Cyclops (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) (26 page)

“Look at him—wants to tell anecdotes to pass the time,” mutters the captain.

The old seaman sees that nobody is listening, turns over on his side, and falls contentedly asleep in an instant.

The next day a feeble hope is timidly born inside the castaways that things might take a proverbial turn for the better. No cannibal lunch is in the offing. What was the cook’s stake the day before is now covered with smoking green branches—to repel poisonous insects, thinks the Asclepian, a wise measure. If only the cook remembered to make a religious speech in front of the cauldron, he would be proclaimed a saint, or at least a martyr in a hundred years’ time; his name would be mentioned in all the cathedrals in Christendom. As it turns out, all that is left behind him are the swollen bellies from the
Menelaus
earnestly cursing him for having so painstakingly fattened them with death. No preparations for anything like a feast are under way in the village. The natives dawdle idly around the huts, stepping out of the way of naked women who slap them jokingly on their shiny black behinds. Mothers suckle their young with dull indifference, some of them catering to two at a time, one at each breast. The bigger children enviously watch the feeding of the tiny sucklings and divert milk drops with a finger from the greedy little mugs, licking their sticky sweetened fingers with gusto. A monkey whom a boy has singed with a flaming twig screams piteously in the forest. Presently his entire tribe joins him in a screeching show of solidarity, protesting in an angry chorus. Then the whole forest puts up a horrible howl. The offended monkey folk. The cannibals scoff at the impotent simian rage, hurling provocative counterhowls back. At this the monkeys’ screeching turns into a kind of general weeping in recognition of their impotence and defeat. And once again peace reigns in the jungle.

Several natives armed with blowpipes take the castaways out of the hut and into the forest. The four naked swells from the
Menelaus
, using their hands as fig leaves, go through the village past the naked women with their eyes downcast in a gentlemanly manner, dying of shame. Only the first mate holds his uncaring favorite in the pedagogical embrace of his long white fingers as if teaching it elementary skills. A poor pupil, certain to flunk the easiest of tests. But that is not the point: it is just that the first mate is defying the elements. He is making humor of his misery, i.e., of the best raw material of all. But the product remains limited to personal use only as nobody else partakes of it or indeed notices it at all. Not that he minds: he keeps holding his rudder for his own account, grinning squeamishly.

Alongside the naked men walk the two clothed (inedible) oldsters. The old seaman displayed a most brachiate curiosity, casting quick glances at the sky and his surroundings, the trees, the huts, the men, women, and children, harkening to the birdsong, the roar of the wild beasts, the sound of the wind in the treetops, and suddenly says with satisfaction, “By gum, this place don’t look half bad.” The doctor walks slightly apart from the group, as he has walked all his life. But with a difference! This time it is he who stands out, fully dressed, dandified even, aware of his terrible superiority, which he patiently flaunts to the shitty Nakeds. To that herd of stupid cattle which is shyly covering their genitals with the sorry dignity of former human convention. Stuff and nonsense! As if they’ve discovered a milder version of this damned mess! As if their sadly pendulous noses are going to shock anyone! Cause a revolt of public decency? Impinge on the moral sensitivity of those ladies walking about naked themselves who pay no attention whatsoever to the presence here of this naked, exciting masculinity?

But as soon as they set foot in the forest the first mate lets drop his wrinkled saint and starts furiously examining the flora, biting into fruits, nibbling leaves, branches, roots. Then, half out of his mind, he suddenly swings around to the doctor.

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“Show me the tree of knowledge!”

“Ah,” the doctor remembers, “yes, you’re after your alkaloids. I hope we’ll be able to find something for you.
Piper Bette
leaves, for instance. Only I don’t know what the trunk looks like. But I do know the
Areca Catechu
palm. I’ve seen it before. Its nuts contain a high percentage of alkaloids as well. The thing’s quite tall though, and betel nuts grow at the top, you’ll have to climb.”

“Trying to scare me?” laughs the first mate. “Climbing is a seaman’s skill I still haven’t forgotten.”

“I daresay. Only will these people allow you to climb that high?”

“Well, where could I possibly flee to? The sky?”

“Don’t ask me—ask them. However,” the redheaded Asclepian adds slyly, “I happen to know a man whom they would allow to climb.”

