hope he murders that dirty schtunk tonight.”
“Here they come,” Grace said, swinging around and staring at the dressing room entrance. Martha also turned, and along with several others began to boo lustily as a fat man with a shaven head and a black moustache swaggered into sight and stood on the ramp midway to the ring. He looked about him with a sneering grin, raising his arms in a victory clasp, taunting his enemies. He was wearing long pliable leather boots that came halfway up his muscular calves and a shabby black silk gown that bore the name Krosniac in white lettering on its back.
“You dirty Russian bastard!” Martha shouted in German. “You’re a stinking cheater!”
Her words were drowned out in the general uproar, and Krosniac swept the Gardens with his supercilious grin, knowing he was the master of them all, daring them to hate him. Grace watched him closely, her mouth opening slightly, a feeling of weakness overcoming her as she gloried in his size and strength.
“Pig! Russian pig!” shouted Martha, her big red face glistening.
The big man ambled slowly to the ringside and with a movement quick but dainty for a man his size parted the ropes and stepped inside. Without another glance at the crowd he walked to his corner, grabbed the ropes and flexed his knees.
Grace took her eyes off him long enough to notice a small woman sitting three rows ahead of her who was waving in her direction and trying to catch her eye. It was Mrs. O’Brien, at least temporarily cured of her gall bladder trouble.
“Hello, Lil!” Grace shouted at her over the intervening heads, “How’s your — how’s everything?”
“Fine,” answered the little Irish woman. Cupping her hand to her mouth she added, “They didn’t have to operate! I’m on a diet.”
Grace smiled and nodded, ending the shouted conversation by shifting her eyes once more to the big man in the corner of the ring, who had now doffed his dressing gown. Though he was fat it was still possible to see the heavy rolling muscles on his back as he stretched at the ropes. His shaven head gave him a look of Oriental cruelty, and Grace imagined him pulling a small blonde Teutonic virgin to him with the reach and heavy strength of a careless bear. He turned towards her, and leaning indolently on the ropes showed his sagging belly. His fat breasts were covered with a mat of black Negroid hair which ran from his chest to his navel, spreading as it disappeared beneath his tight black trunks. His jockstrap made a noticeable bulge at the base of his belly. Grace sucked in a long breath of air.
She tore her eyes from him as the Gardens became filled with the ragged cheers of the crowd. Jumping Jimmy Jones was walking towards the ring, his short blond crewcut giving him a boyish appearance. He looked neither to right nor left as he climbed into the ring, his manner almost insolent.
Martha turned to Grace. “Isn’t he beautiful?” she whispered. “I hope he fights tonight.”
Jones handed his white terry cloth bathrobe to an assistant and smiled and nodded to an acquaintance at the ringside, showing off a mouthful of perfect white teeth.
“Gott verdammt!” exclaimed Martha, staring at him hungrily.
The two wrestlers came together in what the announcer called a twenty-minute one-fall exhibition. For the first five minutes they sparred around the ring, sizing each other up, loosening their muscles. The crowd began to boo, and there were shouts for Jones to stop backing away.
“Look! Didn’t I tell you he had the cutest little ass in the city,” Martha said, turning her wet red face to her companion. “He can put his shoes under my bed anytime he wants to.”
Grace smiled and glanced dutifully at the blond young man’s backside as he backed away from Krosniac. Her glance was momentary however, for her eyes were drawn back to the big Russian, who was stalking the younger and leaner man like an avenging killer. Once he grabbed hold of Jones and threw him expertly to the mat, stamping on the young man’s throat as he held him with a wristlock
“Stop him! Stop him!” screamed Martha, her words hurled at the unhearing referee who had his back to the wrestlers.
“How can that dumkopf let him get away with that?” Martha asked. “Do you see what he’s doing!”
Grace was too intent on the sight of the big man to care. It was as though she were the one lying on the mat, suffering exquisitely from his stamping foot, writhing in an agony of expectation for what was to come. She was crying out weakly, but there was no one to hear her cries. The foot on her throat was the heel of her master grinding her protestations into sobbing silence, robbing her of her strength and exciting her for the degradations he would make her commit. Above her she could see the heavy bulge of his loins and the sweat-streaked hair on his cruel crushing belly, while his unshaven face, twisted with depravity, grinned down at her and mocked her.
With a sudden twist Jones sprang to his feet, and the crowd roared its approval. He faced his opponent warily, pointing to his throat and saying something to the referee.
“Tell him, Jimmy! Tell him what the bastard did!” Martha cried in English. Slipping into German again she said, speaking about the referee, “He’s blind, that fool! Look at him shaking his head!”
From the seats behind them came a loud murmur of protest at the imagined foul. The voice of an elderly woman, hysterical and phlegm-choked, screamed in Grace’s ear. Two men stood up in the rows ahead and shook their fists at the ring.
Shouting into the face of his opponent and kicking at his shins, the fat Krosniac stepped forward, grabbed him in a wristlock, and pushed the blond man’s arm up behind his back. They turned this way and that, the younger man’s face strained from the pain of what had now become a hammerlock, stepping up on his toes to relieve the pressure.
Grace’s eyes were caught by the fat man’s cruel grin, as he forced his opponent’s arm higher along his back. As they faced in her direction Krosniac seemed to be looking straight at her, his clenched teeth locked in a promising smile, taunting her with the expectation of what was to come. Hardly able to stand the feelings she got from his grin, Grace tuned her head away and let her eyes sweep along the row of out-thrust heads to the right. The man in the next seat was chewing gum, taking in the sight with a smirk of disbelief. Next to him his wife, or at least the woman who accompanied him to the wrestling every week, had her eyes half shut and seemed to be invoking God to step in on the side of Jimmy Jones.
Suddenly the blond young wrestler lifted his foot and brought it down crushingly on his opponent’s instep. Krosniac, pulling an agony-filled face, dropped his grip on the others arm and ran away, lifting his injured foot in a pitiful limp. The large auditorium filled with delighted screams and cries. Mrs. O’Brien was standing up, her flowered hat askew, cheering on her gladiator with curses and imprecations aimed at the injured villain.
“Now’s your chance, Jimmy boy!” yelled Martha.
“Jimmy! Jimmy!” the crowd cried, beginning to stamp its feet in unison.
In the ring the two men circled each other warily, Krosniac emphasizing his limp and Jones working his arm to rid it of its stiffness. Around them, from the rows of ringside chairs and back into the tiers of permanent seats, there was a constant stamping of feet and a bubble of excited advice. The wrestlers, seemingly impervious to the noise around them, circled each other with concentrated awareness as if taking part in a ritual dance.
Suddenly the lithe young form of Jumping Jimmy, no longer retreating from the bigger and heavier man, made a feint in his direction, but
