Stanley Elkin - Boswell

“Stop,” the voice said. “I’ll open the door.”

It opened. “Sandusky?”

“Come inside.”

“The Great Sandusky?”

“Don’t make bad jokes. Come inside.”

There was a mistake. In his pictures Sandusky was a huge man with a great shining massive skull, the famous “battering ram.” He was bulky rather than muscular, meaty, red-fleshed, faintly Tartar, a circus poster strongman in leopard-skinned dishabille, one furred strap tight across a wide and straining shoulder. He was fearful even in the photographs, like some strange wet animal. On a circus poster the man before me might have looked like the company’s advance man, nothing more. He was shorter than Sandusky could possibly have been, and if his appearance suggested that he had ever been in athletics it was because he looked so much like a vaguely seedy high school basketball coach who had known his share of point shavers, gamblers and hoods. A baggy sharkskin business suit gave him the careless, spilled-soup look of the insider, the man who breaks training. His fingers had the mustardy nicotine blotches of the revolutionary, and indeed, against the background of his hotel he looked like some out-of-date anarchist.

We looked at each other narrowly for a moment and then the man, smiling, offered me his hand. It’s a trick, I thought immediately. This was a hand which had crushed rocks. For all its shabby appearance of disuse and even disease, it would attempt to crush my own. He would break my fingers, would he? All right, I thought, we’ll see. Trying to appear as casual as he I let him have my hand. As soon as we touched I braced and squeezed first; there was no resistance, and I pressed the hand as I would a sponge. As he pulled his arm away I saw that I had made a mistake.

“Do you want to kill me? Is that the way you show your respect?”

“I’m sorry,” I said awkwardly. “I was trying to impress you.”

“You would impress me better if you behaved yourself.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Forgive me.”

It was my flaw. If I met a great athlete I tried to crush his hand; a great banker, I cashed a check. Herlitz, that magician, was right again. I was a fourth — Boswell, the world’s sad fourth, who played other people’s games by other people’s rules. A reader of labels, of directions, a consumer on the most human of levels. Vampire. Sancho. Jerk.

Sandusky, if the little man was Sandusky, was backing away from me and rubbing his hand. I apologized again. He sat on the edge of his unmade bed.

“I made a mistake,” I said.

“All right,” he said, “forget it.”

“It was stupid of me. I’m sorry.” I apologized some more. I saw it gave him courage.

“Three years ago,” he said at last, “I would have thrown you through the wall for that.”

“Yes.”

“I would have torn off your head.”

“Yes,” I said. “Certainly you would have.”

“I had a terrible temper.”

“I heard that.”

“I was a wild man of Borneo in a side show when I was a young man and they had to let me go I was so realistic.”

“I read that somewhere,” I said.

“I once broke a man’s back who got too close to my cage.”

“Didn’t the police—”

“The rube called me a fake and threw peanuts. What police? What could they do, put handcuffs on me? Handcuffs?”

“They would have been like so much string,” I said.

“Yeah, string,” he said. “Crap, what does it mean? You see what happens to a man?” He held up his hand.

“I’m sorry,” I said again.

He ignored me.

“Did you think Sandusky would be like this?” he asked. “I was hiding out. I don’t know how that reporter found me. How do they know those things? He used old pictures. I made him do that. You know what surprises me most?” He looked up at me. “Sit down.” I looked around for the first time, and noticed that except for the bed and a chest of drawers there was no furniture in the room. I had to perch on the edge of the bed with Sandusky. I sat carefully, prissily. Only roommates plop down on each other’s beds. A gentleman uses another man’s bed as he would another man’s car; it is highly personal machinery. Still, I thought, remembering my feelings when I had sat in the office with Herlitz, there is something deeply feminine in me. I thought absently of all the thank-you notes I would one day write.

“What surprises me most is the pain,” Sandusky said. “As an athlete yourself, you know that training is an accommodation to pain. That’s all. A champion is a man who has mastered pain. You’d think my training would have accustomed me to it.” He lowered his voice. “They want to throw me out of the hotel. I holler. At night. I holler.”

“Have you been sick?” I said.

“Sick? Hah, what would you know about it?”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s my fucking constitution. With my trouble any other man would have been dead in eight months. Me? Three years now and God knows how long to go.”

I could not really believe in Sandusky’s illness. “Why don’t you kill yourself?” I suggested.

“Don’t be fresh,” he snapped. “Say, you got a lot of nerve going around telling people to kill themselves.” He considered me for a moment. “Did you really do that?” he asked.

“Do what?”

“That thing. The spike. Or was it a trick?” He meant the filings.

“It wasn’t a trick,” I said.

He shook his head in soft, sad wonder. “You’re the strongest,” he said. “You got any money for an old champion?” he asked plaintively. He pronounced it “champeen.” He was mocking me.

“Have you got any scrapbooks?” I asked.

“What’s that?”

“Scrapbooks. Pictures of yourself — from the old days.”

“Say, what’s the matter with you? Are you straight?”

“Please,” I said. “I’d like you to show me your scrapbooks.”

Sandusky laughed crudely. “Why?”

“I’m a professional,” I said. “It’s scientific.”

I’d had the idea when he told me about making the reporter use old photographs. There must be a scrapbook. That would be the thing — a guided tour. History is rare. It happens once. Who sits under the apple tree with Newton? For the sake of argument, you’re Moses’ closest friend. But when he climbs Mt. Sinai he climbs alone. A tourist sees the mountain, and some raggedy Arab leads him up and shows him a piece of broken stone. But it’s not the same thing. What do places mean? Tombs? Relics? What counts is people in the moment before history happens. So if Sandusky had a scrapbook it was not enough just to see it. I had to sit by while he turned the pages. Ersatz? Certainly, who says no? But I must always go as close as I can go, sidling up to the fearful edge of someone else like a man with vertigo. I tell you there is a sort of shame for me in not being one of the Trinity, such absolute chagrin in not being important that I can hardly look anyone in the eye. I am just Boswell the Big. What a burden for a strong man. In the presence even of Sandusky I felt a sort of awe; even an old success, a past, provocative as a scent, could hold me.

“So you’re a pro, what difference does that make? What can you learn from photographs?” Sandusky asked.

“That’s not it,” I said. “Please.”

He threw up his hands. Under his sleeves, I knew, the flesh around his upper arms hung slackly, like an old woman’s on a bus. “I keep a few pictures,” he said. He seemed apologetic. “Loose,” he explained. “There’s nothing you could call a scrapbook.” He went to the chest of drawers and bent down.

He keeps them in the bottom drawer, I thought, where it’s uncomfortable for him to get at them. He’s humble. Not like Herlitz.