The Club

by Takis Würger

  Alex

  The ring stood in the middle of the hall, like an altar. A person is sacrificed; the crowd cheers. And they say I’m the crazy one.

  I was sitting in the back row in the second block on the left.

  The spectators left their seats. I stayed sitting. He was down there, and I didn’t want to meet him, not yet. I’d been watching him all evening.

  When Hans walked into the ring I started sweating. Almost every time I saw him, I thought; I should have taken him in.

  I’d clapped when Josh Hartley was boxing, so as not to arouse suspicion. Before the fight I’d stood in front of my bed with the expandable baton and pounded the pillow, but the feeling wasn’t as satisfying as it had been with him.

  I waited until the people had left the hall. I saw Hans down in the ring; he was leaning on the ropes staring at the plastic chairs, alone.

  Opposite the Corn Exchange I stood in the entrance to a restaurant and waited for Hans. I was wearing a black coat with a dark hoodie underneath. No one going past noticed me.

  The restaurant belonged to a TV chef with tattooed arms; it was full every evening, but now, just before midnight, it was closed. Many years ago, when I was a student here, this building housed an old library, with a domed reading room in the middle and bookshelves that were slightly curved to fit the library’s rounded walls. I looked at the evening menu, which hung in a glass case on the wall. It offered “artisan bread” for four pounds and “our famous crab linguini” for thirteen pounds fifty.

  This library was where I wrote my final dissertation. Back then I was just discovering the Dutch painters and was so obsessed with Rembrandt’s The Return of the Prodigal Son that I applied to my college for a travel grant to fly to Leningrad, because I was desperate to see the original in the Hermitage.

  It was the hands in the painting. I wanted to see the hands. The father embracing the son who had disappointed him and now knelt before him in rags, asking for forgiveness. The father’s left hand was that of a man, strong, gripping the son’s shoulder; the right hand was delicate, the hand of a woman.

  When I saw the original I was startled because it was so big. The colors were warm. None of his other paintings express Rembrandt’s faith in love quite like this. The father was able to forgive because he loved.

  I’d always been too afraid to try and talk to Hans, to ask him for forgiveness.

  Hans

  The ringside doctor said that while my nose was this badly swollen he wouldn’t be able to tell whether or not I would need an operation. He could reset the bone right away, but it would be painful and would damage more blood vessels. Charlotte was waiting outside the dressing room. I’d taken my time, had stayed in the ring till the hall was empty.

  I took a long, cold shower, as the doctor had recommended, to help close the blood vessels. He’d said that on no account should I blow my nose; it would push the blood up into my eyes and everything would turn red. A typical boxer’s story; I didn’t believe it.

  A light-blue, thick felt blazer was hanging in the dressing room. Hans Stichler was written on the hanger. The day after the coach announced the team we’d gone to the tailor to be measured. Later on, I sometimes wondered what happened to the blazers of boxers who lost. Only those who won their matches were allowed to wear the blue. I stroked the rough material. The light blue of Cambridge University was actually more green than blue. I’d have called it aquamarine if that didn’t sound silly. I put my face against the fabric.

  “You earned it.”

  Charlotte stood in the open doorway of the changing room. She wasn’t smiling.

  “I’d like to talk to you about earlier,” she said. “It wasn’t OK, the way you grabbed my wrist.”

  It took a while for this sentence to reach me. Blood was seeping through the paper in my nose and dripping onto the light blue blazer. It looked brown and ugly on the material.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I swore to myself that no man would ever touch me again if I didn’t want him to.” She reached inside the blazer and stroked the material. “Such a cold color.”

  I remembered how she had slept on my elbow in Somerset. I went to put my hands on her shoulders, then drew back, because I was afraid.

  “I don’t know whether we belong together,” she said.

  “I’m sorry—I was just worried about you.”

