As he still continued to pull me by the throat with his arm, I indicated that I wanted to say something really serious. And I told him, “Your Highness, I am really kind of on a quest.”
He released me. I think I was not so impulsive or lively-responsive, you see-as he would have liked. I could read all this in his expression as I cleaned the dust from my face with a piece of indigo cloth belonging to the lady of the house. I had pulled it from the rafter. As far as he was concerned, we were now acquainted. Having seen something of the world, at least from Malindi in Africa all the way up into Asia Minor, he must have known what sad sacks were, and as of this moment, to judge by his looks, I belonged in that category. Of course it was true I had been very downcast, what with the voice that said I want and all the rest of it. I had come to look upon the phenomena of life as so many medicines which would either cure my condition or aggravate it. But the condition! Oh, my condition! First and last that condition! It made me go around with my hand on my breast like the old picture of Montcalm passing away on the Plains of Abraham. And I’ll tell you something, excessive sadness has made me physically heavy, whereas I was once light and fast, for my weight. Until I was forty or so I played tennis, and one season hung up a record of five thousand sets, practically eating and sleeping out of doors. I covered the court like a regular centaur and smashed everything in sight, tearing holes in the clay and wrecking the rackets and bringing down the nets with my volleys. I cite this as proof that I was not always so sad and slow.
“I suppose you are the unbeaten champion here?” I said.
And he said, “This is so. I allways win.”
“It doesn’t surprise me one single bit.”
He answered me carelessly with a glint from the corners of his eyes, for as I had submitted to being rolled in the dust on my face, he thought we had already made acquaintance thoroughly, concluding that I was huge but helpless, formidable in looks, but of one piece like a totem pole, or a kind of human Galapagos turtle. Therefore I saw that to regain his respect I must activate myself, and I decided to wrestle him after all. So I put aside my helmet and stripped off my T-shirt, saying, “Let’s give it a try for real, Your Highness.” Romilayu was not more pleased by this than he had been by Itelo’s challenge, but he was not the type to interfere, and merely looked forward with his Abyssinian nose, his hair making a substantial shadow over it. As for the prince, who had been sitting with a loose, indifferent expression, he livened up and began to laugh when I slipped off the T-shirt. He stood up and crouched, and fenced with his hands, and I did likewise. We revolved around the small hut. Next we began to try grips, and the muscles started into play all over his shoulders. At which I decided that I should make quick use of my weight advantage before my temper could be aroused, for if he punished me, and with those muscles it was very possible, I might lose my head and fall into those commando tricks at that. So I did a very simple thing: I gave him a butt with my belly (on which the name of Frances once tattooed had suffered some expansion) while putting my leg behind him and pushing him in the face, and by this elementary surprise I threw the man over. I was astonished myself that it had worked so easily, though I hit him pretty brutally with both hands and abdomen, and thought he might be going to the ground only to pull some trick on me; thus I took no chances but followed through with all my bulk, while both hands covered his face. In this way I shut off sight and breath and gave his head a good bang on the ground, knocking the wind out of him, big as he was. When he slammed to the ground under this assault I threw myself with my knees on his arms and so pinned him.
Thankful that it had not been necessary to call on my murder technique, I let him up at once. I admit the element of surprise (or luck) was overwhelmingly on my side, and that it wasn’t a fair test. That he was angry I could see from the change in his color, though the frame of darkness about his eyes showed no change, and he never said a word, but took off his middy and green handkerchief and drew deep breaths which made his belly muscles work inward toward his backbone. We began once more to revolve and several times circled the hut. I concentrated on my footwork, for that’s where I am weakest and tend to pull forward like a plow horse with all the power in the neck, chest, belly, and, yes, face. As he now seemed to realize, his best chance was to get me on the mat, where I couldn’t use my bulk against him, and as I was stooping toward him, cautious, and with my elbows out crabwise, he ducked under with great speed and caught me beneath the chin, closing in fast behind me and trapping my head. Which he began to squeeze. It wasn’t a true headlock but more what your old-timers used to call the chancery grip. He had one arm free and could have used it to bang me across the face, but this didn’t seem to be in the rules. Instead he carried me toward the ground and tried to make me fall on my back, but I fell on my front, and very painfully, too, so that I thought I had split myself upward from the navel. Also I got a bad blow on the nose and was afraid the root of it had been parted; I could almost feel the air enter between the separated bones. But somehow I managed to keep a space clear in my brain for counsels of moderation, which was no small achievement in itself. Since that day of zero weather when I was chopping wood and was struck by the flying log and thought, “Truth comes with blows,” I had evidently discovered how to take advantage of such experiences, and this was useful to me now, only it took a different form; not “Truth comes with blows” but other words, and these words could not easily have been stranger. They went like this: “I do remember well the hour which burst my spirit’s sleep.”
Prince Itelo now took a grip high up on my chest with his legs; owing to my girth he could never have closed them about me lower. As he tightened them, I felt my blood stop and my lips puffed out while my tongue panted and my eyes began to run. But my hands were at work, and by applying pressure with both thumbs on his thigh near the knee, digging into the muscle (called the adductor, I believe) I was able to bend his leg straight and break his hold. Heaving upward, I snatched at his head; his hair was very short but gave all the grip I needed. Turning him by the hair I caught him at the back and spun him. I had him by the waistband of those loose drawers, my fingers inside, then I lifted him up high. I didn’t whirl him at all, as that would have knocked the roof off the place. I threw him on the ground and followed up again, knocking the breath out of him doubly.
I suppose he had been very confident when he saw me, big but old, bulging out and sweating turbulently, heavy and sad. You couldn’t blame him for thinking he was the fitter man. And now I almost wish that he had been the winner, for as he was going down, head first, I saw, as you can sometimes glimpse a lone object like a bottle dashing over Niagara Falls, how much bitterness was in his face. He could not believe that a gross old human trunk like myself was taking his championship from him. And when I landed on him for the second time his eyes rolled upward, and this intensity was not caused altogether by the weight I flung upon him.
It certainly did not behoove me to gloat or to act in any way like a proud winner, I can tell you. I felt almost as bad as he did. The whole straw case had almost come down about us when the prince’s back struck the floor. Romilayu was standing out of the way against the wall. Though it made my breast ache to win, and my heart winced when I did it, I knelt nevertheless on the prince to make sure he was pinned, for if I had let him up without pinning him squarely he would have been deeply offended.