The Last Carousel

by Nelson Algren

  “You’re not in the bushes no more,” Dominoes decided, “you got a manager now.”

  “Who?” I asked him.

  “Me,” he told me.

  I didn’t say anything. I just let him go ahead.

  Oh, that Dominoes. He signed me up for three ten rounders in a single week: Monday night, Wednesday night and Saturday night.

  “What are we doing Thursday?” I asked him.

  Beth took it well. “I always knew you were a bad lot,” she told me when she read that magazine piece, “but I never dreamed you were the very best of it. At least you fight a lot. And you do have color.”

  The poster said Sol Schatzer Proudly Presents—I couldn’t read the rest because Dominoes was sitting with his head against it, pretending to be on the nod.

  I read the contract in front of me through twice. Both times I stopped where it said In event challenger establishes legitimate claim to title, he herewith agrees to purchase managerial services of co-signer.

  “I can beat Pete Mathias without a manager,” I told Schatzer.

  “It’s the customary contract,” he told me, “I don’t have all day. So sign.”

  I pushed it back to Schatzer.

  “You know what you are, Roger?” Schatzer told me, “you’re an Agony Fighter, that’s what you are. You know what else you are, Roger? You’re an Agony Man, that’s what you also are. You can’t fight and you won’t let an opponent fight. You can’t make money for yourself, and you won’t let somebody who can make it for you. You don’t want a manager? Has somebody been around here lately asking? Somebody phoning to ask could he manage Roger Holly? Who been asking? Who been phoning? I’ll tell you who: nobody. That’s who been phoning to manage Roger Holly.”

  “I just got me a manager,” I told Schatzer and nodded toward Dominoes; on the nod under the poster of Pete Mathias.

  “That’s a manager?”

  Schatzer jumped up, raced around his desk with the contract in his hand, and shook Dominoes like a half-empty sack. Dominoes opened one eye. Schatzer pushed the contract into his hand.

  “Manager! Read a contract your fighter won’t sign! Read, Manager!”

  Dominoes tore the contract in two and let the halves fall to the floor.

  “I don’t know what you’re getting so excited about, Roger,” Schatzer told me when he’d caught his breath, “all I’m doing is protecting myself. If you should get lucky against Mathias, I lose my title. All the contract means is I manage you. Don’t I have a right to protect my own interest?”

  “How much does the co-signer take?” I asked Schatzer.

  “Twenty-five percent, clown,” Dominoes said like talking in his sleep.

  “All right, Roger, I’ll level with you,” Schatzer began leveling. “Just for the sake of the argument, let’s pretend you do have a chance against Mathias.”

  “I didn’t say I had a chance, Mr. Schatzer,” I told him in a respectful tone. “I said I would, I can. I know I’ll beat Mathias.”

  “OK. So you can beat Mathias. So can Al Ostak. So can Vince Guerra. So can Lee Homan. So can Indian Walker—and every one of them can whip you and hold the title longer and draw better, too. Am I right or am I wrong?”

  “I have a decision over Walker,” was all I could think to say.

  “I know about that decision,” Schatzer found me out. “Indian Walker is a washed-up Has-Had-It-Has-Been. But he can still beat you.”

  “Then why not offer him the fight? Why offer it to me?” I really wanted to know.

  “Because then he’ll get thirty percent of each man in a rematch,” Dominoes cut in again, “and three guys he can get thirty-five percent out of.”

  “You stay out of this,” Schatzer told Dominoes.

  “I can whip Indian Walker,” I told Schatzer.

  “You can’t even whip Sweetmouth Jenkins,” Schatzer told me.

  “I couldn’t untrack myself that night.”

  “All right,” Schatzer said, glancing at his watch, “go ahead and whip him. Whip anybody you want. Whip Mathias if you want to. How you’re going to get into a ring with him without me is where you got a problem.”

  It was true that any one of those fighters could whip Mathias as easy as I could. It was true that there were just as many fighters who could take me. It was true that, if I got the title, I wouldn’t be able to hold it long. It was true I never drew big.

  And what was truest of all was that if I didn’t get this chance, I’d never get another.

  “Give me the damned paper,” I told Schatzer, and signed it.

