Memos From Purgatory

by Harlan Ellison

  And still, Candle looked as big as a mountain.

  “G’morning,” I said, jauntily.

  It went over like a leper in an elevator. And Candle Steigletz snickered like a seven-year-old. He was wearing a heavy sweater and a shirt under his leather jacket, and I was abruptly glad I had worn my own sweater under my black leather jacket. Protection across the belly and on the arms was a precious thing.

  He looked like a bit-player in an Orozco painting. The black bangs, hanging down almost to his thick eyebrows, the baleful black eyes sheltered under brows that hid the light and direction of his glance. That, too, was something disturbing:

  Point: when you knife-fight, watch the knife hand, of course, but more important, watch the other guy’s eyes. It tells before his hand when he’s going to swing steel. A squint means a strike.

  “You ready, Cheech?” Pooch asked. Goofball wet her lips. Oh, how I wanted to squash that broad!

  “I’m ready,” I said. I was ready to run, that’s what I was ready to do.

  “You ready, Candle?” Pooch turned to my opponent.

  For the answer he gave a funny little wiggle to his arm and the switch-blade dropped down his sleeve, into his hand. He brought it up carefully and pressed the stud on the side. The blade leaped up into sight, and the early morning gray was caught all along the six inch length of the honed blade.

  I dipped my body and came up from the boot with my own Italian stiletto. It wasn’t a switch, and this was the first time the gang had had occasion to see how I uncorked it.

  In all fairness, it is a more impressive unveiling than merely pressing a button. I whipped my arm sidewise, catching my thumb-nail under the slightly protruding tip of the blade, and flipped it out as my arm came around in a great snake-like sweep.

  The blade, the hand, the arm quivered to a halt in firing position. I saw a momentary look of uncertainty cross Candle’s broad, flat face. There were murmurs from the crowd. A real grandstand play; I only hoped I was able to continue my performance.

  Filene was there, behind a group of Debs, and I heard her thin voice say something reassuring.

  “Okay,” said Pooch, “here’s the handkerchief.” He drew a fresh, clean, white handkerchief out of his side pocket and opened it up full. He took alternate corners in each hand and twirled it the way kids do a towel in the locker room of a gym, when they’re going to snap each other’s bare backsides. Then, when it was a two-foot strip, he dropped it on the dirty ground between us.

  I moved slowly but surely to it and picked it up.

  I shook it out a bit, pulling down its length so it would stay long and tight, and put one end in my mouth, wadding it tightly behind my clenched teeth so it could not slip out. I extended the opposite end to Candle, delicately, watching his eyes all the while. They were brightly on me, as he took it.

  SIX

  Candle took the hankie in his mouth and maneuvered it with tongue and teeth until the cloth was settled properly. A faint trickle of spittle edged from the corner of his mouth.

  We were now separated across a two foot restraining line of taut cloth. We moved toward each other and the hankie drooped in the middle. Pooch stepped behind Candle and Fish moved around back of me. I watched as Pooch unbuckled Candle’s wide garrison belt, and pushed it back through two loops till it was loose enough to serve the purpose: he took Candle’s left arm and put it behind his back, inserting it between Candle’s belt and pants. Then he moved to the front, pulled the belt tight and buckled it, two notches shorter than before. Fish did the same to me. We were amputated now, one-armed knife-fighters, with the difference that my left arm, my knife-arm, was free, and Candle was on the right side free. It was a very slight advantage for me, coming in on the offside.

  It was the first time I had ever really been grateful at being left-handed.

  Pooch stepped in close and put hands around the backs of our necks; he pulled our heads close together, and I got a full view, as close as I ever wanted, of Candle’s peon face. It was an unhappy face, fronting an unhappy kid.

  I didn’t want to fight him.

  “Now you know the rules of a stand?” Pooch asked. He didn’t give us time to answer, but went directly on: “Nobody swings till Mary gives the go-ahead—” he motioned to Goofball, who stood with moist, expectant lips, “—and then you use anything you want, so long as one hand stays behind alla time, and you don’t drop the kerchief. One of ya drops the kerchief, he loses, the other guy’s got rights to the loser. A fall is a fall and that’s it. The fallen guy is the loser. Winner, any which way, he’s got full rights. All the way.”

