Chapter 1 A Piece of Steak

2018-04-15 作者： 外研社编译组

Chapter 1 A Piece of Steak

Www.Pinwenba.Com 吧by Jack London

With the last morsel of bread Tom King wiped his plate clean of the last particle of flour gravy and chewed the resulting mouthful in a slow and meditative way.When he arose from the table, he was oppressed by the feeling that he was distinctly hungry.Yet he alone had eaten.The two children in the other room had been sent early to bed in order that in sleep they might forget they had gone supperless.His wife had touched nothing, and had sat silently and watched him with solicitous eyes.She was a thin, worn woman of the working class, though signs of an earlier prettiness were not wanting in her face.The flour for the gravy she had borrowed from the neighbor across the hall.The last two ha’pennies had gone to buy the bread.

He sat down by the window on a rickety chair that protested under his weight, and quite mechanically he put his pipe in his mouth and dipped into the side pocket of his coat.The absence of any tobacco made him aware of his action, and, with a scowl for his forgetfulness, he put the pipe away.His movements were slow, almost hulking, as though he were burdened by the heavy weight of his muscles.He was a solid bodied, stolid looking man, and his appearance did not suffer from being overprepossessing.His rough clothes were old and slouchy.The uppers of his shoes were too weak to carry the heavy resoling that was itself of no recent date.And his cotton shirt, a cheap, two shilling affair, showed a frayed collar and ineradicable paint stains.

But it was Tom King’s face that advertised him unmistakably for what he was.It was the face of a typical prize fighter; of one who had put in long years of service in the squared ring and, by that means, developed and emphasized all the marks of the fighting beast.It was distinctly a lowering countenance, and, that no feature of it might escape notice, it was clean shaven.The lips were shapeless, and constituted a mouth harsh to excess, that was like a gash in his face.

The jaw was aggressive, brutal, heavy.The eyes, slow of movement and heavy lidded, were almost expressionless under the shaggy, indrawn brows.Sheer animal that he was, the eyes were the most animal like feature about him.They were sleepy, lion like the eyes of a fighting animal.The forehead slanted quickly back to the hair, which, clipped close, showed every bump of a villainous looking head.A nose, twice broken and moulded variously by countless blows, and a cauliflower ear, permanently swollen and distorted to twice its size, completed his adornment, while the beard, fresh shaven as it was, sprouted in the skin and gave the face a blue black stain.

All together, it was the face of a man to be afraid of in a dark alley or lonely place.And yet Tom King was not a criminal, nor had he ever done anything criminal.Outside of brawls, common to his walk in life, he had harmed no one.Nor had he ever been known to pick a quarrel.He was a professional, and all the fighting brutishness of him was reserved for his professional appearances.Outside the ring he was slow going, easy natured, and, in his younger days, when money was flush, too open handed for his own good.He bore no grudges and had few enemies.Fighting was a business with him.

In the ring he struck to hurt, struck to maim, struck to destroy; but there was no animus in it.It was a plain business proposition.Audiences assembled and paid for the spectacle of men knocking each other out.The winner took the big end of the purse.When Tom King faced the Woolloomoolloo Gouger, twenty years before, he knew that the Gouger’s jaw was only four months healed after having been broken in a Newcastle bout.And he had played for that jaw and broken it again in the ninth round, not because he bore the Gouger any ill will, but because that was the surest way to put the Gouger out and win the big end of the purse.Nor had the Gouger borne him any ill will for it.It was the game, and both knew the game and played it.

Tom King had never been a talker, and he sat by the window, morosely silent, staring at his hands.The veins stood out on the backs of the hands, large and swollen; and the knuckles, smashed and battered and malformed, testified to the use to which they had been put.He had never heard that a man’s life was the life of his arteries, but well he knew the meaning of those big, upstanding veins.His heart had pumped too much blood through them at top pressure.They no longer did the work.He had stretched the elasticity out of them, and with their distention had passed his endurance.He tired easily now.

No longer could he do a fast twenty rounds, hammer and tongs, fight, fight, fight, from gong to gong, with fierce rally on top of fierce rally, beaten to the ropes and in turn beating his opponent to the ropes, and rallying fiercest and fastest of all in that last, twentieth round, with the house on its feet and yelling, himself rushing, striking, ducking, raining showers of blows upon showers of blows and receiving showers of blows in return, and all the time the heart faithfully pumping the surging blood through the adequate veins.The veins, swollen at the time, had always shrunk down again, though not quite each time, imperceptibly at first, remaining just a trifle larger than before.He stared at them and at his battered knuckles, and, for the moment, caught a vision of the youthful excellence of those hands before the first knuckle had been smashed on the head of Benny Jones, otherwise known as the Welsh Terror.