  “I’m sorry I had to speak to you like I did, Roger,” Schatzer told me. “I did so for your own good. Actually I have nothing but admiration for you.”

  Three days before the fight Schatzer sent for me. He came right to the point.

  “I’m seeing you get five thousand dollars before the fight, Roger,” he told me.

  “I don’t get it,” I told him.

  “In small bills. The day before the fight.”

  “I still don’t get it.”

  “For not straining yourself to win, clown.”

  “Let me maul it over in my mind a couple days,” I told Schatzer.

  I didn’t tell him I wasn’t going to take the five thousand.

  If I let him know I wasn’t going to take it, he might have Mathias fake a training injury. If the fight were postponed, I’d never get another chance. Nobody would be demanding to know when these two tigers were going to do battle. It would just mean somebody else taking the title off Mathias, that was all.

  I put Dominoes in the gym to watch Mathias.

  “He don’t have to fake no injury,” Dominoes reported back; “when he cuts out of the gym, he puts on a pair of foggy-type magnifying glasses so he can tell a taxi from a police car. But he’s going to go through with it all the same. Schatzer must have a fix with the Commission medics.”

  “He must need the money pretty bad,” I told Dominoes, “he must need the money real bad.”

  It’s never bothered me to climb into a ring first and wait in my corner until an opponent comes down the aisle and climbs through the ropes to the house’s applause.

  When Mathias came up the aisle everyone applauded; and half the house stood up to get a better look.

  I could see him coming better than most, being higher up. He was in a flashy green silk robe. But the way he was coming, between two handlers, both of them half a head higher than he was, I saw what Dominoes meant. They kept him between their shoulders as they came to keep him walking straight. When they reached the ring they waited till he got a hand on the top rope. Then one kind of half-boosted him into the ring. Mathias raised his gloves over his head and held them there until one of the handlers shouldered him toward the corner. Then he just stood there until the other handler put a stool up.

  “He don’t see me,” I whispered to Dominoes.

  “Hell, he can’t even see the stool,” Dominoes whispered back.

  What went through my mind was: This is going to be awful.

  I didn’t know how awful it was going to be.

  Mathias kept his eyes on the floor during instructions. All I could see of his head was where he’d combed back a few strings of red hair to cover a bald spot; and a little pink horseshoe at the tip of his nose where the bone had been taken out. It must be filled with wax, I thought. When I tap him in the forehead the horseshoe will get red. When I hit him squash on it, it’s going to pour blood. But something about the way he was standing made me think he wasn’t listening to the referee. Then the crowd whooped and he didn’t hear the whoop. Something more than his eyes was wrong with Pete Mathias. His handlers steered him back to his corner.

  He came out of his corner and hit me in the mouth with his head. He slipped my lead and threw a right hand that near tore my head off at the neck. I moved back, mulling him to give my head a chance to clear. He caught the nape of my neck in his glove, jammed his iron jaw into my shoulder, and whack-whack-whack-right-left-righ
t, I got hit by three house bricks from this deaf-blind tiger. What has he got in his gloves went through my mind, holding on hard. I stepped back to ask the ref to examine his gloves. What he hit me with I never felt. I came to in my corner feeling Dominoes’ fingers pressing the skin above my right eye. “Did I go down?” I asked him. “No, you got back here by yourself,” he told me. By the way he kept pressing I knew it was a deep cut.

  “Is it bad?” I asked him. “Only a scratch,” he told me. Mathias was standing in his corner waiting for the bell to spring upon me. I only hoped he’d wait until it rang.

  “He’s blind as a bat,” Dominoes said.

  “Then how does he know where I’m at?”

  “He’s listening.”

  “He can’t hear neither.”

  “Stop scraping your shoes on the canvas. He’s catching vibrations. Get up on your toes—if he can’t hear you he can’t find you.”

  And the bell.

  I came out tippy-toe, stuck a glove in Mathias’ face, and tippy-toed quietly away. Mathias wheeled and went for the opposite corner.

  “Other corner!” every fink in that house stood up hollering.

  Talk about your informers! If there’d been a Stool Pigeon’s Convention in town, every single delegate had come to help Pete Mathias find me.

