Knockout Land
Down Whitechapel way is a place famous for dealing out sleep by the fistful twice a week.
None of your six thousand pounds Albert Hall fox-trots here. This is Knockout Land. It is, I imagine, the nearest thing to a bull-fight you will see in this country. Good, hard, slamming fifteen-round contests follow each other, with the ropes trembling and the fight fans howling like a pack of hungry wolves, and two half naked men with strawberry-coloured noses, hitting, gasping, reeling....
A great high hall blue with smoke, steel-girdered at the roof like a railway station. It is packed by a cloth-capped crowd, predominantly Oriental—a crowd of swift murmurs and sudden silences and sharp, instantaneous uproars. Good tempered now, but—O my!—suppose somebody started a row! There is not one woman present. The elegant girls in evening gowns who sit out Albert Hall prize fights have no place here. It is a gathering of fight fans. In the centre under bright, white lights rises the ring. The men in it are like men on a raft floating on a sea of restless, white faces.
Suddenly five or six men near the ring leap to their feet and shout "Five to one on Cohen!"
The hall becomes thick with wagers. Arms shoot out, men shout, no record is made (except that in a keen Hebrew mind), and every one is quite happy about it. Even if the Jew were not so commercially reliable, who would dare to be crooked here!
Look! The seconds in their white sweaters are busy. Two fighters enter the ring. Their bodies glisten in the light. One is white, the other olive-coloured, Eastern. They square up, crouch, dance round each other, then pat, pat-pat, pat-pat-pat—crack! A howl goes up from the crowd! That was a hit! Smash! Another one! Right! to the ropes! Back he comes, a little wild, and his opponent is driven away under the speed of his assault. Blows rain on each body, pink patches appear on chests and chins, both men dodge this way and that, a bell rings. Time!
"Chocolates!" cries a man with a tray.
I want to laugh. A less chocolate-like crowd I have never seen. Jellied eels, perhaps, beer undoubtedly, beefsteaks certainly; but milk chocolate—how astonishing!
Round fifteen! Both men are all in. They have pounded each other to pulp. I wonder if they can hear the yells and roars of the audience. Their legs drag. They are weak with hitting. You can see what they meant to do as a blow falls short, you can reach out and enter their exhausted minds, sympathize with them in their hazy world as they dog each other to plant the knock-out for which every one is waiting.
Smash! Right on the chin! The smashed one reels to the ropes, but comes back for more trouble, with his mouth sagging and something in his expression which suggests to me that he is not really here at all, but possibly wandering through some field rich with buttercups, with a little old public-house round the bend in the road.... Smash! He's taken another one! The scene in his dazed mind changes! He awakens from some stellar night, and comes alive again out of careering constellations to rush with the desperation of last strength on his opponent. Crack-crack—bang! Surely the knockout; surely he cannot stand any more? His head must be like iron, his jaws like steel.
He reels, his arms drop, his nightmare mind tries to grapple with the padded realities waiting for him, he makes an effort to hit. The other man is now ready to land him one that will lift him off his feet. He is the gladiator standing over him with lifted sword and—no appeal to the amphitheatre. It is only a question of a second now. Something brutal and masculine inside me desires to see him knocked out; something weak and feminine inside me wishes it was not necessary.
The victor draws back his head, the muscles ripple along his wet back, he shoots out an arm, and the other man crumples like a marionette at the end of a cut string. He lies in a corner of the ring, moves a leg once, and is still. I feel sure he is dead. In two minutes, with water trickling over his reddened face, he staggers to his feet, smiles a painful, swollen smile, shakes hands with the man who put him to sleep, and gropes out into the obscurity of the yelling crowd.
* * *
"And how much do they get for fighting here?"
"Oh, thirty-five bob," replies an official. "Sometimes as much as fifty."
I wonder what our elegant bruisers would think about it as I make my way out into the darkness of the wet streets.