Galatea (6 page)

“I don’t weigh four hundred pounds!”

“What do you weigh?”

“None of your damned business!”

“Over two hundred and sixty, though. That was the first thing I noticed, when I got the first aid from your bathroom—the pair of identical scales, tucked under the cabinet. Because two hundred and sixty is as far as one scale goes, and to weigh, you had to have two. I bet that was a sight, you standing sprat-legged, weighing yourself by halves.”

She got so furious she cried, but I kept driving them in. I said: “As a matter of fact, you’re dying now. Your heart nearly went out when you fell in the hole. It’s laboring now, supplying blood to all that lard, though from your looks I would say it was normal. Your pancreas can’t take it, your ankles are near the end, and your kidneys will make the K. O. One of these days you’ll topple on your face, and Mr. Val will go around bragging of the custom-made casket he got you, as of course no regular casket would fit.”

For some reason that reached her, and she moaned and closed her eyes. Then: “I’ve known I must die, I’m resigned. I do the little I can, my mite of good on this earth, until I hear the call. I’ve asked you: isn’t that enough? Do I everlastingly have to be told? Can’t I die in peace? How often do I have to say it? It’s
glandular!
It’s an
affliction!
There’s no
cure
, and—”

“It’s not glandular.”

“ ...
What?
”

“You heard me, I think.”

“And what, then, is it?”

“You. You and your dishonest soul. You, that haven’t the guts to say no to your gut.”

“Listen, I may be weak, and we’re right back where we started. If it’s not glandular, why can’t they find any cure?”

“They can. They have.”

“Funny they wouldn’t tell me.”

“They have, I think. As Dr. Semmes tried to tell you today. But you can’t hear them, can you? You kid yourself they may mean pie, but not ice cream—oh no.”

“And what is this wonderful cure?”

“Don’t eat so goddam much.”

She turned white, not at the words, but the sense, at the fear of not having food. I wouldn’t have been human then if I didn’t go get her lunch. I heated her up two take-outs, warmed her ice cream, found some chocolate sauce, melted it, poured it on top of the cream, found maraschino cherries, put them on top, so I had a tray that looked like something in movies. I set it beside her and said: “There you are, meat, cream, sugar, everything. You’re trying, as you lie there, to make yourself heave it at me, but with the character you got, what you’re going to do is eat it. Aren’t you?”

“And I thought I had a friend.”

“Friend? What you want is a pallbearer.”

She started to cry, and I squatted there, to be plastered with goo if that was what she wanted. She didn’t do any plastering. She ate the last slice, the last crumb, the last drop.

I took the tray, came back, and asked if there’d be something else. She said I could pack, as she’d have to tell her husband of the things I had said, and he’d have to let me go. I felt myself go numb, as that threw me back to the officer, my confession, and what all that might mean. I hated to eat her crow, but after some seconds, when the scare of the bars had done its work, I did. I said: “I have talked very plain, but as you said just now, we once said we were friends, and I spoke for your own good. If you’re bound you must tell Mr. Val, there’s nothing I can say, but before you do, I’d like to tell you more—about myself—my days in the ring—what I learned there—so you’ll know I can help you—if you’ll only let me.”

But her face only got meaner, and, fear or no fear, you can take just so much. I said: “How’d you like to go to hell?” Then I flung out, went to the cottage, and packed.

But the thought of her ankles rode me, especially on certain angles, like her being helpless to get to the bath-room, and maybe needing to go, so I went back, as though to borrow the phone. I said, if Mr. Val had to be told, I’d rather do it myself, and picked up the receiver to dial. She said: “Duke, will you put that down? And sit here, where we can talk?”

“I apologize.”

“I had it coming, and more.”

I put the receiver back and moved the phone where she could reach it. I pulled a chair over and sat down facing her. She touched her tongue to her teeth, said: “I have that taste again. Not sweet—just a queer, gray sensation. And my ears ring a little. As though frogs were here.”

“The sugar in that sundae—”

“I know, I know.” And then: “Part of it’s lying, Duke, to myself, and taking it out on you. But part of it’s fear. Of not having the food I so desperately need.”

“You so desperately
want
.”

“It’s some
little
bit need.”

