Gladiator

by Wylie, Philip;

  There was the echo of bedlam in his whirling mind when they walked through the almost deserted street. She called to a taxi and they got in. The lights seethed past him. A dark house and three flights of rickety stairs. The gritty sound of a key in a lock. A little room with a table, a bed, two chairs, a gas-light turned low, a disheveled profusion of female garments.

  “Here we are. Sit down.”

  Hugo looked at her tensely. He laughed then, with a harsh sound. She flew into his arms, returning his searching caresses with startling frankness. Presently they moved across the room. He could hear the noises on the street at long, hot intervals.

  Hugo opened his eyes and the light smote them with pain. He raised his head wonderingly. His stomach crawled with a foul nausea. He saw the dirty, room. Bessie was not in it. He staggered to the wash bowl and was sick. He noticed then that her clothes were missing. The fact impressed him as one that should have significance. He rubbed his head and eyes. Then he thought accurately. He crossed the room and felt in his trousers pockets. The money was gone.

  At first it did not seem like a catastrophe. He could telegraph to his father for more money. Then he realized that he was in New York, without a ticket back to the campus, separated from his friends, and not knowing the address of the toastmaster. He could not find his fraternity brothers and he could not get back to school without more money. Moreover, he was sick.

  He dressed with miserable slowness and went down to the street. Served him right. He had been a fool. He shrugged. A sharp wind blew out of a bright sky.

  Maybe, he thought, he should walk back to Webster. It was only eighty miles and that distance could be negotiated in less than two hours by him. But that was unwise. People would see his progress. He sat down in Madison Square Park and looked at the Flatiron Building with a leisurely eye. A fire engine surged up the street. A man came to collect the trash in a green can. A tramp lay down and was ousted by a policeman.

  By and by he realized that he was hungry. A little man with darting eyes took a seat beside him. He regarded Hugo at short intervals. At length he said, “You got a dime for a cup of coffee?” His words were blurred by accent.

  “No. I came here from school last night and my money was stolen.”

  “Ah,” there was a tinge of discouragement in the other’s voice. “And hungry, perhaps?”

  “A little.”

  “Me—I am also hungry. I have not eaten since two days.”

  That impressed Hugo as a shameful and intolerable circumstance. “Let’s go over there”—he indicated a small restaurant and eat. Then I’ll promise to send the money by mail. At least, we’ll be fed that way.”

  “We will be thrown to the street on our faces.”

  “Not I. Nobody throws me on my face. And I’ll look out for you.”

  They crossed the thoroughfare and entered the restaurant. The little man ordered a quantity of food, and Hugo, looking guiltily at the waiter, duplicated the order. They became distantly acquainted during the filched repast. The little man’s name was Izzie. He sold second-hand rugs. But he was out of work. Eventually they finished. The waiter brought the check. He was a large man, whose jowls and hips and shoulders were heavily weighted with muscle.

  Hugo stood up. “Listen, fellow,” he began placidly, “my friend and I haven’t a cent between us. I’m Hugo Donner, from Webster University, and I’ll mail you the price of this feed to-morrow. I’ll write down my name and—”

  He got no further. The waiter spoke in a thick voice. “So! One of them guys, eh? Tryin’ to get away with it when I’m here, huh? Well, I tell you how you’re gonna pay. You’re gonna pay this check with a bloody mush, see?” His fist doubled and drew back. Hugo did not shift his position. The fist came forward, but an arm like stone blocked it. Hugo’s free hand barely flicked to the waiter’s jaw. He rolled under the table. “Come on,” he said, but Izzie had already vanished through the door.

  Hugo walked hurriedly up the street and turned a corner. A hand tugged at his coat. He turned and was confronted by Izzie. “I seen you through the window. Jeest, guy, you kin box. Say, I know where you kin clean up—if you got the nerve.”

  “Clean up? Where?”

  “Come on. We better get out of here anyhow.”

  They made their way toward the river. The city changed character on the other side of the elevated railroad, and presently they were walking through a dirty, evil-smelling, congested neighborhood.

  Another series of dirty blocks. Then they came to a bulky building that spread a canopy over the sidewalk. “Here,” Izzy said, and pointed.

