Through Streets Broad and Narrow (24 page)

Of all the people there, only Biceps remained grave and undisturbed. He came up close to them and through the racket of the packed shrieks said, “Get lambasting now, sirs, get fighting.”

Cosby was blushing with fury, John pale. By some intuition he knew how they were being seen: the audience had become for him a mirror on which all his pretensions were revealed to him, the distortion, if it existed, a fact nevertheless and unchangeable. His first instinct was to drop his gloves and assume dignity like a clown awaiting the death of the laughter he has summoned, the next to jump the ropes and attack the first and loudest fool he found.

But then he became convinced that it was Cosby's style—a twin whose physique parodies that of his brother—which by overemphasizing his own, had translated it from simple egregiousness into rank absurdity. The idea evidently was simultaneously Cosby's too; for just as John decided to make a quick end of him, he was forestalled by a barrage of blows to his face and jaw. He felt only the first one, extremely painful and vertiginous in its effect, the ring spinning, the laughter muted as though a door had closed upon it.

He was too much dazed by the fury of the assault and its effect to make any counter. He was only determined not to fall down but to hang on, by retreat if necessary, until the bell rang. In addition, the fact that the contest was now being dictated by the audience, that the change in tempo was directly due to its mocking, made him decide not to riposte until the corporate mood had changed. He let Cosby pursue him round the four sides of the ring, only keeping his guard up, watching Cosby's eyes, his long neck and pear-shaped head, and deducing from these their mutual betrayal of themselves in having been persuaded to fight publicly at all.

He was aware of catcalls amid the laughter, of the demoniac
delight of Bethelgert and Lynch, of Kerruish's applause for himself for having brought off a comedy which had so far excelled the promises he had secretly been making in the preceding weeks. He felt no venom against Kerruish at all, realizing that the boxer had come fully true for him, magnificently right in his right context, by achieving such a jape. Kerruish had not betrayed himself and would not have allowed himself to be drawn into any intellectual contest, no matter how subtle the preliminary blandishments. He would never have attempted to capture the Bi or the Phil, nor ever published an ode to his mistress's eyebrow even though he had secretly written it. Kerruish's joke had its limitations; if its consequences went beyond those he was capable of visualizing, that was not his fault; and by refusing to give his answer before the fight he had demonstrated both the limitations of his honesty and the boundlessness of his humility.

The bell rang at last and John returned to his corner, oblivious of everything except the towel flapping mockingly in front of him. From the floor, Kerruish, through his laughter, was counselling this or the other strategy, as, long before, Fisher had advised him in his fight with Marston. Then he left John and went round to Cosby's corner to congratulate him on his points lead and encourage him to increase it in the second round if he could not achieve a knockout first.

One of the stewards was dabbing a styptic to John's eyebrow, and the other, having finished his towel-flapping, was applying a cold sponge to his bleeding lip. There was about a minute of the interval left and the audience was greedy for a resumption of the comedy.

John looked across at Cosby and caught his eye. Cosby was interested in the physical damage he had inflicted. He was much surprised by it, he had not thought that it would be so easy and was busy working out its implications. All this was in Cosby's expression as he waved his seconds aside and breathed carefully for the remaining moments of the interval. John was sure that he was reminding himself of the unreality of all success, that what really interested him was the Tantric penalty he might incur by victory and the reward he might look for in
defeat, even though it could entail a transient loss of consciousness.