“You?” said the first mate, looking him up and down with derision.
“You
would climb?”

“I wouldn’t know how. I’ve never been good at the simian skills. But they wouldn’t stop the old salt.”

“You mean they’re not going to … to cook him?” says the first mate with envy. “They’ll spare you, too,” he adds with some hesitation. “I don’t resent it, believe me. That is to say, I don’t care. Will you just look at our crew scarfing down bananas?”

“Yes, I am looking. Carbohydrates and albumens. They’ll be pummeling their bellies mea culpa tonight.”

Indeed, the captain, the chief engineer, and the agent are greedily busy peeling bananas. Four-petaled peels fly about them like spent shells. Hunger has pushed aside all their awed nocturnal thoughts; they are feeding mindlessly, almost idiotically, no longer giving any thought to the death that looms so near—worse, so horrible. But all of a sudden, after a young cannibal throws down before them a fresh lot of bananas, coconuts, pineapples, mangoes, sugarcane marrow, and stickily sweet pink Indian figs, the captain seems to have had a brainstorm. He smacks his convex and surely intelligent brow hard:

“You know what, gentlemen? They’ve taken us out to pasture!” “Ah, the penny’s dropped at last!” mutters the doctor with a pitying smirk.

“They’re fattening us!” the first-threatened agent nearly sobs out in horror.

“That’s right, gentlemen,” the chief engineer states ashamedly, “fattening us like pigs.”

Now there ensues a painful awakening in the caring embrace of Mother Nature. The babies immediately release the generous breast. They feel the swellings in their bellies, they feel a dreadful animal slithering and squelching over the mishmash of sweet fruits inside. As if they had been eating live salamanders, rats, crocodiles, their innards rebel at the prospect of sudden catastrophe. Each hugs a tree trunk in an all-out effort to throw up and out their sneakingly greedy and disgusting death.

A disgusting death. A disgusting death you carry about inside you, as you do the image of your home country, the old homestead. My heart’s in the highlands. From across the seas I’ll come back to thee. And the soul parts from the body. Going hence. But before leaving it dictates the dispositions to be made as hereunder specified: one half of my assets to be left to my legitimate issue, the other half accruing to my lawfully wedded wife to own and manage as she shall see fit for the rest of her natural born life, should she not marry again. In the event of her remarriage, her inheritance shall pass on to my legitimate issue, or my grandchildren if any, upon their coming of age. My widow shall in such a case retain only her personal belongings from her so-called dowry, should any remain. Item, two dresses, one for everyday wear and the other for formal occasions; item, two changes of underwear, to wit, two slips, two pairs of panties, two brassieres, and two suspender belts, one change being white and the other black (for possible mourning). Items, two pairs of shoes, one of low quality and the other of high quality, the latter to be black for the reason set out hereinabove. Her jewelry shall be sequestered in full, including her wedding ring which through her remarriage will have lost its sacramental value and become an item of personal adornment. Further, there shall be deducted from the estate an appropriate sum of money, at rates currently obtaining, for a Class A funeral (not including a requiem) for my widow. There shall be carried in her funeral procession a wreath of thorns and nettles with a yellow ribbon bearing the inscription
COME
TO
ME
,
DARLING.
My widow shall be buried in a grave separate from mine, with the following inscription to be carved on the headstone:
HERE
LIES
THE
WOMAN
OF
MY
LIFE
TO
THE
DEATH.
HER
LATE
HUSBAND
#1. While the coffin is being nailed shut there shall—Knock knock knock—violent pounding at the door interrupted The Great Will and Testament. Before he had time to ask who it was, Ugo’s leering face appeared in the room.

“Verily, verily, I say unto thee,” and in three steps he reached the sofa on which Melkior was lying. “What you’re doing to yourself God Himself cannot understand. Been lying long like this? Woolgathering, I gather?”

“Yes, well, I’ve been doing a bit of thinking,” replied Melkior stretching himself as if freshly awake.

“Thinking? Well, I, too, despise the body, Eustachius the Most Kind. ‘But God hath tempered the body together, having given more abundant honor to that
member
which lacked.’ Saint Paul. I’ve been feeling spiritual all over today. We had a clergyman to lunch, a certain Dom Kuzma. My mother has the habit of picking up such characters in churches and bringing them home. And he’s all spirit, hardly any body left at all.”

