Katherine Dunn - Nightmare Carnival

Now it was time for the finisher. The Raja grabbed Johnny the Plant’s left foot, placed his leg against the back of Johnny the Plant’s knee, and then twisted Johnny the Plant’s leg. Johnny the Plant howled and begged. Raja stepped over and cranked Johnny the Plant’s foot, then got back into position, and did it again, and again. The townies erupted at the sight of the spinning toehold, and finally Johnny the Plant screamed, “Uncle! Uncle!” When the rage of the crowd finally drowned out the bell, the Raja dropped the leg, stepped up to the audience, and took a graceful low bow. Johnny the Plant crawled to the apron and rolled out of the ring, favoring his tortured leg.

Most nights, that was the first act of the show. Despite the All-Comers name, it was a rare gilly that would get between the ropes after witnessing the beating Johnny the Plant took. Normally, Black Raja retires, and the still-bleeding plant stalks the midway, pounding his palm with his fist and working up his courage for a rematch loudly and publicly. An hour later, Johnny the Plant brings a new tip back to the ring and manages to get a few licks in on the champ before the Raja takes him down and hooks him with yet another crowd-pleasing spinning toehold.

Tonight though, when Jeff Gordon said, “Just barely a minute! A spirited effort by the young lad who saw what the Raja had to offer and followed us down the trail forty miles, but he leaves no richer. but infinitely wiser. Would anyone else like to test his mettle against the Black Raaaa—” He was interrupted.

“Jah!” said a huge white man that even Chattopadhyay hadn’t previously spotted. He must have joined the tip during the match, and thanks to his friends in the Klan, he had gotten all the way up to the ring apron. They’d set themselves up and then parted like the Red Sea for him. The big man pulled himself up onto the lip of the ring, his strong arm bending the ring rope as he gained his footing. “I’ll fight this Hindoo! This. Black Negro!” he declared, and the crowd roared.

Gordon shot Chattopadhyay a look. Chattopadhyay nodded, then turned and focused on his opponent. The big man wasn’t one; he was a big kid. Maybe a college boy, corn fed and on a football scholarship, with a familiar face.

He looked just like the cop, but huge. Everyone in the tip seemed to know him. The kid took off his shirt to reveal a blacksmith’s physique — a huge barrel chest and cannonball biceps.

Here’s something to know about wrestling. It’s all about leverage, and angles, and being game . Every hold has a counter, and all else being equal the man who keeps his wits about him wins.

Here’s something else to know about wrestling. A good big man beats a good little man, almost every single time. College boy was big enough that he didn’t even have to be all that good. The cop had been a normal-sized man, half a head shorter than Chattopadhyay.

His wife must be fucking enormous, Chattopadhyay thought.

Gordon rang the bell. Work became shoot. Fraud transformed into battery. A flash tackle and college boy was on top. He rained punches down on to the Black Raja, trying to get a little claret going. Finally, the scarred-over skin on Raja’s head burst open and the blood started to pour. That’s when the Raja grabbed the college boy’s wrist, jerked it forward, swung his freed leg over the boy’s torso to get him into a scissor hold.

College boy crunched up and slid an arm behind the Raja’s neck, not to crank it but to whisper. “We’re gonna burn you out, so just lie back and count the fucking lights. My daddy and his friends just wanted to see the show first.” Then the college boy tightened his grip and went for the can opener neck crank, driving Raja’s chin to his chest.

Raja smiled. The college boy was strong, but not too smart. He let go of the scissor hold, and the pressure from the can opener all but vanished. He bumped the kid off him with a hip thrust, rolled to his side, planted a hand on the kid’s ass and shoved him onto his face. Raja took his back. This would be easy.

Except that the college boy did a press-up, then got to his feet, with the Black Raja hanging off his back like a child. The crowd howled with glee, and someone screamed, “Jack him!” and the boy did, smashing Raja under him.

Gordon, still outside the ring, reached under the bottom rope and slapped the mat twice but Raja jerked a shoulder up. Gordon was eager to slap the mat a third time anyway, to ring the bell, to make a mad dash for the shotgun under the ring if he needed to, but something stopped him.

The Black Raja stopped him, with a glare. Chattopadhyay was gone.

College boy didn’t try to rock his opponent back into a pinning position; he just pushed down on Raja’s knees and turned, looking to sneak in a few punches. Which is what Raja wanted.

Raja snaked his right arm under the college boy’s armpit and behind his neck, the other over the boy’s left shoulder. A three-quarter nelson — he owned the boy’s upper body now. The boy could take a pin, and get humiliated in front of the town. Or the boy could try a neck bridge, and Raja would just hook , making the hold so painful that the boy would have to submit.

Raja shifted his weight and drove the boy’s shoulders toward the mat. But college boy was smart after all. He put his fists together behind his head and flexed hard. Raja felt his grip being pried open. The boy thrashed and was free. He planted a knee on the Raja’s belly and sank near three hundred pounds into it. One paw swallowed the Raja’s neck. The boy’s right hand was a fist, held high, ready to come down.

Chattopadhyay thought it looked like the moon. The Black Raja was gone.

He wondered if he was going to die.

Here’s something to know about Chattopadhyay. Raja is a gimmick. Kalamatas is a gimmick. Chattopadhyay wished he was a raja, dressing in gold, riding in a palanquin. Sometimes he wished he was just a simple Greek moron, herding goats and spitting olive pits onto the table.

What was Chattopadhyay actually? He was a little boy. Chattopadhyay was placed in an akhara —like a gym, or a monastery dedicated to breaking bones — by his parents at age four, and did the work wrestlers do. Up before the sun to perform a thousand squats and a thousand dand pushups. Twenty-five matches in a row, real matches, with his fellow students. Endless swinging of Indian clubs, sometimes while wearing a stone gar nal around his neck to build up his bridge. As the gym’s own boy, he’d cook the food and clean up the messes and jerk off his teachers, who were barred by the traditions of the sport from handling themselves or lying with women.

Then came the war, and the Indian Army, the Italian campaign. Then on to London, which smelled like a fire, and on to Canada on his hard-earned passport. It was only a single midnight truck ride in the bottom of the truck to get him to the United States, where a man could make a living wrestling — especially a man who knew how to shoot as well as work. When Chattopadhyay wanted to win, he could pin pretty much any longshoreman or pituitary gland case the brass put up against him. That’s how the promoters used him, to cut young workers down a peg when they made the mistake of asking for more money, or threatening the boss with their big canned-ham fists. In the lingo of the field, Chattopadhyay was a stretcher. His job was to get in the ring and hook them but good , to make his opponents realize that wrestling was real, even when they were paid to fake it.

Mostly though, Chattopadhyay counted the lights after putting in his pantomime offense. Nobody was going to put a championship belt on an Indian man, even if he wore a turban, or a Native headdress, or a sequined mask, or a Roman tunic. One night, after Strangler Frankhauser mouthed off in the locker room, Chattopadhyay decided to shoot. The Strangler was a fat old man with a fused ankle and thanks to his brother the promoter held the Midwestern state title. Chattopadhyay played heel and spent most of the match sweating it out under Strangler’s armpit, then grabbed an ankle, flipped Strangler over, and hooked the leg hard with a toehold.