Cyclops (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) (11 page)

Melkior tortured himself with bitter, sardonic thoughts. As if he were ranting at a vast power—a god or a force like the collective mind of all men—he spoke like a lawyer and demagogue, preached with prophetic pathos, in the voice of a supplicant, he sought impact-making figures of speech, paradoxes, drastic examples, he championed “his cause.”

And saintlike, mortified his flesh. Tortured it with hunger, wore it down with vigils, never for a moment let it be. Burdened it with fabricated, superfluous worries, invented tasks in bed at night: one grain of wheat on square one, two on square two, four on square three, eight on square four, sixteen on square five, thirty-two on square six, sixty-four on square seven, a hundred and twenty-eight on square eight, two hundred and fifty-six on square nine, five hundred and twelve on square ten, a thousand and twenty-four on square eleven, two thousand and forty-eight on square twelve, four thousand and ninety-six on square thirteen, eight thousand one hundred and ninety-two on square fourteen, sixteen thousand three hundred and eighty-four on square fifteen, thirty-two thousand seven hundred and sixty-eight on square sixteen, sixty-five thousand five hundred and thirty-six on square seventeen, a hundred and thirty-one thousand and seventy-two on square eighteen, two hundred and sixty-two thousand one hundred and forty-four on square nineteen. … The number grew at a dizzying rate! He had only wanted to play a little game with arithmetic, and it came out a nightmare! Where was it all leading to, and what was the point? Through a small, innocent act of doubling, through the truly paltry mediation of the so beloved, popular, ordinary, friendly, familial, lovers’ number—the number two—grew an endless monster, the inconceivable body of infinity, as terrible as fear, as vast as eternity.

That, too, was a form of torture: infinity and eternity. For we have become accustomed to seeing things tamed by forms, harnessed to our limited needs, cut up into mouthfuls to fit our appetite. Things in costume, clean-shaven, groomed for parade, for show; the humiliation of matter, being reduced to a prop, a camera, a razor, a brush.

And things are weirdly superior and heedless. Undimensional. Infinite. And all the symbols that have grown above things—like clouds condensing into being above endless waters—roam inside our heads in the guise of thoughts, worries, wishes, daydreams. Tortures.

Melkior entered his torture chamber with delight. But there was no joy to his delight, only calculation. He took pleasure in reckoning that in the twists and turns among which he ran, in the labyrinths around which he raced blithely shouting at the top of his lungs, “I’ve disappeared, I’m not here,” he would really and truly disappear from the sight of the absurdity that lay in wait for him. That he would be invisible and elude those huge, hairy, greasy fingers getting closer to him whenever his thought faltered, whenever he forgot himself and surrendered to pleasure.

Over there, around the corner, is where he lives: a room with its own access overlooking the parade ground of the 35th Regiment barracks from across the street. And over here, before the corner, is the Cozy Corner, a small bar or café which Ugo calls a
bistro.
That is where Melkior drops in of an evening on his way home to “have a drink.” The Cozy Corner is run by a German family: a small pink pot-bellied father, his face certain of the importance of his existence, a long and lean mother speaking Croatian-German in a good-natured, comical way, a plump pale daughter, Else, who looked as if she recently quit a convent, shielding her femininity from male lust and dropping her gaze when serving the tables (as if she were serving at an altar), and the son, Kurt, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped, and with a large blonde head. Cozy Corner was the local watering hole for the sergeants from the barracks of the 35th; Melkior often wondered why only sergeants, it may be that the establishment was the right match for their rank, or some such thing.

Melkior entered and was greeted by three members of the German family (the father was seldom seen, he was always off on his business rounds), but the mother’s greeting rang out, “Goot eefnink.”

The sergeants had taken the four sides of one table; on a corner chair sat demure Else, twiddling her fingers in her lap, her eyes downcast, naturally. Kurt was serving another table: a giant and a little old man in a white linen suit left over from summer. A half-pint each.

Two tables were free. Melkior sat down at the one farther away from the sergeants’ table, sensibly, out of reach of the mothball smell of the army. Kurt was a deft waiter; he described himself as a waiter although he was a student of engineering. He served Melkior with one of “their own” special sausages and asked permission to join him.

“Ach, Herr Professor” (he addressed Melkior as Herr Professor to elevate the level of the conversation or, more likely, his own image), “I’m sick and tired of it all, you know. You toil and toil—for what? You work for a living. And why do you live? To work. It’s a
circulus vitiosus
, Herr Professor, an absurdity. Did you ever think, Herr Professor, that we all go around and around in an absurd circle, that there is no way out, none at all,” and Kurt rested his sizeable hands on the table next to Melkior’s plate. Ten fingers, fleshy, sausagelike. Melkior had just made the first incision in his sausage, but now granted it free pardon, gave up the idea of slaughtering it after seeing Kurt’s fingers on the table. And again there surfaced an idea of cannibals, of the destroying body which may give rise to appetites in another body and become its food. And all the thoughts harbored by that “food,” its ideas, appreciation of a blue-and-yellow color scheme, of the tragedy of King Lear, welling tears, anxiety in the diaphragm, fear across the scalp, daydreams about a certain walk, a certain sway of the hips, “a little smile on dear lips, a bunch of flowers in a water glass” … all this is contained in the food, in the destroying body.

