Cyclops (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) (16 page)

And the judge leaves. He pulls behind him his wife and his virgins, who are reluctant to go: they are held back by curiosity. How
is
it going to end? “Tell me, my friend: who is the sleep-murderer?” Four Eyes asks of Melkior soberly, worriedly even, having dropped his embrace. A blast of brandy shoots out of his mouth.

Melkior steps aside in disgust. He is shaking with rage.

“Mr. Adam, if you don’t lead your ape away instantly, I will thrash him!”

“Ladies and gentlemen,”
ATMAN
speaks up with dignity, “do you see an ape here? Pull yourself together, Mr. Melkior, if you please. We have all been roused in the middle of the night. We are all finding things a bit out of the ordinary.”

The audience is on
ATMAN’S
side. But Melkior is not aware of his own failure.

“This is the second time this drunkard has insulted me today. I don’t even know him.”

“Perhaps, Mr. Melkior, in a previous life?”
ATMAN
is being kind like a psychiatrist with a madman patient. “Never mind, eventually you will remember …” Then to the audience, “Under hypnosis, ladies and gentlemen, the soul acquires what is known as metempsychic memory. Here you have a typical example. You have just seen a hypnotized subject find the man he was searching for. In a previous life, as I said, they may well have grazed on the same meadow or, apologies to the ladies present, chased the same bitch. And now, having been reincarnated …”

“Will you stop the drivel, you ass? You read about that in the paperback you borrowed from me the other day!”

Even Melkior himself now sees he is losing. If only the judge had stayed behind: he might have been able to grasp a point or two. But these people just stare with fascination at
ATMAN
, the man in the know.

“There you are, gentlemen, ‘in the paperback.’ Paperbacks are just about at our level. Whereas they read about things in thick volumes. The secrets of the occult, Mr. Melkior, are to be found not in paperbacks but in here,” and the palmist tapped his forehead. “If you wish, I can lead you, too, as a medium, up and down these steps, for all your libraries. In the paperback, indeed!”

ATMAN
is offended. But he is immediately rewarded by the sympathies of all those present, which after all is what he was after. The effect is complete: everyone despises Melkior and takes no pains to hide it.

But nobody notices the disappearance of the subject. Four Eyes, possibly at some secret sign from the palmist, has lost himself—simply melted away like a specter. And later on, when his disappearance
is
noticed, nobody believes any longer that he was there at all. They even believe that the snoring was produced by
ATMAN
and that the entire incident at the staircase was merely a nocturnal magic trick to surprise them, and they are grateful to him for it. They disperse with smiles, marveling at the artifice.

ATMAN
, too, has made for his room downstairs, but Melkior stops him. “Just a moment, Mr. Adam.”

Turning toward Melkior,
ATMAN
smiles innocently.

“What was the idea of all this business with Four Eyes tonight?”

“Four Eyes?
What
Four Eyes?”

“Four Eyes the drunkard. You brought him here and arranged this monkey business with him. We’re alone, you can speak freely.”

“Hypnosis is monkey business? Is that the way for a psychologist to talk? You saw that nobody else understood anything. They just marveled. But you, Mr. Melkior …!”

“Flattery will get you nowhere,” says Melkior almost threateningly. “Why did you bring Four Eyes here?”

“Here, you even know his name! Yet you pretended not to know him.”

“Just tell me why you brought him here.”

“Why ask me? He’s your friend,
‘Votre ami,’
am I right?”

“I heard four feet when you were going up the stairs …”

“Well, well, you are good at colorful insults! What a clever way of calling me a jackass! Four legs, huh? There, there, don’t be afraid. You don’t have to be literary about it—insult me directly. I won’t sue you.”

“I’m … I’m going to …”

“Kill me?” the palmist whispers sensuously, squinching an eye. He is offering his cheek to Melkior’s blow wholeheartedly, almost politely. It is as if he asks for nothing but being strangled by Melkior forthwith.

He is standing dreadfully close. Melkior feels some maddened cat move inside him because of that nose, those ears, those cheeks … But the eyes, the palmist’s eyes, set so close to each other under the straight line of the eyebrows, watch him from under a mask, as if through slits, with a different look, one that does not go with his words. With a distant, threatening look that “knows all” and means business.

His beast takes fright, bends its spine, curls into a cuddly ball, meows ingratiatingly.

“Why do you follow me around?” he asks of the palmist in an almost supplicating whisper, despondently.

The palmist’s eyes go mellow again, come closer, amicably, intimately touching Melkior’s with a sort of kindness.

“Tut, tut, Mr. Melkior,”
ATMAN
was shaking his head, “what an idea! Follow? Me follow you? Isn’t it in fact you who are the follower of certain interesting persons?”