  Between rounds he didn’t sit down. Just stood there boggling his head about trying to find out where I’d gone. Just before the bell his handler would whisper to him where I was hiding and push him. He’d come right over there. All I could hope was he wouldn’t put his glasses on.

  The way I lasted through that fight was by grabbing his left glove in both of my own and holding on to it for dear life for as long as the referee would let me. Once I stuck my head under his armpit to keep him from digging that iron chin into my shoulder and striking me. From this purely defensive position Mathias was so hampered he couldn’t do anything but smash the wind out of my lungs, bang my ears till they rang, pound my kidneys to shreds, and rabbit-punch me at will—“you got him, Roger,” someone hollered in the dark behind the press row, “you’re gettin’ your blood all over him!” I don’t know whether Mathias heard this—but something suddenly got him mad at me. He got my lower lip in his glove in a clinch and gave it a twist that almost tore it off. I grabbed his adam’s apple and sunk my teeth into the lobe of his left ear—the ref got my teeth out by pulling my head back by the hair—but I was still choking him to death. Then he split my right cheek wide open with the point of his elbow.

  “I didn’t mean to hurt him,” I told the referee.

  “If that’s how you men want to fight it’s alright with me,” the referee gave us the go-ahead.

  Mathias wasn’t cute-dirty. He wasn’t even scientific-dirty. He was temper-dirty. All I could do those last two rounds was grab his elbow, spin him, give him a choke job, chop him in the groin and try a butt on that tender nose now and then. Just to let him know I was in the fight, too.

  And then on an old scarred bench was a swab stick, the cardboard core of a roll of gauze, the top of a Vaseline jar and half a bottle of liquid adrenalin.

  That was what I had to show for getting my face punched in for fourteen years.

  On the evening of the first day that we opened the diner at Carriers Mills, Beth switched on the Fight of the Week for our two customers.

  It was Sweetmouth Jenkins, challenger, against Pete Mathias, title-holder. Jenkins kayoed old Pete in two minutes and eleven seconds of the first round. I switched the set off and went back to waiting on the two customers.

  People around here say I never could fight much, I just knew the moves. Beth says I had color.

  The Marigold in Chicago and the Armory A.C. in Wilkes-Barre and the Valley Arena at Holyoke and Joe Chap’s Gym in Brooklyn and The Grotto in Jersey City and The Casino at Fall River and Provenzano A.C. in Rochester and the St. Cloud Music Hall and Antlers Auditorium in Lorain and Billow Abraham’s Gym in Wilkes-Barre and Conforto’s Gym on Canal Street and Sportsman’s Bar in Covington and the Council Bluffs Ballpark and the Hesterly Arena in Tampa and the Tacoma Ice Palace and the Great Lakes Club in Buffalo and the Century A.C. in Baltimore and the Paterson Square Garden and the Coliseum Bowl in Frisco.

  If just people didn’t keep running so fast these days, backwards sometimes.

  You never can be sure what they might do to you by mistake.

  COULD WORLD WAR I HAVE BEEN A MISTAKE?

  THE Premier Danseur of the Imperial Russian Ballet, Vaslav Nijinsky, had a pair of feet, I’m assured, that you’d have had to see to believe. For the base of his toes and his heels were equidistant from his ankles. Nothing with feet like that had ever been seen outside of Australia.

  When Sergei Diaghilev, that great impresario, first saw Nijinsky’s feet he revealed no emotion. “Upjump for me,” was all he said.

  Nijinsky went straight up five feet off the ground, completed an entrechat-six, and descended slowly.

  “I see you’re out of condition,” the impresario observed.

  The following afternoon, during a performance of Les Sylphides, Nijinsky accomplished an entrechat-huit. The applause was deafening. He awaited the impresario’s congratulations with confidence.

  “Have you tried coming down on one toe?” was all Diaghilev asked.

  One week later, presenting Le Pavilion d’Armide, with Karsavina and Baldina, he achieved an entrechat-douze. Then, instead of walking off the stage, he leaped toward the wings, floated upward and disappeared. Nobody saw him land. Nobody even heard him land.

  The house went as wild as though he’d performed a superhuman feat. Which, obviously, he had.

  The applause went on so long, without the dancer reappearing, that Diaghilev went to look for him. He found Nijinsky at last, one hand pressing his heart and the other grasping a stage brace. He had only breath enough to ask Diaghilev—

  “Now?”

