Chapter Eight
When the bout is concluded and Nabayah limps bloodied and scowling from the field, Pawpitch holds Keasik tightly in her arms and tells her in a quiet voice intended to soothe and console to be brave and try not to cry.
“You’re not the first wife who’s been won or lost at the wrestling,” she says, “and you won’t be the last, I’m sure.
It’s hard, but it won’t kill you, I promise.
The new man doesn’t look too bad, if you ask me.
At least he’s young. I know he’s showing off now, with all his friends around him, but he’ll quiet down later, I expect, and he has a kind-looking face. ”
He doesn’t have a kind-looking face at all, she thinks—it is narrow and pointed, and his eyes are full of conceit—but she can see that the girl is scared to death and is trying to keep her calm.
Some women take such things as they come, Pawpitch knows, and some may even like the change it brings, but most will hate it.
You’re used to the husband you already have; you’ve learned to live with his flaws and get along with his family, and then suddenly everything changes and you have to start again with nothing.
At best, it’s tiresome; at worst, it’s a torment.
Some women run away—she’s known that to happen—but it’s a dangerous thing to do.
If you’re really lucky, the old husband may offer to buy you back off the new one, but if not, the new one will most likely beat you or even kill you for vengeance.
Men are so vain, in her opinion. They’re so easy to wound; that’s their one weakness.
Most of the time they ignore their wives apart from the fucking, but if the wife ever shows some interest in another man, or another man shows interest in her, then they behave as if the world is ending. It’s always been the same.
When the suitor, after enjoying the adulation of his friends, strides across to claim his prize, Pawpitch asks him to leave her and Keasik alone for a little while longer.
But he is so flush with his own success, so inflated and prideful, that he grabs the girl anyway and when Pawpitch tries to stop him, after a brief moment of struggle he knocks her sideways with the back of his hand.
Suddenly Pawpitch is lying face down in the dirty snow, dazed, with blood dripping from her nose, and those around her are pointing and laughing.
She gets back to her feet in a fury and looks about for Datsanthi, but instead of her husband she sees, of all people, John Shaw rushing toward her.
She can’t understand at first what the Englishman is trying to do or say with this wild behavior, but then she realizes with amazement that he’s laying down another challenge, offering to wrestle the suitor to win Keasik back.
No one knows whether to take the challenge seriously, but then Shaw, sensing their reluctance, starts shouting out the foulest insults he can think of, calling the other man a coward and a snake, and that makes the difference.
Keasik is tossed aside and the two men start pushing and poking each other and have to be pulled apart.
By the time Datsanthi appears, looking confused, it has already been arranged.
Shaw has his shirt off and is being wiped down with grease.
“It won’t do,” Shaw explains to Hearn and Walker as he pummels his face and ears to rouse the stagnant blood and warm himself, and then slaps his bared chest and arms. “A sweet thing like her. No, I can’t allow it.”
“It’s none of our business what they do to each other,” Hearn says. “You said so yourself.”
“I can make it my business if I choose to. She’s one of our party, and I won’t let her be snatched away from us so easily as that.”
“What if you’re injured?” Walker says. “We can afford to lose the girl, but if you get hurt we can’t go on.”
“Oh, I shan’t be injured, Abel,” Shaw insists.
“You don’t need to worry yourself on that score.
When I was a younger man, down at the York Factory, out in the wooding camps at night, to pass the time we’d challenge each other and make wagers on the winner, so I’ve wrestled with Indians a dozen times or more and never lost a single bout.
This one will look at me now and think I’m old and easily overthrown, but I know a few tricks which will give me the beating of him.
There’s a fine skill to the wrestling, you see—a daintiness, even.
It’s not all roar and bluster. Nabayah made a poor fist of it just now.
He was far too clumsy and slow on his feet, but I’ll show this boastful fellow how it’s done.
I’ll teach him a hard lesson, you wait and see. ”
“And if you win the fight?” Hearn says. “What happens then?”