  In short, the loser was dead.

  Pooch moved back, and instantly we pulled the hankie two feet tight, our backs arched, bodies curved to put us as far away at swinging level as possible. The arm-swinging range was exactly two feet…with the other guy’s knife in the line of fire. A kid with gorilla arms hanging below his knees would have been a shoo-in. We moved idly, maneuvering. The wind blew in off the river. My eyes started to unfocus, and I blinked them three or four times quickly, to put me back where I belonged.

  Now was no time to crap out.

  I planted my feet apart and waited for Goofball to give us the word. Candles eyes were totally in darkness now; I could only see the flat planes of his cheeks that telegraphed nothing. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Pooch putting his arm around Goofball’s shoulders, whispering something to her, and she tittered idiotically.

  Then she drew in breath to yell and I knew the balloon was about to go up. She screamed right at us:

  “Go GO!”

  Candle jerked back sharply on the hankie and it started to slip from between my teeth. I’d lose by default. The cheap cloth gave an ominous tearing sound and I swung my knife in wide, flat arcs, moving forward and teeth-winding the hankie so I had it more firmly between my jaws. I almost wound too much, almost came too close. Candle made a first tentative slash at me, trying to break through the windmill attack I was laying down to cover my teeth-winding of the hankie, and he almost made it. I was almost too close, with too little hankie between us. I stopped winding, wadded it behind my clenched teeth and settled down to fight.

  Then we were equally apart, the hankie tight, the knives enough of an extension to gut, if the opening came.

  We circled; stepping, stepping, stepping carefully, measuring each movement. Footwork had to be close, and a misstep could send a guy down, his feet fouled, his windpipe exposed. And down meant out.

  Pretty quick the ground was worn into a dark brown rough circle as we went tail-around-head past each other. The Barons and their Debs fanned out, watching, making sure that a wild swing could not touch them. We bent forward from the shoulders, putting our bellies as far back as possible.

  We stopped every half-circle, our feet wide apart, swinging for an opening, fencing for a thrust, making certain we didn’t throw ourselves off-balance.

  I could hear Candle grunting, and my own explosions of sweat only made me more aware of how tired my arm was getting already—and nothing had happened.

  Strange thoughts beat at my mind, and I had the feeling this was a play or some histrionic charade. It had to end; and then Candle’s arm would come up from below, and I’d counter with my own sleeve and the force of his swing would bounce off me, deadening my forearm, and I’d know it was no sham. This was the goods. I swung back in defense. He had me backing off now, as much as I was able to back off with that frigging hankie between my teeth, tethering me. I was starting to stoop over, and I knew it was a dead giveaway to the peon that I was weakening. He came on that much harder, and I found myself bouncing roundhouse slashes off my jacketed arm.

  One got through, I heard the leather rip heavily, and he’d brought across the first successful swing of the game. The sonofabitch moved in for an early kill.

  He brought it up from around his thigh, arcing over in a full overhead jab. It came down like a swooping hawk and I ducked aside, kicking him in the ass as he went
past. It threw him completely off-balance, and as he went skinning past me, the hankie snapped tight, nearly jerking him off his feet. He spun as best he could and wiggled the blade awkwardly in defense, trying to keep me away till he could get his feet under him.

  I didn’t give him a break. I juggled back, dragging him with me, but I moved too fast and almost fell over myself.

  In a moment we were both stable, both wary again, circling each other as before. I still had a slight edge because I was a southpaw, but it didn’t make up for his greater reach, and the fact that I was getting tired. I had a hunch he worked out with weights, the bastard.

  He parried and countered each thrust and riposte I tried to eel past him, and I did the same for his sloppy attacks. But we weren’t getting anywhere, and pretty quick one of us was going to goof and that was it.

  He called me a dirty name for vagina, through his clenched teeth, and I brought across a zig-zag slash from right to left that caught him with his guard lowered. I cut him on the chin—the blood came out in a thin, crooked line from his jawbone to his lower lip, and he squealed wildly. I felt a sudden exuberance; so this was what it was like to kill a man!

