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The Game

Jack London

CHAPTER II


Genevieve and Joe were working-class aristocrats.  In an environment made
up largely of sordidness and wretchedness they had kept themselves
unsullied and wholesome.  Theirs was a self-respect, a regard for the
niceties and clean things of life, which had held them aloof from their
kind.  Friends did not come to them easily; nor had either ever possessed
a really intimate friend, a heart-companion with whom to chum and have
things in common.  The social instinct was strong in them, yet they had
remained lonely because they could not satisfy that instinct and at that
same time satisfy their desire for cleanness and decency.

If ever a girl of the working class had led the sheltered life, it was
Genevieve.  In the midst of roughness and brutality, she had shunned all
that was rough and brutal.  She saw but what she chose to see, and she
chose always to see the best, avoiding coarseness and uncouthness without
effort, as a matter of instinct.  To begin with, she had been peculiarly
unexposed.  An only child, with an invalid mother upon whom she attended,
she had not joined in the street games and frolics of the children of the
neighbourhood.  Her father, a mild-tempered, narrow-chested, anaemic
little clerk, domestic because of his inherent disability to mix with
men, had done his full share toward giving the home an atmosphere of
sweetness and tenderness.

An orphan at twelve, Genevieve had gone straight from her father's
funeral to live with the Silversteins in their rooms above the candy
store; and here, sheltered by kindly aliens, she earned her keep and
clothes by waiting on the shop.  Being Gentile, she was especially
necessary to the Silversteins, who would not run the business themselves
when the day of their Sabbath came round.

And here, in the uneventful little shop, six maturing years had slipped
by.  Her acquaintances were few.  She had elected to have no girl chum
for the reason that no satisfactory girl had appeared.  Nor did she
choose to walk with the young fellows of the neighbourhood, as was the
custom of girls from their fifteenth year.  "That stuck-up doll-face,"
was the way the girls of the neighbourhood described her; and though she
earned their enmity by her beauty and aloofness, she none the less
commanded their respect.  "Peaches and cream," she was called by the
young men--though softly and amongst themselves, for they were afraid of
arousing the ire of the other girls, while they stood in awe of
Genevieve, in a dimly religious way, as a something mysteriously
beautiful and unapproachable.

For she was indeed beautiful.  Springing from a long line of American
descent, she was one of those wonderful working-class blooms which
occasionally appear, defying all precedent of forebears and environment,
apparently without cause or explanation.  She was a beauty in color, the
blood spraying her white skin so deliciously as to earn for her the apt
description, "peaches and cream."  She was a beauty in the regularity of
her features; and, if for no other reason, she was a beauty in the mere
delicacy of the lines on which she was moulded.  Quiet, low-voiced,
stately, and dignified, she somehow had the knack of dress, and but
befitted her beauty and dignity with anything she put on.  Withal, she
was sheerly feminine, tender and soft and clinging, with the smouldering
passion of the mate and the motherliness of the woman.  But this side of
her nature had lain dormant through the years, waiting for the mate to
appear.

Then Joe came into Silverstein's shop one hot Saturday afternoon to cool
himself with ice-cream soda.  She had not noticed his entrance, being
busy with one other customer, an urchin of six or seven who gravely
analyzed his desires before the show-case wherein truly generous and
marvellous candy creations reposed under a cardboard announcement, "Five
for Five Cents."

She had heard, "Ice-cream soda, please," and had herself asked, "What
flavor?" without seeing his face.  For that matter, it was not a custom
of hers to notice young men.  There was something about them she did not
understand.  The way they looked at her made her uncomfortable, she knew
not why; while there was an uncouthness and roughness about them that did
not please her.  As yet, her imagination had been untouched by man.  The
young fellows she had seen had held no lure for her, had been without
meaning to her.  In short, had she been asked to give one reason for the
existence of men on the earth, she would have been nonplussed for a
reply.