The impression of his hunger came back on him.

“Blimey, but couldn’t I go a piece of steak!” he muttered aloud, clenching his huge fists and spitting out a smothered oath.

“I tried both Burke’s an’ Sawley’s,” his wife said half apologetically.

“An’ they wouldn’t?” he demanded.

“Not a ha’penny. Burke said ”She faltered.“G’wan!Wot’dhe say?”

“As how ’e was thinkin’ Sandel ud do ye to night, an’ as how yer score was comfortable big as it was.”

Tom King grunted, but did not reply.He was busy thinking of the bull terrier he had kept in his younger days to which he had fed steaks without end.Burke would have given him credit for a thousand steaks then.But times had changed.Tom King was getting old; and old men, fighting before second rate clubs, couldn’t expect to run bills of any size with the tradesmen.

He had got up in the morning with a longing for a piece of steak, and the longing had not abated.He had not had a fair training for this fight.It was a drought year in Australia, times were hard, and even the most irregular work was difficult to find.He had had no sparring partner, and his food had not been of the best nor always sufficient.He had done a few days’ navvy work when he could get it, and he had run around the Domain in the early mornings to get his legs in shape.

But it was hard, training without a partner and with a wife and two kiddies that must be fed.Credit with the tradesmen had undergone very slight expansion when he was matched with Sandel.The secretary of the Gayety Club had advanced him three pounds the loser’s end of the purse and beyond that had refused to go.Now and again he had managed to borrow a few shillings from old pals, who would have lent more only that it was a drought year and they were hard put themselves.No and there was no use in disguising the fact his training had not been satisfactory.He should have had better food and no worries.Besides, when a man is forty, it is harder to get into condition than when he is twenty.

“What time is it, Lizzie?” he asked.

His wife went across the hall to inquire, and came back.

“Quarter before eight.”

“They’ll be startin’ the first bout in a few minutes,” he said.“Only a try out.Then there’s a four round spar ’tween Dealer Wells an’ Gridley, an’ a ten round go ’tween Starlight an’ some sailor bloke. don’t come on for over an hour.”

At the end of another silent ten minutes, he rose to his feet.

“Truth is, Lizzie, I ain’t had proper trainin’.”

He reached for his hat and started for the door.He did not offer to kiss her he never did on going out but on this night she dared to kiss him, throwing her arms around him and compelling him to bend down to her face.She looked quite small against the massive bulk of the man.

“Good luck, Tom,” she said.“You gotter do ’im.”

“Ay, I gotter do ’im,” he repeated.“That’s all there is to it.I jus’ gotter do ’im.”

He laughed with an attempt at heartiness, while she pressed more closely against him.Across her shoulders he looked around the bare room.It was all he had in the world, with the rent overdue, and her and the kiddies.And he was leaving it to go out into the night to get meat for his mate and cubs not like a modern working man going to his machine grind, but in the old, primitive, royal, animal way, by fighting for it.“I gotter do ’im,” he repeated, this time a hint of desperation in his voice.“If it’s a win, it’s thirty quid an’ I can pay all that’s owin’, with a lump o’ money left over.If it’s a lose, I get naught not even a penny for me to ride home on the tram.The secretary’s give all that’s comin’ from a loser’s end.Good by, old woman.I’ll come straight home if it’s a win.”

“An’ I’ll be waitin’ up,” she called to him along the hall.

It was full two miles to the Gayety, and as he walked along he remembered how in his palmy days he had once been the heavyweight champion of New South Wales he would have ridden in a cab to the fight, and how, most likely, some heavy backer would have paid for the cab and ridden with him.There were Tommy Burns and that Yankee nigger, Jack Johnson they rode about in motor cars.And he walked!And, as any man knew, a hard two miles was not the best preliminary to a fight.He was an old un, and the world did not wag well with old uns.He was good for nothing now except navvy work, and his broken nose and swollen ear were against him even in that.