  It was worth doing, suddenly, and I knew how people could get carried away. It was plunging down a steep snowy hill on a sled, like whipping around a turn on a carnival ride, like flooring a car…it was strange and weird and wonderful—and then he cut me back.

  His knife sliced right through my jacket, my sweater, my shirt and my T-shirt, and entered my body, and all the fun and glamour and buoyancy were gone. It was pain. Terrible pain. Worse than falling down and cutting my face, and worse than being hurt for a reason. This was stupid, and it was death I was fooling with, not gamesmanship! This was no movie or TV act where we’d shake hands and walk away afterward. It was the McCoy, the goods, the real stuff, and I was scared again, worse than before.

  And still I fought on. Because I couldn’t do anything else.

  My hair broke loose from its careful, rigid pompadour, and flopped over my eyes. I couldn’t waste my knife-hand to swipe it away, though. I couldn’t blow it back away with my lips, so I tossed my head quickly, right at the top of a full-arm swing.

  It fell back and I resigned myself to my handicap. Candle’s hair was flat, gave him no trouble, but what he had considered an advantage—the heavy leather jacket—was not. Unlike mine, it was almost skin-tight, and the jacket bunched against the insides of his elbows, made swinging difficult, and sometimes cut short his reach.

  Then we went into an interminably long period of short, dagger-like thrusts and kicking. Around and around we went, and I don’t know how long it was, just the sound of my grunts and straining, the sounds of his exertions and sweat coming off the both of us. None of the others spoke. It was too much fun to watch.

  Candle kicked out with a faking movement and I leaped back, jerking Candle’s neck at the end of the hankie. But he fooled me…he came on instead of pulling back to right himself, and his arm went around my neck, and that knife was in back of me somewhere. My own arm was wedged in between us, the knife harmlessly hanging down between our legs. I fought in close to him, trying to break his stranglehold, and we nudged each other roughly with our shoulders, edging each other a few inches, then back again.

  I was starting to gray-out. He had my windpipe, somehow, and I knew another few moments would finish me. I lunged forward, carrying him with me, and banged my head down in a sharp, vicious bird-like peck. My forehead caught him squarely across his nose, and he fell back in pain, almost screaming, allowing the hankie to sag in the middle. I drew back to the end of the tether, and gasped hugely through my nose, trying to get the clouds and scum and cobwebs off my brain. Finally, I steadied myself for the swing I knew had to come. He thought he had me on the ropes—and he wasn’t far wrong—and he was going to put it all into one monstrous attempt. But the attack came from an entirely new direction. His knife hand stayed plainly in sight, and he kicked me square in the crotch.

  I felt the blood draining out of my face, and the pain came up like a screwdriver inserted in my privates. It was so bad I couldn’t make a sound. All air went out of me and I started to fall backward. He hit me again, with the balled fist and the handle of his knife, right across the left temple. Something popped my skull like an empty paper bag. I started to fall, and I grabbed out, and he came across with the knife again, going for my throat, and I threw up my hand, and I felt the razored edge of the blade slice across my palm. Blood spurted all over everything. Oh, Jeezus!

  I wanted to scream, but something made me hold that hankie between my teeth, no matter what, and I sank to my knees, wadding the cloth tighter as blood poured across my hand and down my arm.

  Candle stepped back for the death-swing and nothing, not a damned thing, passed before my eyes, except the steel that was about to be imbedded in my chest. It came up like a jet from around the peon’s knees as he bent to drive it further into me, and I jerked sidewise, throwing out one leg like a Russian Cossack dancer. Candle went on past me, over the leg, and down in a sprawling heap, ass over teakettle, and the hankie popped from his mouth with a soft snap.

  I was on my feet in an instant, and as he tried to get to his feet I kicked him squarely in the mouth. He went back down, bits of him all over the place. But he wasn’t finished. He tried it again, and this time I took him under the chin with the toe of my boot. His eyes rolled up in his head and he gagged and puked and fell right back over, the knife still clenched in his fist.

  I looked down at him lying there, ruined, and the hankie hanging idiotically from my mouth.

