OH WE DON’T LIKE TO SAY, WE DON’T LIKE TO BLAB
BUT SOON YOU’LL BE LYING ON A MARBLE SLAB
LYING ON A SLAB COVERED BY A WREATH
MISSING YOUR PRIVATES, MISSING YOUR TEETH
HELLO, HELLO, WHO ARE YOU?
Each step forward dragged Cale further down, as if weakness and fear, alive in him for the first time in years, ran riot in his guts and brain.
Then finally he was there and Solomon Solomon beside him, his rage and power burning alongside him like a second sun.
The master at arms gestured them to his left and right. Then he called out:
“WELCOME TO THE RED OPERA!”
With that, the crowd, almost as one, rose bellowing to its feet-except for the section reserved for the Materazzi, where the men cheered and the women applauded indifferently. This was not, in any case, the top drawer of Materazzi society, who would not readily associate themselves with something as vulgar as either this occasion or the not-quite-one-of-us Solomon Solomon, who, though respected for his power in the military hierarchy, was the great-grandson of a man who had made his fortune in dried fish. This is not to deny that a few of the choice of Materazzi society had come late, including a deeply reluctant Marshal, and were watching from carefully recessed private boxes while eating that morning’s catch of prawns. In the section reserved for the Mond, the blazing hatred they felt for Cale erupted in a sea of arms jabbing toward him and a chorus of derision.
“BOOM LACALACALACA BOOM LACALACALACA TAC TAC TAC.”
From high up on the West Bank some skillful thug or hooligan, having escaped the searches of the peelers, threw a dead cat in a massive arc, the body thudding into the sand only twenty feet from Cale, to a roar of delighted approval from the crowd.
Panic ran riot though Cale’s wilting soul, as if some reservoir of fear had been dammed up in him for all these years and now had burst its banks and swept away all nerve and guts, all gall and the will to power. His very spine shook with cowardice as the master at arms handed him his sword. He could barely now raise his hand to pull it free, so weak had he become. It was so heavy that he let it fall to hang loosely at his side. Everything now was just sensation-the bitter taste of death and terror on his tongue, the bright and burning sun, the noise of the crowd and the wall of faces. And then the master at arms raised his hands. The crowd hushed. Then he dropped his arms to his sides. The crowd bellowed as if one beast, and Cale watched as the man who was about to slaughter him raised his sword and cautiously, thoughtfully, moved toward the trembling, panic-stricken boy.
From deep inside, something in Cale called for protection, begging to be saved: IdrisPukke save me, Leopold Vipond save me, Henri and Kleist save me, Arbell Swan-Neck save me. But he was beyond all help except the help of the man he hated most in all the world. It was Redeemer Bosco who rescued him from the sickening blow and the red blood spilling on the sand; it was the years of violence at his hands, the daily dread and fear-those were what delivered him. Beginning in his chest, the waters of terror began to freeze. As Solomon Solomon quickly circled, the coldness spread downward through Cale’s heart and guts and into his thighs and then his arms. In only a few seconds, like a miraculous drug suppressing an agonizing pain, the old familiar, numbing, lifesaving indifference to fear and death was back. Cale was himself again.
Solomon Solomon, wary at first of Cale’s immobility, was moving in quickly for his attack, sword raised, eyes intent, controlled, the skillful emissary of violent death. He moved within striking distance, then held for a moment. Both stared into each other’s eyes. The crowd hushed. All sights seemed to come to Cale as in a tunnel-an older woman in the crowd was smiling at him like a kindly grandmother while pulling her finger across her throat, the dead cat so stiff on the ground it looked like a badly made toy, the young dancer at the arena’s edge, her mouth wide open in alarm and fear. And his opponent shuffling in the sand, the grating noise much louder than the crowd, who seemed to be so far away. And then Solomon Solomon gathered his strength-and struck.
Cale ducked and moved under his arm, stabbing downward as Solomon Solomon’s sword tried to cut him in two. Then both had swapped places-the crowd roared, desperately excited and confused. Neither of them had been touched. Then something began to drip from Cale’s hand and then it poured. The little finger on his left hand had been severed and lay on the sand, small and ridiculous.
Cale stepped back, the pain now hit, horrible, intense and agonizing. Solomon Solomon stood and took in carefully the blood and pain, the job not finished but the work of killing seriously begun. As the crowd started to see the blood on the sand, a slowly growing roar rippled around the Opera. There were boos from some of the hoi polloi, now rooting for the underdog, cheers from the Materazzi, more chattering mockery from the Mond. Then slowly the crowd went silent as Solomon Solomon, knowing that everything was now in his control, waited for the loss of blood, the pain and the fear of death, to do its work for him.
“Stay still,” said Solomon Solomon, “and perhaps I’ll finish you quickly. Though I can’t promise anything.”
Cale looked at him as if slightly puzzled. Then he moved his sword around in his hand, as if testing the weight, and made a lazy and slow pass at his opponent’s head. Years of instinct to counterattack such a weak attempt drew Solomon Solomon into striking at Cale, his great thighs pumping him forward like a sprinter. But with his second step he fell as if he had been struck by one of Henri’s bolts, crashing to the sand on his face and chest.
The crowd breathed in as if one creature-a great sigh of astonishment.
Cale’s stab downward in the first attack had not missed its mark at all. As Solomon Solomon’s first stroke took his finger, Cale had cut downward, severing the tendon in his opponent’s heel. This was why, along with the agony of the pain in his hand, he had been so puzzled that Solomon Solomon had been apparently untouched. That was why he gestured so carelessly with his second stroke-he simply wanted to make him move.
Despite his fear and astonishment, Solomon Solomon had instantly rolled onto the knee of his good leg, lashing out at Cale to make him keep his distance.
“You dirty little bag of shit!” he said in barely more than a whisper. Then he shouted in a huge burst of anger and frustration.
Cale kept back out of reach and waited. Another burst of rage and humiliation from Solomon Solomon. Cale simply watched as he began to accept that he had lost.
“Very well,” said Solomon Solomon-bitter and angry. “You win. I surrender.”
Cale looked at the master at arms.
“I was told that this had to continue until one of us is dead,” said Cale.
“Mercy is always possible,” said the master at arms.
“Is it now? Because I don’t remember anyone bringing it up at the time.”
“A defeated opponent may ask for mercy. It need not be granted, and no one may reproach the victor if he refuses. But I repeat that mercy is always possible.” The master at arms looked at the kneeling man. “If you wish to have mercy, Solomon Solomon, you must ask for it.”
Solomon Solomon shook his head as if a great struggle were going on inside him, which indeed it was. What was going on inside Cale was at first puzzlement and then a huge and growing indignation.
“I ask you for your-”
“Shut up!” shouted Cale, looking back and forth between his beaten opponent and the master at arms.
“You hypocrites! You drag me here on a rail, and when it suits you, you think you can bend rules because things haven’t worked out to your advantage. That’s all your camel shit about the nobility amounts to-that you have the power to make everything suit yourselves. Everything about you is just a pack of bloody lies.”
“He is obliged,” said the master at arms, “to pay you ten thousand dollars to redeem his life.”