As she emptied the measure of ice-cream into the glass, her casual glance
rested on Joe's face, and she experienced on the instant a pleasant
feeling of satisfaction.  The next instant his eyes were upon her face,
her eyes had dropped, and she was turning away toward the soda fountain.
But at the fountain, filling the glass, she was impelled to look at him
again--but for no more than an instant, for this time she found his eyes
already upon her, waiting to meet hers, while on his face was a frankness
of interest that caused her quickly to look away.

That such pleasingness would reside for her in any man astonished her.
"What a pretty boy," she thought to herself, innocently and instinctively
trying to ward off the power to hold and draw her that lay behind the
mere prettiness.  "Besides, he isn't pretty," she thought, as she placed
the glass before him, received the silver dime in payment, and for the
third time looked into his eyes.  Her vocabulary was limited, and she
knew little of the worth of words; but the strong masculinity of his
boy's face told her that the term was inappropriate.

"He must be handsome, then," was her next thought, as she again dropped
her eyes before his.  But all good-looking men were called handsome, and
that term, too, displeased her.  But whatever it was, he was good to see,
and she was irritably aware of a desire to look at him again and again.

As for Joe, he had never seen anything like this girl across the counter.
While he was wiser in natural philosophy than she, and could have given
immediately the reason for woman's existence on the earth, nevertheless
woman had no part in his cosmos.  His imagination was as untouched by
woman as the girl's was by man.  But his imagination was touched now, and
the woman was Genevieve.  He had never dreamed a girl could be so
beautiful, and he could not keep his eyes from her face.  Yet every time
he looked at her, and her eyes met his, he felt painful embarrassment,
and would have looked away had not her eyes dropped so quickly.

But when, at last, she slowly lifted her eyes and held their gaze
steadily, it was his own eyes that dropped, his own cheek that mantled
red.  She was much less embarrassed than he, while she betrayed her
embarrassment not at all.  She was aware of a flutter within, such as she
had never known before, but in no way did it disturb her outward
serenity.  Joe, on the contrary, was obviously awkward and delightfully
miserable.

Neither knew love, and all that either was aware was an overwhelming
desire to look at the other.  Both had been troubled and roused, and they
were drawing together with the sharpness and imperativeness of uniting
elements.  He toyed with his spoon, and flushed his embarrassment over
his soda, but lingered on; and she spoke softly, dropped her eyes, and
wove her witchery about him.

But he could not linger forever over a glass of ice-cream soda, while he
did not dare ask for a second glass.  So he left her to remain in the
shop in a waking trance, and went away himself down the street like a
somnambulist.  Genevieve dreamed through the afternoon and knew that she
was in love.  Not so with Joe.  He knew only that he wanted to look at
her again, to see her face.  His thoughts did not get beyond this, and
besides, it was scarcely a thought, being more a dim and inarticulate
desire.

The urge of this desire he could not escape.  Day after day it worried
him, and the candy shop and the girl behind the counter continually
obtruded themselves.  He fought off the desire.  He was afraid and
ashamed to go back to the candy shop.  He solaced his fear with, "I ain't
a ladies' man."  Not once, nor twice, but scores of times, he muttered
the thought to himself, but it did no good.  And by the middle of the
week, in the evening, after work, he came into the shop.  He tried to
come in carelessly and casually, but his whole carriage advertised the
strong effort of will that compelled his legs to carry his reluctant body
thither.  Also, he was shy, and awkwarder than ever.  Genevieve, on the
contrary, was serener than ever, though fluttering most alarmingly
within.  He was incapable of speech, mumbled his order, looked anxiously
at the clock, despatched his ice-cream soda in tremendous haste, and was
gone.

