Tandia (54 page)

'That's William Shakespeare!'

'Mr Wolfson, he tell me that once when they bring me back some perfume from Paris, France. "A rose by any other name smell jus' as sweet!" My name is Rose you see.'

'Mr Wolfson?'

'That's the family where I the cook. The whole family they gone to France. Mr Wolfson he got folks in Europe, they ain't comin' back before Christmas.'

'Well, the name of this rose is "Peace". You see, Mrs Smith, I've come in peace. I didn't write that catfish and caviar nonsense. You know how the newspapers carry on? Taking something and blowing it up, pitting one side against another. You see, Mrs Smith, I'm really a lot more catfish than I am caviar. But in the end, ma'am, we're all just people, don't you think?'

Mrs Smith looked up at Peekay through her pebble glasses.

She didn't seem in the least intimidated by the high ground Peekay occupied. Through the thick lenses her eyes were enormous. Peekay felt like a mouse on a rafter being watched from below by a barn owl. 'You a sweet talker, Mr Peekay.' She pointed a fat finger at the roses. 'It's true they called Peace?'

'Cross my heart!' Peekay knew he was beginning to win. It was time to change tack. 'Mrs Smith, I can understand how you feel, if Peppy can't come, well, it's disappointing. He's a wonderful young boxer, he'd learn a lot with us. But I do understand completely.'

'Now you jus wait, Mr Caviar who turn Catfish! Who said Peppy ain't comin'?'

'Well, ah…I got the impression…well, you did?'

'Now you just listen up, young man. It ain't jus' what it says in that newspaper. Every time Peppy goes away he comes back to his mamma so thin and miserable, like a dry stick; put him across your knee, go whap an' he'd break in two pieces like he's nothin' but kindlin' wood!'

She'd walked right into Peekay's cleverly laid trap. 'Mrs Smith, why don't you come to Pike's Peak as our cook? You said the Wolfsons are overseas? I'll call Mr Graw in Denver first thing and tell him not to hire a cook. Do you think you can cook for ten men?'

Mrs Smith made a valiant effort to rise and managed to get halfway out of the chair. 'Ho, I can cook for the whole United States Marine Corps if I set my mind to it! Ten people, why, that ain't even a proper dinner party at the Wolfson residence!' She fell back into the chair, fanning her face with a large hand.

'Then it's a deal, you'll come?'

'A rose by any other name ain't so stoopid. We ain't talked 'bout the remuneration!'

'Why, what you're getting now, of course!'

'What I gettin now don't suppose I got to climb up no mountain to go to work! It don't suppose I gotta fall into no canyon! It don't suppose I gonna cook on no 'lectric range no more! It don't suppose I gotta be away from home for two months!'

'Okay, twenty-percent hardship allowance.' Peekay guessed. 'That's the usual,' he added, trying to sound convincing. To his enormous surprise Mrs Smith rose out of her chair as though she'd been fired from a gun. 'Peppy, you come out that bedroom now, you heah! Bring mama's suitcase, the one I packed las' night; we goin' mountain climbin', sweetheart!' The laughter in her stomach started as a low rumble that rapidly grew in intensity. Peekay started to laugh too. Soon they were clutching onto each other both of them convulsed. 'Ho, ho, ho, hee, hee, hee, you ain't no catfish, Peekay, ho, ho, hee, hee, you the virgin sturgeon, if evah I saw it!'

Peppy, a serious expression on his face, entered the small parlour struggling with an enormous old suitcase. Peekay pointed to it, his mouth open in amazement and the two of them exploded into fresh gales of laughter. Exhausted, both collapsed back into the chairs. 'Game, set and match to Mrs Smith,' Peekay said, knuckling the tears from his eyes. 'I can sing too, baby. I'm gonna throw in singing foh free.' It was fortunate that Jerome and Peekay had left New York with what amounted to an overnight bag each. By combining the weight allowance of the four of them the airline settled for a ten dollar overweight charge on Mrs Smith's baggage. Apart from her big suitcase, she carried with her all manner of kitchen equipment starting with a griddle and frying pan, both large enough to cook enough flapjacks and fried eggs for an army.

They'd met Hymie and the rest of the New York party in Kansas City. The only other addition to the troupe was an elderly fighter's manager who claimed his name was Daddy Kocklelovsky but who was known as the shortened version, Daddy Kockle. He was a negro with snowy-white hair. He'd been born in Texas during the presidency of James A. Garfield, which made him at the most sixty-six years old.