  The Barons went nuts. “Kill him! Jam him! Jam him! Knife the bastard, knife him, man, knife him!” they screamed, and everything whirled and spun and my flesh ached, and my groin was on fire, and the blood, oh Christ, the blood was all over my hands, and all over him, and everything…

  A foot came out of the crowd and jammed down on Candle’s hand with the knife, and then kicked the blade out of his reach. He was unconscious, completely out of it.

  “Get him, he was gonna put you down!” Goofball yelled, right in my ear.

  I stared down at him, lying there on his back, and for a second it all went away. The wind blew at me, and I heard the water, and freedom, and pity, and surliness and madness, and then it all went away again. My knees turned to peanut butter, my hands went limp, and I saw the sky as I went over backward, all gray-white and speckled with large dots of red and black and green and blue and then the black got bigger, and so help me God, I passed out with my feet almost touching Candle’s feet.

  I went far away, very fast.

  It didn’t last nearly as long as I wanted it to last. Very soon the black started to widen and draw down, like a big piece of black rubber, being stretched tight. Then it spread and grew thin in spots, and I saw gray, then white, behind it. Then the gray became an overall shade, and the painful spears and rents of white burst upon me fully.

  It was Filene’s face I saw, first thing. She had a look of absolute horror in her eyes, and at that moment I realized they were as brown as a candy bar. Her long, straight hair was hanging over her shoulders, and she had my head in her lap. It was straight out of McCall’s, and I didn’t mind a bit. I tried to raise myself, and everything blew out like an overloaded fuse. I went down again.

  It was a long time before I came back again, and when I did, my skin felt open at every pore. Someone—Filene and Fish, I learned later—had bound up the thin cut on my left forearm and the deeper gash in my palm. I was blood all over and my head ached from the garrotting I’d taken. There’s no use talking about the pain between my legs where he’d kneed me; it was unbelievable.

  They had Candle propped up against someone’s car wheel, and he was in very bad shape. It had not been too far away from total destruction; insanity had held me for a moment, and I saw how far one human being could go against another, if the reins were loosened. It made me very ill.

  Pooch came swaggering over, as though I
was a brother returned from the wars, and he threw an arm over me as Fish and a boy whose name I did not know lifted me to my feet. “Well, he’s all yours,” he said, waving a salutary hand at the fallen Candle.

  Then he handed me Candle’s blade. It was a big switch with green plastic side panels, made of Solingen steel and sharper than mine had been, even after my boning it for hours. That was it; Candle was mine. He was my bait; I was the victor, and if I wanted to open his jugular, they’d stand and watch (and Goofball would clap her hands in childish glee, no doubt). I could do as I pleased with his life. The law of the jungle was nakedly employed.

  Candle stared up at me as I tottered over to him, aided by Fish on my right arm. His eyes were turned up into the morning light, and I could see both an open fear and an omnipresent challenge. His lips were parted slightly, in an infinitely callous expression. He didn’t want to die, but he wasn’t going to crawl. Perhaps he wasn’t emotionally capable of crawling.

  I looked down at him for a long second, and his sneer grew like a flower opening to the sun. It spread across his peon face, and I found it difficult to combat it. For the first time in my life I literally held another person’s life in my hands. I could kill or not, as I chose.

  It was a heady feeling. There is no way to explain it; an Army infantryman, lying doggo in a ditch with his M-1 sights dead on an enemy, waiting to slowly squeeze off a round, knows what I mean. A housewife in Yonkers or Silver Spring, Maryland, can never know. It is unlike any other aphrodisiac or narcotic in the world. I had a knife, I had free passage, and I was master of not only my own Fate, but this gutter kid’s, as well.

  “I ought to put this right into you,” I said. It was a wasted effort. He knew the moment I spoke that I was going to let him live. He knew it, and the gang knew it. And their respect for me dropped a notch. I was a hardcase, there was no doubt of that; even though I was a short bastard the fight had proved I could handle myself; but I wouldn’t send that blade into Candle’s body, so I wasn’t a mean stud. I would never be able to take up residence in Death Row; they would never look on me as a cold number.