She was ready to weep with vexation.  Such meagre reward for four days'
waiting, and assuming all the time that she loved!  He was a nice boy and
all that, she knew, but he needn't have been in so disgraceful a hurry.
But Joe had not reached the corner before he wanted to be back with her
again.  He just wanted to look at her.  He had no thought that it was
love.  Love?  That was when young fellows and girls walked out together.
As for him--And then his desire took sharper shape, and he discovered
that that was the very thing he wanted her to do.  He wanted to see her,
to look at her, and well could he do all this if she but walked out with
him.  Then that was why the young fellows and girls walked out together,
he mused, as the week-end drew near.  He had remotely considered this
walking out to be a mere form or observance preliminary to matrimony.  Now
he saw the deeper wisdom in it, wanted it himself, and concluded
therefrom that he was in love.

Both were now of the same mind, and there could be but the one ending;
and it was the mild nine days' wonder of Genevieve's neighborhood when
she and Joe walked out together.

Both were blessed with an avarice of speech, and because of it their
courtship was a long one.  As he expressed himself in action, she
expressed herself in repose and control, and by the love-light in her
eyes--though this latter she would have suppressed in all maiden modesty
had she been conscious of the speech her heart printed so plainly there.
"Dear" and "darling" were too terribly intimate for them to achieve
quickly; and, unlike most mating couples, they did not overwork the love-
words.  For a long time they were content to walk together in the
evenings, or to sit side by side on a bench in the park, neither uttering
a word for an hour at a time, merely gazing into each other's eyes, too
faintly luminous in the starshine to be a cause for self-consciousness
and embarrassment.

He was as chivalrous and delicate in his attention as any knight to his
lady.  When they walked along the street, he was careful to be on the
outside,--somewhere he had heard that this was the proper thing to
do,--and when a crossing to the opposite side of the street put him on
the inside, he swiftly side-stepped behind her to gain the outside again.
He carried her parcels for her, and once, when rain threatened, her
umbrella.  He had never heard of the custom of sending flowers to one's
lady-love, so he sent Genevieve fruit instead.  There was utility in
fruit.  It was good to eat.  Flowers never entered his mind, until, one
day, he noticed a pale rose in her hair.  It drew his gaze again and
again.  It was _her_ hair, therefore the presence of the flower
interested him.  Again, it interested him because _she_ had chosen to put
it there.  For these reasons he was led to observe the rose more closely.
He discovered that the effect in itself was beautiful, and it fascinated
him.  His ingenuous delight in it was a delight to her, and a new and
mutual love-thrill was theirs--because of a flower.  Straightway he
became a lover of flowers.  Also, he became an inventor in gallantry.  He
sent her a bunch of violets.  The idea was his own.  He had never heard
of a man sending flowers to a woman.  Flowers were used for decorative
purposes, also for funerals.  He sent Genevieve flowers nearly every day,
and so far as he was concerned the idea was original, as positive an
invention as ever arose in the mind of man.

He was tremulous in his devotion to her--as tremulous as was she in her
reception of him.  She was all that was pure and good, a holy of holies
not lightly to be profaned even by what might possibly be the too ardent
reverence of a devotee.  She was a being wholly different from any he had
ever known.  She was not as other girls.  It never entered his head that
she was of the same clay as his own sisters, or anybody's sister.  She
was more than mere girl, than mere woman.  She was--well, she was
Genevieve, a being of a class by herself, nothing less than a miracle of
creation.

And for her, in turn, there was in him but little less of illusion.  Her
judgment of him in minor things might be critical (while his judgment of
her was sheer worship, and had in it nothing critical at all); but in her
judgment of him as a whole she forgot the sum of the parts, and knew him
only as a creature of wonder, who gave meaning to life, and for whom she
could die as willingly as she could live.  She often beguiled her waking
dreams of him with fancied situations, wherein, dying for him, she at
last adequately expressed the love she felt for him, and which, living,
she knew she could never fully express.

Their love was all fire and dew.  The physical scarcely entered into it,
for such seemed profanation.  The ultimate physical facts of their
relation were something which they never considered.  Yet the immediate
physical facts they knew, the immediate yearnings and raptures of the
flesh--the touch of finger tips on hand or arm, the momentary pressure of
a hand-clasp, the rare lip-caress of a kiss, the tingling thrill of her
hair upon his cheek, of her hand lightly thrusting back the locks from
above his eyes.  All this they knew, but also, and they knew not why,
there seemed a hint of sin about these caresses and sweet bodily
contacts.