Daddy Kockle had seen Jake 'Spoonbill' Jackson fight on several occasions and he'd taken the job in Colorado, not at all sure that the unknown Peekay wouldn't be badly mismatched in the ring. Jackson at his best was a formidable opponent; most experts believed him to be unbeatable. But after watching Peekay, the speed and intelligence of the young South African had impressed him. As the fight drew closer he became more and more convinced that the man who needed the title the most would be the ultimate winner. One afternoon he called Peekay aside. Tell me, son, how bad you want to win?'

'Bad, Daddy Kockle.
Real bad!'
Peekay replied, using the Americanism for emphasis.

'Real bad ain't enough. Jackson he want
real bad
also. Tell me, you hate Jackson some, a lot, you don't hate him at all; which is it?'

'I just want what he's got, it belongs to me, the title, it's mine. But I don't hate him, Daddy!'

'Son, you got two weeks. By the time you climb in that ring you gotta hate that nigger, you hear?'

Peekay was shocked at the expression. 'Christ! I don't think of him as a nigger! He's a fighter, the world champion!

I want his title. I've thought about owning that title a hundred times every day since I was six years old. I don't give a fuck who owns it, it's mine, that's all!'

'I like that, son. You got heat. That a good start. But you ain't got hate. You gotta have hate! For some other title, maybe heat enough. In a world championship it ain't. Why you think Jackson been saying those things 'bout you in the newspaper and on the radio? You saw what he said in the newspaper yesterday. He says he's build in' up his dislike. He said he got enough already built up to put you out in the fifth round but he's buildin' on it! Dis-like! That's jus'

'nother word foh hate, sonny boy!'

'Let me tell you something! I want that title so badly my teeth hurt just thinking about it. Every muscle, every sinew, every second of my day and night is involved with winning it. It's not getting rich that matters for me. The title isn't about getting rich and driving around in a big Cadillac with my name painted on the door. It's about being free to be myself, the person hiding behind the person. I'm trapped inside myself, Daddy. The title is the doorway to my escape! That's why I'm coming down the mountain to take Jake "Spoonbill" Jackson!'

Peekay had never talked to anyone like this before and he didn't understand why he was telling Daddy Kockle now, or even if he was making any sense to the old man.

'I can't reckon too much on that, son, what's inside a man is there for his own self. But I can reckon on knowin' how a fighter get ready foh fightin'. He got to know he superior, he better! Now you lissen to me, son. What I got to say now it ain't pretty and it ain't oughta be spoke by no black man.

You gonna fight a nigger. That not the same thing as fightin' a white man. A nigger got some things in his head you use right, you can whup him. Inferiority things, things he can't help hisself 'cause they borned into him. Ain't so long ago we coloured people, we been slaves. Jackson, he's a southern boy, from Kentucky. That ain't no place a coloured boy ever grow'd up brave! That's Klan territory, that's mighty fearful country. Right now, in that boy's home town, there are white folk saying, "That Nigger, he's too sassy, he got a big mouth foh a nigger. Maybe that white boy he gonna whup him good, teach him his place!'"

'Jesus, Daddy Kockle, it's nice knowing you're on my side but this is racist stuff, it's everything that repulses me!'

'Never mind no racist! You think like that, Peekay, you gonna lose! Hear me, this ain't no boxing match, this is war! What kinda war you got when you gonna love thine enemy!'

'I don't love Jackson, I just don't hate him because he's black. Give me some other reason to hate him!'

'Ain't no other reason. That's the strongest. That's the one reason supersedes all the others. That's the one reason ain't got logic. It's the bes' kind of hate foh a fightin' man!'

The old man shook his head, 'My granpappy he tol' me a sad tale his granpappy tol' him concernin' the slaves. He told when the Arab captured him and his brothers in his village in Africa and marched them to the ships and sold them to the white man captain of a big ship. He told how they chained them in the hold below, but the young women they put in a big cage on the deck. Then come those sailor men with a bottle and the bottle it contained blood and they drank the blood and they done raped them black women in the cage. They were raped by cannibals! Blood drinkin' cannibals who killed their men below and drank their blood!' Daddy Kockle chuckled. 'Ain't that somethin'? All the time, it ain't the black people who are the cannibals, it's the white! That's the kind of fear that lies inside the black man. That's the kind of hate. It ain't logiC hate. It ain't logic fear. My granpappy he prob'ly figured out what them sailor men bin' drinking from that bottle was rum or port wine.