John did not know what Dymphna was thinking. He wanted to look round for her and he did, knowing that it was most courageous so to do; because he argued like this: If she looks back, salutes me in any way, it could mean she is not in the least ashamed of my love, that somehow I have the franchise other people appear to possess when they are loved, never to be wrong, never foolish, never only pitiable. Or it could mean that she is so incapable of appreciating my feelings about successs, popularity and everything else connected with this moment of my love for her, that she is not worth having. But since I already believe this to be the case and yet must still have her, it makes no difference. On the other hand, if when I look round she pretends not to see me, as I myself pretended not to see her a few minutes ago, I might guess either that she loves me sufficiently to want to avoid the pain of recognition, or else that she hopes to hurt me because my defeat has hurt her. Yet again, her avoidance could mean she despises me. Next, it might so happen that she has forgotten all about me at this instant and that as I turn round to attract her attention I shall only see her talking to Cloate or someone; or listening or smiling or pretending to listen or smile. And since, were I her and she me, I could not for an instant fail to watch her under equivalent circumstances, her inattention might imply that she does not love me as much as I love her, or indeed that she does not love me at all. Lastly, it is possible that though she loves me or does not love me, she might coincidentally fail to notice my gesture because of its brevity, in which case I cannot logically make any deduction at all. So I may be sure that in turning round I am likely to gain nothing, whilst I am more than likely to lose a good deal.

Later, when he tried to recall in what posture he had actually seen her at the moment of his turning, he was quite unable to remember. But then he could not remember anything significant she had ever done in the way of responding to his love.

Thinking in this way, overtaken by his perennial need to analyze everything, without ever reaching any advantageous conclusion, he was scarcely ready for Crosby's renewed attack
when the bell rang and they went forward to meet one another.

When Cosby hit him fairly hard, to his amazement he felt no anger; equating the blow merely with one of the smiles that Dymphna had or had not given him in the past, a kiss received or refused. But after a few more blows he decided that the jolts caused him were facts; they interfered with his thinking; were crudely inconvenient, mechanical interruptions. A blow dodged or received was not the same thing as a kiss given or withheld. Both kisses and blows affected one's emotions, but it was difficult to differentiate between their significance when one was being punched.

He was aware at this time that the laughter of people had become less tolerant because of his failure thus far to hit back at Cosby at all. He sensed that he had crossed the boundary of the comical into that of the farco-tragical. His nose was bleeding freely, Biceps was shouting through the mocking laughter while Cosby was closing in with ever greater confidence. He was quite unable to hurt John any more; punches to the head and face, hooks to his ribs and midriff had formed a kind of numbed carapace against which subsequent coups seemed to fall harmlessly at some little distance.

Cosby was really a very ridiculous person with his contained life, his absurd novel and his transcendent philosophy which, the moment he gained an unaccustomed advantage of the most vulgar kind, he discarded as a beggar blows away snot. But how humiliating for Cosby that although at last, and perhaps uniquely, he had been experiencing a demonstrable superiority, he was quite unable to conclude it.

John covered up in green corner and Cosby came in even closer. Over his gloves, John said to him, “Om mane padme hum.” Cosby jabbed a left to his eye and John repeated the thanka, “Om mane padme hum.” Cosby hesitated a moment and then hit him with his right glove very low on the bleeding lip. John lisped out, “Oh the jewel in the lotus flower—om mane padme hum.”

Biceps shouted, “No talking in the ring, gentlemen. No talking now, box on.”

“I am your chela,” John said, “you are my guru.”

“Be quiet!”

“Your chela is about to knock out his guru,” John said.

When he had said this he saw someone reaching for the towel to throw it in. He was for the first time fully aware of the laughter and the cat-calls. He felt immensely strong; unassailable as a fool, indestructible as a sage. All the blows he had received, the taste of his split lip, his blood-fogged eye, were immediate physiological insults which he would irresistibly avenge. Somewhere behind the sense of outrage which became him like a drug he discovered an almost murderous contempt of his love for Dymphna. He was no longer in the least interested in Cosby or anything about him. Cosby was a midge or fly that had settled for too long on a sensitive part at an inopportune moment; the representative of the entire species which buzzed, bit, swarmed, pinged and crawled over and contaminated the human situation.