“With, er, big ears?” Melkior propped himself on an elbow in keen interest.

“Rather like an ex-elephant. You know him?”

“Ahh, poor Dom Kuzma.” Melkior could see him on the invalid’s machine, miserable, quarrelsome, haggling for each gram of flesh. “We sucked a lot of blood out of him in our boyhood. He was our catechism instructor. But then he had a lot of blood in those days—fierce blood, too.”

“You should see him now!
Dies irae.
One of those who come before God’s wrathful countenance. Mother kept going out to the kitchen so as not to cry in front of him. Even Kalisto’s worm-eaten heart gave a lurch. He vowed, deep inside, to stop seeing Deaf Daisy for a week. But he’ll go to her tomorrow, naturally. He hasn’t got the least shred of bodily shame, that fundamental paternal virtue.”

“Of such a son,” added Melkior.

“Why do you believe me so incapable of spiritual elevation? The unholy spirit that proceeds from the father …”

“… proceeds also from the son.
Filioque.
The theologico-sexual problem of every family. That is what the East split from the West over. It preferred to rely on the father, the more experienced of the two. The sexual spirit is the accidental progenitor of the son, the punished libertine paying dearly for his tiny short-lived happiness. The son is his damnation. His conscious sex incarnate, always underfoot when the desire is upon him. A waking ear in carnal nights, a suspicious eye preying on his lust with unjust and cruel disgust. Woe to the parent, having to be ashamed of his own virility because his male descendant has castrated him in his fantasy.”

“My view of the issue is more on the financial side. Kalisto’s virility is a strain on the family budget.”

“Ah, you would like him to have that little item subsidize your virility instead? Because your virility is entitled to financial aid arising from his shameful renouncement? Entitled to your father’s sacrifice? But why? What’s your honorable Johnson done to deserve more joy than his? Perhaps your father’s panicking at the thought of his last twitches? No joy, no poetry, just a poignant overhaul?”

“Don’t, don’t. You’ll have me weeping in a minute!” Ugo made a comically tearful face. “I’ll dream about Kalisto in flagrante with Deaf Daisy and cheer him on to beat the band.”

“And so you should, were you more of an independent male specimen and less of Daddy’s stupid spermatozoon who’d happened upon the notion of the immaculate conception.”

“You are hell-bent, aren’t you, on depriving me of my little revenue stream. If this transpires, I’m done for. Without sin I cannot peddle indulgences. Mind you, Kalisto is a good-sized sinner as sinners go, and I can tell you he gets off cheap with me. Let him just try his luck in church—they’d give him something to remember. He’d get his sinful knees good and callused like a dromedary’s. Not to mention the repentance, the vows, the useful Never Again decisions … Whereas I allow ongoing sinning—for a modest consideration, of course. And yet you tell me I have no understanding? I’m kindhearted, I really am. And how does
he
treat his legitimate ‘spermatozoon’? Makes him sell old hats, that’s how! I have to go off to a date like a consumptive romanticist, with poems in my pockets—I’m too broke to take a girl to a Café. I owe money to waiters all over town. Thénardier will sport my guts for suspenders. With all the damp in the parks, I’ll catch my death one of these days. But God sees my misery—He’s sent us a warm autumn. Ahh!” sighed Ugo in dead earnest.
“And
I’ve got this rhyme business to worry about! You can’t get to first base with blank verse. They look right through you like cows and carry on with their own train of thought: two yards of fabric will do for a close-fitting dress, but you need more for a pleated skirt. Plus a matching striped silk blouse (black and yellow), yes, that would do nicely. … No, rhymes are an absolute must. The only thing they understand;
June-moon.
The old tune. It gets their attention. They swoon. My goodness, the way those words go with each other, isn’t this marvelous?” he imitated a marveling dumb blonde.

Melkior was chuckling on the sofa. “Well then, my dear Parampion, all you have to do is write rhyming verse.”

“Aah, don’t laugh at the pragmatic poet, Eustachius the All-Wise. Why not help me instead, you’re a ready hand at making those treats which our birds peck at so readily. Listen to this: