Free Boswell by Stanley Elkin

damn it,” my enemy said. “His arm gave a few inches that time. Come on. One. Two. Three.” They weren’t ready for him. The doctor lost his grip and his hand fell uselessly to the table.
    “Don’t let go, don’t let go!” my enemy screamed. The doctor rushed his arm back into the contest but he grabbed the hand of the old man’s son. “No,” the counter-hustler said in despair, “that’s your own man.” He released his grip on me and guided the doctor’s hand to a vacant area on my arm. “All right,” he pleaded, “another shove. We can rock him down if we swing our guts into it Are you ready for me to count?”
    The men grunted.
    “One,” he counted, “two—all right, thureee!”
    This time they came against me together. They shoved and pulled at my arm like men hauling down a flag. It was their lives’ most serious effort. My arm began to give. I thought they had broken it. A great pain, like something loose, slammed and tore through me. Pain came up my elbow like fire. I groaned. I could see tears on my fist. “No.” I screamed. “No. No. No! I will not be beaten. I will not be beaten. Because my heart is pure. Because my heart is pure!” Inches away from the table I was able to check the arm’s descent. They tried by sheer weight to force the arm the rest of the way down, but they had lost their rhythm again. Whatever it was that had brought them together, that had decided them to come to that bar in the first place—whatever mutuality of fate or luck or just plain taste that had caused each of them to accept my challenge, something monolithic in their lives which charted, categorized, classified them as though they were so many similar though perhaps not identical pieces of fruit—was gone. I hated them after all, my victims, because they could permit themselves to be my victims, because my victims were not great men, because my arm hurt. My arm went up easily, smoothly.
    They hung on for the rest of the seven minutes, clinging to my arm indifferently, as they would in emergency to some piece of baggage they could not quite decide to abandon. They were dispirited, each in some particular stage of despair, routed, finally, as all men are finally routed, as individuals.
    The old man called time and the hands came off my arm like so many birds quitting a branch.
    The bartender handed me my ten dollars.
    “No hard feelings,” my enemy said. “You were getting pretty sore there.”
    “No,” I said, “of course not.” I rubbed my arm, holding it up, offering it to them. “It hurts,” I said.
    “It was a good fight,” he said.
    “It certainly was,” I said.
    Was it? Was it? These particular victims didn’t think David Niven was cute—they thought he was a fag. These particular victims didn’t get spooked in bad neighborhoods. But these particular victims were victims, too. One didn’t do battle with them, one didn’t fight the good fight against them. Not the good fight. I was miserable. Where’s my life, huh, Herlitz? Herlitz?
    They wanted to buy me a drink. No, I said. They wanted to challenge me with five guys, with six. With seven. Like the guy in Dallas. With eight. Better than the guy in Dallas. No, I said, though I knew now I could win. No. They offered to empty all the bars, to flag down trucks, to call cops in off their beat. They offered money. They would sponsor me; I would be their boy, their champion. Who needed it? No, I said. No.
    I had forgotten first principles. I didn’t mean to be a character in a bar. All right, a strong man is not a bank president, but if he’s on a stage there’s some distance at least. People don’t know anything about him. They don’t even know his name. What was the name of the last magician you saw? Immortality is works—I insist on that. If people remember me I’ll be embarrassed. Damn a man’s body anyhow, as my Uncle Myles, the convulsive, says.
    I went back to Penner’s room, straightened it, then went to the market and