“Oh, that. You want a laugh? Here, look at these.” He handed me two photographs I had not seen. One was of the lower part of his body, his waist and legs; the other was of everything above the waist.
I looked at the photographs and then at Sandusky. “They’re nice,” I said.
“Don’t you get it?” he said. “Don’t you get it?”
I shrugged.
“Lower Sandusky,” he said, pointing to the picture of his legs. Then, touching the other photograph, “Upper Sandusky! The town in Ohio! Get it?”
He handed me a full-length portrait of himself. “Greater Sandusky?” I said.
“Yeah,” he laughed, “yeah, yeah. Greater Sandusky!” He clapped me on the back. He laughed and laughed. “Greater Sandusky,” he wheezed through his laughter.
“Greater Sandusky.” I laughed with him. “Greater Sandusky! Greater Sandusky! Yeah. Yeah.”
“Yeah,” he said.
“Greatest Sandusky!” I roared, putting all three pictures in a pile.
“Yeah,” he laughed, “Greatest Sandusky!”
He fell back on the bed, one arm flung heavily across his forehead. The other he raised weakly to his lips, trying to contain his laughter. He looked like someone who knew he would be sick, and the sight of him beside me, beneath me, the strong man wrestled to his bed by laughter, made me laugh more. You’d have had to have been there, I kept thinking, already trying to explain to someone else afterwards what it had been like. You’d have had to have been there. I tried to say “Greatest Sandusky” again to keep the joke going. Sandusky saw me and shook his head in warning. He took his hand away from his lips long enough to say, “Do-o-n’t. Doannt. Don’t. No. D-dd-doonnt.”
I was made ruthless by my laughter. “Greatest Sandusky,” I said.
He giggled.
“Greatest Sandusky,” I said.
Sandusky roared.
“Greatest Sandusky!” I yelled at him.
He collapsed in laughter, the water rushing from his eyes. Startled, I saw that he looked like the Sandusky of old, the Sandusky of the photographs, his cheeks blown out in a rage of pain, his eyes drowned in his effort’s flood. Sandusky beneath the barbell, beneath the world’s gross weight, who held that weight from the ground, who was all we had between it and us. Sandusky’s face, its urgent effort, angered me. The heroic effort, the bald look of strain. There it was, the history I pursued and pursued, the moment I chased to see George do it. I gazed down at the straining Sandusky and wondered if it was possible to kill a man by making him laugh.
“Sandusky,” I yelled, screaming to make him hear me, “Sandusky, why does a strong man wear a jock?”
“D-d-do-on-nnt. Doannt.”
“To hold his bells up.”
“D-o-o-n’t. Ple-plee — leeze.”
“Mr. Sandusky, how is a strong man like a man who serves food in a restaurant?”
“D-on’t.”
“They’re both weighters!” He laughed, strangling, but I saw that he was regaining control. It was too bad, I thought. “If you can’t join ’em, kill ’em.” The new Boswelclass="underline" Boswell the Bad. Aesthetically it was a pity. I could imagine Sandusky dead, and calling the police myself to report it, and their coming and finding Sandusky’s corpse. The Corpse of Sandusky, the heroic mold, all muscles and laughs. “Of course, gentlemen, he died out of his prime, but the essential materials are still there,” I would tell them, lifting a loose flap of skin and pulling it taut. “We could take him to a taxidermist and have him stuffed. It’s what he would want.” I would explain to the Inspector that I had told him a joke and he had died. But it was too late; already Sandusky was sitting up, his feet over the edge of the bed. He looked like someone who might wake with a hangover. He was disreputable, torn, and seemed as seedy as he had when I first came in.
“That was a good laugh,” he said stupidly. He smiled, remembering it.
“Yes.”
“It’s been years since I had a laugh like that.”
“It’s good for you to laugh like that once in a while. It clears the system.”
“Well, sure,” he said, “I know. When I was developing the body I used to make it a habit to read the joke books. It’s a very good lung exercise.”
“Is that a fact?” I said. When he said “the body” I felt another twinge of anger. He had confirmed again the selflessness of his life’s effort.
“I’m a little tired now,” he said apologetically.
“Sure,” I said, “I’ll get out of here.”
“Maybe you could come back another time. I enjoyed talking to you.”
“Sure,” I said, and got up.
“Wait a minute,” he said. He came over to me. “You might as well take one of these.” He handed me one of his poses.
“Oh, I couldn’t.”
“Sure,” he said. “What the hell.” He looked at me carefully. Then, to my surprise, he reached out and touched me. He put his hands on my arms, and stooping, slid his palm down my thighs. On his hands and knees he held my calf muscle, molding it, almost. “Say,” he said, looking up at me, “that’s all right.” He straightened up. “You got any pictures of the body? I’d like to see those calves.”
“Gee, I’m sorry, Mr. Sandusky, my photographer promised he’d have some ready for me yesterday, but he ran out of the high-gloss paper we use.”
“Oh,” he said, “I see.”
“Some should be coming in soon, though,” I said. “I could let you have a chest and legs and thighs, of course, and a neck that I’m very proud of. I saw the neck proofs yesterday when I went to the shop, and I think they’re terrific.”
“I’d like to see them,” he said. “The neck was always one of my weak spots, as you probably saw.”
“No,” I said, “you had a distinguished neck.”
“Well, it was scrawny,” he said, lowering his voice. “I was susceptible to sore throats and I could never exercise it the way I should have.”
“The way it deserved.”
“Yeah,” he said, “the way it deserved.”
“Well,” I said, shoving out my hand, “thanks for everything.”
“My pleasure,” he said.
I held up the photograph he had given me and grinned.
“Forget it,” he said, “my pleasure.”
Pleasure, I thought, leaving him, what would you great men know about pleasure?
IV
I still have in my files the photograph Sandusky gave me. A picture of a serious young man (like one of those figures you see in a tableau — can it move, does it breathe, is it real?) in a loin cloth. His arms (of course, that is merely a convenience, a convention of language; they are no more his than mine) fluid with muscle, his chest… It’s in my files. A cornerstone!
Herlitz, you comedian, you clown, you had some Old World fun with Boswell, hey? That Herlitz! He played a joke. Not just on me — on Freud, on the German generals, on the man with the monorails. He gave us projects. What, you think greatness is fun? Laughs? You think it’s all honors and international congresses and dressing for dinner? No, I tell you. Everybody dies. We’re all lashed to the mast. The man goes down beneath his cause like the soldier beneath his flag. Only his achievement, his thing, lingers. Men leave us their lousy things, that’s what. Vaccine or the patents or a greasy wallet with fourteen dollars and change and sixty dollars in uncashed traveler’s checks — it’s all the same. (They take it out of the hospital safe and send it to you in the mail. “Here are your father’s effects,” the letter says, not unkindly. They call them that, effects. Who needs his effects? I want him.)