There were times when she felt impelled to throw her arms around him in a
very abandonment of love, but always some sanctity restrained her.  At
such moments she was distinctly and unpleasantly aware of some unguessed
sin that lurked within her.  It was wrong, undoubtedly wrong, that she
should wish to caress her lover in so unbecoming a fashion.  No
self-respecting girl could dream of doing such a thing.  It was
unwomanly.  Besides, if she had done it, what would he have thought of
it?  And while she contemplated so horrible a catastrophe, she seemed to
shrivel and wilt in a furnace of secret shame.

Nor did Joe escape the prick of curious desires, chiefest among which,
perhaps, was the desire to hurt Genevieve.  When, after long and tortuous
degrees, he had achieved the bliss of putting his arm round her waist, he
felt spasmodic impulses to make the embrace crushing, till she should cry
out with the hurt.  It was not his nature to wish to hurt any living
thing.  Even in the ring, to hurt was never the intention of any blow he
struck.  In such case he played the Game, and the goal of the Game was to
down an antagonist and keep that antagonist down for a space of ten
seconds.  So he never struck merely to hurt; the hurt was incidental to
the end, and the end was quite another matter.  And yet here, with this
girl he loved, came the desire to hurt.  Why, when with thumb and
forefinger he had ringed her wrist, he should desire to contract that
ring till it crushed, was beyond him.  He could not understand, and felt
that he was discovering depths of brutality in his nature of which he had
never dreamed.

Once, on parting, he threw his arms around her and swiftly drew her
against him.  Her gasping cry of surprise and pain brought him to his
senses and left him there very much embarrassed and still trembling with
a vague and nameless delight.  And she, too, was trembling.  In the hurt
itself, which was the essence of the vigorous embrace, she had found
delight; and again she knew sin, though she knew not its nature nor why
it should be sin.

Came the day, very early in their walking out, when Silverstein chanced
upon Joe in his store and stared at him with saucer-eyes.  Came likewise
the scene, after Joe had departed, when the maternal feelings of Mrs.
Silverstein found vent in a diatribe against all prize-fighters and
against Joe Fleming in particular.  Vainly had Silverstein striven to
stay the spouse's wrath.  There was need for her wrath.  All the maternal
feelings were hers but none of the maternal rights.

Genevieve was aware only of the diatribe; she knew a flood of abuse was
pouring from the lips of the Jewess, but she was too stunned to hear the
details of the abuse.  Joe, her Joe, was Joe Fleming the prize-fighter.
It was abhorrent, impossible, too grotesque to be believable.  Her clear-
eyed, girl-cheeked Joe might be anything but a prize-fighter.  She had
never seen one, but he in no way resembled her conception of what a prize-
fighter must be--the human brute with tiger eyes and a streak for a
forehead.  Of course she had heard of Joe Fleming--who in West Oakland
had not?--but that there should be anything more than a coincidence of
names had never crossed her mind.

She came out of her daze to hear Mrs. Silverstein's hysterical sneer,
"keepin' company vit a bruiser."  Next, Silverstein and his wife fell to
differing on "noted" and "notorious" as applicable to her lover.

"But he iss a good boy," Silverstein was contending.  "He make der money,
an' he safe der money."

"You tell me dat!" Mrs. Silverstein screamed.  "Vat you know?  You know
too much.  You spend good money on der prize-fighters.  How you know?
Tell me dat!  How you know?"