  “Why you come down so soon?” Diaghilev complained.

  Nijinsky paled.

  “Master,” he asked coldly, “what is it you require of me?”

  “Etonne-moi!” Diaghilev replied. “Astonish me!”

  Upon which Nijinsky hit him across the face with a nine-pound mackerel he’d been holding behind his back.

  “I knew he was going to say that,” the premier danseur filled the press in later— “he used it on Cocteau last week. This time I was ready.”

  Diaghilev, thoughtfully picking mackerel bones out of his teeth, felt a dawning realization.

  “I am going to transform the ballet from a chic but moribund art form into a superbly effective agency for the promotion of avant-garde values,” he decided. “I will begin by convincing the fashionable élite—whom I shall seduce into financing my opulent productions—and end by winning over the general public! For although the average mujik refuses to spend a kopek to see a premier danseur do an entrechat,” he convinced himself, “he will pay several roubles eagerly to see a great impresario get slapped in the teeth with a mackerel.”

  He immediately began building a new routine. Commissioning Picasso, Bonnard, Gris, Derain, di Chirico, Fokine, Nijinska, Matisse, Utrillo, Rouault, Miró and Braque as set designers; Massine and Balanchine as choreographers; Debussy, Ravel, Richard Strauss, Poulenc, Milhaud, Prokoviev, Stravinsky and Buffy St. Marie to write the musical score, they opened at last in Odessa. The Archduke Ferdinand of Austria attended.

  Diaghilev, wearing a putty nose, an orange string tie down to his yellow shoetops, baggy pants tied with a rope and a battered stovepipe hat, had all the best lines. After Nijinsky had completed an entrechat-six, Diaghilev got to say: “Try going a little higher.” And after Nijinsky had gone a little higher he got to say, “Why you come down so soon?” And, after Nijinsky asked, “Master, what do you require of me?” he got to say ‘‘Etonne-moi!”

  Upon which Nijinsky got to hit him with a mackerel with unnecessary force.

  The Archduke fell out of his box and was assisted back.

  Fistfights b
roke out in the audience; dancers were unable to hear the orchestra above the uproar. The Archduke fell out of the box again. An usher helped him back.

  Exercising great presence of mind, Diaghilev brought Nijinsky onto stage center and began harmonizing on If I Can’t Sell It I’ll Keep Sittin’ On It I Just Won’t Give It Away.

  The house quieted slowly. When it became deathly still the Archduke fell out of the box again. This time nobody helped him back.

  It was a succès de scandale. Diaghilev and Nijinsky were on their way to continental triumphs.

  Their greatest successes, understandably, were in the seaports.

  Yet with every triumph Nijinsky grew more irascible.

  “Leave room when you pick teet’,” he reproved Diaghilev.

  The impresario refrained from reminding the dancer that it was mackerel bones he was picking out of his teeth. All he did was to suggest that perhaps, thereafter, they might use a foam-rubber fish.

  Nijinsky became infuriated at the mere suggestion.

  “You! You! You!” he cursed Diaghilev, “You are a Portuguese oyster!’’

  “I’m sorry I even brought it up,” Diaghilev apologized. But Nijinsky was not to be pacified.

  “I take orders only from the Gods!”—he let Diaghilev in on something he’d known for some time but hadn’t wanted to let the press in on.

  “Before I would use an artificial fish,” he made it final, “I would abandon my art!”

  “Have it your own way,” Diaghilev gave in—“But let me remind you that, next week in Barcelona, it’ll be your turn to say Etonne-moi!”

  The act broke up in Barcelona.

  Which simply goes to show you how much integrity in art depends upon who is swinging the mackerel.

  And causes me to wonder whether, were the Archduke found to be alive and well today in Argentina—Wouldn’t that make World War I a mistake?

  OTTO PREMINGER’S STRANGE SUSPENJERS

  “I can’t recall a single director in the history of movies who has turned out so many rotten pictures or been so continuously ridiculed by every critic with even the most rudimentary classroom knowledge of what films are all about,” a film critic complained recently,* “somebody should do something about Otto Preminger. Like teaching the man how to make movies.”