Church of Marvels: A Novel

by Leslie Parry

  EIGHT

  THE FIGHTS WERE NEVER ADVERTISED. BILLS WEREN’T PLASTERED to fences or hung in tavern windows. There was no swaggering talk from street-corner barkers (who ballyhooed, for a fee, anything from a politician to a whorehouse to a two-bit revue). The matches were hasty, ramshackle, fought in any place that happened to be empty and unpatrolled. The dead cornfield on Henry Street. The burned-out shell of an old gin distillery. It was for the toughs to earn some money and the drunkards to smell some blood. Today the turf was the floating church, St. Elmo of the River, which was docked in the shadows just north of the bridge.

  Sylvan walked there alone, past the dumps along the waterfront, trying to focus, to keep himself calm. He stared at the ragpickers who foraged through the heaps, dragging their sacks over tin-scrap and bones. Once a grand pier had stood there, a marvel of industry. Its glass pavilion had shone and rippled above the water: a ghostly, fiery schooner of light. It was almost like being inside an aquarium, they said—ladies floating through the motes in their muffs and pearls, gentlemen basking in the exotic shadows of fronds and gullwings. But the pavilion had since sunk to the bottom of the river, and now only the dome, or at least its skeleton, could be seen anymore, battered by wrack and plumed with birds, its mossy iron skull cresting above the dull and lusterless water.

  Sylvan walked farther along the wharf, staring up at the masts. From the rolling gurneys and crates he could smell spices and bilge-water, the ripe rot of fish. He took a deep breath, feeling the blood beat in his jaw. He’d never been in the water before. Even as a child he hadn’t jumped from the dome the way the others had, not even on a scorching summer afternoon. He’d seen them all out there together, laughing in the wake of freights, splashing away rats. He hated their dumb loyalty, the way they showed off for each other, clambering up the rungs of the old pavilion and leaping off, hollering and wheeling their arms.

  Sometimes he thought that if he’d grown up with another life—in that room with the crying woman in the white kerchief—he might have learned how to swim. He might have been a man who dove beneath the slick, baked water of the river, down to the coldest depths, to the black ravaged bed and nests of hoggleweed. He might have glided through mazes of fallen cargo, prizing open crates, turning out the pockets of drowned men and scavenging shipwrecks for loot. He imagined swimming through the sunken pavilion with turtles and eels, twisting glass baubles from old chandeliers, wresting caviar spoons from the river shrubs. But instead the sight of the river—sucking at the rust on the hulls, foaming and whipping in the morning wind, tossing flotsam on its way to the sea—only made him sick.

  St. Elmo was a small ship, moored between a creaking, tar-breasted bordello and a clipper that had once been a Union hospital off the coast of Virginia. (Ex-soldiers still convened there, seeking morphine in the rotting cabinets and chests, lying drugged on the floor in the darkness.) He drew himself up and crossed the bowed gangplank, keeping his eyes fixed on the steerage cabin ahead.

  When he dropped down into the berth, he saw that men had already started to gather. There was a rawness in the air, an ache particular to the morning. The numbness and blunder of nighttime had worn off, but there were many who couldn’t stand to see it end—they huddled there under the swinging lanterns, hiding from the sunrise, anxious for a fight, some blood, anything to keep them rolling. The preacher passed around a jug of crabapple liquor. Three potbellied brothers played a game of faro with girls from the bordello. One of the girls, the youngest one, sat by herself in the corner, running her finger along a prayer card and trying to read the words under her breath.

  Sylvan had barely slept; his back was aching and his eyes were dry. He looked around in the dark, trying not to stare at any one person too long. He felt like an animal out of its shell, a scooped oyster. He’d made it a point not to make friends here—he was a mystery to them, and it served him better that way. As a dogboy he always found matches to fight—he could be an adversary for just about anyone. And the crowds were bigger now that word had passed among the privileged circles: See a gentleman coxswain fight a lowly night-soiler! See a Moscow brute battle a New York rogue! Some fighters came in signature regalia, trailed by a gang of bootlickers, all in their banner colors. In the crowd Sylvan could already see ribbons of purple and blue. He rolled back his shoulders, ruffed out his beard. When the preacher blew the whistle, he stepped into the ring.

  Over the years he’d witnessed every sort of unusual bout—he’d seen a man with no arms fight a man with no legs. He’d seen a Bowery Boy, victorious, draw an American flag on the chest of an Irish tinker with the man’s own blood. He’d seen another fellow’s eyeball pop out mid-fight and loll against his cheekbone, still rooted to the socket. Gasping, the man had cupped the jellied eye in his palm and stumbled around the room, until one of the whores laid him down on the floor and sank it back into his skull with the aid of a matchstick.

  This morning’s round he was paired against an older Englishman named Banto Qualms, who sported a purple waistcoat and blue top hat, which he shed with genteel ceremony as he entered the ring. He worked as a stevedore on the western docks, Sylvan knew, but still carried himself like some kind of swell. He was pale and pudgy and top-heavy, with broad shoulders that narrowed down to spindly ankles. Blue veins cauliflowered in the crooks of his elbows, on the backs of his knees.

  They circled each other under the lanterns, rocking on the unsteady floor. Sylvan felt a turn in his gut, a primal thing like hunger or dread. He wasn’t a brutal man, or a thief by nature; he didn’t like to bring on trouble—but still, he’d grown familiar with this feeling. A poisonous, antic adrenaline, an inability to be still or feel safe. He studied the way Banto lurched back and forth with the sway of the ship: his arms were oversized and apelike, his gut sagged tremendously beneath his shirt, but his knees looked brittle and jittery, an old man’s joints.

  The preacher raised his hand and blew the whistle. Banto lunged at Sylvan, throwing his arms around his waist and bringing him fast to the ground. They grappled on the floor, flipping like two hooked fish, the dust rising around them. Over the shouts of the crowd, Sylvan could hear a baby shrieking. He moved to jam his fist into the divot behind Banto’s knee, but Banto rolled away and hoisted himself to his feet. Sylvan jumped, swinging his fists, slamming Banto in his lip as he tried to duck. Banto grunted and threw back his head.

  Sylvan swiveled around, trying get an elbow to his kidneys, but Banto knocked him to the floor with one shoulder, pinning him down by the neck. “You got a tail, Dogboy?” he said. “You shit-licking piece of trash?”

  His fingers wriggled over the top of Sylvan’s trousers, gouging his skin, digging into his tailbone. Sylvan thrashed and kicked. With a whinny, Banto pulled his pants down to his knees. Sylvan flopped on the ground, his ass exposed to the air. The crowd began to bark and howl.

  Sylvan tried to twist around, to get a blow to Banto’s ankles, but Banto knocked him back with a quick pop to the jaw. Sylvan’s teeth cracked together, ringing; his head slammed against the floor. He felt the blood bubble up under his tongue and run down the back of his throat. He opened his eyes but couldn’t focus on anything; the dust was wet against his cheek, his beard sticky with spat wine. He saw people, riled and shifting, just beyond the ring of light. A few clapping hands. The slick glint of teeth. Above him Banto stood with his legs stoutly apart, his arms raised in victory. Then Sylvan’s muscles twitched. Quickly he hooked his feet around Banto’s ankles and launched himself forward, springing up in the air. Banto, upended, fell flat on his back. Sylvan went tumbling over him, his pants still loose around his waist. He got his balance and crushed his knee to the man’s sternum, then started pummeling. Despite the blisters from the slop shovel and the sting of his skinned knuckles, his fists were tight. He got a few good slugs to Banto’s chin, a haymaker to his cheek. The tremor of contact traveled up through his arms and shoulders and spine, then exploded in his brain, an electric white light.

  Banto jabb
ed him in the groin with the points of his fingers—hard enough for Sylvan to flinch and buckle forward—then came a one-two punch to the left cheek, the throat. Sylvan toppled to the floor, struggling for air. He tried to lift his head, draw a full breath, but Banto was already standing over him, a green heel pressed against his windpipe. He cracked Sylvan once more, on the side of the head, and it was over. Sylvan lay still on the ground, unable to breathe.

