Cyclops (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) (23 page)

“This is your book, isn’t it?” She raised her pretty, bright eyes toward him. “And you’ve read all of it?”

“Yes,” said Melkior with a shade of embarrassment.

“What about you, MacAdam? Have you read all of it, too?” she asked scornfully of
ATMAN.

“Of course I have. That is, I haven’t finished it yet. But I
am
in the middle of reading it …”

“But what do you need it for? Those old hags of yours? Mr. Trešèec is a teacher … You are a teacher, aren’t you?”

“Bachelor’s degree in philosophy,” answered Melkior, aware that his ears had gone red, and added for good measure, “And my name is Tresić.”

“Yes, well, Professor Tresić. I heard it the first time. Sorry.” She blushed slightly, which Melkior took as small change for his fiery ears and felt good.

“I don’t understand a word of this. I tried to read it. What’s com-pen-sa-tion?”

“There you are—
exemplar.
What did I tell you?”
ATMAN
gave a happy jump and snapped his fingers with satisfaction.

“You shut up, I wasn’t asking you!” she snapped. The palmist hung his head in shame, ingratiatingly, like a child who has intruded on a grownup conversation. But he was smiling with a corner of his eye, slyly.

What kind of relationship did they have then? Melkior was saddened by her authoritative intimacy with the palmist. Why was she free to use such a tone? But he noticed immediately, with doubled sadness, the way
ATMAN
took pride in showing Melkior her behavior. As if it was his right not to be offended by it, to take it as something familiar, domestic. He even grinned at Melkior—“This is the kind of terms we’re on, get it?”

He felt dreadfully lonely in their company. He thought it best to leave while he still stood a minimal chance of having got it all wrong. But he found it hard to relinquish her presence. Better to risk a horrible revelation than interrupt this happy moment … Rubbish! they’re acting out a charade for my benefit. This is a trap! He realized it in a flash.
ATMAN
had set up this ambush: they had been lying in wait with that book on her knees. With
com-pen-sa-tion.

“Do sit down, please, Mr. Melkior,” the palmist got suddenly fussy and flashed him a servile grin. “You’ve frightened him, kitten. Won’t you sit down here, on the sofa? You won’t mind him sitting next to you, will you? But why do you hesitate, Mr. Melkior? Don’t be afraid, she’s only arrogant with me. Am I right, kitten—he’s not to be afraid of you? There, the kettle’s boiling.”

“You’re talking nonsense, Mac. You’re making me look the monster,” she said flirtatiously. “Please sit down, Mr. Tresić, I should be truly glad to learn something from you. All these characters ever do is talk nonsense.”

“
These characters
are mostly me,” explained the palmist with a pride of sorts. “You are so kind, kitten, thank you very much. But at least I know what
compensation
is—which Freddie for one does not, I’ll stake my life on that.”

“Freddie’s a dolt,” she said in irritation. “And so are you. You only differ from him as much as a melon differs from a pumpkin.”

“Well, at least that makes me the melon. Admit it—I’m the melon, right?”

“No, you are not!” She showed her beautiful teeth, spitefully. “Melons are sweet.”

“There you are, I’m not even a melon. Did you hear her, Mr. Melkior—not even a melon.”

ATMAN
placed a small coffee table near the sofa, laughing brightly. Melkior noticed the table had already been set with three teacups. So everything had been planned ahead, premeditated. This actually alarmed him: what are they up to with me?

“So Freddie’s the sweet one, then,” prattled the palmist brightly, laughing, fetching butter, liver paste, sliced sausage, cheese, bread, doing it all with hostlike, familiar alacrity, with measured, feminine motions. “Whereas I’m the pumpkin, ha-ha. A squash.” He poured out the fine fragrant dark amber tea, smiling at some unspoken thought of his. “Shall I spread some páté for you, kitten? It’s genuine liver paste, fat-free. Do help yourself, Mr. Melkior. I recommend the sausage, it’s very good indeed. A bit on the spicy side, just the thing for us men.”

Melkior’s beast gave a start and trembled with hunger. It fell to voraciously gobbling the food with its eyes. But Reason gave the beast a bash on the maddened snout and calmly proclaimed:

“No, thank you very much, Mr. Adam, I’m straight from lunch … Just a cup of tea will be fine. Thank you.”

“Straight from lunch? You’ve given up then? A wise thing, if you ask me. I mean, what’s the use? I keep asking myself if it really made sense. That treatment you’re in for, as it were. Women go through it for their figure, which is also …” he gave a hopeless gesture and a benevolent smile.

