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By Root 6110 0

say to myself, “Dance, dance, dance, dance!” Convinced that mastery of the game depends upon dancing. But gangsters and businessmen, translating their occupational style into these matches, outdance me and win. I tell myself that when I achieve mental and spiritual clarity and translate these into play nobody will be able to touch me. Nobody. I’ll beat everyone. Meantime, notwithstanding the clouded spiritual state that prevents me from winning, I play violently because I get desperate without strenuous action. Just desperate. And now and then one of the middle-aged athletes keels over. Rushed to the hospital, some players have never come back. Langobardi and I played Cut-Throat (the three-man game) with a man named Hildenfisch, who succumbed to a heart attack. We had noticed that Hildenfisch had been panting. Afterward he went to rest in the sauna and someone ran out saying, “Hildenfisch has fainted.” When the black attendants laid him on the floor he spurted water. I knew what this loss of sphincter control meant. Mechanical resuscitation equipment was sent for but nobody knew how to operate it.

At times when I pushed too hard at the game, Scottie, the athletic director, told me to quit. “Stop and look at yourself, Charlie. You’re purple.” In the mirror I was gruesome, gushing sweat, dark, black, my heart clubbing away inside. I felt slightly deaf. The eustachian tubes! I made my own diagnosis. Owing to the blood pressure my tubes were crinkling. “Walk it off,” said Scottie. I walked back and forth on the patch of carpet forever identified with poor Hildenfisch, surly inferior Hildenfisch. In the sight of death I was no better than Hildenfisch. And once when I had overdone things on the court and lay panting on the red plastic couch, Langobardi came over and gave me a look. When he brooded he squinted. One eye seemed to cross over like a piano-player’s hand. “Why do you push it, Charlie?” he said. “At our age one short game is plenty. Do you see me play more? One of these days you could seven out. Remember Hildenfisch.”

Yes. Seven out. Right. I could roll bad dice. I must stop this tease-act with death. I was touched by Langobardi’s concern. Was it personal solicitude, however? These health-club fatalities were bad, and two coronaries in a row would make this a gloomy place. Still Vito wished to do what he could for me. There was little of substance that we could tell each other. When he was on the telephone I sometimes observed him. In his own way he was an American executive. Handsome Langobardi dressed far better than any board chairman. Even his coat sleeves were ingeniously lined, and the back of his waistcoat was made of beautiful paisley material. Calls came in the name of Finch, the shoeshine man “—Johnny Finch, Johnny Finch, telephone, extension five—” and Langobardi took these Finch calls. He was manly, he had power. In his low voice he gave instructions, made rulings, decisions, set penalties, probably. Now then, could he say anything serious to me? But could I tell him what was on my mind? Could I say that that morning I had been reading Hegel’s Phenomenology, the pages on freedom and death? Could I say that I had been thinking about the history of human consciousness with special emphasis on the question of boredom? Could I say that for years now I had been preoccupied with this theme and that I had discussed it with the late poet Von Humboldt Fleisher? Never. Even with astrophysicists, with professors of economics or paleontology, it was impossible to discuss such things. There were beautiful and moving things in Chicago, but culture was not one of them. What we had was a cultureless city pervaded nevertheless by Mind. Mind without culture was the name of the game, wasn’t it? How do you like that! It’s accurate. I had accepted this condition long ago.

Langobardi’s eyes seemed to have the periscope power of seeing around corners.

“Get smart, Charlie. Do it the way I do,” he said.

I had thanked him sincerely for his kindly interest. “I’m trying,” I said.

So I parked today under the chill pillars at the