  The whistle shrieked. The preacher pulled Banto to the middle of the ring and held up his arm. Sylvan rolled to his side, panting. There were hoots and taunts, a smear of sound, nothing he could really understand. In the swinging light, clusters of faces flickered around him, like a wormy knot of coral. The preacher handed over the purse and Banto, thumbing up his suspenders, thanked him and counted out the dollars. Everything seemed false: a pantomime, a shadow of life. In the crowd money flicked, exchanging hands. No Bones stood against the wall and stared at Sylvan with tired, jaundiced eyes, wine dripping from his beard.

  Sylvan pushed himself to his feet, left the ring without a word. He was conscious of the sweat shaking off of him, the sappiness on his knuckles. He poured water from a canteen over his head and shivered as it ran down his face, through his hair and over his chest. He shook it off. Dogboy.

  He had a strange feeling then—as if he were floating above the room, staring down at his body, sweat-slick and covered in dust. He could see his pants hanging off the yellowing knob of his hipbone, the blood in the grooves of his knuckles, the beads of grit embedded in the skin of his back. He could see everything in St. Elmo’s berth, thrown into sharp relief—the sprigs of violet in hatbands and buttonholes, the thumbprints on the porthole glass.

  He wrapped a chunk of ice in a rag and pulled himself up to the deck. A few people were cooling themselves between rounds, their faces turned into the wind. He could smell the wine drying in his beard, the iron tang of his blood. He felt everything at once—the ache in his kidney, the crack in his jaw, his flummoxed and galloping heart. He stood there for a few minutes, dragging the ice over his ear and his cheek, buttoning up his shirt. A group of men hollered at him, waving their hands. They hoisted a couple of flasks and cheered. Sylvan never knew what he was supposed to do in these situations. He was dying for a drink—he always needed a beer after a fight, a shot of grog to soothe his head—but he just looked awkwardly away, as if he hadn’t seen them, and continued up the waterfront, the sun rising higher and burning through the fog, the ice melting against his face and running down his neck.

  Sometimes when people did seek out his company, he grew wary and withdrawn, to the point where his aloofness discouraged attention, no matter how desperately at times he craved it. Because he looked so unusual, people assumed that his life was dramatic and full of adventure, that it was as wild and uncanny as he appeared. He could sense their growing disappointment in his ordinariness, in his normal appetites and habits: how, after a fight, he went home and cooked his own meal and practiced reading the newspaper. There was nothing to apologize for, he felt, or to be ashamed of, but he sensed that others—passing friends, women he’d taken home—were surprised by this. Sometimes it seemed they held it against him, although in anyone else those same pleasures might have been welcome, even comforting. Why, he wondered, did he have to peddle his difference for their amusement, and yet at the same time temper it, suppress it, make it suitably benign? Eventually these people drew away, and afterward Sylvan burned with an indignant satisfaction. Being right had become more important to him than being loved.

  He wasn’t sure what to do with himself once the Scarlattas were dead and he was suddenly alone. He had no money and no real plan. The glove business had moved elsewhere; there was no longer anyone to give him work, to keep him fed. He stayed on in the cellar, piecing together odd jobs where he could: shoveling snow in the winter, clearing trash in the spring. He kept fighting. If you didn’t have something to live for, he reasoned, you’d die. Not just to live for, but to live toward. He thought for a little while he’d live for someone else—a woman, Francesca. She’d grown up on the other side of town, in Greenwich Village, the daughter of a well-to-do family. Last spring she started coming down to see the fights. Her father owned a glass company, she said, and her mother was Italian—a fact she was quick to point out, as if that were something unique that bound them together. He was excited by her at first—a girl from outside the neighborhood who had chosen him, who had seen him fight, who recognized something in him that was worthy. She wasn’t classically beautiful—she had an upturned nose and a downturned mouth, which sometimes gave her the look of a startled lapdog—but she was spirited, dirty-mouthed, arch and aggressive in a way that he needed. He felt wanted—for the first time in as long as he could remember—really wanted, and even if it was for the wrong reasons, it was better than being alone with his own mind. When they had sex she came quickly, vigorously, with what he suspected was a bit too much theatricality. Afterward she put on a mood: she’d shrug him off and order him around and flick him away when he tried to touch her hair. Still, night after night she’d come down to the waterfront—he looked for her, always, in the crowd, straining to catch a glimpse of a watered-silk dress, a mauve hat flitting between the soggy caps and fedoras. He tried his best to scrub up, look handsome, but she wanted him dirty. She wanted him just after a fight, when he was sweaty and bruised.