“Yes, I heard that, too, about you undergoing a treatment. But I don’t think you should really, you’re far too thin.” Her teeth sank into a thick layer of páté. She bit off a mouthful and fell to chewing daintily.

“Who told you that?” Melkior asked fearfully. “Ugo? He’s made up some sort of cock-and-bull story about me and is peddling it about in the Cafés. He’s mad.”

“Ugo? Ugo who?”

The one you slept with last night, you bitch! She read some such thought in Melkior’s look and her eyes flashed with malice for an instant, but she drove it all away with a very surprised smile.

“Mac, do I know this Ugo character?”

“By my method of reckoning time you’ve known him since last night,” mumbled
ATMAN
through a mouthful of food, vengefully. “The wounded guy last night at the Give’nTake, the one you ministered to.”

“Oh, the one Freddie clouted?” she remembered very convincingly. “The poor man, he had blood all over his mouth. That brute packs a punch.” She laughed aloud, throwing back her head on the sofa backboard. “But he was absolutely brilliant, poor Ugo. I had no idea what his name was.”

So much the worse. An unknown with an unknown. Perhaps even … Ugo’s meaning was now clear. An unknown physiognomy steps into our lives, out of nowhere. Our smooth (smooth, eh?) sailing is boarded by a mysterious passenger who instantly steals our entire sense of reality. Sucks our willpower dry, and our secret wanderings begin. Through a terrain of illusions.

Melkior was already feeling helplessly drawn into this woman’s magnetic field. He did not even know her name yet. The damnation —the sense of letting go, the senseless fattening of one’s vanity. The words which issued from the charming mouth to sail through space following the most pedestrian auditory patterns assumed higher significance in our intricately distorted mind. We readily spread underneath them our ridiculous expectations, our hopes, for each word to drop where we chose. To cover, cleanse, comfort, delight, stroke, caress, to bite, cut, to draw blood and inflict pain, for that, too, now and then, is something our vanity needs.

Do I love her? And he glanced at her in step with the question … as if to make a snap check. Don’t speak to me of love! Here, if she were to fall on her back right now in death throes, mouth frothing and body in torment, if I were to see death in her eyes—would I go out of my mind with fear, with despair at the loss? And there surfaced, by way of reply, an entirely cold, cynically grinning wish that this should actually happen, that she should die right here and now, in agony. There’s love for you!

He hated her. He hated her with a motivated, cruel hatred, which was taking its revenge in advance for the future. His future. For there had already sprouted a shoot of pain inside him, he knew it had, and he was watching his tender stalk sway its bitter fruits.

“He’s a poet as well, isn’t he?” she asked, but didn’t wait for an answer. “He recited me some poetry. I don’t remember any of it, but it was very beautiful. I mean, soulful,” she corrected herself, noticing an ironic twitch of Melkior’s lips. “I believe Ugo’s an excellent actor. Better than Freddie anyway.”
ATMAN
gave Melkior a look: what did I tell you? His face shone with professional triumph.

“Better as an actor, too, did you hear that, Mr. Melkior?”
ATMAN’S
face dissolved into ambiguity: two conflicting expressions were mingling there like two opposing winds on a water surface; his face was slightly shivering both with hatred and a genteel smile. “So Freddie’s quite without talent, is he?”

“Do you know what he did to him?” she turned to Melkior for help. “It was the opening night of I forget which play and Freddie was having this wonderful scene all to himself, and this Othello here …”

“That’s not true!” the palmist interrupted her, alarmed. “It wasn’t me, it wasn’t me.”

“It
was
you, yourself!” she outshouted him. “You eat pigeons.”

“What’s this got to do with me eating pigeons? I ask you, Mr. Melkior! She’s crazy, is she not?”

“Crazy, eh? You know what he did? Freddie was just into his big scene, dramatic pause and all, you know how it goes. Everyone was dead silent, you could have heard a feather drop, and at that very moment this man …”

“I told you it wasn’t me. It was his fellow actors who did it, out of spite.”

“And this man, would you believe it, lets loose a pigeon from the box where he is sitting! You must have been there, surely you remember?”

Yes, Melkior did remember the pigeon. Freddie’s soliloquy had indeed fallen flat. The women protected their hairdos, believing the assailant to be a giant bat. The pigeon kept hurtling into the darkness of the box, into the galleries, terrified, miserable, panicking for its columbine life. There was a pigeon hunt on all over the place, nobody took any further interest in the play. The hunting interlude went on for a long time before it occurred to the pigeon to make for the stage and up to the dome where at last it settled down.

