We drove into Liège. I was jittering terribly now. Joe asked for directions a few times in his schoolbook French, and the closer we came to our destination the worse the nervous cramp in my limbs became. We were really going to do it, and no matter how many matches I lost that day, I was going to sit down at a metal table and pit myself against men I’d never seen before. Joe repeated the last set of directions he’d heard and steered the car — generally known in Lomark these days as ‘Speedboat’s grave-mobile’ — down the gloomy streets. We took a wrong turn, Joe tried to remain calm and murmured, ‘Three times to the left is also right.’ He seemed as nervous as I was. OK, not quite, but definitely nervous. He had a lot riding on this.
One hour before the tournament started we got to the Metropole Café with its meeting hall for billiards, darts, dance parties and arm wrestling. It took us a long time to find a spot that was big enough for the Oldsmobile. Parked around the café I saw number plates from France, Germany and England. My left arm had convulsed into a stick, the other one kept twitching up and down, making it look at times like I was doing the fascist salute.
Joe rolled me across the street, up onto the curb and through the swinging front doors. We found ourselves in a narrow hallway with a set of stairs going up in front of us and the open door to the café on our right. Behind the bar a man with an oversized moustache was polishing the mirror. Joe asked the way, he pointed up. I tilted myself out of my seat and began climbing the stairs. Step by step, I worked my way up. Joe had folded the cart and was carrying it up behind me. By the time I got to the top the sweat was running down my back — all beer and tobacco toxins leaking from my pores. The stairwell was filled with the odour of smouldering cigars and old carpet.
I found myself in a shadowy entranceway with brown panelled walls. At the end of it a door opened and a wave of noise came rushing out. We heard the tinkling of glassware, raised voices and heavy objects being slid across a wooden floor.
The meeting hall was a low room with dozens of chairs scattered around, and there were at least a hundred people in there. A mist of cigarette smoke hung just below the ceiling. I saw tattooed men with bulging muscle groups beneath their tight mesh vests and sleeveless T-shirts. At the centre of the room stood the altar of this fringe cult: the metal table with its upright pegs. Joe went looking for the organizers in order to sign in. I squeezed the armrest of my cart to stop the uncontrollable jerks rolling through my body. Oh cigarette, oh beer. . I didn’t seem to remember anything about having come here of my own free will. When Joe came back I gestured for a cigarette, he lit one for me and wedged it between my lips.
‘Knock-out system,’ he said. ‘Lose once and you’re finished. They start with the lightweights, then the big boys. The betting begins right before you do, and you start on “Ready? Go!” How you doing?’
I nodded.
‘You start against. . look here, Gaston Bravo is the guy’s name. I heard someone say he’s a hometown boy, so don’t let yourself be distracted by the cheering. I’ll help you onto the stool, all you have to do is concentrate on that first match. Tut-TUT, OK?’
He took the cigarette from my mouth and knocked off the ash. Waiters were running back and forth with trays, everyone was talking loudly to be heard above everyone else who was talking loudly, the atmosphere was like a sideshow. Right before the first match started the noised swelled even further, two men left the crowd and sat down at the table. There was some heavy betting going on. The referees assumed their positions on both sides of the table, and at ‘Ready? Go!’ the men went for it. The room was too small for the noisy tempest that burst loose then, it was enough to wake the dead. One of them was obviously a bodybuilder, the other a stocky farmhand with a tanned, healthy face. I was pleased to see the farmhand win the first match; he hadn’t looked like the strongest of the two, and it was in my own interests that appearances be deceiving.
The ease with which he won threw the bodybuilder into a poisonous rage, the same kind that overcame Dirk whenever someone got in his way. The second round took longer, but the farmhand won again and went on to the next round. The loser stalked out of the room, pushing a slender, good-looking girl rather heavy-handedly toward the door.
There were another five contests to go before it would be my turn. I saw crude-bodied, potato-faced bastards who you could tell had ploughed on through to this competition table by means of dirty schoolyard tricks, men whose entire lives had consisted of leaning on others, of which arm wrestling was the literal expression. Those who lost had to stifle their swagger for the moment, but you sensed that would be only temporary; before long, to salvage their injured self-image, they would be blaming it on the bad shape they’d been in that day, on a cheating opponent or a referee who was blind as a bat. And their wives and children would go along with the ruse, to avoid incurring worse.
Well OK, maybe they weren’t all that bad, but half of them were for sure. It was a pleasure to see a number of them hit the table.
‘You ready?’ Joe asked at one point.
Yes, that’s why we’d come — for a moment I thought about refusing, or about throwing the match right away. Joe pushed the cart up to the table. It grew quieter, we could feel the people around us hesitating about which of us was the wrestler. And if it was Joe, what the hell was I doing here? When I lifted myself out of the cart, leaning on the stool for support with one hand, a whisper ran through the ranks and grew in volume as Joe helped me onto the hot seat.
‘Mesdames et messieurs!’ the announcer reverberated, ‘François le Bras!’
François le Bras, was that me? Apparently it was, because he went on to announce the other man as Gaston Bravo. I looked at Joe, he was laughing. What a scream. The only problem was, my opponent didn’t come to the table. I could see him in the front row. I knew it was him because the other men were pushing him forward.
‘Allez, Gaston!’
I made a quick estimate: an immigrants’ son, too young to have worked in the mines and therefore now holding down some menial job (later I heard that he worked on the line at a munitions factory in Liège). He was what they called ‘good looking’ (black hair slicked back and big, sentimental eyes).
One of the judges went to see what was keeping him. Bravo pointed at me and gesticulated wildly. I understood, he didn’t want to go against me. Not against a wheelchair case, the same way footballers wouldn’t want to play against a girls’ team. I tried to make eye contact with Joe, who signalled to me to stay calm; confusion worked to our advantage. After some coercion, Bravo came to the table. He didn’t meet my gaze, just sat down and planted his elbow in the box. I did the same and seized his hand. It was a frightened hand, and a wave of disappointment rolled over me. Because of his opponent, the man sitting across from me was no longer taking the game seriously. It was painful and insulting. I had counted on plenty of setbacks, but not this one. I kept myself from looking to Joe for support, I had to do this on my own.
‘Ready. . Go!’
I struck hard, to avenge the insult. He was already halfway to defeat by the time he seemed to wake with a start and tried to resist, but it was too late: 1–0. The howling of the crowd was terrible to hear, they had all put their money on Bravo, they egged him on with the fury of floor traders at the stock exchange. For the second round, Gaston Bravo seemed prepared to do things differently.