  His finger indicated a sign, which Hugo read twice. It said: “Battling Ole Swenson will meet all comers in this gymnasium at three this afternoon and eight to-night. Fifty dollars will be given to any man, black or white, who can stay three rounds with him, and one hundred dollars cash money to the man who knocks out Battling Ole Swenson, the Terror of the Docks.”

  “See,” Izzy said, rubbing his hands excitedly, “mebbe you could do it.”

  A light dawned on Hugo. He smiled. “I can,” he replied. “What time is it?”

  “Two o’clock.”

  “Well, let’s go.”

  They entered the lobby of the “gymnasium.”

  “Mr. Epstein,” Izzie called, “I gotta fighter for the Swede.”

  Mr. Epstein was a pale fat man who ignored the handicap of the dank cigar in his mouth and roared when he spoke. He glanced at Hugo and then addressed Izzie.

  “Where is he?”

  “There.”

  Epstein looked at Hugo and then was shaken by laughter. “There, you says, and there I looks and what do I see but a pink young angel face that Ole would swallow without chewing.”

  Hugo said: “I don’t think so. I’m willing to try.” Epstein scowled. “Run away from here, kid, before you get hurt. Ole would laugh at you. This isn’t easy money. You may think you’re husky, but Ole is a killer. He’s six nine in his socks and he weighs two hundred and eighty. He’ll mash you.”

  “I don’t think so,” Hugo repeated.

  “Well, you’ll be meat. We’ll put you second on the list. And the lights’ll go out fast enough for yuh.”

  Hugo wrote his name under a printed statement to the effect that the fight managers were not responsible for the results of the combat. The man who led him to a dressing-room was filled with sympathy and advice. He told Hugo that one glance at Ole would discourage his reckless avarice. But Hugo paid no attention. The room was dirty. It smelled of sweat and rubber sneakers. He sat there for half an hour, reading a newspaper. Outside, somewhere, he could hear the mumble of a gathering crowd, punctuated by the voices of candy and peanut-hawkers.

  At last they brought some clothes to him. A pair of trunks that flapped over his loins, ill-fitting canvas shoes, a musty bath robe. When the door of his room opened, the noise of the crowd was louder. Finally it was hushed. He heard the announcer. It was like the voice of a minister coming through the stained windows of a church. It rose and fell. Then the distant note of the gong. After that the crowd called steadily, sometimes in loud rage and sometimes almost in a whisper.

  In the arena it was dazzling. A bank of noisy people rose on all sides of him. Hugo walked down the aisle and clambered into the ring. Ole was one of the largest men he had ever seen in his life. There was no doubt of his six feet nine inches and his two hundred and eighty pounds. Hugo imagined that the man was not a scientific fighter. A bruiser. Well, he knew nothing of fighting, either.

  A man in his shirt sleeves stood up in the ring and bellowed, “The next contestant for the reward of fifty dollars to stay three rounds with Battling Ole and one hundred dollars to knock him out is Mr. H. Smith.” They cheered. It was a nasty sound, filled with the lust for blood. Hugo realized that he was excited. His knees wabbled when he rose and his hand trembled as he took the monstrous paw of the Swede and saw his unpleasant smile. Hugo’s heart was pounding. For one instant he felt weak and human before Battlin
g Ole. He whispered to himself: “Quit it, you fool; you know better; you can’t even be hurt.” It did not make him any more quiet.

  Then they were sitting face to face. A bell rang. The hall became silent as the mountainous Swede lumbered from his corner. He towered over Hugo, who stood up and went out to meet him like David approaching Goliath. To the crowd the spectacle was laughable. There was jeering before they met. “Where’s your mamma?”

  “Got your bottle, baby?”

  “Put the poor little bastard back in his carriage.”

  “What’s this—a fight or a freak show?” Laughter.

  It was like cold water to Hugo. His face set. He looked at Ole. The Swede’s fist moved back like the piston of a great engine into which steam has been let slowly. Then it came forward. Hugo, trained to see and act in keeping with his gigantic strength, dodged easily. “Atta boy!”

  “One for Johnny—dear!” The fist went back and came again and again, as if that piston, gathering speed, had broken loose and was flailing through the screaming air. Hugo dodged like a beam of light, and the murderous weapon never touched him. The spectators began to applaud his speed. He could beat the Swede’s fist every time. “Run him, kiddo!”