But what his granpappy tol' him is the truth accordin' to the way he want to feel. It ain't no logical truth. That make no difference. It's the emotional truth. The emotional truth got the fear and the hate contained in it!' Daddy Kockle paused. 'That's the hate Jackson got in him! That the hate you gonna come into the ring to fight, but also the fear. Now lissen, boy, the idea! The idea is you got to make the fear in that southern black boy more than the hate. Then Jackson, he gonna be whupped!'

'Daddy Kockle, I'm going to have to take this problem to the mountain, I just don't know what to say. I'm sorry, but I can't build up an emotional reaction to Jackson based on his colour. My life, my future life, is dedicated to the proposition that all men should be born equal. What happens to them after that is up to them. But they must be given equal social and intellectual opportunity based on their minds, their skills and their personalities. When you declare a man or woman inferior, second class, because of pigmentation, then you sin beyond any possibility of redemption. That's the very point of a boxing ring; it's twenty foot by twenty foot of equal opportunity. When you climb into the ring, all you've got is your brain and your fists. If you win it's because you're the best man, not because you've been given a totally unfair advantage as a birthright!'

Daddy Kockle clucked and shook his head. 'Hallelujah! Praise the Lord! You're a good man, Peekay. But that ain't winnin' talk, that losin' talk if ever I heard it, son.'

The expression Peekay had used about taking the problem up to the mountain had been devised by Jerome. 'Q-ho, Peekay he goin' to the mountains to get hisself a problem fix!'

In the bright crisp September and October afternoons in the Rockies when they'd completed training for the day Peekay would head for the mountains. Togger had accompanied him on one early occasion but they'd seen a rattlesnake on a rock catching the last of the afternoon sun and he'd decided the countryside was for the birds.

Peekay had been raised in the mountains with Doe and while the Rockies, iced with early snow, were somewhat different to the soft shouldered hills that rolled back into the high mountains which cradled the small lowveld town where he'd spent his boyhood, they nevertheless filled a deep need within him.

In the mines and during his Oxford years he'd been away from the high crags and terraces that leave a man free to think his mind clean and clear. From the dude camp he'd quickly climb through the ponderosa pine where the silvertailed squirrels darted from tree to tree, less scared at his approach than curious. Beyond the pine he'd climb through sparse clumps of sycamore and mountain ash on beyond the Alpine flora to the sharp outcrops of rock and cliff face. Twice he'd seen a lone coyote on a ridge and imagined it was the same one, an old loner who liked the privacy of the high ground where he could look at the Rockies climbing higher to the North West and the vast plains beneath him where the Sioux and the Cheyenne had once ruled and buffalo had once grazed in their tens of thousands.

Peekay would return at sunset from his mountain walks in time to take his turn chopping firewood, for it was log-sawing in the early mornings and chopping at night. Invariably he'd mention a possible solution he'd found to a problem they'd come against during the day's work-out or when they'd been discussing tactics over lunch.

A golden eagle, the first Peekay had ever seen, hovered no more than a boy's kite flight above him, so close he could see the ribbed feathers in its wingspan tipped with backlight. The eagle seemed to symbolise all that was beautiful in this magnificent country which Peekay was beginning to love enormously. The people they'd met had, for the most part, been so open, kind and hospitable that Peekay had been able to put the Jackson campaign into perspective. What he hadn't reckoned with was the power of the media, who'd grabbed the catfish and caviar analogy and were milking it to death.

Jackson had abandoned his often clever invective of earlier weeks and lately had been building on his hate thing. It was the first time a black American boxer had used the black! white dichotomy in a determined way. In the America of the mid fifties, black sportsmen were still expected to behave in a modest and submissive manner, grateful for the opportunity sport provided them to rise above their peers. It was an unstated thing, built out of a century and a half of accepting the negro as the underclass. Jackson's aggression towards his white opponent was seen as unseemly and provocative, and it was beginning to polarise fight fans along racist lines. It even had the effect of turning many of Jackson's own fans in the white Southern States against him.