The Harder They Fall (6 page)

She puzzled me. She was the kind of girl to whom I was always going to say something nice a little later. What kept me back, perhaps, was that she would only half believe what I told her, always holding something in reserve. Maybe it was her upbringing, the kind that demands a strict balance all the time. Maybe it was the old Puritan strain in her. Maybe it was a bad inheritance of fierce convictions. Whatever it was, a nice girl like Beth, good respectable family, good schooling, good brain, was still a question mark to me. Passion and restraint, in equal portions, end up in a no-decision fight.

‘She’s all right,’ Nick said. ‘You got yourself something there. Plenty of class.’

We walked through the spacious living room, an overdecorated hall of mirrors that looked unlived-in, to the sun-porch. When he saw us, the little Argentinian rose quickly to his feet, stiffly formal, his teeth showing in a rehearsed smile. He was a short dumpy man with a large nose, a swarthy complexion and a half-dozen strands of hair angled back from his forehead in a strategic but unsuccessful effort to hide his baldness. He wore spats, a white-chequered vest and the kind of four-button sports suit belted in the back we haven’t seen around here in quite a while. On the fourth finger of his short stubby hand was what might have been a ruby.

‘Eddie,’ Nick said, not bothering to introduce me, ‘this is Acosta. You guys got some work to do, so I’ll leave you alone.’

Acosta began a little bow and started to say something
like ‘Charmed…’ or ‘Very pleased …’ but Nick caught him in the middle of it. The courtesies were all right with Nick, if they didn’t get in the way of business. ‘I dialled out on you,’ he said to Acosta, ‘because I don’t hafta hear all that crap about the village and the wine barrels. I’m a businessman. I take one hinge at the boy and I see he’s got something. I can sell him. But,’ Nick squeezed my shoulder affectionately, ‘I want you to give my boy here the full treatment.’

‘Yes, yes, I understan’,’ Acosta said, bowing slightly toward Nick again, as if what he had just said had been graciously friendly.

‘Don’t forget now, the full treatment,’ Nick said, using the same tone on Acosta he used on the bums around the office. ‘Including dessert and the finger bowls.’

‘Meester Latka, he has a very smart head for business,’ Acosta said to me when Nick left us alone. ‘Very strong mind, very intelligent. When El Toro and I come to North America I never even have the dream to be the partner of such a big man as Meester Latka.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

He reached into his inside pocket and brought forth a silver case from which, with an elaborate gesture, he offered me a cigarette. ‘Perhaps you do not mind smoking an Argentinian cigarette,’ he said. ‘Very mild, very nice smoke. If you will pardon me for saying, I like better than your Chesterfield and Lucky Strike.’ Again he smiled with his teeth to show that this was not an issue of nationalist rivalry but merely a little joke, and fitted his cigarette nicely into a slender tortoiseshell holder. He spoke better English
than the Killer or Vanneman, but with a strong affinity for the present tense and a tendency to louse up his present and past perfects.

‘Meester Lewis,’ Acosta began, ‘for me to meet you is a very great pleasure. Meester Latka, he has tell me about you the many good things. You are a very great writer, yes? You will make very famous my great discovery El Toro Molina and his little manager Luis?’

This was said with a little laugh, as if to show we both understood that Luis was not nearly so aggressive and self-seeking as he made himself sound. Luis had shrewd little eyes that appraised you too carefully all the time he was smiling at you. For all the Argentine schmaltz, it wasn’t too difficult to see him promoting up and down Jacobs Beach with the best of them, spats and all.

Well, the overture is over and the curtain’s going up, I thought.

‘Tell you what you do, Mr Acosta,’ I said. ‘Give me the whole thing. From the beginning. Where the guy comes from, how you found him, when he started fighting, the works.’

‘Please?’ Acosta said.

‘You know, the whole story, complete in this issue.’

‘Oh, yes, yes I understan’,’ Acosta said. ‘It is very very interesting the story of El Toro and I. Very romantic. Very dramatic. But first if you please I will warn you of something. El Toro Molina, he is a very young boy. He does not have yet twenty-one years. He comes from a very little village in the Andes, above Mendoza. All the people there, they are of very simple minds. Not loco you understan’, just of
simple minds. All their life they work in the vineyards of the great
estancia
de Santos. Of the world outside, they know nothing, not even of the capital of their state, Mendoza. Buenos Aires, it is not as real as heaven to them, and North America it is as far away as the stars.’

Acosta smiled for Toro’s innocence.

