Cyclops (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) (39 page)

Sure enough, she bought nothing this time either. She had everything taken down from the shelves, turned the lot upside down, and went out again. Disappointed.

“What did I tell you?” she said all hot and bothered, splotches coming out all over her face. Who is she angry at? She’s gone a bit ugly even, he smirked to himself with a kind of glee. Look, she’s even got tears in her eyes!

“No, no, I tell you,” she said, barely managing to hold back the tears. “Nothing ever works for me. Nothing, nothing, ever! Don’t laugh at me, it’s true.”

“I’m not laughing,” but inside he was, impudent and vengeful. He was deriding the mannequin-like sorrow that robbed him of the importance of his existence with her, making him a lonely companion: he was trotting along by her side all but unnoticed. He suffered grumpily. Homeomeries, the great-grandmothers to atoms, the seed of the world according to Anaxagoras, I know about them, too. He was reminding himself of his own importance, to prevent himself from sinking. He was clutching at straws. At homeomeries. Embraced by Aristotle, too. How well-shaped and pretty her mouth is, the lower lip slightly swelling—for a
kiss!
But no, it’s not only a
kiss.
Oh love, for delights! The subjective derivative of proliferation. The bait. The biblical apple. The warbling. Come to me, darling, we’ll have a lovely time. Enka naked. Kior! Oh, Kior …

He kept trying to ward off the black fillings in Ugo’s wide-open, lustful mouth, which guzzled lechery with kisses. The fleshly feminine existence. If I am then I am what am I. The pride of the body. The breasts making their announcement in advance, trumpeting to the world to tell it who is coming. The fascinating damned holy leg tapping the patient Earth’s head with pointed sandal, the elevation of the rump. Here she comes, here comes the proudly exalted empress of the world. Noses jerking after her, eyes staring, tongues dropping. The great drooling of mankind. While
NATURE
, the old seductress, the Madam of The Great Brothel, murmurs contentedly, Aren’t my girls lovely?

“I buy bottles! Bottles! Old newspapers, bottles!” the voice of one crying in the wilderness, issuing a final warning.
Vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas.
Repent while ye still have time. The Great Pestilence is upon us. It’s ravaging these lands. Say your prayers and sell your bottles. Old newspapers, too. Bottles.

“I just don’t see what they want those newspapers for,” she spoke up derisively. “Forever whining about things. Now, the bottles I can understand … but the old newspapers? What can they possibly need trash for?”

“To cook and recook, and make into new newsprint.”

“New newspapers from old? No wonder you can’t find anything worth reading in the papers. Just a load of rubbish, nothing but war and bombs. They’ve nothing better to do.”

“While they could be weaving marquisette …” Where had he come up with “marquisette”? He wondered himself.

“Why marquisette?” But the penny dropped: “You’re making fun of me, aren’t you? Well, I did tell you I was looking for cloth … for Aunt Flora. But there’s no point in boring you. I’ll go on alone.”

Melkior was afraid she might abandon him mid-street. “No, Viviana, please don’t, I’m not bored at all. I only said, wouldn’t it be more useful to weave pretty fabrics for pretty women? To make the world a more beautiful place. Then you’d find what you’re looking for.”

“Ah, if only I knew what I’m looking for!” she admitted with a sincere smile. “I have to find it first to discover what it was I was looking for. I’m over the moon when I finally find it. And I don’t mean just the cloth—that’s who I am.”

That’s who I am
—did she mean “unfortunately” or “hooray”? For there was neither sad tinge nor boastful triumph in her voice, it was a simple statement of fact: anything goes—I’ll see what you have to offer.

Melkior was offering himself. Offering up his person with all his heart and soul, in order to be found, discovered. Here I am, Viviana, with all the devotion of a love which … No, they prefer charm boys, euphoric babblers using fetching lies to decorate a night. A wonderful night. The very stars were bursting with laughter. Wow, what a time we had!

She has been sucked dry with kisses, gnawed bare by those black fillings. She has got the “wonderful night” circled around her eyes in a spreading sfumato of carnal blue. The stars of pleasure are even now bursting in her pupils. She is still being drenched with caresses. Viviana! Rattling inside him was a shattered sky, Ugo was stomping on the shards.