  I stood there like that for a moment or two, then went into the bathroom to fetch some more paper for my nose. She tried not to make any noise as she walked out of the dressing room and down the stairs. She left my mother’s necklace on top of my sports bag.

  I stood in front of the mirror, took my nasal bone between my hands and pulled it straight. Then I turned off the light and left the dressing room.

  Alex emerged from the darkness. Hands in her coat pockets, she stepped out of a doorway. She saw the blood running down my chin, took the scarf from her neck and gave it to me.

  “You’ll never get it out,” I said.

  She shrugged. I held the scarf under my nose. She stroked the sleeve of my blazer.

  “Charlotte’s already left,” I said. Alex nodded.

  She walked beside me without speaking and tentatively took my arm. I felt my muscles tense up. Until that day, the only physical contact between Alex and myself had been handshakes. Taking my arm was such a familiar, tender gesture that I wondered if something bad had happened.

  In the shop windows we were walking past I saw suits with too-short jackets and sweatshirts with the slogan i ♥ cambridge. I thought of Charlotte holding another man’s hand.

  “She’ll come back, she’s not like her father,” said Alex.

  “You know her father?”

  “Sort of.” She glanced at me. “You have to find out who did it, Hans.”

  “I know.”

  We walked silently, aimlessly, across the market square, then stopped for something to eat at the late-night kebab shop.

  “Why didn’t you send for me, back then?” I asked.

  She sucked air through her teeth.

  “I was too ill,” she said. “There was a period when I wasn’t myself.”

  “That’s it?”

  We were sitting side by side on a bench, not looking at each other. She spoke quietly.

  “Do you know Goya’s Black Paintings?”

  “Alex.”

  “Yes.”

  “This is important to me. Please don’t start talking about some paintings.”

  She leaned towards me. “Do you know Rembrandt’s painting of the prodigal son?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Please—forgive me,” she said.

  When Alex put her thin arms around me I was so shocked that initially I recoiled as if she were trying to hit me. Her sharp collarbone dug into my chest. I wondered why her hug didn’t feel warm, and that was when I realized I would never forgive her. She had come too late.

  “I’m tired,” I said.

  “Hans, please …”

  I got up and went home. An animal was leaping through the branches of a tree; a squirrel, I think. Squirrels are never afraid of falling.

  In my room I hung the bandages on the door to dry, put on a white shirt and tied my bow tie. I could do it without looking now. I put on the new, light-blue blazer.

  The other boxers were already at the Pitt Club, celebrating. They hugged me and talked about the fights. I drank vodka out of the trophy the team had won, too fast and too much, because I didn’t want to think about Charlotte any more. Afterwards, at the bar, I knocked back four tequila slammers with lemon and salt. A woman stroked my new blazer. Another asked if I was the German boxer. Josh asked me if I wanted to do a line of coke. He’d used eye pencil to paint himself blue. I pointed to my broken nose and shook my head. He touched my blazer and said something like, “Safe jacket, right?” Josh knew everything that went on at the Club; he’d been at the university as long as Charlotte. I felt I could hardly bear any more of this.


  A woman put two tequilas in my hands and unbuttoned my shirt. I let her do it. She sprinkled salt on the skin between my collarbone and my chest, licked it, drank the tequilas, and flung the slice of lemon onto the dance floor. The woman examined the cuts on my face and said she was studying medicine. She was like an insect.

  I was partying in the club where my girlfriend had been assaulted, and chatting intimately with another woman. I was drinking and dancing with the men who might have done it.

  There had been evenings at this club when I’d felt as if my real self were slowly dissolving and at some point only Hans Stichler would be left. That evening, though, I knew exactly who I was, and who I didn’t want to be.

  I left without saying goodbye and walked through the empty streets. For the first time I noticed that in Cambridge hardly anyone spat chewing gum on the ground. The pavement gleamed in the light from the streetlamps. The blue blazer, the shining cobbles, the neat grass in the college courts, the black gowns, the white pillars of the Pitt Club all combined to create and preserve the myth that made this place great. I remembered how much I’d wanted to belong; but tonight, when I was finally wearing the university colors, when I finally did belong, it disgusted me.