‘So it is of this matter that I will warn you, if you please, Meester Lewis. I cannot make El Toro come to North America without I promise to take care of him with very great
fidelidad,
er …’

‘Faithfulness,’ I said.

‘Ah, ¿habla usted español?’

‘Un poco,’
I said.
‘Muy poco. Seis meses en Méjico.’

‘Good, very good,’ he said warmly. ‘
Su acento de usted
es perfecto
.’

‘Mi acento es stinko
,’ I said.

‘Ah, you have the sense of humour,’ Acosta said. ‘In my Argentina we have the saying: A man who cannot laugh is a man who cannot cry.’

‘On Eighth Avenue life is not so simple,’ I said.

‘Around the Madison Square Garden it is very impressive, yes?’ Acosta said. ‘That is where they make the big business, the ringside ticket for maybe thirty dollars. In my country a hundred pesos.
¡Fantástico!
My ambition it is to see the name of El Toro Molina in the lights of the Garden
marquesina,
this peasant clay that I have carve into work of art. It is my big dream, my big promise to El Toro.’

He wasn’t kidding. You could see from the intense way his eyes worked that he wasn’t kidding. He was a little man, both in stature and achievement and he came from an
underpopulated, second-rate country. This was his way of dreaming greatness. The way he lived it, Toro Molina was David to his Michelangelo.

‘But you must think I am a man of very much wind,’ Acosta said. ‘I have talk all this time and I have not tell you this matter of the warning. El Toro, I love him like my son, but he has no head for the business. Only me he trusts to take care of his money. For this he comes with me, to take back the big money to his family in the village. So I cannot tell him of the business of Meester Latka. He will not understan’ how I have sell fifty per cent to Meester Vanneman and how Meester Vanneman has turn around and sell forty per cent to Meester Latka and how Meester Latka has also buy from me another forty per cent. This business El Toro will not know how to understan’. It will make him very frighten’, I think. So it is better for El Toro if he think the agreement we come to New York with is not change. It is better if he think Meester Latka is only my very good friend, a very big North American sportsman. So when he sees Meester Latka around very many times he has no sospecha, sos …’

‘Suspicion,’ I said.

‘
Exactamente
,’ Acosta said, ‘suspicion.’

‘In other words, when I see the boy, you want me to dummy up about how he is being sliced up like corned-beef in a delicatessen,’ I said.

‘Please?’ Acosta said.

‘Dummy up,’ I said. ‘Keep quiet about your little deal with Vanneman and Latka.’

‘Ah, your slang, they are so colourful,’ Acosta said. ‘I
would like before I go back to the Argentine to learn them all.’

‘Before you go back to the Argentine,’ I said, ‘you will learn a great deal.’

‘Thank you very much,’ Acosta said.

‘Now let’s get back to this work-of-art of yours,’ I said. ‘You really believe you’ve got a fighter, huh?’

That look came into his eyes again. ‘Argentina, it is a land of great fighters,’ he began. ‘Luis Ángel Firpo would have won the knockout over Dempsey if the sporting writers had not lift him back into the ring. Alberto Lovell wins the amateur championship of the world in the Olympic. But El Toro Molina – he is our greatest, the greatest of all. In Argentina the mountains are very high, the pampas are very wide, it is a big country, big cattle, big men, but El Toro – his mother calls him El Toro because when he is born he weighs’ twelve pounds ten ounces – he is
gigantesco
, with the neck and the shoulders of a fighting bull and muscles in his arms as big as melons and legs as strong as the great
quebracho
trees of the Andes.’

‘Tell me,’ I said. ‘Just where did you find this mythological conglomerate of fighting bull, mountains, melons and
quebracho
trees?’

‘Ah, you mean where have I make my great discovery?’

‘Sí,
dígame
,’ I said. Nick should dig my
dígame
, I thought. I should get a couple of extra sawbucks for doing the Spanish version.

‘Two years ago I have a little travelling circus in Mendoza,’ Acosta began. ‘There is Miguelito, the clown; there is the bareback riders Señor and Señora Mendez and
their horse; there is Juanito Lopez with his dancing bear; there is Antonio the Magician which is me (one day I will make a card trick for you); and there is Alfredo el Fuerte, Alfredo the Strong-one. At the end of his act Alfredo always makes the challenge to lift up anything that three men in the audience can carry up on the stage together.