He went for Cosby's body with both his gloves. Cosby retreated and counter-attacked with determination; but John stormed through his punches, closed with him and renewed short sharp jabs to the front of his chest and the space between the costal margins. Suddenly Cosby doubled up to sidestep and gain a moment of time to take his breath. John saw the fall of his head and brought up the right uppercut he had practised so often on the punch bag. His gloved fist registered no impact at all, but suddenly Cosby was there no longer; instead there was a reduced replica of him slumped in a crouching position, quite unconscious on the canvas floor.…

And that was all that happened. It was, after all, so small a victory that at the time no one took much notice of it. When the competition was over he went out for drinks with Jack Kerruish and the others and got a little drunk but not so bad that they had to put him to bed.

But the remaining fortnight of that term several things, not unconnected with the boxing, did happen. For instance, one evening at about six o'clock, Kerruish arrived at his rooms with several other members of the Boxing Club. They were facetious a little, or they were not; they were affectionate, seemed about to laugh, to be verging on amusement and from the outset a
little ill at ease. They were probably contrite, Kerruish certainly was embarrassed in a huge way and it became him. Kerruish, unsure of his position, clapping John on the back, nursing his joke adjacent to his discomfort, unsure whether he was adding insult to grievance, was a most attractive being.

“What's to be told him,” he said to the others, “is to be told him in the Wicklow and no other place, am I right?”

Everyone agreed that he was, so they went off to the Wicklow and filled him a pint of porter.

“You've to drink it with us,” Kerruish said, “without drawing breath, mind.”

Then these large fellows, Condor, Halaghan, Malcolm and the rest shouldered round him, joking and laughing, drawing patterns with their shoes in the sawdust on the floor of the bar and talking Gaelic to the farmers who had come in from the cattle sales.

Kerruish said, “There's this for you and this,” and handed him a cardboard box and a paper bag. “You've to open the box first.”

Inside it there was a small silver cup just big enough to take a hen's egg.

“That's not so much for the fight as for the training, though we all say that the uppercut you gave the poor devil was a sizzler. God, didn't that come up from the floor like a Holy Soul from Purgatory? Look at it now, there's your name on it, the year and Novices Competition, Welterweight.”

In the paper bag was a Knight of the Campanile tie.

“And that's not the best of it,” said Kerruish. “It was paid for by Dymphna when we told Broyle, who told her, that you were elected to the Knights, so maybe after all you'll be wanting to thank her.”

“He should put it on,” Condor suggested, “and we should wet it with another porter.”

“Well I'll stand them,” said John, “and thanks very much.”

“We only want to know what it was you said to Cosby before you fetched up that jaw-jerker of yours?”

“I'll tell you,” said John, talking very fast and persuasively. “Cosby writes books. He sits down at seven forty-five every night
after he's eaten a tomato and drunk some orange juice and he clears the table and then he does his exercises—Buddhist exercises. You have to think of absolutely nothing to do these exercises and that means you have to practise and be damned careful what you eat. You might find you're unable to think of nothing, that however hard you try you're always thinking of something, so Cosby thinks of a turnip.”

“A turnip?” asked Condor.

“A complete turnip. First of all he thinks of the leaves, then he thinks of the turnip itself and lastly he thinks of the roots. Then he stops thinking of the leaves and the roots until he's left with the turnip as clean as a tennis ball. When he's got this completely in his mind as a perfect unity, and he's concentrating on it so hard that there's absolutely nothing in his head but the globe of the turnip, he suddenly takes
that
away and there's
nothing
left; he's successfully thinking of nothing.”

There was a moment's silence and then Kerruish said, “Why doesn't he start wid the tennis ball?”

“You'd have to ask him. It's probably a question of discipline.”

“Supposing,” Condor reflected, “you were to start with a woman instead, gradually taking a little piece of her away at a time in your mind until you was left just with—”

“No good,” said John. “You see Cosby doesn't happen to like turnip. He has no feelings about them at all.”

“You big dolt,” said Kerruish to Condor, “thinking
you
could start with a woman and end up thinking of nothing.”

“Whatever you started with, Jack, whether it was a tennis ball or lamp standard you'd end up thinking about—”