“It’s not.”

“All right, then—”

It must have been a minute before she could make herself whisper: “Want.” Then, after another minute: “Now tell me. About yourself.”

“I couldn’t hit.”

“I know. Not that I’d want you to.”

“I couldn’t hit, but I wouldn’t give up, and that spells punk, or, in other words, sparring partner. But then I got the idea I’d make that racket pay. So I did. I trained guys for title fights, guys that had to make weight. You understand about that?”

“Not very well, I’m afraid.”

“They got divisions, each a different weight, like fly, bantam, feather, light, welter, middle, light heavy, and heavy. Each division carries a title, worth plenty of dough. But some guys, who’d be rich at 160, but are bums at 175, are like you. They can’t, or think they can’t, make the weight. That’s where I came in. I talked to doctors, read in libraries, listened to stuff, and got it down to a science. I was the guy, out there in the West, who could take that 175-pound bum, work on him five or six weeks, and make him a champ at 160. I had all the work I could do. ... Listen, stupid, for you I could do the same.”

“I haven’t the—guts, you called it.”

“You think you’re the only one?”

I grabbed her shoulder, shook it, and said: “Every fatso on earth is like that from not having guts—but my business was giving them guts. I know how. Don’t you want to step out of that grease? Don’t you want to be free of it? To walk without folding up? To run? To look like other people? To be able to go in a store, see a dress that you like—”

“Shut up.”

“You finish it up.”

“You got a sireen song, Mr. Webster.”

There’s such a thing as knowing when to shut up, because guts are found inside, and can’t be laced on like gloves. I said nothing for some time, and she lay there, her arms folded over her eyes. Then: “Duke, I’ll try it. I’ll put myself in your hands, with the same trust I have in you always—on one condition.”

“Which is?”

“I’ll be facing two fights. One with myself. On that you’ve offered your help and I accept it. The other is—my fight alone. On that I must have your promise you’ll keep out. It must be my fight alone.”

After what Bill had said, I thought I knew what she meant. I said: “Are you sure you’ll have that fight? It seems to me that
anyone
would be only too glad—”

“Duke, it’s pride. In food. In emancipating Woman with a capital W—and Woman includes me. In something a lifetime is dedicated to. That’s part of it. But there are other parts too, that I can’t go into. Duke, I must have your word.”

“Look. On this subject, in addition to know-how, I’m one hell of a salesman. I had to be. That’s where you begin. I could make with the explaining so—”

“Duke, no!”

She wasn’t impatient, she was terrified. She said: “Unless you promise me, unless it’s to be secret between us, unless I can be sure that not even my family knows until I’ve won—if I win—it’s off. We don’t start. Have I made it clear?”

“ ... If that’s the deal, Mrs. Val—”

“It is, it has to be.”

“Then, that’s it.”

We shook and she held my hand, so we were closer than ever. And yet, as I write it now, I wish I believed it was quite as good as it looks. On her part it was, I know. But on my part, if she had a taste in her mouth, I had one too, and it wasn’t gray, it was yellow. Just once that afternoon I had remembered what Val could do to me, or I thought he could do. And maybe, even pressing her hand, I may have been slightly relieved to be standing clear of that fight, to be glad I wasn’t involved.

N
OW, THERE’S NO MYSTERY
to it, how you get a fat guy thin, a fat girl, or a fat anybody. You take them off sugar, starch, and fat, and put them on protein, fruit, and salad, saying it twice for fruit. You do it with diet, and there’s not any other way—at least, any other way that’s safe, regardless of all you hear about exercise, massage, baths, and pills. Time was, they got results with that stuff, like the dry-out, as they called it, for jockeys, drunks, and fighters. They took them off liquid, water, coffee, beer, or anything that’s drunk, and then sweated them, in Turkish, Swedish, or Finnish baths. It was a cure all right, but often the patient died. Joe Gans did, after he trained that way for Nelson, on account of getting fed up with the wrangle over weight and agreeing to one hundred and thirty-three ringside. He made it all right, but the pictures of him, which they still show you in Goldfield, look like a Congo famine victim, and t.b., two years later, gave him the final K. O. Lot of people have died, even big Hollywood stars, from going about it all wrong and believing fairy tales. It’s done, I said, with diet, and there’s not any other way.

