“Hey, Karras Jr.,” said DiGeordano, as Karras walked in front of the cart.
“Mr. DiGeordano,” said Karras with a nod, as he and Mamakos passed.
They walked behind DiGeordano’s cart and had a seat on the edge of the bulkhead, their legs dangling over the side. A rowboat was tied off on a piling to their right. The water was not so clean here as it was downriver at Mount Vernon and at Marshall Hall.
“Hot,” said Mamakos.
“Damn hot,” said Karras, happy for the chance to curse in front of Mamakos but wincing at the sound of his own high voice.
Mamakos looked down at the rowboat, then pointed his chin towards Hains Point. “What we ought to do, maybe we ought to take that over to the Speedway, go for a swim while we’re at it.”
“I can’t swim,” said Karras.
“Sure you can.”
Peter Karras spat between his feet, watched the spit hit the water with a soft click. “I can’t.”
Mamakos nodded, glanced thoughtfully across the channel. “So who’s gonna win the fight tonight?”
“My pop says Schmeling. Says Max Baer ain’t nothin’ but a bufo.”
“Your pop says.”
“That’s right.”
“He thinks Baer’s a clown? Maybe. But he’s a clown with a right.”
Karras squinted in the sun. “You gonna listen to it?”
“Yeah. You?”
“Uh-huh.”
Mamakos looked over at Karras, smiled as he studied the mop of blond hair, the blue eyes. “You don’t look much like a Greek, you know it, Pete? Except for the ilia, maybe.”
Karras touched his finger to the prominent black mole to the right of his lip. “My pop’s village, in Sparta, they all look like this. Pop says we never got overrun by the Turks. It’s the Turk blood makes other Greeks dark—”
“Your pop says.” A drop of sweat fell from the blunt tip of Steve Mamakos’s nose. “Sure is hot, though. We ought to take that little boat out.”
Lou DiGeordano had been listening to the conversation. He turned around, made a kind of pushing motion with his hands. “You wanna take the boat, take it. I know the guy who owns it. He owes me a few dollars, anyway. But bring it back soon. You hear, Karras Jr.?”
Mamakos had lowered himself down into the rowboat before Peter Karras could protest. Karras followed, freeing the loop of line from the piling. He pushed off on the bulkhead, noticing the meager flex of his biceps. They floated out into the channel then. Mamakos peeled off his shirt and took hold of the oars. His arms rippled on the stroke. Karras pulled his shirt over his head and dropped it in the boat, and kicked his shoes off as well. He looked at the thinness of his own arms, told himself that he would grow.
“I’m telling you,” said Mamakos, “it’s going to be Baer. Then Baer will take the title from Camera after Camera beats hell out of Sharkey in July.”
“I hear you,” said Karras, who suddenly felt closed in on the boat. It reminded him of the Murphy bed he slept on in his parents’ apartment.
“You looked good in the gym this morning, Karras. Maybe you got a little Max Baer in you, too. But you got to remember to keep your hands up, and breathe. Breathing’s real important.”
“Okay, Steve.” The boat rose and dipped over the wake of a passing skiff, and Karras felt a flutter in his stomach. Now that they were out in the channel, it didn’t seem so cool after all. Karras still felt hot and a little bit sick.
“This is good enough,” said Mamakos, pulling the oars from the water.
“What’re we gonna do now?” said Karras.
“Now,” said Mamakos, “I’m going to teach you how to swim.”
“I can’t. I know I can’t.”
“Sure you can. Once you’re in there, you make like a dog. Move your hands and feet like hell. Kind of paddle, like, and keep paddlin’. It’s simple.”
“I can’t, Steve.”
“Stand up, boy.”
“Steve—”
“Stand up and jump off the front of this boat.”
Karras went to the bow, stood there. He knew that he would do it, on account of being a chicken in front of Steve Mamakos was the last thing he would ever want to be. And it did feel awful close in the tiny rowboat, real close and uncomfortable. He wanted to take a deep breath first, but he couldn’t seem to keep one in. He would do it, but not just yet. He needed to wait.
The easy laughter of Mamakos filled the air as Karras felt the weight of a large hand on his back. He was falling then, and almost as he touched the water he slipped beneath it, and he waved his hands and kicked his feet frantically, and just as quickly as he had gone under his head came out. He heard his own voice, a kind of humming sound. His hands swirled and his feet kicked. He saw the green of Hains Point, the gulls gliding at its edge, the white puff of clouds against the perfect azure sky. He took the warmth of the sun on his face, and felt the stretch of his own smile.
“Swim, you Greek bastard!” said Mamakos.
Swim. Yeah, it was simple.
2
Peter Karras pushed the covers off his bed. He sat up and touched the bruise at the edge of his temple, the bruise given to him by his father the night before. Dimitri Karras, who worked a fruit and vegetable stand at the head of an alley on the 1700 block of Pennsylvania, had heard from One of his friends on Maine Avenue who had seen his son swimming in the channel. Dimitri had come home that night with the idea of teaching the boy a lesson. He had taken off his belt, and he had beaten his son with it, and the buckle had caught the boy on the side of the head. Dimitri Karras stopped when he saw what he had done. During the whole thing, the boy had never cried.
Karras glanced over at his father, sitting at the table wearing only his union suit, his hand touching a cup of Turkish coffee. His father did not look up. At the foot of Peter Karras’s bed, a lobby card from a movie house lay on the wood floor. The photograph, bent and wrinkled, showed two actors, James Dunn and Zasu Pitts, from a picture called Hello Sister. So his old man had gone up to the Savoy to see a late show, and taken the photograph off the wall. And then probably gotten drunk. A present for his son, and a cockeyed one at that, as if Karras would want a photograph of Zasu Pitts. What would he do with it, anyway? Well, it was a gesture, at least. It was something.
At the kitchen stove, Georgia Karras crumpled feta cheese into the frying pan which held the scrambled eggs she cooked for her husband. She wore a dark housedress, one of three identical housedresses she owned, with her long brown hair tied up tightly in a bun. On her feet she wore a pair of cord-fabric sandals with leather soles and Cuban heels, which she had saved for and bought at Goldenberg’s for a dollar and nineteen cents. A cat sat beside her, its nose touching her calf, listening to the hiss of the eggs congealing in the pan.
“More cafe, Yiorgia,” said Dimitri.
“It’s coming,” Georgia said tiredly. “I’m going to bring the eggs and the coffee together. I’m going to give it to you all at once.”
“Uh,” said Dimitri.
“Ella na fas, Panayotaki,” said Georgia to her son, with a come-on gesture of her hand.
“Don’t have time to eat. Ma,” said Peter as he tied his shoes and pulled on the shirt he had worn the day before. “I’m gonna meet my friends.”
“What friends you gonna meet?” said Dimitri.
“Perry Angelos, and Billy Nicodemus. Jimmy Boyle, and Joe Recevo.”
“Recevo,” said Dimitri. “The Italos.”
Georgia served the eggs to Dimitri and refilled his coffee. She wiped her hands dry on her housedress.