Black Ajax Read online

  There will never come another like him, sir, I can tell you. I saw him on the peak, tip-top high, and I saw him in the gutter. I saw him rich and famous, and I saw him scorched and forgotten. Why, I saw him shake the Prince Regent's own hand, sir, and clink his glass of iced champagne punch while the noblest in the land clapped his shoulder all smiles – and I saw him face down in rags in a farmyard sty with the gapeseeds crowing each time he shot the cat, puking his innards out, so fat and used up he was.

  A sad end to a sad story, you say? Well, I don't know about that, sir. I been in the Fancy man and boy for more'n fifty years, and they reckon I fought more mills than any boxer that ever came to scratch, and I lent a knee and held the bottle for as many more again. I was lightweight champion of All England. I stood up to the great Jem Belcher longer than any other did, giving him two stone, when he had both eyes, too! I've sparred with every champion of England since Mendoza – Humphries, Jackson, the Game Chicken, Gully, Cribb, and the rest of 'em. Nothing in Paddington Jones's record to think shame of, you may say … but I never had a day like Copthorn, sir, and I don't know many milling coves that did. He had that day, though, Black Tom Molineaux of America. The greatest day in the history of the game, a turn-up that they'll talk about as long as there's a prize ring. No, sir, I can't say his was a sad story, however it ended, not with that day in it.

  I knew him as well as anyone in his life, I suppose. I trained him, and taught him, and seconded him, and nursed him (and cursed him, I dare say), and was as close to him as a man could be. But as I said, I never knew his mind, or what he thought truly of us, or of the Fancy, or of London that he came to a great black simpleton and yet was talk o' the Town afore all was done, or of England that cheered and jeered him, and loved and hated him – oh, and feared him, too … what Tom Molineaux thought of all of that, sir, I can't say. Who knows what's in a black man's head?

  Did I say drink and wenches did for him? Well, that's gospel, sure enough, but when I think back on him I reckon pride did for him, too. I may not have known his mind, but I'll lay all the mint sauce in the Bank to a sow's baby that he had pride in him for a belted earl, born slave and all though he was. You smile, sir? Well, I've said my say, and I tell you, he was a proud man, and paid for it.

  What's that, sir? Was he the best? Ah, well, now it's my turn to smile. I'll put it this ways: Mendoza was no faster, Belcher was no cleverer, and Ikey Bittoon the Jew never hit no harder, to which last I can testify, having had three ribs stove in by him. In fine, sir, Tom Molineaux was as good as ever twanged – but the best? Bless you, there's no such creature, let the wiseacres say what they will. Why, sir? Because somewhere, and the good Lord only knows where, but somewhere, sir, there's always one better. Course there is.

  LUCIEN-MARIE D'ESTREES DE LA GUISE,

  gentleman of leisure,

  Baton Rouge, Louisiana

  It is simply untrue, whatever my more sycophantic admirers may say, that I insist on perfection in all things. That they should think so is, perhaps, natural, but that they should say so aloud is unpardonable, since it suggests that I am susceptible to flattery. No, I am fastidious, that is all, but I am well aware that perfection in anything is rarely to be found, even by such an assiduous seeker of the ideal as myself. This being so, I am content merely to insist upon the best – the very best, you understand, be it in personal comfort, wardrobe, feminine company, male conversation (I talk to women, of course, but I have yet to converse with one), horses, weapons, food and drink, amusement, or any other of those necessities and pleasures which gratify the senses of a cultivated man. And since I am noble, insistent, and rich, the best is usually forthcoming. When it is not, I withdraw. I remove, I take myself away, and if that is not possible, I endure, for as brief a time as may be, with good grace and perfect composure. It is not for one who bears the names of Guise and d'Estrees to do less.

  Thus, when my American cousin, Richard Molineaux of Virginia, descends on my Louisiana estate, with the appalling demand that I accompany him to New Orleans to see his slave, “the best dam' fightin' nigra in the South” (his words, not mine) pit himself against another black savage, I decline with aplomb. Cousin Richard is not of the best. Indeed, it is hard to place him at all.

  I say, with the insincere courtesy which kinship requires: “Give me the pleasure of your society here for as long as you wish, dear Richard, and by all means take your primitive to New Orleans to do battle, but do not ask me to be present. To a man of sensibility the spectacle of two gross aborigines mauling each other (to death no doubt) would be painful in the extreme. I wish to oblige you in all things, as you know, but I cannot expose myself to that.”

  “Why, how you talk!” cries he, red-faced, and perspiring in my drawing-room. “Since when you tender o' niggers gittin' hurt, or kilt? I collect you kilt a fair few right here on yore own plantation –”

  “Only under the painful necessity of discipline.”

  “Painful necessity, yore French ass! Yo' glad of an excuse to string 'em up!” cries he. He is of inexpressible coarseness, this Molineaux, being American of the English. It is true that I also am in the narrow legal sense American, but of France, which I need not tell you is a vastly different thing. We remain what we have always been, Frenchmen. The English, having no heritage of civilisation, become American without difficulty.

  “An' 'tain't no necessary discipline that makes you git yo'self a front seat at the whippin'-house whenevah they's a comely yeller wench to be lashed!” bawls he, leering, and stamping his boots without regard for my Louis Seize carpet. “You jes' admires to see 'em a-squealin' an' a-squirmin' – oh, Ah knows you, Lucie! You got real dee-praved tastes, cousin!”

  I invite him to sit, marvelling that my great-aunt should have married the grandfather of such a creature. “The necessary execution, occasionally, of one of my own slaves for disciplinary reasons, is something I deplore, since it is both expensive and inconvenient. The correction of personable young slave wenches at the whipping-house, artistically administered, is an aesthetic experience,” I inform him. “But I do not expect you to appreciate the distinction. Be that as it may, my Richard, the privilege of watching your ‘fighting nigra’ display his disgusting talents is one which I shall be happy to forgo.”

  “Whut you talkin' 'bout? Ah thought you liked boxin'? Least, you

  never tire tellin' 'bout all the great champeens you seen in Englan'.

  Well, Ah got me a champeen, a nigra champeen, so now! An' he can whip any man 'twixt heah an' Texis, ye heah?”

  If I shudder, do you wonder? How to explain to this oafish Richard, disdaining the aperitif I offer him and calling for his detestable “corn”, that to compare his black barbarian to the English masters of la boxe is to compare … what? A plough-horse to an Arab blood, a drab to La Dubarry, a Dahomey idol to a Donatello? How to convey that beside the speed, the science, yes, the beauty of an English prize-fight, the spectacle of his brawling brutes would be the crude beastliness of swine in a sty? An impossible task, so I do not attempt it.

  If it should seem remarkable that I, an aristocrat of Louisiana, should not only know but admire to excess the pugilistic art, I must digress to tell you how this came about. During the late unpleasantness between France and England which ended so deplorably with the unnecessary catastrophe of Mont Saint Jean,* I had felt it my duty to unsheath the sword in my true country's service. After all, France is France, a Guise is a Guise, and mere accident of birth on the unfortunate side of the Atlantic cannot alter allegiance, or excuse a gentleman from discharging the obligations which blood and breeding impose. If I hesitated at all, it was at the thought of attaching myself to revolutionary upstarts, but I consoled myself with the reflection that others with lineage hardly inferior to my own had condescended to enlist in the armies which they commanded. In brief, we put the honour of France first, and the likes of Corporal Bonaparte nowhere.

  Very well. Of my service I choose to say only that it ended with my being taken pris
oner in '98, thanks to the mismanagement of our Irish expedition by a general who in civil life had been a vendor of rabbit-fur. C'est la revolution. Thereafter I passed some years in captivity in England. No need to speak of that curious country and its inhabitants, save to concede that they know at least how to behave to an enemy nobly born, and, my parole being taken for granted, I found myself a guest rather than a prisoner. And since their polite society is devoted to sport, I became acquainted with, and, I confess, fell under the spell of that great national pastime which they properly call the Noble Art.

  At first, to be sure, the notion of watching the lower orders pummelling each other with their bare fists was repugnant. How could it be otherwise, to one whose training in personal combat had been confined to the epee, the sabre and the pistol, and whose whole being and temperament inclined to all that was refined and elegant, and recoiled from the vulgar and brutal? But it chanced that I had my first view of pugilism when I was conducted by Guards officers to an

  exhibition by the magnificent Mendoza, then past his prime but a master still, and was ensnared forever.