“Follower? Of what persons?”

“Follower
is a deliberately chosen word to underline a certain little idea. Follower of interesting, truly interesting persons, Mr. Melkior. I repeat—interesting.”

“You remind me of a fishmonger in my hometown. He would invent things all day long at the fish market and confound people. He ‘knew all.’”

“The fishmonger may have invented things; I do not. Try to remember, Mr. Melkior … today, this afternoon …” The palmist squinches an eye again, derisively. Then Melkior remembers. Prompted by the squinch, perhaps. He had indeed followed Dom Kuzma. So …

“So you were following me this afternoon as well?”

“Hah, you think I have nothing better to do? You’ve lost a great deal of weight lately. Do you weigh yourself every day or just now and then?”

“What concern is that of yours, damn you?” shouts Melkior, quite furious now.

“I wonder myself. What concern is it of mine? Well, I am concerned—not so much with your person as with your error. Your erroneous reckoning, that is.
Circulus vitiosus
, is that right? Because what’s the use of a life that you are bound to lose in another way—to disease, I mean? You saw the catechist. But he had been mortifying his body for different reasons. And even he changed his mind. He would now like to live. Too late. He had been renouncing life through penitence, whereas you, contrariwise, want to live. Which is why you’re killing yourself. I perceive the absurdity of it, that is what I have long meant to tell you.”

“I’m not killing myself in any way. This is just another of your ridiculous conjectures.”

But Melkior suddenly realizes he is defending himself, retreating. Why on earth is he letting the cad meddle in his affairs in the first place?

“And stop speculating about my private life!” he says vigorously and somehow definitively.

“Why, Mr. Melkior, it’s not your private life I’m speculating about. It’s the problem itself, the very interesting problem of saving one’s life from one peril—a grave and dreadful peril, granted—at the price of bringing on another peril which is no less grave or dreadful. You are not aware of the latter peril now—you are overpossessed by the fear of the former. I can understand a prisoner mortifying and thinning his body in order to fit it through a hole. His object is right there: getting through, and after the hole come recuperation and fattening. But what’s your hole? Where’s the hole you wish to fit through?”

“Leave me alone!” cries Melkior in desperation. “Anyway, good night.” He turned around and was about to leave, but
ATMAN
stabs his back with a pointing finger.

“Are you quite sure it will be a good night, Mr. Melkior?” and gives him an insolent grin.

Melkior looks at him with impotent scorn. He is on the verge of riposting, but the staircase lights go off. What can he say to him now in the dark?

The palmist’s nearness makes him shudder. Instinctively he stretches out his arms and touches
ATMAN
, who is coming near step by tiny step with an accelerating hiss of “kill … kill … kill …” He pushed him back hard, in terror, and begins a panicky grope for a wall to cover his back. And fumbles for the switch with all ten fingers to turn on the lights. But the switch is gone. The wall is gone, too. Nowhere around him is there a single solid object to protect him, anything firm, secure, anything but emptiness and dark. And
ATMAN
is gone, too. There is only his laughter from some strange, sobbing distance ha-ha-ha. And repeated striking sounds, a bang, shouts. As if someone is calling out to him in French. And the light suddenly comes on.

He opened his eyes. The light was on in his room. How long had he been asleep? Snoring? What snoring? He had been hearing himself snore. Something struck his window again. A pebble. And someone shouting in the street, “Mon
ami, mon ami!”

He went over to the window. Ugo was gesticulating in the middle of the street. Drunk, of course. Melkior opened the window.

“Elle m’aime, elle m’aime!”
Ugo was shouting from down there, sending him kisses blown with both hands. “Elle
m’aime, mon cher, elle m’aime, Melchior!”

Melkior’s heart sank.
Elle l’aime!
Well, let
ATMAN
hear it, too.

“But who?
Qui est celle qui vous aime?”
Let it be all spelled out to “him below.”

“She,
la Grande!”
Ugo shouted dementedly. “Tell you all about it tomorrow. Ah,
l’amour! À demain, mon cher.
Good night, Oh noble and wise one. Ah,
l’amour!”

And off went Ugo, declaiming Baudelaire in some version of his own, with much pathos, assuredly with tears in his eyes:
à la très belle, à la très bonne, à la très chère … qui remplit tout mon coeur, tout mon coeur… salut à l’immortalité
…

Melkior closed the window. Lost in thought. So they did it straight away, the same evening. No sooner had she met him than … The harlot. That’s their taste in men—talkers and drunks. Didn’t I tell you she’d … said he to himself. This is how
ATMAN
talks to himself. Me and “myself.”

