There was more laughter, shouts, exclamations of delighted surprise. The Reverend helped Lou to his feet and then they went through the throw very slowly, Knurr pausing frequently to explain exactly what he was doing, calling his students' attention to the position of his feet, how his weight shifted, how he used the attacker's momentum to help disable him.
'Okay,' he said, 'that was just a demonstration.
Tomorrow you're all going to work on that throw. And you'll work on it and work on it until everyone can do it
right. Then I'll show you the defence against it.
Now … who's going to show up for the bullshit session tonight?' He looked around the room. But heads were hanging; no one volunteered. 'Come on, come on,' Knurr said impatiently, 'you've got to pay for your fun. Who's coming for the talk?'
A few hands went up hesitantly, then a few more.
Finally about half the boys had hands in the air.
'How about you, Willie?' Knurr demanded, addressing the shambling youth with the black eyepatch. 'You haven't been around for weeks. You must have a wagonload of sins to confess. I especially want you.'
This was greeted with laughter and shouts from the others.
'Right on!'
'Get him, Faddeh!'
'Make him spill everything!'
'He's been a baaaad boy!'
'Aw right,' Willie said with a tinny grin, 'I'll be here.'
'Good,' Knurr said. 'Now dry off, all of you, then get the hell out of here. The gym will be open from five to eight tonight if any of you want to work out. See you all tomorrow.'
They began to pick up their garments from the floor, with the noise and horseplay you'd expect. Knurr rolled up the mat and flung it against the wall. His sweatshirt was soaked dark under the arms, across the back and chest.
While he showered I sat at the kitchen table, sipping beer from the can, listening to shouts and laughter of departing boys. I looked up through the window. In the apartment house across the courtyard an old woman fed a parakeet seeds, from her lips, bird perched on finger.
Godfrey Knurr came into the kitchen wearing a terrycloth robe, towelling head and beard. He put the towel around his neck, took a beer from the refrigerator.
He said across from me.
'Well?' he demanded. 'What do you think?'
'Very impressive,' I said. 'You speak to them in their own language. They seem to respect you. They obey you.
The only thing that bothers me is — '
'I know what bothers you,' he interrupted. 'You're wondering if I'm not teaching those monsters how to be expert muggers.'
'Yes,' I said. 'Something like that.'
'It's a risk,' he admitted. 'I know it exists. I keep pounding at them that they're learning the martial arts only for self-defence. And God knows they need it, considering what their lives are like. And they do need physical exercise.'
'Does it have to be karate?' I asked. 'Couldn't it be basketball?'
'Or tiddledywinks?' he said sourly. 'Or I could read them Pindar's odes. Look, Joshua, most of those kids have records. Violence attracts them. All I'm trying to do 210
is capitalize on that. Listen, every time they punch the air and shout " H a h! " they're punching out the Establishment.
I'm trying to turn that revolt to a more peaceable and constructive channel.'
'You can kill with karate, can't you?' I asked him.
'I don't teach them killing blows,' he said shortly. 'Also, what you just saw is only half of my programme. The other half is group therapy and personal counselling. I try to become a father figure. Most of their natural fathers are drunks, on drugs, or have disappeared. Vamoosed. So I'm really the only father they've got, and I do my damndest to straighten out their tiny brains. Some of those brutes are so screwed up — you wouldn't believe! Mens sana in corpore sano. That's really what I'm hoping for these kids. What I'm working towards. Let's eat.'
He had made a salad of cut-up iceberg lettuce topped with gobs of mayonnaise. The roast beef sandwiches had obviously been purchased in a deli; they were rounded with the meat filling, also slathered with mayonnaise. He opened two more beers for us and we ate and drank. And he talked.
He was a very intelligent, articulate man, and he talked well. What impressed me most about him was his animal energy. He attacked his sandwich wolfishly, forked the salad into his mouth in great, gulping mouthfuls, swilled the beer in throat-wrenching swallows.
'But it all costs money,' he was saying. 'Money, money, money: the name of the game. There's no church available for me — for any of the tentmakers. So we have to make our own way. Earn enough to do the work we want to do.'
'Maybe that's an advantage,' I said.
He looked at me, startled. 'You're very perceptive, Joshua,' he said. 'If you mean what I think you mean, and I think you do. Yes, it's an advantage in that is keeps us in closer touch with the secular life, gives us a better understanding of the everyday problems and frustrations 211
of the ordinary working stiff — and stiffess! A pastor who's in the same church for years and years grows moss. Sees the same people day in and day out until he's bored out of his skull. There's a great big, cruel, wonderful, striving world out there, but the average preacher is stuck in his little backwater with weekly sermons, organ music, and the terrible problem of how to pay for a new altar cloth. No wonder so many of them crawl in a bottle or run off with the soprano in the choir.'
'How did you meet Tippi Kipper?' I asked.
Something fleeting through his eyes. He became a little less voluble.
'A friend of a friend of a friend,' he said. 'Joshua, the rich of New York are a city within a city. They all know each other. Go to the same parties. I was lucky enough to break into the magic circle. They pass me along, one to another. A friend of a friend of a friend. That's how I met Tippi.'
'Was she in the theatre?' I asked.
He grinned. 'That's what she says. But no matter. If she wants to play Lady Bountiful, I'm the bucko who'll show her how. Don't get me wrong, Joshua. I'm grateful to Tippi Kipper and I'll be eternally grateful to her kind, generous husband and remember him in my prayers for the rest of my life. But I'm a realist, Joshua. It was an ego thing with the Kippers, I suppose. As it is for all my patrons. And patronesses.'
'Sol Kipper contributed to your, uh, activities?' I asked.
'Oh sure. Regularly. What the hell — he took it off his taxes. I'm registered in the State of New York. Strictly non-profit. Not by choice!' he added with a harsh bark of laughter.
'When you counsel your patrons,' I said slowly, trying to frame the question, 'the rich patrons, like Tippi Kipper, what are their problems mostly? I mean, it seems unreal to me that people of such wealth should have problems.'
'Very real problems,' he said soberly. 'First of all, guilt for their wealth when they see poverty and suffering all around them. And then they have the same problems we all have: loneliness, the need for love, a sense of our own worthlessness.'
He was staring at me steadily, openly, it was very difficult to meet these hard, challenging eyes.
'He left a suicide note,' I said. 'Did you know that?'
'Yes, Tippi told me.'
'In the note, he apologized to her. For something he had done. I wonder what it was?'
'Oh, who the hell knows? I never asked Tippi and she never volunteered the information. It could have been anything. It could have been something ridiculous. I know they had been having, ah, sexual problems. It could have been that, it could have been a dozen other things. Sol was the worst hypochondriac I've ever met. I'm sure others have told you that.'
'When did you see him last?' I asked casually.