“A
circulus
, Herr Professor. I mean: you, I, these two gentlemen, the soldiers over there, we all talk. But what can we accomplish? Can we do something with our bare hands to change the world? We talk. That’s all we’re good for.”

“Tell ya shomp’n, buddy,” says the little old man to the giant. “Dey’re treshpassherzh, poacherzh. And dere’zh no shatishfaction in dat. Did I tell ya how I shlept? I wazh shound ashleep …”

“By God! You can ask Else if you like. Here, Else, did I or didn’t I down fifteen brandies last Saturday? And did it show? Hah! Got up, buckled on my belt and: about face, forward march, direction the barracks. The old legs steady as all get-out, sparks flying from the cobblestones, you’d say I was marching in review on the First of December.”

“I don’t hold with guzzling for the sake of it. Not me. What I drink for is my mood. You knock back a couple and it puts you at ease, like. Take me. When I come in here of an evening I just sit there like some damned plaster saint. Like I had nothing to say. But let me have a shot and whee! I could even kiss Else there and then. Get my drift? That’s what a good jolt does for you.”

“For example, Herr Professor, suppose we build a dam and then a flood comes along and sweeps it all away. What’s the sense of it all, Herr Professor?”

“I wazh shound ashleep when all of a shudden dere wazh tap-a-tapping at the winda. Sho I got up, got out of bed that izh, and what did I shee? Moon shining azh bright azh day and a dove on the winda-shill.”

“Rrruh,” goes the giant, agreeing or belching, it was difficult to say which.

“What did ya shay, bud? Well, I’m no good at reading the dreamzh. And the dove jusht went on tap-a-tapping at the winda. And if I’d opened it, who knowzh, it might have turned out to be a shoul, eh?”

“Grg, no,” replies the giant briefly and assuredly.

“It wazhn’t, eh? Yesh, well, I’m no good at dat short of thing. But it wazh funny, how it went tap-a-tapping … I shaw a film the other day about the Emperor Mackshimilian and how the Communishtsh murder him in Meckshico, shee. And hizh wife the Empresh wazh at Miramare near Trieshte. When the Emperor gave up the ghosht …”

“And what about having children? You’re not married, Herr Professor? Sensible. There’s no such thing as a friend. When they tell you ‘friend’ you think, What does he want from me?”

Well, well, thought Melkior, so Kurt’s philosophy is expanding! He had heard Kurt out on dams before, but his views on children and friends …

“When the Emperor gave up the ghosht hizh shoul went to the Empresh right away like shome dove. Shinging,
Open the window, my shoul izh
…” (the little old man sang that part). “And you shay, bud, that it wazhn’t a shoul?”

“Nah,” rasped the giant. “That’s just cinema.”

“Far, far awaaay from us, down by the seeea
…” nostalgically wails a Sergeant Second Class, throwing his head back and closing his eyes.

“No, no, please,” Else implores him to keep the peace. “We can be fined for this. We have no music license.”

“What do you mean, music? This is national, a folk song. It’s not dance music or anything.”

“No, singing is forbidden as a general rule,” says Else meekly, almost abashed, as if someone were trying to kiss her.

“Armies are for war, aren’t they, Herr Professor?” Kurt then dropped his voice to a whisper and assumed a somewhat confidential air, so that a thought crossed Melkior’s mind, almost alarming him. “See for yourself, Herr Professor: that type of mentality” (he nodded in the direction of the sergeants), “is it fit for waging a war? It’s only fit for barroom brawls. Fifteen brandies, that’s his brand of heroism. War is a science these days. And his idea of a good soldier is sparks flying underfoot. That’s the type of mentality I mean. My poor sister has no choice but to listen to the drivel, because it’s good for business. It’s what we make our living at. And so it goes …”

“What? There ain’t no man alive like our major. To see him facing the ranks on the parade ground, you’d think he’s going to eat your liver for breakfast—but he’s all heart. Word of honor. I went up to him once, sir, says I, you know how it is, a soldier’s life, there’s this gal waiting in town, ‘Any good?’ says he and gives me one of his winks, ‘Welll …’ says I, wondering if I should tell him she’s crème de la crème, ‘Off you go, then,’ says he, ‘and mind you don’t disgrace the battalion,’ and he does his spit ‘n’ snort routine like he was sending me out on a patrol. He’s all heart, honest.”