“There you are, Mr. Melkior, is she possessed by the devil or is she not? Even the devil himself wouldn’t have …”

“… could have come up such a nasty prank,” she completed his sentence with malicious glee.

“But I tell you it wasn’t me. I would have owned up, now. I might have done it if I’d been able to think of such a thing, but I’m afraid I’m not as clever as you. I’m just not. The pigeon must have flown in on his own through a hole in the roof—they have their nests up there …”

“Oh my pigeon!” she sang derisively. “You did think of it, it came to you as you were going after pigeons up in the attic. He eats pigeons, you know. And how does he kill them? He drowns them. Imagine those darling little heads that look at you so coquettishly, well he pushes them under water till they drown! Oh, Mac, you
are
a butcher.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, kitten, you eat pigeons—right, Mr. Melkior? You must drown them to keep the blood in the flesh.”

“Do you hear what this cannibal is saying about blood and flesh? Shut up, you horrible man!” and she turned away from him capriciously. “All right, sir, I know you don’t like Fred, you’ve never given him a good review, but I’m sure you would never do such a beastly thing to him. While Mac here … He pretends to be his bosom pal, mind you. Fred was marvelous, if it hadn’t been for the stupid prank with the pigeon he would have got a round of applause on stage, but he loosed the pigeon himself! No, you’re a terrible Jesuit! Don’t believe a word he says, Mr., Mr. Trecić.”

“Better use my first name,” said Melkior, offended, “you seem to have difficulty remembering my last. My name is Melkior.”

“That’s even worse. Did I make a mistake?” she said coyly. “Why do you dislike Fred?”

“Well, you don’t have to love everyone, do you?”

“But Fred isn’t everyone. He’s a prominent artist. A protagonist. What are you smirking for, you sadist, isn’t
protagonist
the right word?”

“Oh, definitely, kitten, definitely. Exemplar!” and
ATMAN
gave Melkior a wink.

“You’re an exemplar yourself!” she flared. “An exemplar of a dolt. No, honestly, Mr. Melkior, why don’t you like Fred?”

“Why don’t
you
like him anymore?” Melkior dared to ask, his face very visibly red.

“That’s different. I know him, I know him very well. You hardly know him at all, so to speak, except on stage … Anyway, how can you speak of actors if you’re not in close contact with them?”

“An astronomer is not in close contact with the stars, but that doesn’t prevent him from speaking of them,” said Melkior. “And Freddie is not such a star that I should not speak of him.”

The retort pleased her hugely. She gave a contented laugh.

“That’s good. Freddie’s not such a star that … Very good indeed. You’re a witty crew, you from Ugo’s crowd. And each of you is called something funny. What do they call you?”

“Eustachius.”

“Why?”

“Who knows. There was a Roman soldier in the army of Emperor Trajan …”

“… the Goat Ears? And what do they call Ugo?”

“Parampion.”

“Why?”

“He chose it himself.”

“Why?” she asked with childlike insistence, but her mind was already elsewhere.

That elsewhere offended Melkior. But he no longer hated her. He thought, Sure, she’s superficial, fickle, and—if it came to that—definitely unfaithful. But he loved the artlessness which seemed to him incapable of being false. She was singing in an angelic choir amid a scent of roses. This is it—I’m in love. And he was in high spirits.

He had found a nest among the branches. Chirping. Baby, he said to her in his mind.

“As for you, Mac, don’t you think it’s time you stopped that chewing?” She gave a laugh tinged with disgust.

Well, perhaps she, too, was relishing an inner celebration that was being interrupted by Mac’s smacking lips.

“Sorry, Mic, I’ll be finished in a moment.” He began to tidy the table. “That was my lunch. I completed a major commission today. Two horoscopes of historic importance. They took me nearly two years to work out. Well, they are done. Both will end up on the bottom. I finished this morning.”

“Oh, it’s those ships, Mac?”

“The steel behemoths will be sunk next year. Here, have a look, Mr. Melkior”—he spread some sheets of paper out on the table with constellations, figures, and names on them. “On February the thirteenth last year, at one-fifteen p.m., the battleship
Bismarck
was launched in Hamburg, while on February the twenty-first of the same year, at three-forty-two p.m., the battleship
George V
was launched in Newcastle. Both are going to be smashed like a couple of tin buckets. The greatnesses.” He gave a mordant laugh, evidently with something else on his mind.