They had rebounded from each other and now stood with heaving chests, and with fists braced against their hips. Both, certainly, had taken a good blow or two, for their faces had grown wicked, and both protruded their lips with an indignant air, as much as to say: “What do you mean by hurting me that way?” Jappe’s eyes were red, and Do Escobar showed his white teeth, as they once more started in.
They now pummelled each other with all their might, alternately, and after brief pauses, upon the shoulders, the forearms, and the breast.
“That’s nothing,” said Johnny in his sweet voice. “They’ll never finish each other that way. They ought to hit each other under the chin, an upper cut under the chin. That settles it.”
In the meantime Do Escobar had seized both of Jappe’s arms with his left arm, holding them against his chest as in a vice, and with his right fist he belaboured Jappe’s ribs incessantly.
This caused a great commotion. “No clenching!” shouted a number of the spectators and leaped to their feet. Herr Knaak, with a frightened face, rushed into the middle of the “ring.” “No clenching!” he too shouted. “You are clenching, my dear friend! That is against the rules!” He separated them and once more admonished Do Escobar that clenching was absolutely forbidden. And then he once more withdrew behind the periphery.
Jappe was furious—that was plain to see. He was very pale and kept massaging his side, at the same time looking at Do Escobar and nodding his head slowly in a manner that boded no good. And when the next round began, his face bore an expression of such determination that all were sure that he would give the decisive blow.
And, really, as soon as the new encounter had begun, Jappe executed a coup—made use of a feint, which he had apparently thought out beforehand. A feint with the left towards the head caused Do Escobar to cover his face, but no sooner had he done this than Jappe’s right landed so hard in the region of the solar plexus that Do Escobar doubled up and his face took on the aspect of yellow wax.
“That went home,” said Johnny. “That hurts. And now it’s possible that he’ll pull himself together and go at it in earnest, so as to get even.”
But the blow in the stomach had been too heavy and it was clear that Do Escobar’s nervous system had suffered. One could see that he could no longer double his fists properly in order to land his blows, and his eyes had an expression as though he were not quite conscious. But as he felt that his muscles were giving way, he began, out of sheer vanity, to conduct himself as follows: he began to play the temperamental Latin, who was bent upon teasing the German bear by his nimbleness and thus driving him to desperation. He began to cavort all around Jappe in a small circle, taking short steps and making all kinds of superfluous movements, and then he attempted to laugh in an arrogant manner, which, considering his weakened condition, did not fail to make a heroic impression upon me. But Jappe did not grow at all desperate; he simply kept turning on his heel and delivering many a good blow, at the same time with his left arm fending off Do Escobar’s feeble and trifling attacks. What sealed Do Escobar’s fate, however, was the circumstance that his trousers kept constantly slipping down, so that even his striped undershirt began to creep out and up, revealing a strip of his bare, yellowish body, which caused some to laugh. Why had he taken off his braces? He should not have paid any attention to considerations of mere looks. For now his trousers incommoded him, had in fact incommoded him during the entire fight. He was always trying to tighten them, and to thrust his little undershirt inside them, for in spite of his evil state he could not bear the thought that he offered a deranged and comic spectacle. And so it happened, as he was still fighting with only one hand and trying to improve his toilet with the other, that Jappe gave him such a blow on the nose that I am still unable to understand to this day why it was not completely demolished.
The blood gushed forth and Do Escobar turned aside, trying to stop the blood with his right hand, and with his left he made a most eloquent gesture behind his back. Jappe still stood, his knock-kneed legs apart and with fists held in position, and waited for Do Escobar to come on again. But Do Escobar had had enough. If I understood him correctly, he was the more respectable of the two and had come to the opinion that it was high time to put an end to the game. Jappe, no doubt, would have continued to fight even with a bloody nose, but almost as surely Do Escobar would have refused his cooperation in this case, and so he did this all the more resolutely since it was he himself who was bleeding. His nose had been made to bleed—the devil!—things ought never to have gone as far as that, he thought! The blood ran down between his fingers upon his clothes, defiled his light-coloured trousers, and dripped upon his light-tan boots. This was simple beastliness, nothing else, and in such circumstances he simply refused to fight any longer, for that would have been inhuman.
And besides, his view of the situation was that of the majority. Herr Knaak came into the circle and declared the fight over. “Honour has been amply satisfied,” said he. “Both have put up a good fight.” One could see how greatly relieved he was that the affair had gone off so smoothly.
“But there was no knockout!” cried Johnny, astonished and disillusioned.
Jappe was also quite content to regard the case as settled and went towards his
