“Yes, that’s right. Educated at Cambridge. But I told Father at the time that I shouldn’t be content with a sedentary rich man’s life. He thought it a youth’s threat, of course, and meanwhile I developed my body to what you see now.”
“Were you actually in the Four Hundred?”
“Well, not actually. There was some nasty business some years ago about an uncle in trade. If I had to place the family, I’d put it somewhere in the low Five Hundreds.”
“I see,” the reporter would say, tiredly. Then, “You’re not supporting the family now, of course — it hasn’t…”
“Fallen on harder days? No, I should think not. Otherwise I might be able to take off this damnable mask. No, no, the Van Bl— whoops, I mean the family, the family is monied.”
“They’ve got a lot of money,” he’d say, writing it down.
“Oh, Lord yes, I should say so. But a fellow likes to earn a bit of his own, you know.”
“Of course.”
Of course.
Articles began to appear about me in the magazines. There was an editorial in Ring; my sort of “showmanship” might proliferate, it warned, and bring about the further vulgarization of a once noble sport. Other magazines, the body-building books and that sort, took the story — or pretended to take it — at face value, passing it on to their readers (who were those people anyway? more boogie-woogie winkers, I suppose) so that it actually gained in translation. I wrestled, they said, only in those towns where I had factories or brokerage offices or banks.
I was bigger now, more important than I had ever been as myself, and the lesson was not lost on me. For the first time I began to take the wrestling seriously. As the months went by I gathered more and more of a reputation; there was even talk that one day I would be a serious contender for the championship. Which brings me back to St. Louis and my first appearance in a main event.
Bogolub had told me on the night he wanted to throw me out of wrestling that I might one day have been a contender, that he’d had his eye on me. Perhaps it was true. I doubt it, but perhaps it was. Probably he said it to add a fillip to my loss, to start in the young man’s mind the old man’s myth, “I could have been the champion—” We are instinctively ironists, tricky tragedians. But if it was not true when Bogolub said it, a year later it was.
I got a call from Bogolub one night when I was in Fargo, North Dakota.
“Boswell? Barry.”
“Yes, Mr. Bogolub?”
“Peter Laneer broke his leg in Philly last night. He was supposed to go against John Sallow in a main event in St. Louis Friday but there’s no chance of his making it. I want you to go down and take his place.”
“I can’t do it,” I said. “I’m fighting in Des Moines Friday.”
“Called off, Jimmy.”
“What about the forfeit fee?”
“Jimmy, you’re talking about peanuts. This is a main event in St. Louis I’m talking about. You’re big time now, Jimmy. Give me a call when you get to LA.” He started to hang up.
“Mr. Bogolub. Mr. Bogolub?”
“Come on, Jimmy, this is long distance. Fargo ain’t Fresno.”
“What about the arrangements?”
“Oh, yeah, in my excitement I forgot to tell you. You lose.”
“What’s that?”
“You lose. Routine number thirty-eight. Give them a show, you understand, you’re an important wrestler, but you lose. I can trust you.”
“Mr. Bogolub, the last time I was scheduled to meet him I was supposed to win.”
“He’s the next champion, Jimmy. Be a little patient, please. Give me a ring as soon as you get to LA.”
“Mr. Bogolub, I don’t want to fight him. I don’t want to fight him Friday.” I was talking to myself. Bogolub had hung up.
I went down to the National Guard Armory. I don’t remember who I wrestled — which is odd for me; I never. forget a name. I stumbled through the routine and it was a lousy show, even though I won. The crowd was booing me. “Hey, Masked Man, go get Tonto,” someone shouted. “Hey, Keemosavee, you stink.” “Take off the mask, Prince. The ball is over.”
In the locker room, afterward, the fellow I beat sat down next to me. “What’s wrong, Jim?” (The wrestlers, of course, knew who I was. In a way the wrestlers were wonderful. They always played to the other fellow’s costume.) “Don’t you feel good?”
“Ah, Bogolub called before the match. I fight The Reaper Friday in St. Louis.”
“That’s terrific,” he said. “That’s really great. Main eventer?”
“Yes.”
“That’s marvelous, Jim. That’s really terrific.”
“I lose.”
“Oh,” he said. “Oh, that’s different. That’s too bad. That’s a tough piece of luck, Jimmy.
He thought I felt bad because I was supposed to lose. I was a comer, a contender. One day I was supposed to be strictly a main eventer: The Reaper already was. If I was scheduled to lose to him in my first appearance in a main event it probably meant that Bogolub was narrowing the field, was dumping me. I was better off winning the little matches, better off even losing some of them, than losing the big ones. It was too soon for me to go against Reaper and lose.
But I hadn’t been thinking of my career at all. This was personal. I was thinking about John Sallow. John Sallow, The Grim Reaper, was the wrestler I had been scheduled to fight in LA just before I disappeared out there as Boswell. Sallow had been fighting under one name or another for years. He had been a wrestler before I was even born. He had wrestled when the sport was a sport, before it had become an “exhibition.” At one time in his career he had beaten Strangler Lewis, had beaten The Angel, had beaten all the champions. He had fought everywhere — Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, the Americas, everywhere. It was impossible to know how many fights he’d actually had, partly because many were in days and towns when and where they did not keep records, and partly because of his many changes of name.
Sallow wasn’t very active in the thirties, though he fought some during the Depression, but he came out of his semi-retirement during World War II when many of the younger wrestlers were in the service. One day he would beat them, too, just as he had defeated the older champions. It was phenomenal to see the old man work. The crowds loved to watch him, loved to gape, fascinated, at his wily, ancient movements. He was curiously lithe; watching him, you had the impression that he was detached, that the body which moved so gracefully before you was somehow something which he merely inhabited, oddly like clothes which move always a split second after the agent inside them has already moved. This gave the impression of an almost ruthless discipline of his limbs. His face carried this even further. It was impassive, totally without expression, without the familiar landmarks of either love or hate. Nor did he fit conveniently into the traditional role of hero or villain in his matches. True, he never employed the obvious techniques, the blatant eye gougings, hair pullings, finger bendings, chokeholds, which sooner or later could bring even the most sophisticated crowd to its feet, but there was latent in his movements, always slow, always oddly prim, a sure viciousness, an indifference to consequences to bone and muscle. If he pulled a punch it was ultimately strategic, and although he submitted to the terms of his contracts, winning or losing according to some higher plan, wrestlers hated to fight him. He hurt them even when he lost. They could not account for his steady strength. Some said he was insane, but if he was his irrationality never extended to his activities in the ring. Indeed, he seemed to have a rational body. His movements were so naturally deft and logical that it was impossible to imagine him ever stubbing his toe accidentally or ripping his clothes on a nail. Outside the ring, in street clothes, he was unremarkable, a tall, pale, almost gaunt man, with preternaturally black hair. He looked like a farmer, in town perhaps to visit by a bedside in a hospital. He did not speak much (you could tell that by looking at him), but he must have had an extraordinary facility with languages. Once, when I was on a card with him, I heard him explain to two Japanese Sumo wrestlers who had come over for a special exhibition what arrangements had been made for them. The Sumos, delighted that they had found someone who could speak their language, tried to engage him in further conversation, but Sallow simply turned away.