jensen began ponderously, drawing from his pocket a folded and finger-worn clipping from El Pantero to show me his feature article on Toro’s career. ‘El Toro Brings New Glory to Argentina’, it was headed. ‘I wish to send back a daily report on El Toro’s condition and activities,’ he continued. ‘You see, our country is a very proud country. We have a Strength-and-Health programme to build up the bodies of our young men. Before I left I have written an editorial in which I consider El Toro Molina as the symbol of Young Argentina.’

  ‘Fernando here is a very serious fellow,’ de Santos added jokingly. ‘You shouldn’t pay too much attention to everything he says.’ His brown eyes seemed to be laughing. ‘Can we see El Toro now? I have a gold watch I want to present to him in behalf of his fellow Santa Marianos.’

  Toro was just drawing on his running togs when we came in. He looked surprised when de Santos embraced him so warmly. Even though the young estanciero was obviously accepting Toro as an equal now, Toro still treated him with the shy deference of an obedient paisano. While de Santos gave Toro the latest home-town news, with a breeziness that did not succeed in overcoming Toro’s obvious unpreparedness at this sudden familiarity, I went out to round up the reporters and photographers. News had been pretty slow around the camp and this was just what we needed to cover up the general sluggishness of Toro’s workout.

  We even got the newsreels out that afternoon for de Santos’ presentation of the gold watch. The fantastic strength of the Molina barrel-makers had long been a legend in Santa Maria, de Santos said, and now the entire village was praying and burning candles for El Toro to bring back the championship of the world. If El Toro defeated Lennert, the de Santoses were going to fill the village fountain with wine and declare a two-day holiday.

  That had everything. It couldn’t have had more schmaltz if I had dreamt it up myself. And I noticed that young de Santos, for all his playboy chatter, had managed to work in his commercial for de Santos wines, which were just beginning to hit the North American market.

  While the newsreel men wrapped up their cameras, and de Santos and Jensen were telling the reporters they had also brought with them fifty thousand dollars raised by a group of de Santos’ wealthy friends to bet on Toro, Toro just stood there in a daze.

  ‘Well, this must be a pleasant surprise,’ I said to Toro. ‘Now you’ll have someone to talk to.’

  ‘He wishes me to call him by his nickname, “Pepe”,’ Toro said unbelievingly. ‘Imagine me, an aldeano, addressing a de Santos as Pepe!’

  He showed me the gold watch with its sentimentality engraved on the back. ‘To El Toro with pride and affection from the House of de Santos.’

  ‘And he asks me to call him Pepe,’ Toro repeated. ‘In his whole life my father has spoken to Carlos de Santos only once. But you have heard his son with your own ears asking me to call him Pepe.’ It was more than he could comprehend. ‘I have much luck, Eddie. Just like Luis promise, and young Carlos de Santos asks me to call him Pepe. I have everything I want – money, honour, people like me.’ He pressed his lips together in a simple gesture of determination. ‘I must beat this Lennert. I must show my countrymen they have not come all this way for nothing.’

  ‘You’ll beat Lennert,’ I said. ‘You’re a cinch to beat Lennert.’

  ‘One ponch, I hope he go boom,’ he said.

  The camp was too quiet for Pepe that evening. There was nothing doing but the regular nightly crap game. So he suggested that I take him and Fernando into town and show them the sights. The three of us squeezed into the Mercedes-Benz he had brought up from BA. Pepe, it developed, was a dirt-racing driver as well as a polo player and pilot, and the way he pushed that M-B into the city seemed to combine all those accomplishments. It was not without a certain fear that I realised I was in the hands of a playboy. A playboy in my book is not the carefree, luxury-loving character that word usua
lly calls to mind. It is someone trying to escape from the neurotic riptide of an overabundance of money and an insufficiency of responsibility.

  First we had to go up to the suite they were keeping in the Waldorf Towers so Pepe could change into more suitable clothes. He indicated an impressive display of bottles on the table. ‘I’ll be out in a jiffy, old fellow. Help yourself.’ The Scotch was Cutty Sark. There was also some champagne brandy, some Holland gin and a couple of bottles of Noilly Prat.

  Fernando was ready in a couple of minutes, but Pepe must have been in there at least half an hour. When he finally appeared, he looked like one of those ads the tailors always show you when you are selecting a style that never comes out looking on you as it did in the picture.

