Cyclops (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) (21 page)

“You are now about to witness the tactics of losing potential pursuers. He’s going to the Main Post Office, you’ll see. The crowd is worst there at this time of day. He is a circumspect man, is my Prostate Pa. Pro-state-Pa, Pro-state-Pa, the three-quarter-time two-timer. Whereas I’m having to pawn an old hat—mine!—to buy cigarettes!”

Melkior understood none of this.

“Where’s he going?” he asked, all but running after Ugo.

“I told you—the Main Post Office.”

“Well, what of it? Leave him alone.”

“Leave him alone? Do you know what he’s like, a man who tells you you’re an artist and a libertine? A man who sucks a spoonful of my blood a day telling me I lavish my money on loose women? Don’t infuriate me. There, I’ve lost him!”

Indeed, Mr. Kalisto had disappeared into a crowd that suddenly spilled from a side street. Ugo stood on tiptoe and craned his neck trying to isolate that dignified head of his progenitor’s, but he eventually reported from up there: “It’s no go! All’s lost.”

“I really don’t see why you’re following him!”

“I’m following my star! My paragon! In the footsteps of my ancestor!” Ugo spat out with despairing pungency. “What am I to do now? I’ve lost a unique chance! Who knows when I’ll be able to nab him again?”

They walked idly, in silence. Ugo stole glances at passing women: he was angry and mournful and thought it improper to watch women when he was in mourning.

“To think that he solemnly signed the convention,
tête-à-tête!
Don’t laugh. You’ve met my mother, haven’t you? Well, he assured that deaf mistress of his that his wife was on her deathbed—expected to die within the week. And Deaf Daisy came by to see for herself. Mother received her with an open heart, in complete good faith, you know what she’s like. Deaf Daisy started grunting like a damned bear when she saw Mother alive and well. You should’ve heard the conversation in the anteroom: Deaf Daisy cooing in disappointment, in desperation, seeing her hopes blighted, Mother understanding nothing, offering her coffee, tea, cold compresses for her head, aspirin. … I’m howling with laughter in my room. Mother’s afraid for me, rushes in, Deaf Daisy hot on her heels, grunting away, wanting to see everything for herself. Mother introduces me, politely, hoping it would help. ‘This is my son,’ says she. She’s totally in the dark.

” ‘Dat’s de son?’ grunts Deaf Daisy, even more desperately. ‘But he said he’d no chidden!’ and down she falls on my bed in a dead faint. I enjoyed slapping her face to bring her to. Mother grabs my hands, won’t let me slap her, goes off to fetch water, vinegar, but by the time she’s back Deaf Daisy’s on her feet again, ready to fight. I had the devil’s own job pushing her out. Mother never mentioned it to him on account of my making a shocking exhibition of myself, and she refused to speak to me for a month for being so cruel to the poor bitch. To this day she believes Daisy was just a nut who wandered into the wrong house.

“Following this, the sinful parent was delighted to accept my conditions for keeping the secret. But he’s recently taken to complaining quietly, indeed with tears in his eyes: even the worst criminals, says he, know the length of their sentence while he doesn’t know whether it’s only for life or what. Also, the cost of living keeps going up, and seeing that he, too, is a smoker, that he, too, likes a cup of coffee now and then but is reduced to drinking espresso at a stand-up bar. … He pleaded for mercy and I pardoned him. Then he became aggressive again, the dear old moralist, the advising Polonius. Now he’s off to see Deaf Daisy again.”

“How can you tell?”

“Aah, he’s one dirty old man, is Mr. Kalisto! I’m ashamed even to tell you how I know. Can you imagine what it must be, to make
me
ashamed?” Melkior was laughing. He was amused by the naughtiness of Mr. Kalisto-the-moralisto.

“Do you know what he does down there?” Ugo was clearly troubled by his father’s sexual roguery. “He listens for sounds from the Ladies! The walls are thin, you can pick up an auditory signal or two from a female organism. Pathetic. But that’s what he goes down there for: an aphrodisiac for a spot of how’s your father with Deaf Daisy. That’s how I know he’s off to meet her. Ptui!” and Ugo spat in genuine disgust.

Melkior remembered Maestro: the whole business was nothing more than old men urinating. Tepid waters gurgling, false signals sent.

“Are you sure you didn’t make any of this up?”

“Make it up? He told me himself, in a state of cruel bliss, how you could hear it aaall through that waaall …” Ugo imitated him with disgusted hatred.

“Now then, this hat … What can I expect from Kikinis for it? Not even ten bucks. And not a single hole in it, as you’ll see.”