‘When we come to the little village of Santa Maria in the beautiful wine country of the Andes, we are ask to present our performance in the great patio for the amusement of the de Santos family who have the great
casa de campo
on the highest peak overlooking thousands and thousands of hectares of their beautiful grapes. It is the name day of the head of the de Santos family, and while they watch from the balcony, all the villagers crowd around our little portable stage in the courtyard. Things are passing very excellently. Yes, everything goes very excellently until my last act, Alfredo the Strong-one. Alfredo is a very accomplish strongman, only he has one weakness, which is a very great thirst for champagne brandy. The evening before our performance Alfredo has make a rendezvous with the youngest daughter of the butler of the de Santos
casa
. The next morning when I smell the breath of Alfredo, it is even stronger than he is. I find it out that the little
muchacha
has stolen for him a bottle of champagne brandy from the cellar of the great house with the keys of her father. So when Alfredo makes his challenge to pick up anything three men can carry up on the stage he is already puffing like a big fish in the net …’

‘This is all very interesting,’ I said, ‘but I’m not doing the life story of your circus. All I need is the stuff on Molina.’

‘Please,’ Acosta said, as if I were a heckler climbing up
on the stage in the middle of his act, ‘they are all threads in the same rug, how I have come to make the great discovery of El Toro Molina.’ He fitted another cigarette into his holder and gave me his cold social smile. ‘When I see in what weaken condition is Alfredo the Strong-one I am praying to Saint Anthony of my devotion that nothing heavy will come up on the stage. But Saint Anthony does not hear me. Because three of the biggest men I have ever see are carrying up on the stage the biggest barrel of wine I ever see. One of the men is old, of very little more height than I have, but he is almost as wide as he is tall. The other two are young
gigantes
who have over six feet in height and weigh more than Luis Firpo.

‘“Who are these big fellows?” I ask. “They are the Molinas,” I am told. “Very famous of this village. The short one is Mario Molina, the barrel-maker, and those are two of his sons, Rafael and Ramon. At all our feast-days when it comes to the wrestling, old Mario was always the champion. And now his sons can throw him on his back as easy as you can swallow a grape.”’

‘That’s good,’ I said. ‘That’s in the script. I can use that.’

‘Please,’ Acosta said. ‘I will give you what Meester Latka call “the whole treatment”. Now the big wine barrel is on the stage and if Alfredo cannot lift it I have promise to pay each of the men who have come up on the stage one peso. And if, God forbid, anyone in the audience can come up and equal Alfredo’s feat, I have promise to pay five pesos. Poor Alfredo he puts his arms around the barrel and the sweat is running down both sides of his nose in two steady streams and I swear on the faithfulness of my mother to my
father I can smell the champagne brandy. Yes, there is much sweat and much noise but no lifting of the barrel. All the villagers have begin to shout rude remarks and Alfredo has much anger in himself and sucks in his breath until the ribs begin to show through the fat. But still there is no lifting of the barrel. The villagers are throwing vegetables at Alfredo. Then someone calls out, “El Toro, we want El Toro” and soon everyone is shouting “El Toro, El Toro!”

‘Out of the crowd a giant rises up and he seems to get bigger and bigger as he comes. When he climb up on the stage he move very slow but very
poderoso
…’

‘Powerful,’ I said.

‘Thank you,’ Acosta said. ‘Very powerful, like an elephant. He seem very embarrass. “I do not wish to come up, señor,” he say to me, “but it is the wish of my friends who I cannot insult.” Then, I swear by my sainted mother, El Toro reach down and lifts the barrel high in the air. The crowd laughs and shouts
Mucho, mucho, viva El Toro
Molina
. “Who is this fellow?” I ask. “He is the youngest son of Mario Molina,” they say to me, “the strongest man in Argentina.”

‘When I pay this young giant the five pesos he has win I say to him, “Perhaps you will like to come along with me and take the place of my Strong-one. You will have much money in your pocket and see many fine cities and everywhere you go beautiful señoritas will marvel at your strength and be yours for the taking.”

‘But El Toro says, “I wish to stay with my people. I am content here.”

‘“How much are you pay by the
estanciero
?” I say.

‘“Two pesos a day.”

‘“Two pesos! That is but the droppings of the sparrow. From Luis Acosta you will receive five pesos and when we are performing in Mendoza and the crowds do not keep their hands in their pockets you will make ten, maybe fifteen, pesos a day. You will come back to Santa Maria and take the most beautiful girl in the village for your wife.”

‘“You mean Carmelita Perez?” El Toro says.

‘At last I have found the soft spot. “Of course I mean Carmelita,” I say. “Who else but Carmelita? You will come back with money enough to build a house for yourself. For you and Carmelita. And from Mendoza you will bring her a beautiful silk dress as fine as anything worn by the daughters of de Santos.”