That was all he ever said about it. In fact, Metz had predicted Joe’s reaction to a tee: ‘We don’t want to see them for what they are, and thereby multiply the damage they will cause us with time.’
‘By the way,’ Joe said, standing in the doorway. ‘Is it OK if P.J. comes along to Poznan?’
We left on 5 May, in the early morning hours. Lots of houses in Lomark already had their flags out for Liberation Day. It was one year ago that Joe had suggested I become an arm wrestler; from the very beginning, Poznan had lain in the future like a promise, it was the most important tournament of all. Despite the bizarre way everything had sped up since the events in Rostock, I had trained like mad and even sparred with Hennie Oosterloo. I had tried out a number of different openings on him, and sometimes let myself be pushed almost to the table in order to learn how to come back from hopeless situations. Oosterloo was useless otherwise, I was now in a completely different class.
I acted normal toward Joe and P.J. Everything fine, no jealousy, no revelatory literature: business as usual. Everything would have to run its course, and I would assume the role of clinical observer. Joe had ignored the warning and was fair game now. Someday he would come back and ask to look at that book and kick himself for having chosen to be blind.
It was at least a ten-hour drive to Poznan. Joe stayed behind the wheel the whole time, P.J. occasionally massaged his neck, we were witness to a perfectly harmonious love. At times everything that had happened seemed only a diabolical figment of the imagination: we laughed and Joe and P.J. sang songs, and it was as though Engel wasn’t rotting in his grave and that damned omen of a book had never been written.
We reached Poznan before nightfall, steam coming from the radiator. Joe parked the Oldsmobile in front of the Hotel Olympia, an uninspired colossus from the days of socialism, with an endless number of floors and enough beds for an entire army.
‘Look at that,’ Joe said as we entered the lobby.
He pointed at the digital clock above the desk, which showed both date and time: 5.5.19:45. It took a moment before I realized that this was the exact date of Holland’s liberation, a stimulating coincidence that lasted only a minute, when the clock hopped to 19:46 and the moment was over. Joe asked for two rooms, one for him and P.J. and one for me, for that was how things now stood.
After a knock on the door, Joe came in.
‘Everything OK? Bathroom and everything?’
He dropped into a chair by the window and looked down at the street.
‘Man, I’m exhausted. Tomorrow’s the big day, François.’
And, after a while: ‘I think I’m going to hit the sack, I’m still seeing the white stripes on the road.’
Oh Joe, please look at her the way you once looked at me and saw me on the dyke — Jesus, Joe, you don’t know what you’re getting into. .
‘I’ll see you bright and early in the morning, Frankie. If you need any help, dial zero and then five-one-seven, that’s our room number.’
The window provided a view of concrete and asphalt. Low sunlight coloured everything orange; here, too, Man was concerned only with himself. I closed the heavy synthetic curtains but opened them again a little later; darkened rooms while it’s still light outside depress me, I think because they remind me of death. Since Engel died I also couldn’t stand the smell of tallow, which had filled every corner of the funeral home. I tried to read a little in Go Rin No Sho, but couldn’t keep my mind on it. Then I waited for darkness to fall, while down below the Poles lived their lives and inside me the multitude of things came washing in. There was nothing more I could do.
*
The tournament was in a gym on the south side of town. Two competition tables and fifty-seven wrestlers, about half of them lightweights. A strong entry. Right before the gong announcing the first two bouts, the man I’d been waiting for so long came in at last: Big King Mansur. Although it was as much a sensation as, for instance, an entrance by Muhammad Ali, and I had actually been expecting an even number of virgins to be strewing rose petals before his feet, it was in fact only a black man walking into a seedy gym. He wasn’t very big either, more stocky, with exceptionally broad shoulders. His head was shaven and the light from the high windows of the gym reflected off his scalp. Beside him was a slender woman in sunglasses whose classic petiteness told me she had to be French. She was the kind of woman tennis players and football stars marry, the kind you see on TV sitting in the stands with her hand over her mouth when things get exciting.
Joe nudged me, I nodded that I had seen him. Mansur and the woman sought out a quiet corner, the only quiet corner in fact in the packed gym, and the woman was sent off to fetch two chairs. With slow, deliberate movements Mansur took off his jacket and T-shirt and fumbled around in a sports bag until he found a little vest. When he stuck his arms through the straps I saw his awesome latissimi dorsi, the muscle group referred to in the world of strength sports as ‘wings’. Joe told P.J. who Big King Mansur was, that we were looking at the unassailable world champion, the fearsome Beast #1.
‘And Frankie has to wrestle against him?’ she asked.
‘Maybe,’ Joe said. ‘If we’re lucky.’
The crowd itself consisted of people with conventional bodies — smooth, fat and white, just like in Rostock. We figured out that if I won all my bouts the fourth match would be between me and Islam Mansur. The first two matches weren’t much of a problem. The third one I almost lost to a guy I’d seen doing his stuff back in Liège, a black man from Portsmouth. But then I thought about Islam Mansur, how badly I wanted to go up against him, about how today could be the day, and I beat the Englishman just in the nick of time.
It took two bottles of beer to keep the spasms under control. P.J. rubbed my shoulders, Joe was on pins and needles. Would I be able to give Mansur a run for his money? Was there any sense in hoping he’d have a bad match, that his concentration would flag? P.J.’s hands produced shivers of pleasure, I was sucking up beer like a sump pump. Then it was time. From the corner of my eye I saw Mansur coming out of his corner and approaching the table, the consummate human machine. Joe rolled me over to the table and helped me onto my stool. Just briefly he laid his hands on my shoulders — I felt the missing fingers on the right — and looked me in the eye.
‘I believe in you,’ he said, and let go.
I was on my own, across from a force of nature. Mansur sat down.
Arm Saint, at last.
He seized the peg (damn, his left arm was just as big as his right, he really could take on opponents with both at the same time) and slid his elbow into the box. Only then did he look at me; bulging eyes, lots of white around them. His palms were white too. I put my arm on the table and we engaged. Solid as a wall, like laying my hand against a warm building.
From what I’d seen of Mansur’s earlier matches, I knew that his openings alternated between the Fire and Stone Cut and the Red Autumn Leaves Cut (‘The Red Autumn Leaves Cut means knocking down the enemy’s long sword. The spirit should be getting control of his sword’); I readied myself. His palm was dry and soft, mine was little and clammy. Mansur kept his eyes on me the whole time, I knew it was part of his strategy to hypnotize his opponent with a penetrating, uninterrupted stare. In an interview he had once said that his greatest strength came ‘from inside’. ‘When your spirit is concentrated, you can block out everyone around you. Your opponent is the centre of attention.’ Although that may sound rather banal, I could actually feel his energy grow solid and I was drawn into his gaze. I became the glowing core of his attention, sealed in a vacuum by his eyes.