Paradise Garden: The Satirical Narrative of a Great ExperimentGibbs, George
General
Paradise Garden: The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment
Gibbs, George
Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Satire
In the ring the men had thrown aside their dressing-gowns and the
opposing seconds were examining the bandages upon their hands. Clancy
wore bright green trunks, which if his name had failed would have
betrayed his lineage, and his great chest and arms were covered with
designs in tattoo. Jerry wore dark trunks. And as his wonderful arms
and torso were exposed to view, a murmur of approval went over the
audience. In spite of his training in the open his skin was still very
white beside the bronzed figure of his adversary, but the muscles
rippled smoothly and strongly under the fair skin--and bulked large at
thigh and forearm as he moved his limbs. It was not the strong man's
figure nor yet, like Clancy's, the stocky, thickly built structure of
the professional fighter's, yet it was so solid, so admirably compact
that his great height was unnoticeable. I could see from the
expressions upon the faces of those about me and the calls from the
seats behind us, that Jerry's appearance had already gained the
respect of the crowd, some members of which were already hailing him
by his first name. "Good boy, Jerry," they cried, or "All right, old
boy. You've got the goods--but look out for his right."
Even the stout person beside me was silent and I heard nothing more
about the goldfish. Fortunately for him, and for me, I suspect, for
had he repeated his phrase, I might have brained him with a chair.
The preliminary conferences at an end, the principals took their
corners, fresh ones not used in the preliminaries, Jerry luckily with
his back toward the box in which the Van Wyck girl was sitting. If
their glances had met, I did not notice. For all that I knew. Jerry
might have been unaware that she was in the house. He did not look
around in a search for her and seemed totally absorbed in his
instructions from Flynn, who stood outside the ropes just behind him
whispering continuously in his ear, Jerry nodding from time to time
and glancing across the ring to Clancy's corner, where the superbeast
was sprawled, his long arms extended upon the ropes. Spatola and the
black Swede were seeing to Jerry's gloves and looking over every
detail of the corner with careful eyes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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