  I blew my nose into a napkin I’d taken from the Club and dropped the bloody tissue on the ground. Walking back to college I was cold, and the felt blazer scratched my neck. I wished Billy were there and I could tell him the truth. That night I would have done. When I got back I went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. My eyes were red.

  Hans

  The first meeting with the Butterflies took place in Josh’s kitchen. He was pacing up and down in front of the cooker in a cotton apron he’d knotted over his stomach, frying prawns in olive oil and garlic. He took the prawns out of the oil, let them drain onto a paper towel, and arranged them on the plates; he chopped coriander and chili, scattered them over the prawns and sprinkled them with coarse sea salt.

  “Squeeze the lime juice on yourselves, my young whippersnappers,” he said.

  With me at the table sat four former boxers, all of whom I knew from the Club. They’d been on the team in recent years and were still at the university. All of them had greeted me with a hug. Beside me sat the man who had beaten Billy up in the Pitt Club at the start of the year.

  Any one of them could be a rapist. Underneath the table I dug my fingernails into the wood until the nail on my right index finger snapped.

  At the start of the summer term I’d found in my pigeonhole an envelope with the butterfly seal and an invitation to this dinner at Josh’s.

  The five men talked about the boxing match, laughing when one of them imitated Magic Mike. Josh said something or other about blue African vampire shrimps. I’d come here expecting something sinister, and now I was sitting with five guys drinking white wine in a fancy kitchen. I found it unbearable to be laughing with them.

  Josh said the Butterflies were a club of young men who swore always to stand by one another. All members had to fulfill certain criteria, the details of which were complicated, but they all had to be Pitt Club members who had won a boxing match against Oxford.

  The Butterflies had been around for as long as anyone could remember. Josh said all this in a conversational tone, but then his expression grew serious.

  “No one on the outside knows about us,” he said, and squeezed my arm.

  A few days ago someone had slid a copy of Charlotte’s doctor’s report under my door. I’d read the report again, and now, as I watched the prawns slowly turn red in Josh’s frying pan, dancing in the hot oil, all I could think about were Charlotte’s tears. The last thing I felt like doing was eating.

  Josh refilled our glasses with Chablis. He said the Butterflies would accept me as one of their number. There were always five active members, he said, and Paul—he put his hand on one man’s shoulder—was graduating this year, so a place would soon be free. The initiation ritual was old and parts of it were a bit—Josh gazed out of the window—a bit unconventional. The other boys smirked. Josh reached for the little terracotta garden gnome on his windowsill and tossed it in the air; the gnome described a single somersault and fell back into his hand.

  “I don’t think anyone’s ever regretted it,” he said.

  I looked around the group. “How do you know I want to join?”

  “Everyone wants to join,” said Josh.

  I nodded.

  “Are you with us, my friend?” Josh asked.

  For a moment I hesitated, but no one said anything; I don’t suppose they noticed.

  “Sure,” I said. A single word that cost me everything I had.

  “Boom,” said Josh.

  I heard the chink of crystal. One of the boys said I should think carefully about whether I planned to go on spending time with Billy—the man must surely have lice. Another asked me whether I was interested in doing an internship that summer at a private bank in Zurich; he knew someone there, and it would be perfect for me, being fluent in German.

  “More prawns?” asked Josh.

  “They’re good,” I said.

  I ate another two. The prawns tasted of salt and the sea. All of you are going to pay, I thought.

  Back in my room I sat at my desk and took a fresh notebook off the shelf. I’d briefly considered writing on the computer, but that didn’t seem right. For the first time in years I wrote a diary entry. The first sentence was: Her name is Charlotte.