But there’s tricks you can use to ease it, and the first one I’d used, with the fighters, was a few days of thinking it over, to get up plenty of wanna and put less strain on gotta. To that she readily agreed, so her ankles would come back in shape, she could get around, Marge would quit coming up, and Val would shove off to town, as usual before she ate breakfast, and the whole thing would be simpler. Each day we’d talk it over, how much better she’d feel, all kinds of stuff of that sort, while in between would come gaps while she screwed up her nerve. Then, toward the end of the week, soon as I saw Val off, I came in and there she was, waiting for me in the living-room, sitting up on the sofa, no longer stretched out flat. I said how pleased I was to see her around again, she thanked me and drew a deep breath. She said: “My wanna I think I have. What next?”

“Fruit.”

“Just fruit?”

“Stop looking like that!”

“We don’t have any fruit.”

“No restaurant man ever does. They know everything about dishes and nothing at all about food.”

“The Clinton store has peaches.”

“I’ll go get some.”

“Take my car.”

Taking it sounds easier than it was, as all sorts of attachments were on it, pedal extensions and so on, so the seat would push back for her belly, and at the same time she could still reach the controls with her feet. It was like sitting with your legs wound around a kid’s express wagon, but I got there and back, and found her just as I left her, getting the jitters from hunger, but still hanging on somehow. I washed off some peaches, put them in a basket, and brought them to her, with a plate and a little knife. She asked: “How many can I have?”

“Many as you want.”

“Well,
that’s
something.”

“You eat them, you got mineral and pulp and vitamins, but not enough sugar, compared to the syrup on cakes, even to rate a count.
And
your stomach’s full, so your hunger is not yet gnawing.”

While she was chewing along, I cooked the rest of her breakfast, and her face lit up when I came with it, as she’d thought fruit was going to be all. She got two boiled eggs, a strip of bacon, and a whole pot of black coffee, which I told her drink plenty of, as it would do the same as the peaches, fill her stomach up and at the same time not make weight. She spoke of diets she’d seen in the papers, cottage cheese and stuff like that, and I said: “They’re all hokumalarkey, every one of those systems. They’re theoretical, and don’t take into account that the person reducing is
human
. They’ve got to like the diet. The peaches are friendly. They look pretty, they smell pretty, they taste pretty.
And
you can have as many as you want. How do you feel?”

“I have to say all right.”

“Any hunger?”

“Not even a little bit.”

“Say so if it’s there.”

“No, it’s really amazing.”

We went out and worked on hams, and I brought a small chair from the cottage, so she could slide it around and lean on it and in that way take weight off her feet. Then I thought I could leave her, and drove up to the city, to pick up stuff I wanted for her, like Italian cheese, a grater, olive oil, garlic, lemons, peppercorns, a grinder, more fruit, and other stuff. When I got back she was pooped, all stretched out on the sofa, but definitely yenning for food. She said. “What’s next?”

“Salad.”

“I never cared for it much.”

“And look it, I may say.”

“All right then, salad.”

I made her a Western job, of chicory and romaine torn up, fried croutons rubbed with garlic, a coddled egg broken on, lemon juice and olive oil mixed, ground peppercorns and cheese grated over it. I brought it out on a plate, and she said: “How much of
that
can I have?”

“All you want, pitch in.”

“My, my my.”

She chumped it down, had a second plate, but shook her head when I offered ham, saying she was full. I said: “All that lettuce and stuff distends your stomach and fills it. The egg and cheese are protein, which is fuel but doesn’t make weight. And the fat, the little bit of butter the croutons are fried in, as well as the spoonful of oil, coats it all, so digestion is slowed down and it stays with you awhile. However, I brought you some strawberries. You eat them as is, of course, without any cream or sugar, but they’ll give you a friendly feeling over your coffee.”

I ate my lunch then, cold ham or whatever it was. When I’d gathered everything up and was ready to do my own work, I asked her: “How you doing?”

“It’s really marvelous, Duke. I feel fed, I’m not hungry, I’m beginning to see how it works. And yet I’m up with it now, the real thing I’ve dreaded.”

“Say what it is, tell me.”