“When I win, I’ll give the girl back to her husband to restore the peace, but not before I have some enjoyment myself, a night or two of pleasure at least, for the laborer is worthy of his hire, and if I risk some broken bones and bruises for another’s sake, I expect due recompense.
You may have a little taste of her yourself if it pleases you, Hearn, and I’m sure young Abel here will want his share. ”
“You think Nabayah will agree to have his wife portioned out like that?”
“Why, of course he will, and gladly. What choice does he have in the matter? By their rules, I might keep her forever.”
There is a certainty to John Shaw, Hearn thinks, a blithe and boundless self-assurance that he has sensed in their previous dealings but never until now seen exposed in so pure and unalloyed a form.
When Shaw speaks of victory, there is no hint of doubt or misgiving in his voice, no sense that he might be confused or mistaken in his opinion, or that altered circumstances might ever force him to change his mind or recant.
Each word he utters, on the contrary, is like a brick baked hard or a block of stone, with all the weight and solidity of a pure and unalterable fact.
John Shaw is a man of faith after all, Hearn realizes, except the object of his faith is not God or the communion of saints or the Holy Catholic Church but rather himself and his own immutable and indomitable power.
Some might call it blasphemy or a monstrous arrogance, but Hearn can’t help but be impressed, even faintly awed, by such a strength of will, such a refusal to bow or bend to or even to acknowledge the world’s grave weight and resistance.
Of course Shaw will fail in the end, Hearn thinks, despite his limitless confidence or perhaps because of it.
He will take one risk too many, and that will be the end of him.
But not now, he thinks, not yet, and until that happens, Shaw will move through life not as I do, weighed down with confusion and doubt, but easily and smoothly without impediment or resistance, like a whale in the deep ocean or a great bird on the wing.
When he sees that his opponent is making ready to begin, Shaw claps his hands together eagerly, gives out a roar, and steps forward from the shadows into the wavering circle of burnished firelight.
As he stands there, hands on hips, poised and grinning, below and around the dark angled pelt of his belly and chest hair the pale skin glows and pulses like an iron cresset illumined from within.
As the contest begins, the two men appear at first quite evenly matched.
They watch each other carefully, slowly moving sideways and around, reaching out in turn, then lowering their arms, touching briefly, then just as quickly moving away again.
Minutes pass and there are thrusts and dodges, but neither man can gain the upper hand; each move is parried or countered, each probe or thrust avoided or slapped away.
Shaw is nimble on his feet, and his movements, which Hearn had thought might be simple or clumsy, are always neat and well-controlled.
Despite Shaw’s earlier bullishness, the way he fights is calm and patient, almost passive in its gestures.
His intention, Hearn can plainly see, is to frustrate the suitor first, then lure him into making a fatal mistake, and after a while, this simple plan begins to work.
The suitor starts to scowl and grunt each time Shaw steps away from him or fends him off and soon afterward, fed by this growing impatience, his attacks become more urgent and less organized than before.
He lunges forward wildly once and when Shaw parries him, instead of moving backward as he should, he tries the same attack a second time.
Shaw, sensing that his moment has arrived, steps easily away, kicks the other’s leg out from under him, and sends him tumbling to the ground.
“Nice and easy,” he says. “That’s the first one to me.”
The suitor smiles and tries to laugh it off, but as he wipes his face and looks about it is clear to everyone watching that beneath the bluster his temper is beginning to fray.
His friends are shouting at him to fight harder, and John Shaw, with his chest puffed out, is strutting about whistling “Lillibullero” and blowing kisses to the crowd.
When the two men come together again, instead of delaying as he did before and waiting for an opening to arise, after only a minute or two the suitor blindly charges forward.
He intends to wrap his arms around Shaw’s waist and drive him backward, but Shaw, with the quick feet of a dancer, skips away and locks his right arm tight around his opponent’s neck instead.
He braces himself first with legs wide apart, then, as the suitor struggles in his grip, leans back and starts with his thick and veinous arms to twist and squeeze.