Hang it all, am I in love? Or is this envy? The thing, I think, is to drink (hey, a rhyme!), to be a lush, a swooze. The floozy! He even felt sorry for Freddie. Sparing but a single thought for it. Hypocritically. How easily this comes to women! And then Ugo walks about shouting
L’amour.
This is all a brothel.

He threw himself onto the bed. He bit a corner of his pillow and began tugging at it furiously. He felt a chicken feather in his mouth. There you are.
L’amour.
The hen. She will lie down under any rooster.
La cocotte.
In any backyard. She will even lie down under a parrot, multicolored, chattering.—Sorry, I thought you were the new rooster.—Not at all,
Madame.
I’m a general. Nice uniform, eh?—Divine!—I’m a hundred and twenty. A young parrot.—And a general already, eh?—Yes. That is why,
Madame
, I suggest
un peu d’amour
before the war.—So there will be one?—Certainly.—And you will kill me.—Yes, and eat you, too. I can already see you,
Madame
, in soup. Two drumsticks …—Enough of your lasciviousness,
monsieur le Perroquet!
—Oh no, I’m only a gourmet. Troop movements. We have no time for the finer points. Be mine.—Just like that?—Yes. But with love!—Oh, you’re not to be trusted. All you males are the same. You want everything straight away.—Oh no, not straight away. Half of you boiled today, the other half roasted tomorrow,
Madame la Poule.
Orderly! See to it that Mrs. Cocotte does not suffer. Use a sharp knife. Give her the Marie Antoinette treatment. Boil the rump.—How tenderhearted you are.—That’s what I am like. My profession is something else altogether. I hate cruelty. Do you like my beak?—It’s divine!—It’s terrific in lovemaking.
Il est formidable.
You will see. I could tell you my memories. We live long. We, crocodiles, elephants, and porpoises. Pity you’re not a porpoise. You will grow old soon.—I can’t help it, can I?—No, indeed you cannot. Do you lay eggs every day?—How indiscreet you are! I do only when I’m pregnant.—By cocks?—By
a
cock, by a rooster. By my Coco.—All he does is make noise, the fool. Cock-a-doodle-dooo … What does that mean? Nothing. Rubbish.—You’re jealous of him. It means “the dawn is breaking …”—“… a new day’s in the making.” So much for “cock-a-doodle-doo.” For all that he was a colleague of mine, truth be told. Anyway, they will screech in the middle of the night, too, the fools. And you admire them for it. Women love noise. Women generally love dunderheads.—Not all of them do.—I know. You don’t love them. Those who love us are always the exception.—I did not say I love you.—Never mind. You will. It’s my charm. We parrot-generals are a charming lot. Shall we have a drink?—Heavens, you’ll get me drunk.—Stewed hen. I have seen it before. Not bad.—You are trying to seduce me.—I admit a glass of cognac makes it easier for a woman to understand love.—Is this what you call love?—Well, what do
you
think love is? Clucking? At least I’m a realist.—You are a seducer of poor helpless women. You are low.—And you are marvelous when angry,
Madame la Poule!
I’m going to kiss you.—No! Oh, no. For God’s sake, no. Oh, what are you doing? What are you doing to me?—Loving you, my darling. My one and only love.—But I, I love only Coco, my Coco. Him, only … Oh you are terrible, you are!—I am, darling, I am. I’m crazy, my sweet little
Poulette!—My
little
Pappagallo!
—I’ll devour you, my sweet little
Poupoulette!
I’ll devour you!—Eat me, my little one. Eat me, eat me, eat me … ohh …

Tomorrow I’ll give Enka a buzz.

He was tired and out of sorts. He remembered Enka’s furious lovemaking and felt a fierce desire for her. Perhaps Coco was on night duty at the clinic? Should he go down to the pay phone and call her right now? How delighted she would be, now, in the middle of the night. She would say,
Quelle surprise!
She liked to clothe her adultery in French phrases. For the sake of the décor. Costume muck. À la Pompadour. She was with him, that is to say under him (as Iago would have put it) on the broad canopied bed. The telephone on the night table rang. He tried to prevent her from lifting the handset. No, she wanted to take the call. Precisely because of the situation! She winked at him. It was Coco. Ringing from the university, between two lectures. “How are you,
ma poulette?”
He was bored stiff. She answered him in French.
Mon bichon, mon chéri.
She was reading the book he had recommended. She did not like it. Boring. When are you coming home? Two more hours of lectures. Come back as soon as you can,
on fera des
chikki-chikki. Coco was chuckling into the receiver. Happy. She rang off. She was laughing. “Now then, where were we?”