  Sylvan knew he wasn’t in love with her—he disliked her self-absorption, her automatic sense of authority—but she was different—nervy and vital, with an appetite for everything. She laughed easily, kissed hard. (He knew she had money, and he hated to say it, but he liked it—he liked fucking a girl whom other gentlemen, refined and well-bred, were apparently proposing to, still thinking she was pure.) She wanted (discreetly) for everyone to recognize that she had more money than they did. She wanted them to envy her (fizzing about in her French silk and lambskin gloves), but she also wanted them to admire her for slumming it, for drinking cheap beer in a run-down saloon.

  She played up her Italian blood as if it were part of her lusty, continental disposition—something that couldn’t be helped—even though, like Sylvan, she’d never been out of New York City. She’d throw around Italian words (usually the wrong ones, although he hesitated to correct her), and even in her roundabout, airy way, there was always the suggestion that her Italian-ness was superior to his (but I’m not Italian, he wanted to say, or if I am I don’t know it). From what he could discern, Francesca’s mother was a quiet, respectable Catholic woman who spent her days keeping books for the glass company and teaching music lessons. Why should there be any shame in that, he wondered? And where did Francesca tell them she went, the days and nights she spent with Sylvan along the waterfront? The Ladies’ Club, or tennis lessons, or my cousin’s in Chelsea—she really didn’t care if they believed her or not, they were so bourgeois. She wanted to make it very clear that she was wild, artistic, free, and bohemian, unlike her small-minded peers. But in the end, Sylvan realized, she didn’t seem to do much more than seethe. She was fed not by her passion for experience, but by her fury for others. What would she do without their boring conventions? Where would she be if there was nothing to run from?

  The last time he saw her was at a party in Greenwich Village. She’d invited him as her guest—even loaned him a suit, already pressed. Flattered, he’d agreed, but all week he was sick with nervousness—if people on his own block didn’t know what to make of him, what would her friends think? That afternoon, when he and Francesca arrived at the brownstone on Barrow Street, it had already begun to rain. Inside there was a large, buzzy, boisterous crowd, all smoking and swilling wine and talking too close. Sylvan stood there in a three-piece suit, drinking a glass of French wine that he couldn’t pronounce; his hair, parted and greased just an hour ago, had started to frizz in the humid air. Francesca introduced him to a series of well-heeled gentlemen as her pugilist. Please meet my pugilist, Mr. Scarlatta—which wasn’t his name, and she knew it, but which
he supposed sounded more bloodthirsty and exotic than Threadgill.

  My pugilist. Mine.

  That’s when he realized he wasn’t there to keep Francesca company at all—he was only meant to shock. He could see it in her proud smile as she dragged him from group to group, each introduction a little more manic than the last. Have you met my pugilist from the East Side? He braced himself, but everyone just smiled and shook Sylvan’s hand: Hello, sir, hello, how do you do. Nice to see you, Mary Frances. They were all exceedingly polite, which Sylvan hadn’t anticipated—he was overcome with relief, even a bit of brotherly warmth—but looking over to Francesca, he realized that wasn’t what she wanted at all. She was livid and tense, drained of color. And he could see her now the way the others did—embarrassing herself with social stunts and performances, dramatic bids for attention. But they were all determined to staunch it with cool, unruffled acceptance. No men, he realized, were fighting to marry her—they only gritted their teeth when they saw her approach. And the look in their eyes when they shook his hand was one not of jealousy, but of sympathy. Good luck, chum. He would never forget the look on her face—like a girl about to blow out the candles on her birthday cake, only to find that another child had already stuck his fingers in the icing.

  She glared at Sylvan, distant but accusing, as if this had all been his fault. Whatever had thrilled her—the danger, the impropriety, the illicitness—was gone. He drank the last of his wine, pulled off his collar, and left. He walked all the way home in his borrowed suit, through the spill of the factories at shift’s end, shouldering blindly through a crowd that smelled thick and familiar—rosin and sawdust, wood glue and linseed oil, the liverwurst in their lunch pails, the cheap powdered soap that scrubbed the sap from their hands.