"I know vat I know," Silverstein held on sturdily--a thing Genevieve had
never before seen him do when his wife was in her tantrums.  "His fader
die, he go to work in Hansen's sail-loft.  He haf six brudders an'
sisters younger as he iss.  He iss der liddle fader.  He vork hard, all
der time.  He buy der pread an' der meat, an' pay der rent.  On Saturday
night he bring home ten dollar.  Den Hansen gif him twelve dollar--vat he
do?  He iss der liddle fader, he bring it home to der mudder.  He vork
all der time, he get twenty dollar--vat he do?  He bring it home.  Der
liddle brudders an' sisters go to school, vear good clothes, haf better
pread an' meat; der mudder lif fat, dere iss joy in der eye, an' she iss
proud of her good boy Joe.

"But he haf der beautiful body--ach, Gott, der beautiful body!--stronger
as der ox, k-vicker as der tiger-cat, der head cooler as der ice-box, der
eyes vat see eferytings, k-vick, just like dat.  He put on der gloves vit
der boys at Hansen's loft, he put on der gloves vit de boys at der
varehouse.  He go before der club; he knock out der Spider, k-vick, one
punch, just like dat, der first time.  Der purse iss five dollar--vat he
do?  He bring it home to der mudder.

"He go many times before der clubs; he get many purses--ten dollar, fifty
dollar, one hundred dollar.  Vat he do?  Tell me dat!  Quit der job at
Hansen's?  Haf der good time vit der boys?  No, no; he iss der good boy.
He vork efery day.  He fight at night before der clubs.  He say, 'Vat for
I pay der rent, Silverstein?'--to me, Silverstein, he say dat.  Nefer
mind vat I say, but he buy der good house for der mudder.  All der time
he vork at Hansen's and fight before der clubs to pay for der house.  He
buy der piano for der sisters, der carpets, der pictures on der vall.  An'
he iss all der time straight.  He bet on himself--dat iss der good sign.
Ven der man bets on himself dat is der time you bet too--"

Here Mrs. Silverstein groaned her horror of gambling, and her husband,
aware that his eloquence had betrayed him, collapsed into voluble
assurances that he was ahead of the game.  "An' all because of Joe
Fleming," he concluded.  "I back him efery time to vin."

But Genevieve and Joe were preeminently mated, and nothing, not even this
terrible discovery, could keep them apart.  In vain Genevieve tried to
steel herself against him; but she fought herself, not him.  To her
surprise she discovered a thousand excuses for him, found him lovable as
ever; and she entered into his life to be his destiny, and to control him
after the way of women.  She saw his future and hers through glowing
vistas of reform, and her first great deed was when she wrung from him
his promise to cease fighting.

And he, after the way of men, pursuing the dream of love and striving for
possession of the precious and deathless object of desire, had yielded.
And yet, in the very moment of promising her, he knew vaguely, deep down,
that he could never abandon the Game; that somewhere, sometime, in the
future, he must go back to it.  And he had had a swift vision of his
mother and brothers and sisters, their multitudinous wants, the house
with its painting and repairing, its street assessments and taxes, and of
the coming of children to him and Genevieve, and of his own daily wage in
the sail-making loft.  But the next moment the vision was dismissed, as
such warnings are always dismissed, and he saw before him only Genevieve,
and he knew only his hunger for her and the call of his being to her; and
he accepted calmly her calm assumption of his life and actions.

He was twenty, she was eighteen, boy and girl, the pair of them, and made
for progeny, healthy and normal, with steady blood pounding through their
bodies; and wherever they went together, even on Sunday outings across
the bay amongst people who did not know him, eyes were continually drawn
to them.  He matched her girl's beauty with his boy's beauty, her grace
with his strength, her delicacy of line and fibre with the harsher vigor
and muscle of the male.  Frank-faced, fresh-colored, almost ingenuous in
expression, eyes blue and wide apart, he drew and held the gaze of more
than one woman far above him in the social scale.  Of such glances and
dim maternal promptings he was quite unconscious, though Genevieve was
quick to see and understand; and she knew each time the pang of a fierce
joy in that he was hers and that she held him in the hollow of her hand.
He did see, however, and rather resented, the men's glances drawn by her.
These, too, she saw and understood as he did not dream of understanding.
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