  ‘Now where shall we go, boys?’ Pepe said, with an empty, festive smile.

  ‘Depends what you’re looking for,’ I said. ‘Music, celebrities, girls?’

  ‘Who’s interested in music and celebrities, eh, Fernando?’ Fernando smiled heavily. Pepe produced a gold cigarette case, filled with Players, and selected one gracefully. ‘Don’t worry, my friend,’ he said to Fernando, winking at me happily, ‘I will swear to your wife you spent every night at the training camp.’

  Pepe tipped his way to ringside tables, ordered the waiters to keep the wine flowing and fell verbosely in love with each successive blonde who came on to dance, sing, or smile across her cigarette tray. It was apparent that he was to have a happy and costly Broadway debut. Early in the morning at the Copa, he was saying, ‘The one second from this end – who looks like a little golden kitten – do you suppose she would like to come up to the apartment for a nightcap?’

  ‘Look, Pepe,’ I said – he had already offered me a large guest house all to myself whenever I came down to Santa Maria – ‘that little tramp takes a hinge at your layout in the Towers, and you’re in trouble.’

  ‘But she is so beautiful. For her I would not mind a little trouble …’

  When the party broke up, the garbage collectors who herald the dawn in New York were banging and scraping the cans on the sidewalk as if in protest against the more fortunate citizenry with cleaner jobs at more convenient hours. On the corner of Eighth Avenue I bought the morning papers from an old woman with a shawl around her head. Automatically, I turned to the sports sections as I walked back to the hotel.

  The News had given the de Santos story a nice play. ‘Argentine Scion Arrives to Cheer Former Employee, Toro Molina. Brings $50,000 to Wager on Ex-Barrel-Maker of Famous De Santos Vineyard.’

  And further down, I read, ‘Toro Molina faces the acid test of his spectacular career this Friday night when the undefeated giant gets a chance to try his celebrated mazo punch on the formidable ex-champion, Gus Lennert.’

  I recognised my own words, words I had written so many times they began to assume the weight of truth. On the bottom of the same page was a large cigarette ad in which a recently crowned middleweight champion was advising his fans to smoke a well-known brand because it was the only cigarette that didn’t affect his endurance. I thought of all the people involved in this pious lie: The fighter, the copywriter, the advertising and cigarette executives, the newspaper publishers and finally the great mass of readers themselves who acquiesce and make a lie, for all practical purposes, as easy to live by as truth.

  How could I be blamed for pushing my product, the Giant of the Andes? Who was I to crusade for integrity? I was just trying to live in the world with a minimum amount of friction and pain. If this town was so stupidly credulous as to fill the Garden to see a harmless oaf maul a burnt-out ex-champion, who was I to turn them away at the door? What if I did know better? What if I even saw the fight game for what it was, a genuinely manly art, dragged down through the sewers of human greed? What could I do about it?

  But whom was I arguing with? Who said I had to do anything about it? I was looking up toward the sixth floor of Beth’s apartment-hotel. What was I doing a dozen blocks away from my own joint off Times Square? Her light was on. At five o’clock in the morning, her light was on. Now I realised why my mind wasn’t letting me rest. This wasn’t a Hamlet soliloquy; it was my running argument with Beth. I peered through the locked glass doors into the hallway. The dreary shapeless figure of a middle-aged woman was scrubbing the floor. I had seen her there for years on my way to and from Beth’s apartment.

  I kept looking in at the scrub-woman while trying to make up my mind. How would Beth receive me? Would she see this as an act of determination daring enough to sweep away her resistance? Or would it seem to be just another alcoholic performance by a restless drunk who wandered through the grey canyons of the city’s dawn in pursuit of a will o’ the wisp – his decency?