He unwrapped the hat from the newspaper and turned it to the sun.

Both their gazes dipped under the brim encountering the sight of a dark night sky thickly strewn with first, second, and third-magnitude stars.

“You can clearly see the Big Dipper, Andromeda, and Betelgeuse Alpha. Happy viewing!” Ugo was watching the constellations with an astronomer’s concern, in dead earnest. “Moth-made galaxies, soup-strainer constellations. A miniature astronomy overhead. Oh well. At least we discovered the starry sky above us and the moral law within us, like old Immanuel of Königsberg. Let us therefore follow our Polar Star like the Argonauts, let us harken to the voice of the categorical imperative within us!”

So speaking, in a kind of rapture, he entered the spacious hall of the Main Post Office, with Melkior hurrying along at his heels.

“What are we doing here?” he tried to pull him back. There were a lot of people about, businesslike, patient, as well as short-tempered, addressers. He feared Ugo’s excesses.

“I’m looking for a dome to present with the sky,” said Ugo, burning with the urge to do a good deed. “Not to worry, it’s all according to Kant: Act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will … how does it go on? Give me a clue—you’re a Kantian, aren’t you? Categorically, imperatively! Caution, the Earth is about to quake, consider lines of retreat.”

He selected an exemplary yellowish bald pate of a hurried-looking addresser and placed his old riddled hat on it with a quick, imperceptible motion. He then casually spoke to Melkior as if asking for a point of information.

“Alea jacta est!”
he whispered hurriedly. “The Earth is already quaking with injured pride. This means war. Flee to Switzerland, quick!” Melkior did not hesitate: he almost ran for the exit. This is sheer madness, those people in there are going to kill him …

He just had the time to hear a “Who put this thing on my head?” coming from behind him and then it was, Run for it, run, run! The fear down his back. Knifed in the back, just like that, on account of such a rascal. Death At Main Post Office. Innocent Victim Of Misunderstanding. All over, before the war even broke out. A farewell to arms.

Yes, somebody could really take me for a … seeing that I’m … er, running away … He only calmed down outside, on the opposite pavement.

Ugo’s
acte gratuit.
Been reading Gide recently, imitating Lafcadio. He always imitates people. Characters in novels. The ape. He’s going to tell about it tonight (to Her). The thought hurts. Still, must admit it takes guts. Takes brass nerve to cut such silly capers. Daring. For example:

An old man, dignified, rugged, a rock, features showing the greatest greatness—a Goethe, in a word—coughs in the street (such things do happen) and spits into his handkerchief, forcefully, quite in keeping with his station, and peers—with scientific interest, as it were—into his all-important gob of phlegm.

“Well? Looks lovely, doesn’t it?” Melkior loosed his
acte gratuit
and went momentarily deaf, like someone whose rifle had gone off by accident in his hands.

“Im-pertinent cad!” gurgled the rock through his catarrhs, and passersby agreed with him, silently.

“Gratuit,”
ejaculated Melkior mechanically, by way of explanation to those who had turned around after him. And he blushed, miserably.

No, I’m no good at that sort of thing. No good at all, really …

“… that it should become a universal law. I remembered it looking at the ungrateful sky-carrier. I’m thinking of the tiny suns that will shine on his bald pate when he goes out again. The bastard. That very hat would have cost him thirty dinars at Kikinis. But he still wanted to fight me.”

Ugo was regretting the gift.

“We should have looked at it not against the sun but in the dark. And then gone to Kikinis the astrologer. He would have shelled out ten dinars for it, at the very least. We played at being anonymous benefactors and eccentrics, Kantian philistines, victims of the categorical imperative—phooey! When we could have used the ten dindin-din to giventake till lunchtime. A fatal mistake!”

They walked in silence. Melkior was deliberately steering the stroll toward the Theater Café. Toward Viviana. But how is it, if he was with her last night, how is it that they have arranged nothing? Oh but they have. For tonight.

Under cover of darkness. He’s avoiding his fiancée. Let us hide our loves. They’ll get married after he’s done his National Service. And a war. They’ll have children. War orphans: enormous heads, large eyes, tiny skeletons, ribs, kneecaps … “Have you made your last wish, Eustache? Here comes Scarpia.”

Melkior said nothing: his jaw had gone stiff. He had a dreadful fear of the police. The Platonic
Politeia.

