He excused himself politely for his belated arrival. A discussion with the directors of the Kurhaus in connection with the “reunion” on Saturday evening had detained him. “Are the combatants on hand?” he then asked in a firm voice. “Then we can begin.” Leaning on his cane and crossing his feet, he stood outside our circle, began gnawing his brown moustache with his lower lip, and narrowed his eyes darkly like an expert.
Jappe and Do Escobar stood up, threw away their cigarettes, and began to make ready for the fight. Do Escobar did so with most impressive swiftness and dispatch. He threw his hat, his jacket and waistcoat upon the ground, unloosed his cravat, unbuttoned his collar and suspenders, and cast them upon the same pile. He even pulled his rose-coloured shirt with attached cuffs out of his trousers, wriggled nimbly out of the sleeves, and stood there in a red and white striped undershirt with short sleeves which revealed his tawny arms, already covered with black hair, bare to the middle of his biceps.
“At your service, sir,” he said, rolling his R’s, and stepped swiftly into the centre of the field, throwing out his chest and adjusting his shoulder-blades with a jerk. He had kept on his silver bracelet.
Jappe, who was not yet ready, turned his head towards him, and with raised brows and eyelids almost closed, looked at his feet for a moment, as though he would say: “Be so good as to wait. I’ll come all right, even without those monkey-shines of yours.” Although he was broader in the shoulders, he did not appear half so athletic and fit for the fight as Do Escobar, as he stood up to him. His legs, in the tight-fitting breeches with the strap, were knock-kneed, and his soft shirt, already somewhat yellowed, with the wide sleeves closed at the wrists by plain pearl buttons, and crossed by grey elastic suspenders, looked like nothing, whilst Do Escobar’s striped undershirt and especially the black hairs upon his arms conveyed an extraordinarily pugnacious and dangerous impression. Both were pale, but this was more noticeable in Jappe, because he usually had red cheeks. He had the face of a merry and rather brutal towhead with a pug-nose, covered with a sprinkling of freckles. Do Escobar’s nose, on the other hand, was short, straight, and inclined to droop, and there was a dark trace of moustache upon his pouting upper lip.
They stood with hanging arms almost chest to chest and each stared at the abdominal region of the other with sinister and contemptuous mien. It was obvious that they did not know what they were to do with each other, and that was what I, too, distinctly felt. Since their encounter a whole night and half a day had elapsed and the zest for hammering each other, which had been so active only the night before and which had been bridled only by their chivalrousness, had had time to cool off. And now at a fixed hour, in cold blood and in the face of an assembled audience, they were supposed, at a word of command, to do that which they would so gladly have done yesterday out of sheer living impulse. And finally, after all, they were well-behaved boys and not ancient gladiators. Calm reason surely induces a human reluctance to pummel somebody’s sound body to pieces with one’s fists. Such were my thoughts and such, no doubt, was the truth.
But as something had to be done for sheer honour’s sake, they began to prod each other’s chests with the ends of their five outspread fingers, as though they believed, in mutual contempt, that each could level his opponent to the ground by so slight an effort, and also with the obvious intention of irritating each other. The moment, however, that Jappe’s face began to contort itself, Do Escobar broke off this preliminary skirmish.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” said he, as he retreated two steps and turned aside. He did this in order to draw the buckle at the back of his trousers tighter, for he had taken off his braces, and, as he was narrow in the hips, it is likely that his trousers had begun to slip down. After he had once more girded up his loins, he uttered some rattling phrase, something gummy, something Spanish, which no one understood and which was no-doubt meant to signify that he was now readier than ever, threw back his shoulders once more, and stepped forward. It was clear that he was supremely vain.
The skirmishing with shoulders and open hands began again. But suddenly, quite unexpectedly, there was a short, blind, violent tussle, a whirling mix-up of fists, which lasted three seconds and which then broke off just as suddenly.
“Now they’re in form,” said Johnny, who sat beside me and held a dry grass-stalk in his mouth. “I’ll bet you that Jappe will get the best of him. Do Escobar is too showy. Just see! he is always squinting at the other! Jappe has himself well in hand. Will you bet that he’ll lick