  “It’s only three rounds.”

  The bell. Ole was panting. As he sat in his corner, his coal-scuttle-gloves dangling, he cursed in his native tongue. Too little to hit. Bell. The second round was the same. Hugo never attempted to touch the Swede. Only to avoid him. And the man worked like a Trojan. Sweat seethed over his big, blank face. His small eyes sharpened to points. He brought his whole carcass flinging through the air after his fist. But every blow ended in a sickening wrench that missed the target.

  The third round opened. The crowd suddenly tired of the sport. A shrill female voice reached Hugo’s cold, concentrated mind: “Keep on running, yellow baby!”

  So. They wanted a killing. They called him yellow. The Swede was on him, elephantine, sweating, sucking great, rumbling breaths of air, swinging his fists. Hugo studied the motion. That fist to that side, up, down, now!

  Like hail they began to land upon the Swede. Bewilderingly, everywhere. No hope of guarding. Every blow smashed, stung, ached. No chance to swing back. Cover up. His arms went over his face. He felt rivets drive into his kidneys. He reached out and clinched. They rocked in each other’s arms. Dazed by that bitter onslaught of lightning blows, Ole thought only to lock Hugo in his arms and crush him. When they clinched, the crowd, grown instantly hysterical, sank back in despair. It was over. Ole could break the little man’s back. They saw his arms spring into knots. Jesus! Hugo’s fist shot between their chests and Ole was thrown violently backward. Impossible. He lunged back, crimson to kill, one hand guarding his jaw. “Easy, now, for the love of God, easy,” Hugo said to himself. There. On the hand at the chin.

  Hugo’s gloves went out. Lift him! It connected. The Swede left the floor and crumpled slowly, with a series of bumping sounds. And how the hyenas yelled!

  They crowded into his dressing-room afterwards. Epstein came to his side before he had dressed. “Come out and have a mug of suds, kid. That was the sweetest fight I ever hope to live to see. I can sign you up for a fortune right now. I can make you champ in two years.”

  “No, thanks,” Hugo said.

  The man persisted. He talked earnestly. He handed Hugo a hundred-dollar bill. Hugo finished his dressing.

  “Wait up, bo. Give us your address if you ever change your mind. You can pick up a nice livin’ in this game.”

  “No, thanks. All I needed was railroad fare. Thank you, gentlemen—and—good-by.”

  No one undertook to hinder Hugo’s departure.

  Chapter VIII

  GREATNESS seemed to elude Hugo, success such as he had earned was inadequate, and his friendships as well as his popularity were tinged with a sort of question that he never understood. By the end of winter he was well established in Webster as a great athlete. Psi Delta sang his praises and was envied his deeds. Lefty and Chuck treated him as a brother. And, Hugo perceived, none of that treatment and none of that society was quite real. He wondered if his personality was so meager that it was not equal to his strength. He wondered if his strength was really the asset he had dreamed it would be, and if, perhaps, other people were not different from him in every way, so that any close human contact was impossible to him.

  His love was a similar experience. He fell in love twice during that first year in college. Once at a prom with a girl who was related to Lefty—a rich, socially secure girl who had studied abroad and who almost patronized her cousin.

  Hugo had seen her dancing, and her long, slender legs and arms had issued an almost tangible challenge to him. She had looked over Lefty’s shoulder and smiled vaguely. They had met. Hugo danced with her. “I love to come to a prom,” she said; “it makes me feel young again.”

  “How old are you?”

  She ignored the obvious temptation to be coy and he appreciated that.

  “Twenty-one.”

  It seemed reasonably old to Hugo. The three years’ difference in their ages had given her a pinnacle of maturity.

  “And that makes you old,” he reflected.

  She nodded. Her name was Iris. Afterwards Hugo thought that it should have been Isis. Half goddess, half animal. He had never met with the vanguard of emancipated American womanhood before then. “You’re the great Hugo Danner, aren’t you? I’ve seen your picture in the sporting sections.” She read sporting sections. He had never thought of a woman in that light. “But you’re really much handsomer. You have more sex and masculinity and you seem more intelligent.”