“And have you ever sheen canariezh kishing, bud? I have. It’sh a lovely shight, their kishing, and mosht interesting, too. You’d never have thought, they being shuch tiny creaturezh …”

“Or take your own case, Herr Professor … You’re a man of intelligence—it’s so stupid!”

“What’s stupid?” Melkior understood immediately and was seriously afraid.

“That lowlifes like that should suck the blood of a man like yourself for nine months! Can’t you think of a way out?” And Kurt became very confidential again. “Herr Professor, my father knows a trick, you see, but it’s nothing dangerous and has no harmful aftereffects. He picked it up in the Great War, it’s a very simple thing to do and there’s no professor of medicine who could suspect a thing. You dip two cigarettes in … in I don’t know what, you dip them in whatever it is and smoke them before your physical. They’ll send you home with tears in their eyes. My
Vater
got hundreds out that way. What is it you dip them in now? … He ought to be back any minute. If you would care to wait we’ll ask him, all right?”

Melkior was upset by the come-on-we’re-partners intimacy with which Kurt was assailing his innocent fear of history. You know, it’s something altogether different, Kurt, what you have in mind, Kurt, this thing you … in his mind Melkior had started stammering some kind of apology to his conscience.

“Leaving already, Herr Professor? I wanted to ask
Vater.
What on earth do you dip them in,
Christgott?
Never mind, I’ll ask
Vater
for you. Herr Professor. A very good night to you.”

“G’niiight!” Else automaton-like sang her little tune at Melkior’s departure, politely and with a touch of blush in her cheeks.

He climbed to his third floor with difficulty, as though his pockets were filled with stones. That’s exhaustion, he thought, brought on by fasting.

Kurt’s sausage had been his first meal since noon the previous day. He had not even finished the sausage, in view of Kurt’s fingers. “Cannibalism” was the thought he had found in the second half of the sausage. And he had left that half to the surprised, even offended, Kurt. “Horses are more expensive than pigs or cattle,” Kurt had said. “There’s no horsemeat in it.”

There is man-meat, Kurt, in our imagination.

He slipped his hand inside his shirt and grabbed a fistful of his hairy chest.

Man-meat. A useful addition to your vocabulary … and to your diet, too, in some parts of the world. Cannibals. Reclining on his bed, in the dark, he sailed out again on the
Menelaus
, a Pacific cargo liner.
Cannibals.
That was to be the title of a play he had been contemplating. Of the grotesque, in fact, with cannibal howls, dances, and native rites to the deafening rumble of drums around a cauldron over a large fire.

The cauldron is offstage, of course, because such high-impact scenes in the theater always take place offstage. Simmering in the cauldron is a white man, a fat cook, the plumpest of the seven survivors from the shipwreck
Menelaus.
You thought of it as a symbolical piece of satire or something. … Anyway, it does not matter what it was to have been, seeing that nothing had come of it save the momentary flash of an idea that came to you again at the Cozy Corner when Kurt brought the sausage to your table.

The idea first came to you one night on a train, on the hard bench of a third-class compartment. You had the entire compartment to yourself, a privilege bought from the conductor for a pittance. As you tossed sleepless on the hard slats the idea slowly took shape as the memory of stories you had heard in your childhood by the sea from lying old seamen who had not only been captured by cannibals but had also each of them seen the one-eyed giant whose eye each of them had gouged out. But why on the train that night the sudden return of those boastful geriatric odysseys, on that hard bench, accompanied by the horrible clatter of wheels under your ear? At one moment you found one of your hands on your knee and the other on your shoulder, you felt the hard and knobby bones overlaid with taut, dry skin; you poked your fingers into the joints, the holes in the bones, the gaps between the tendons, you separated one from another, registering each one in turn, unconsciously, by touch, by touch alone, as foreign, alien objects, not even thinking about them, and now, in hindsight, everything had fallen into place. You were dreadfully emaciated at the time from fear of events that had a claim on your body (the journey was in fact undertaken to settle some army-related business) and, touching your knobby bones, you suddenly felt a great instinctive pleasure, or rather a kind of perverse and derisive joy over these bones of yours, over the traveling skeleton, bearing your name, that had cleverly bought from the conductor this separate little compartment where it could lay down its bones and feel them and register: look, the knee bones, the shoulder blade, the clavicle, the ribs … in a word, where the skeleton could assert the frightening articulation of a skeleton slyly thinking of itself as such: this is I all the same, I who know my name, I who am smoking here in the dark above the clatter of the wheels and—
entre nous soit dit
—I who hope to wriggle free, to wriggle free … Hush, hush, mum’s the word!