  I saw, in the person of that amazing Jewish athlete, the embodiment of graceful motion allied to power, intelligence, and skill, and realised that here was the ultimate expression of the human body in action. Here was the beauty of the ballet wedded to the violence of the battle, the destructive force, unaided by any weapon, of Man the Animal, trained and controlled to complete harmony, terrible and sublime. I came, I saw, I marvelled at craft so complete that it seemed elevated to art.

  This was mere demonstration, of course, sport without danger in which the Hebrew master and his partner displayed the shifts and feints and counters and bewildering nimbleness of foot which are the prime-to-octave of the prize ring. It was intoxication of the soul to behold. Only later, when I saw pugilists engage in deadly earnest, did I realise that it was something more, that here was Truth, the unleashing of man's deepest primordial instinct to destroy, to inflict pain, to wound, and to kill – but with a finesse whose delicacy would become the finest surgeon, and a dispassionate detachment worthy of the classic philosophers. In what other sphere, I ask, can the connoisseur witness and savour at length the slow torture, exquisitely inflicted, of one human creature by another, and experience the thrilling feral joy of the expert tormentor and the helpless protracted suffering and shame of the victim? Let no one deny to the English their share, however modest, of genius, for they have devised the purest form of cruelty, beyond the imaginings of clumsy Inquisitors or the pathetic de Sade, whereby man inflicts punishment, mutilation, agony, and humiliation on his own kind, gradually and deliberately, with the most subtle refinement, and calls it a game.

  I do not box myself. I have aptitude enough for manly sport, and fence, shoot, and ride with more than ordinary address, but while I have indulged myself with dreams in which I possessed the prowess of a Belcher or a Mendoza, practising my art on impotent opponents, I recognise that this is beyond my power. I could not achieve “the best” – and even the best in the prize ring, where the difference between champions is a hair's breadth, must endure their portion of suffering. I do not share the peculiar English satisfaction of experiencing pain while inflicting it. Sufficient for me to enjoy the art and the agony as a spectator.

  To speak of this to my boorish Richard Molineaux would have been to expound Epicurus to a Hottentot. He had no thought beyond his “fightin' nigra” and his forthcoming triumph over another savage, the Black Ghost, the reigning monarch of what passed for prize-fighting in our southern states, a revolting parody of boxing more akin to the ancient pankration, in which the contesting slaves battered, kicked, gouged, tore, bit, and wrestled each other in murderous frenzy, frequently with fatal results. This Black Ghost, I was informed, had killed four opponents and maimed a dozen others, and was accounted invincible by the patrons of this loathsome butchery.

  “Say, but jes' wait till ma Tom sets 'bout him!” exults my gross companion. “Why, that Tom, he the meanest, strongest, fightin'est buck in the country! He goin' chaw up this Black Ghost an' spit him all over the bayous, yessir! Ah tell yuh, Lucie, he licked ev'y fightin' nigra in Virginny, an' he tear the ears an' bollix offa that ole Ghost an' mash his face in like 'twas a rotten melon! He got fists like steel balls, and yuh couldn't fell him with a ten-pound sledge, no suh …”

  And more, and more of the same in praise of his prodigy, until to quiet him I consent to view this behemoth in the slave quarters. I expect, from Richard's description, to see a giant of hideous aspect, with elephantine limbs, ponderous and clumsy, but no, to my astonishment here is a young black buck of middle height, hideous and primitive of feature, indeed, but shapely and well-made enough, as I see when he strips at his master's command. He stands square and stolid as a bullock, without sense. I bid him skip, and he shows agility, but no elan, no spirit, none of that eagerness mercurial that is the sign of the trained boxer. I bid him put up his fists, and he comes on guard like a novice, his hands before his face and his head bowed, as though in fear. I whisper to my Ganymede to strike him suddenly on the face with a cane. He flinches, but his feet do not move. Bon appetit, M'sieu Black Ghost, I say to myself, here is your repast, a mere dull lump of black flesh. But out of regard for Richard I observe only that his teeth are good and his skin smooth, without blemish or scar.

  “Say, nevah no welts on nigras o' mine!” cries Richard. “ 'Fore Ah has 'em trimmed up we spreads a wet canvas on they backs, so the cowhide doan' leave so much's a mark. But Tom doan' need no whip these days, do ye, Tom? No, suh, 'cos he's ma fightin' nigra, so gits the best o' pamperin' an' vittles an' wenches, ain't that so, Tom?”