  Then, between the dances, Lefty had come. “She? Oh, she’s a sort of cousin. Flies in all the high altitudes in town. Blue Book and all that. Better look out, Hugo. She plays rough.”

  “She doesn’t look rough.”

  She came to the stag line, ignoring a sequence of invitations, and asked him to dance. They went out on the velvet campus. “I could love you—for a little while,” she said. “It’s too bad you have to play football to-morrow.”

  “Is that an excuse?”

  She smiled remotely. “You’re being disloyal.” Her fan moved delicately. “But I shan’t chide you. In fact, I’ll stay over for the game—and I’ll enjoy the anticipation—more, perhaps. But you’ll have to win it—to win me. I’m not a soothing type.”

  “It will be easy—to win,” Hugo said and she peered through the darkness with admiration, because he had made his ellipsis of the object very plain.

  “It is always easy for you to win, isn’t it?” she countered with an easy mockery, and Hugo shivered.

  The game was won. Hugo had made his touchdown. He unfolded a note she had written on the back of a score card. “At my hotel at ten, then.”

  “Then.” Some one lifted his eyes to praise him. His senses swam in careful anticipation. They were cheering outside the dressing-room. A different sound from the cheers at the fight-arena. Young, hilarious, happy.

  At ten he bent over the desk and was told to go to her room. The clerk shrugged. She opened the door. One light was burning. There was perfume in the air. She wore only a translucent kimono of pale-colored silk. She taught him a great many things that night. And Iris learned something, too, so that she never came back to Hugo, and kept the longing for him as a sort of memory which she made hallowed in a shorn soul. It was, for her, a single asceticism in a rather selfish life.

  Hugo loved her for two weeks after that, and then his emotions wearied and he was able to see what she had done and why she did not answer his letters. His subdued fierceness was a vehement fire to women. His fiercer appetite was the cause of his early growth in a knowledge of them. When most of his companions were finding their way into the mysteries of sex both unhandily and with much turmoil, he learned well and abnormally. It became a part of his secret self. Another barrier to the level of the society that surrounded him. When he changed the name of Iris to Isis in his thoughts, he moved aw
ay from the Psi Deltas, who would have been incapable of the notion. In person he stayed among them, but in spirit he felt another difference, which he struggled to reconcile.

  In March the thaws came, and under the warming sun Hugo made a deliberate attempt to fall in love with Janice, who was the daughter of his French professor. She was a happy, innocent little girl, with gold hair, and brown eyes that lived oddly beneath it. She worshiped Hugo. He petted her, talked through long evenings to her, tried to be faithful to her in his most unfettered dreams, and once considered proposing to her. When he found himself unable to do that, he was compelled to resist an impulse to seduce her. Ashamed, believing himself unfit for a nice girl, he untangled that romance as painlessly as he could, separating himself from Janice little by little and denying every accusation of waning interest.

  When his first year at college was near to its end, and that still and respectful silence that marks the passing of a senior class had fallen over the campus, Hugo realized with a shock that he would soon be on his way back to Indian Creek. Then, suddenly, he saw what an amazing and splendid thing that year at college had been. He realized how it had filled his life to the brim with activities of which he had not dreamed, how it had shaped him so that he would be almost a stranger in his own home, how it had aged and educated him in the business of living. When the time of parting with his new friends drew near, he understood that they were valuable to him, in spite of his questioning. And they made it clear that he would be missed by them. At last he shared a feeling with his classmates, a fond sadness, an illimitable poignancy that was young and unadulterated by motive. He was perversely happy when he became aware of it. He felt somewhat justified for being himself and living his life.

  A day or two before college closed, he received a letter from his father. It was the third he had received during the year. It said: �����Dear Son—

  �����Your mother and I have decided to break the news to you before you leave for home, because there may be better opportunities for you in the East than here at Indian Creek. When you went away to Webster University, I agreed to take care of all your expenses. It was the least I could do, I felt, for my only son. The two thousand dollars your mother and I had saved seemed ample for your four years. But the bills we have received, as well as your own demands, have been staggering. In March, when a scant six hundred dollars of the original fund remained, I invested the money in a mine stock which, the salesman said, would easily net the six thousand dollars you appeared to need. I now find to my chagrin that the stock is worthless. I am unable to get back my purchase money.