They walked down a street thick with special offers and passersby. A warm and idle morning. Elbows, shoulders, legs. Heads turned in salute to shop windows. Noses and one ear each in profiles. Eyes, greedy, snatching in passing at the fetishes behind the thick panes of glass of the sanctuaries. Inside, priests and Pharisees discovering with delight the secrets of the genesis of pleasing shapes, deluxe qualities, the wonders of the most-moster-mostest of sophisticated civilization. Suddenly, among the splendor-lovers’ ecstatic profiles, Melkior spotted a heretic
en-face
scornfully erasing the bustling fairground enthusiasm and leaving in its wake grave concern. The Stranger strode in a “superior” manner towering above all the heads, even though he was no taller than they. Melkior spotted him a long way off. Instinctively he ducked his head down, dived into the dancing waves of heads, shoulders, bodies in motion, moving on through, and hung his head like a culprit. He wished to dissolve like an anonymous droplet in the thick stupid sea of senseless motion, to pass unnoticed, invisible. In the company of this pretty,
unnecessary
(ah, Viviana!) female I’m loitering among the props of a superficial, irresponsible life, suspected in
his
mind of being an accomplice, perhaps even a believer.

But the Stranger was moving through the crowd headed directly for him. He was cutting his way through the thick rolling magma like someone wishing to meet a man amid all the frivolity and to offer him his hand. He’s spotted me. So … Melkior straightened up like a man, stood apart from the throng and made his way toward the Stranger, leaving Viviana agog in front of billows of silk in a shop window. He had his hand ready to proffer, along with a question about a good night’s sleep … but he noticed that the man was looking over his head, into the distance, with the eyes of a railway inspector, of a man responsible for regular traffic flow. In this way the Stranger passed by Melkior (for it would have been silly to say
over him)
like a mute and hermetic armored train with a vital mysterious destination at some unintelligible distance.

Melkior looked after him, disappointed, cast aside, superfluous at this “historic moment.” Now, Danton would have halted, perhaps even offered a hand. But this Dzhugashvilovich … He felt embarrassment at his own outstretched hand, at his thoughtful question, “Did you have a good night’s sleep?” at his puritanical renouncement of Viviana.

“Nice,” she took hold of his elbow, “and me looking all over for you. Trying to give me the slip?”

“I was trying to avoid encountering a man …” He felt her fingers and his own embarrassment at the lie.

“Or a woman?”

“No, a man,” he mouthed, almost repentant, but he was pleased by her suspicion though he knew it was no more than a stab at a conventional flirtation. Which was true—she followed with no retort to his repeated claim. So that’s how it is—she doesn’t care, man or a woman. What on earth am I wasting my time here for? He was beginning to feel tired, for one thing. In need of sleep, hungry, tormented by dreams, thoughts, and wakefulness, he wished to sit down somewhere, alone, to rest from the nearness of her. Gloomily to ruminate on a happy love, withdrawn, in solitude,
in the dark… I watch your pretty eyes
… and offer life a chance to savor the sweet taste of pain. That legless wretch (the man last night) couldn’t afford it, so he discovered an even more miserable metaphysics of love. Pure music. With no guts or tails, as he put it in his terrible humility. Or was it that he wanted to spill his Penelope’s guts and snip off the tail of her stallion? And him saying he wanted to listen to the cantilena of traitorous love! No, it is undeniably the fate of unhappiness to bite its own fingertips, with pleasure.

“Will you be coming again soon to visit Mr. Adam, Viviana?” he enjoyed using his name for her.

“What, to have him torment me again? No, I won’t,” she said defiantly. “I’ll never go see him again!”

“Why ever not, Viviana? He likes you very much.”

“Oh yes he does, in that way … what’s that word for liking to torture people?”

“Sadistic.”

“Yes, that’s it. You saw what he did to me yesterday.
And
he keeps insulting me. He’s a really nasty piece of work,” she added with a smile that attenuated the words. “And generally speaking, all you men are such good-for-nothings.”

She laughed, showing her incredibly white teeth.

“All?” asked Melkior rather worriedly, then stammered in fear: “Even Ugo?”

“You mean the one whom Fred …? Oh, he’s the worst of the lot. … And such a liar! He thinks I’m some kind of … Apart from that, he’s quite a likable rascal—he’s so funny,” she gave a cryptic smile, “he had me laughing all the time!”

“Last night?” Melkior groaned bitterly.

“Last night?” she said, perplexed. “No, the night before. At the Give’nTake, when he kept teasing Freddie. Why, you were there, too. Weren’t you? Frankly, I don’t remember.”