  I had forgotten how good writing made me feel. My pen glided over the lines. It was getting light outside when I closed the notebook. I opened a window. I wouldn’t get any sleep tonight. The air smelled of spring and a new day.

  Josh

  Face masks are a good idea, for men, too, for the following reasons. They remove makeup, rejuvenate the complexion, moisturize, and they make the skin more elastic, less likely to split, which of course is particularly important for boxers.

  I was sitting on my own in the kitchen as day began to break, waiting for my chamomile and jojoba cleansing mask to take effect. The dirty dishes and a plate of prawn carcasses were piled up in front of me. The lads had stayed late. I wondered why Stichler had hesitated for a moment, and why he’d left so early. Mates don’t leave early, they stay till the end. What was the matter? I’d been a Butterfly for four years. No one had ever hesitated.

  To set my mind at ease I thought about all the women I’d shagged. Whenever I went through the list I always got stuck on the blonde girl the lads had invited a few years earlier. I wasn’t sure whether she belonged on the list or not. I remembered the evening she walked into the Club. She had this warmth about her.

  I barely remembered the end of it, though. I’d only been a Butterfly for a couple of months at the time. The party got a bit too crazy: too much Chartreuse, plus three-and-a-half lines of coke to clear my head, which of course did not have the desired effect. Afterwards: memory fucked.

  Memory one: Sitting on the closed lid of the toilet at the Club, bleeding from both nostrils and feeling like the king of the world. That didn’t explain the dried blood I washed off my thighs the next morning, though. I still remember scraping it off and sniffing it. It didn’t smell of woman.

  I still don’t know what the others did with her. I bet it makes for a strong story, possibly too big a one to tell.

  Memory two: The scent of a woman, mixed with the smell of peppermints. La nuit tous les chats sont gris. Such a cool saying.

  Maybe I should have explained to Stichler who we really were. The boxing, the connections, none of that was important. The Butterflies were friends. That sounds gay, but it’s what counts. Friendship was the reason we existed. It was why we did everything together, good stuff and bad. It meant far more than all the other crap: the blue blazer, the birds, the money, the contacts. It was all about friendship. I was sure Stichler would understand.

  I put the plates in the sink for the cleaning woman. I always felt a bit sorry for her because of her rank job, and because she had s
hit for brains and came from Poland.

  I briefly considered boiling up the prawn carcasses into a stock, but I was too tired. I washed my face in the kitchen sink, went into the bedroom and stood in front of the mirrored wardrobe. I removed my clothes until I stood naked in front of the mirror, and took a look at myself as God made me. When I flicked off the light switch with my big toe, I was smiling.

  Hans

  A few weeks later, Billy and I were sitting on the edge of the fountain in the market square eating soft buttered rolls filled with chips.

  “Chip butties are the best fucking thing the English ever invented, apart from football,” said Billy.

  It was the afternoon before my Butterflies initiation ritual. I assumed I’d be drinking a lot of alcohol. There was a party at the Pitt Club that evening. I’d told Billy I’d like to go and get something to eat with him beforehand; I needed to line my stomach. We’d hardly seen each other since the fight. Billy said there were two things you had to think about when going on a bender: carbohydrates and fat.

  “The best thing to do is to drink a bit of olive oil beforehand.”

  He took two brown balls wrapped in greaseproof paper out of his rucksack.

  “Scotch eggs,” he said.

  I ate them, holding my breath. They were a bit like burgers, as big as his fist, with a hard-boiled egg in the middle. Billy licked his fingers.

  “I know I’ve been weird these last few weeks,” I said. “I’ll explain it all to you one day.”

  “Me too,” said Billy.

  Before we said goodbye, he took a small stone out of his rucksack and gave it to me. It was shiny and looked as if someone had turned it over and over in their pocket.

  “It’ll bring you luck,” said Billy.

  I looked at this young, longhaired man who, for no apparent reason, had come up and talked to me a few months ago. Perhaps those were the best kind of meetings. I held out my hand.