He found himself wishing that he had learned a trade.It would have been better in the long run.But no one had told him, and he knew, deep down in his heart, that he would not have listened if they had.It had been so easy.Big money sharp, glorious fights periods of rest and loafing in between a following of eager flatterers, the slaps on the back, the shakes ofthe hand, the toffs glad to buy him a drink for the privilege of five minutes’ talk and the glory of it, the yelling houses, the whirlwind finish, the referee’s “King wins!” and his name in the sporting columns next day.

Those had been times!But he realized now, in his slow, ruminating way, that it was the old uns he had been putting away.He was Youth, rising; and they were Age, sinking.No wonder it had been easy they with their swollen veins and battered knuckles and weary in the bones of them from the long battles they had already fought.He remembered the time he put out old Stowsher Bill, at Rush Cutters Bay, in the eighteenth round, and how old Bill had cried afterward in the dressing room like a baby.Perhaps old Bill’s rent had been overdue.

Perhaps he’d had at home a missus an’ a couple of kiddies.And perhaps Bill, that very day of the fight, had had a hungering for a piece of steak.Bill had fought game and taken incredible punishment.He could see now, after he had gone through the mill himself, that Stowsher Bill had fought for a bigger stake, that night twenty years ago, than had young Tom King, who had fought for glory and easy money.No wonder Stowsher Bill had cried afterward in the dressing room.

Well, a man had only so many fights in him, to begin with.It was the iron law of the game.One man might have a hundred hard fights in him, another man only twenty; each, according to the make of him and the quality of his fibre, had a definite number, and, when he had fought them, he was done.Yes, he had had more fights in him than most of them, and he had had far more than his share of the hard, gruelling fights the kind that worked the heart and lungs to bursting, that took the elastic out of the arteries and made hard knots of muscle out of Youth’s sleek suppleness, that wore out nerve and stamina and made brain and bones weary from excess of effort and endurance overwrought.Yes, he had done better than all of them.There was none of his old fighting partners left.He was the last of the old guard.He had seen them all finished, and he had had a hand in finishing some of them.

They had tried him out against the old uns, and one after another he had put them away laughing when, like old Stowsher Bill, they cried in the dressing room.And now he was an old un, and they tried out the youngsters on him.There was that bloke, Sandel.He had come over from New Zealand with a record behind him.But nobody in Australia knew anything about him, so they put him up against old Tom King.If Sandel made a showing, he would be given better men to fight, with bigger purses to win; so it was to be depended upon that he would put up a fierce battle.

He had everything to win by it money and glory and career; and Tom King was the grizzled old chopping block that guarded the highway to fame and fortune.And he had nothing to win except thirty quid, to pay to the landlord and the tradesmen.And, as Tom King thus ruminated, there came to his stolid vision the form of Youth, glorious Youth, rising exultant and invincible, supple of muscle and silken of skin, with heart and lungs that had never been tired and torn and that laughed at limitation of effort.Yes, Youth was the Nemesis.It destroyed the old uns and recked not that, in so doing, it destroyed itself.It enlarged its arteries and smashed its knuckles, and was in turn destroyed by Youth.For Youth was ever youthful.It was only Age that grew old.

At Castlereagh Street he turned to the left, and three blocks along came to the Gayety.A crowd of young larrikins hanging outside the door made respectful way for him, and he heard one say to another:“That’s ’im! That’s Tom King!”

Inside, on the way to his dressing room, he encountered the secretary, a keen eyed, shrewd faced young man, who shook his hand.

“How are you feelin’, Tom?” he asked.

“Fit as a fiddle,” King answered, though he knew that he lied, and that if he had a quid, he would give it right there for a good piece of steak.

When he emerged from the dressing room, his seconds behind him, and came down the aisle to the squared ring in the centre of the hall, a burst of greeting and applause went up from the waiting crowd.He acknowledged salutations right and left, though few of the faces did he know.Most of them were the faces of kiddies unborn when he was winning his first laurels in the squared ring.He leaped lightly to the raised platform and ducked through the ropes to his corner, where he sat down on a folding stool.Jack Ball, the referee, came over and shook his hand.Ball was a broken down pugilist who for over ten years had not entered the ring as a principal.King was glad that he had him for referee.They were both old uns.If he should rough it with Sandel a bit beyond the rules, he knew Ball could be depended upon to pass it by.

Aspiring young heavyweights, one after another, were climbing into the ring and being presented to the audience by the referee.Also, he issued their challenges for them.

“Young Pronto,” Ball announced, “from North Sydney, challenges the winner for fifty pounds side bet.”