She doesn’t remember. “I am democratic,” say the finest ladies.

But she doesn’t; Maestro may have lied about it.

“Oh, I was, I was,” muttered Melkior and heaved a sad sigh. “You were looking at me with such an inexplicable loathing …”

“With loathing?” she said with unconcerned wonder. “Why, yes, of course, you are the critic! It was on account of Fred. Anyway, perhaps I wasn’t quite wrong to have looked at you that way,” and she gave him a birdlike look, coquettishly inclining her head to one side.

“You were wrong, Viviana, you were wrong indeed …” Melkior suddenly threw his soul open like a shirt, with unrestrained sentimentality. “I was looking at you … differently. You were awfully unfair to me.”

“You were looking at me with … you know what kind of interest. That syphilitic pig next to you … I saw it. I know the kind of thing he says about me.” The dark splotches broke out over her face again and her eyes went moist with suppressed tears.

“It was Freddie we were discussing,” he lied, “not you.”

“Why should I believe you? Do I know who you are? The first time I ever spoke to you was yesterday, at that crazy Mac’s. In fact, we didn’t even speak to each other. I scarcely heard you speak at all. You’re a curious person. Mac says you’re a very clever but curious person.”

“What does he mean, a curious person?” Well, at least she did think about me, he thought consolingly.

“I don’t know. I suppose you’re not like everyone else. That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

“No, it isn’t,” he blurted out nervously. “For one thing, I’m not witty like Ugo. I’m a bore. I’m boring you, too.”

“You’re not boring me at all,” she said candidly. “That’s where you’re wrong … and where it shows you don’t know me. I am democratic (ah-ha!), I’ll talk to anyone … if they’re interesting. You are curious but interesting, and I’m glad I’ve met you.”

“Are you really, Viviana?” He skipped the “democracy” bit and was pleased. “If only you knew how happy
I
am to have met
you!
I walk alongside you, thinking: if only she had an inkling of … and so on. I talk sheer drivel to myself—those are not thoughts really. Anyway, where could I get thoughts from when I’m all confused, I expect you’ve noticed. I’m happy one minute, the next I’m totally unhappy again, swearing at you inside, being angry with you … I was about to leave and go away just now.”

“Oh, you mean when you ducked me?” She was laughing.

“No, that was really because of a man.”

“Or a woman. Admit it—you didn’t want her to see you with me.”

“There’s nothing to admit, Viviana. It was a man …” He really hadn’t wanted the Stranger to see him with her … and he was now ashamed of that. He was amazed that he should have been ready to abandon her because of … What’s the matter with me? He knew he could not stop now. And he was giving in to it. I’m snared, I’m snared, he complained to himself, but was unable to pull himself together and so began blurting out a series of “ownings up.” I’ll own up, Viviana … no, I know you’re going to laugh, but I’ll own up all the same … I must own up, Viviana, come what may …

This was all very flattering to her. Such a declaration. Including all his suffering, even this morning’s business with the tram. (She took the tram to be a suicide attempt abandoned at the last moment. He presented it like that himself, in a confused and muddled fashion, so she was bound to take it as she did.) It was too late to “mend” anything. She carried her smile high, triumphantly, as if following a victory. Flags fluttered over her head, brass bands blasted away, and everyone was shouting, there she is! There she is! The one alongside Melkior Tresić, that’s her, Viviana! Long live Viviana! In a gracious moment she actually slipped her arm through his, she was democratic, what of it, she didn’t care who knew, let the whole world see, Mr. Adam the palmist himself, Fred, too, and Maestro and Ugo, the entire Give’nTake brigade … that she was not ashamed. And he walked at her side like a “secondary personage” in a parade, the royal consort, a self-styled king, cuckoo-king, thin-king, sin-king, sunk in gloom and indignity. She withdrew her arm from the misalliance after ten steps or so, because … well, enough was enough. Blackness engulfed his soul again and he covered his eyes for a moment with the sad arm she had abandoned. He walked thus for a few moments like someone blinded by a blaze. All had been lost in an instant. He longed to be alone among the ruins.

“Did something get in your eye?” she asked with concern.

“No. Something just occurred to me,” he replied hastily retracting his hand.

“Yes, I’ve noticed that,” she said sarcastically, “some people lay a hand over their eyes when they’re thinking. Does it help you to think more clearly?”