  Her window was a small rectangle casting its yellow shaft into the drab morning. There shines my conscience, I thought, one small compartment in this great edifice of darkness. And as I watched it, in a kind of hateful reverence, it suddenly went out. Down the empty street came a bony milk-horse calop-calopping wearily on the echoing pavement. His day had begun again. Back in harness with his blinders on. In that instant I remembered that I had to be out at the camp by nine o’clock to meet some out-of-town sports writers who were coming in to interview Toro.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  I shaved, showered, tossed a couple of coffees down and called the Waldorf to see if the Argentine delegation was going out with me. Fernando answered the phone. Pepe had just gone to bed. He had left a call for four that afternoon. But Fernando wanted to go with me. He thought it would be a good idea if Toro, in his interview, said something about the growing importance of the national sports movement in Argentina. So for one hour on that bumpy local, with an off-key version of the Anvil Chorus pounding in my head, I had to hear about the growing enthusiasm for Argentinidad. Our Giant of the Andes was only supposed to be a national hero. But this self-appointed ambassador from south of the Amazon seemed determined to make him a hero of nationalism as well.

  Toro was sitting on the porch listening to his radio and idly drawing faces in the margin of a newspaper. Training was over except for some light exercises in the afternoon and there wasn’t much for him to do.

  ‘Why you leave last night?’ he said. ‘Lots of people come and ask questions. I do not know what to say.’

  I had never seen him in such a mood. The strain was beginning to tell. This was the first fight for which Danny and Doc had really put the pressure on, and the daily grind building up to the nervous tension of the tapering-off period had twisted even Toro’s stolid intestines into the usual pre-fight knot.

  Even with the reporters, to whom he usually showed a peasant amiability, he was irritable and uncommunicative.

  ‘It’s a good sign,’ Doc observed. ‘He’s in the best shape he’s been so far. Down to two-sixty-eight. It’s the first time he’s had an edge. Danny has really been working the hell out of him. Trained him like he would for an old-time fight. Had him chopping wood, climbing trees and hopping fences besides his regular work.’

  ‘I’d like to see the big bum make a good showing,’ I said. ‘Those boys in the press row who can’t be had will really be gunning for him.’

  ‘If you ask me, Danny’s done miracles with him,’ Doc said. ‘At least this time he oughta look like a pro. He’s finally got him punching a little bit and he’s moving around a little better, getting off his heels.’

  After lunch Toro was supposed to lie down, but he told Doc he couldn’t sleep. He was too nervous about the fight. He said he wanted to take a drive in his car. Danny, edgy with the terrible effort at sobriety he always made when he was taking his work seriously, jumped Toro irritably.

  ‘Don’t try to kid your Uncle Danny. I haven’t let you out in three weeks, so now you want to run over and get Ruby to take care of you.’

  Toro’s face tightened with anger. ‘You say that, I keel you, you son-of-beetch …’

  ‘Tell you what I’ll do,’ I stepped in. ‘Maybe the ride’ll do Toro good. So I’ll go along
with him. Okay?’

  They both agreed. Fernando was ready to come along, but for some reason Toro didn’t want him. Even in Spanish he could never find the words to express his suspicion of his aggressively patriotic countryman. For Toro, phrases like ‘the power and glory of Argentina’ had no meaning, no matter how many flowery adjectives were used to establish him as a symbol of Argentinidad. To him Argentina was the village of Santa Maria.

  ‘Please,’ Toro said, when we were on the open road, ‘I go to see the Señora.’

  ‘Toro, I am your friend. What goes with you and the Señora?’

  ‘I want to see her,’ Toro pouted. ‘I see her today.’

  ‘Maybe I can help you. But you’ve got to tell me more about it. I’ll guard your secret like a confession. I promise.’

  ‘I have already confess to the sin of adulterio,’ Toro said. ‘But I cannot stop. I am in love with the Señora. I want the Señora for my wife. I want to bring her home to Santa Maria to live with me in the big house I build on the hill.’

  ‘But, Toro, estas loco,’ I said. ‘Completamente loco. Don’t you realise she’s married? Have you forgotten Nick, of all people?’

  ‘It is not real marriage,’ Toro insisted. ‘She has tell me whole business. It is not real marriage before the Church. It is only civil marriage.’

  ‘But what makes you think the Señora wants to go with you? Has she told you? Has she promised you?’

  ‘She says only maybe, it is possible,’ he admitted. ‘But she says she is in love with me, only with me. I will take her back to Santa Maria. And Mama will teach her how to cook the dishes I like. And we will be very rich with the money I make in the ring.’

  ‘That’s great,’ I said. ‘That’s the end of the movie, all right. Only you left out one little detail. Nick. What are you going to do about Nick?’

  ‘The Señora is very intelligent. The Señora will find a way to tell him what has happen.’