The man was limping toward them on uneven legs, but with a “Make way!” face. Uniformed, gilded …

“E lucevan’ le stele …”
Ugo burst into song while the man was still quite some way off, following his progress. But just as the man came in line with them he elocuted in the manner of the ancient, pathos-ridden school of acting: “There is something rotten in the state of Denmark.”

Scarpia paused in the arsis (on the longer leg) with the thought “Should I take this as …?” and while he was making up his mind Ugo pulled Melkior around the corner. Any port in a storm.

“It would have been an uneven struggle. Don’t be ashamed of the retreat. The day of reckoning is at hand. The exact date is known to don Fernando, they told it to him at the Corso.”

“Don Fernando” rang inside Melkior like an alarm bell, like the fear of being seen with Ugo in street excesses. Don Fernando was a profound mystery, a myth, a “something else.” The approach to problems. The responsible care for mankind. No less.

“Who told him?” The mood for joking fizzled out in Melkior.

“The bearded bods. The sternfaces. At least, not bearded, these days they’re clean-shaven; let’s say the morose, the men with the furrowed brows. All in the name of mankind.”

“While you … you don’t give a tinker’s for mankind?” asked Melkior, suspiciously, even with a shade of moral contempt.

“Frankly … no!” whispered Ugo repentantly, while at the same time swelling with incipient laughter. “Somehow I don’t seem to care for it at all. While mankind, I know, suffers horribly because of me. Heh, heh … I’m an ingrate,
mon ami
, and a bad one at that.”

“That you are indeed,” said Melkior from his sudden solitude. What’s to be said now? Mankind? Well, that’s everybody. Including Enka. Including Freddie. Including Maestro. There are various mankinds. The Enka mankind, the Freddie mankind, the Mr. Kalisto mankind … don Fernando’s
MANKIND
? The word and the pathos. You can say anything in a solemn tone—“the Dardanelles,” for instance. So what do I care? Rot the Dardanelles.

“Did he smite you hard, good my friend?” he suddenly asked Ugo with ardent sarcasm. “Show me.”

“What? Oh, you mean last night, in the battles with Fredegarius? Who told you—Chicory? Yes, it was a nasty altercation, my good friend. Blood flowed in streams. And I got my share of the wounds—a bludgeon in the face. He swings a heavy punch, does that Roscius-Rostratus. I was being your outer wall,
antemurale Melkioritatis!
My physical person stopped the
cabotin’s
creative force, as shown by the upper lip enclosed herewith. Here, look at the left corner, that’s where the celebrated protagonist’s front hoof landed.”

Yes, that part of the lip was still swollen. Melkior eyed the wound with sympathy.

“But we won the war,
pardieu!
Fredegonde has been won and is standing firmly by us. No problems there.”

“Standing by you,” and a sigh uprooted itself from Melkior.

“No need to sigh, is there? By me, by you …
Insomma
, she’s with us! And for my sacrifices and bravery in combat, I took my slice of the spoils of war, you understand.”

“You were with her, afterward?”—bandaging his wound with a smile.

“Naturellement, mon petit!”

“At her place?”

“A studio flat, couch, (two couches!), bathroom, hot water.
Et, ce qui est le plus important, elle m’aime.”

“What about you?”

“Fou d’amour!”

Peeking up her skirt while she wiped the blood from his snout—that was
“amour”?
No, he couldn’t take any more. Tension had reached a high point and suddenly he blew a synaptic fuse. Flash!

“You’re such an asshole!”—and then darkness … and peace.

“Oh?” Ugo was surprised. “And you’re some kind of hysteric, Eustachius the Most Pure? That’s what comes of abstinence. I practice sexual congress. Why not follow my example?”

Melkior chuckled inside. Enka. What was she doing now? He felt the tug of desire to call her. No, Coco was back from the clinic. They were now mourning his failure with the heart. Well, who ever had any success in matters of the heart,
mon Coco?

“Date tonight?” he asked ingratiatingly, begging.

“No.” Ugo was being appreciative of his own importance.

“What, the brush so soon?”

“No—at ease. For today.” And Ugo smacked his lips, with gusto.

Suddenly he gripped Melkior’s shoulders and turned him so that they were face to face. He looked into Melkior’s face roguishly, derisively.

“Hurts you, Eustachius, doesn’t it?” and he burst into laughter. “Well, in that case none of it is true. Not a thing.” He gave Melkior a protective hug. “Not a thing, get me? She’s as pure as Ophelia. She can go to a nunnery if she likes. But … but perhaps she won’t, eh? The fair Fredegonde. Perhaps she prefers this sinful Giventakian life? Ha-haaa, my good prince!”