  “Yes, mass',” mumbles the black dolt, his head bowed.

  “But you doan' git no pleasurin' yet awhiles, haw-haw – not till you done beat that ole Black Ghost into mush an' broke him up so he nevah fight no mo'! Then yuh gits all the pleasurin' you want – an' if you trim him real good, maybe Ah lets you wed wi' li'l Mollybird? How yuh like that, Tom?” And my Richard cuffs him in playful humour, at which Tom shuffles and grins.

  “Like dat right well, mass',” says he.

  This astonishes me. “You permit your slaves to marry, then? My good Richard, why? They will breed as well without benefit of a sacrament which Le Bon Dieu never intended for such creatures. And consider, if you please, that to encourage sentiment of family among them is to sow discontent when they or their brood come to be sold apart, as may well happen.”

  He puts out his great American lip. “Doan' breed nigras for sale. Ma nigras mo' like to family. Why, this boy Tom heah, he Tom Molineaux. He ma nigra, he bear ma name, take pride in bein' a Molineaux. 'Sides, he an' li'l Molly bin sweet on each other since they children, so's fittin' they should wed, now she's full growed.” He cuffs the brute again. “You jes' itchin' for her, Tom, ain't that so? Well, you whup the Black Ghost, an' she's yo's, boy – in a real white dress, an' Ah give her a locket fo' a bride gift! Whut you think o' that, now? Say, Lucie, you like 'em yaller, don't ye! You gotta see her – hey, wheah that Mollybird?”

  Knowing my Richard's taste in African flesh, I look to see some voluptuous she-ape, but am enchanted when Mollybird comes tripping from the women's cabins. She is perhaps fifteen, and of a delicacy to kindle the appetite of the most jaded, pale gold of skin and exquisitely slender, with dainty hands and feet, and great gazelle eyes in the face of a madonna. She approaches modestly, putting her hand into that of the boy Tom, and they smile on each other. And this fragile beauty is to be defiled by that hulking animal! An atrocity not to be contemplated.

  “Ain't she the sweetest li'l wench?” crows my vandal cousin. “She virgin, too. Now, Mollybird, make yo' rev'rence to Messoor la Geeze, now!”

  She makes her curtsey, and I see the fear start in her eyes when I beckon her so that I may caress her cheek. It is like silk to my fingers, and when I take a cachou from my comfit-box and place it tenderly between her lips that are like pink petals she trembles in the most
delicious fashion. When I stroke her fine long hair and whisper in her ear what a pretty girl she is, and inquire of Richard what is her price, her terror is delightful.

  “Why, Lucie, you ole dawg!” guffaws he. “Didn't Ah say yuh liked 'em yaller? No, no, ma boy, she ain't fo' sale! She promised to Tom heah – why, if he was to lose Mollybird he'd mope an' pine an' likely die on me! That's why I brung her f'm Virginny, to keep her close by him, fo' his comfo't. But not too close, hey, Tom? No honeymoonin' 'til you lambasted that ole Black Ghost!”

  One does not haggle in the presence of slaves, so I say no more and put the delectable child from my mind for the moment. At supper Richard is his gluttonous self, and insufferably boisterous in his cups, pressing me to change my mind and accompany him to the fight next day, and boasting with intolerable noise of the punishment his protege will visit on his opponent. I am courteously adamant in my refusal, which makes him sullen, and as the evening and his intoxication progress, I detect a change in my vainglorious cousin. He frowns, and falls silent from time to time, and scowls on his glass, and bites his nails – a cannibal at the table of de la Guise, but there it is.

  Suddenly he explodes. “You know all 'bout boxin' an' fightin' men! You seen ma boy Tom – he's a prime figure, ain't he? He smash this Black Ghost feller, fo' sure, yuh reckon?”

  I ask him, how am I to judge, who have seen neither fight, and he pours my Beaune down his uncomprehending throat. “That Black Ghost, he one killin' nigra!” he mutters. “They tellin' me he a reg'lar villain, got no mercy, beat the best fightin' nigras on the Gulf! An' Blenkinsop, whut owns him, they say he keep him caged up, in a cage with iron bars, an' shackled to boot! Say he cain't let him loose 'mong other nigras, even, for fear he tear 'em up in his rage! He ain't human, they sayin'!” “My dear Richard, none of them is human. Vocal animals, as the Romans said.”