Cyclops (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) (40 page)

“Yes it does … I’m sorry, Viviana, I must be off,” he said in a sudden rush.

“Just like that? All of a sudden?”

“That’s right, all of a sudden, there’s something I forgot to do. Goodbye.”

“You
are
a curious one. … All right then,
au revoir.”

She held out her hand with a touch of regret. But he didn’t notice, he didn’t even notice the hand, he was already turning to go.

“Won’t you even give me your hand?”

“Oh, right, sorry …” He felt her small soft hand in his and wavered for a moment. But then a strange fury swept through him and he said
Goodbye
in a near shout and made for the first corner in a genuine hurry.

For the corner, for the corner, run for cover! She had her gaze trained on his trembling back. He walked at a weirdly uneven pace, ridiculous, shameful, like a petty thief with a stolen book under his arm. He was treading across a miry and accursed world, alone and desperate. His body felt to him like a frightened piglet, a seal, a turtle, cumbersome and sluggish, something which could only roll, stumble, and crawl. Something which never got where it was going, as if in a dream. The treacherous body jeering at its own misery. Would I were no more! Would I were the infectious air … I would suffocate the …
preventively
… But he was around the corner by then and the madness subsided instantly. Moreover, there surfaced Don Fernando’s
preventively
as a good sign of mordant humor. Yet he was still striding fast, like someone hurrying to reach an impatient destination. …

“Hey, what’s the rush, fair knight? Has it already started?”

The grinning fillings and the thick, lust-swollen lips. Melkior barely stopped himself from spitting into it all. How many times had he felt the symbolic impulse in his mouth as the resolution of his strange relationship with Ugo! Missed the opportunity again! An encounter of this particular kind was the last thing he needed. Ugo was blocking his way, his arms open for a vehement embrace.

“I want you to know I’m happy, dear friend!” he cried out loud, trying all the while to hug his friend and shower kisses on him, but Melkior had his arms out and kept retreating. “So exquisitely happy that it’s almost beyond your esteemed-accursed (read: wild) imagination.
October
brought a harvest surpassing all expectations. I have picked the fruits—I’m still sticky all over with the sweet dreams.”

“Only with the dreams?” smiled Melkior in a provocative way. He wanted to know, to know, be it even …

“Oh, with reality as well—and how!” exclaimed Ugo delightedly. “The dreams came later on, as a brief recapitulation. I belong to the genus of ruminants in that respect.”

“Meaning what, specifically?” Oh, he knew only too well what it meant, but he wanted to hear it—hear it! Unless this creep is …

“Meaning? You want me to … go into the details?” baring his fillings in a grin, drool pooling between his lip and his lower teeth. “Now, that would be a bit of … No, really, you must admit, we can’t violate a lady’s privacy, now can we?” and he burst into terrible, provocative, teasing laughter.

The night’s dark rings around her eyes had now acquired a very authentic explanation. Oh well, there was nothing for it, might as well get to the bottom …

“Which is to say you … ?”

“Yes, I did.” Ugo was looking “innocently” into his eyes, but his snout was filled full of laughter.

“You’re lying, Parampion,” Melkior spat out the words with a pained smile, “I was with her until a minute ago.”

“Buying the precious fabrics for her aunt? I was supposed to go with her, only I overslept. Heh-heh, does it fit?”

That’s right. It fits, damn it! Of course, it
fit in
with her plans, too.

“And where did you …” Melkior made an easy-to-imagine gesture.

“First
in a quiet little café
, to quote a pop song from our puberty, if you still remember it. It’s actually a great place for ‘undercover’ people (I mean couples with a skeleton in the cupboard) with well-coached, discreet personnel. Then at her place.”

“Her place?”

“Yes. Is that beyond the imagination? But I made with the poetry while still at the café.
Restless is the autumn air
… while the hands, of course, went about their business … poetically. First the hair, for the sake of the rhyme, and then over the rest of the poetry. But the hardest of all, you know, was the passage across those zones … you’d explained it to me, scientifically, the erogenous zones. They are indeed—you were right on that point—highly sensitive points in women. Not to mention that it wasn’t quite the thing to do, getting sexually aroused in public. We’re not in a cage at the zoo,
perbacco
, the monkeys, remember? I told you about that time when I was nudging
la fiancée
toward the potential liberator … Oh,
mon Dieu
, I’m a right bastard, aren’t I? But once we got to her flat everything went smoothly, no resistance at all, over all the zones, heh-heh … But your eyes are flashing, Eustachius the Envious! Well, it wasn’t so hard to predict, eh?”

He may indeed have noticed a glint in Melkior’s eyes—he started fussing over him to give comfort in a flash of generosity.

“She likes you, too, you know. Thing is, you think too much in the late Plato’s terms. Which is not her cup of tea. Frankly, she doesn’t understand that sort of pragmatics. The problem of the transition to the horizontal was invented by male insecurity. We have built poetry upon it. They like being brought down. Their worn-out ‘no’ is a form of the verb ‘keep going.’ You don’t have to be Caesar to cross that dried-up Rubicon—if indeed anything had ever run there except crocodile tears. There, I’ve expounded things at your intellectual level. You’ve got to admit. I’ve even used oratorical metaphors. Applause.”

“Nevertheless you weren’t at her place last night,” said Melkior with mulish obstinacy. “That I won’t believe.”

He really did not believe it. He could not bring himself to believe it. She’s no Enka …

“You don’t? Well, have a gander at this, Eustachius,” he took out a small latchkey from his pocket, “I can usher you immediately into that heaven,
ecco la chiave del paradiso. ‘L’Amor che muove il sole e l’altre stelle,’”
he declaimed, his face gazing skyward, with a gesture of high pathos. “Do you believe me now, my poor Eustachius? I really can’t see why you persist in being so hard on yourself in so determined a way, sipping from the palm of your hand, as it were, all the while surrounded by goblets and chalices brimful with pleasures. Oh you Dio-genius, you ascetic-onanist, you slimy
omnia mea mecum porto
oyster, you quaint plaster saint above the portal of History’s brothel, you martyr to martyromania, you self-elected weeper over the fate of Mankind … which, incidentally, includes my worthless self! Spit on me and everything else (for you do seem about to spit), make a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn around your vertical axis and give those mischievous hormones free rein. Life is no dream. Life is the unity of all the piggish ways known as Man. I don’t believe you still agree with the tramp Satin that
man
has a proud ring to it. Don’t tell me your soul admires the self-denial of the carrier pigeon or the loyalty of the dog. You are proud your-self—what do you care for loyalty and self-denial? Liberate your pigs, let them root through the pleasures, let them grunt with delight. There you have it. Call me an idiot if you like.”

“No. You’re a Superpig … in the Nietzschean sense,” smiled Melkior in bitter disgust. He started to turn around and walk away, but Ugo rushed out in front of him and made a mocking bow.

“Oh Master, teach me to achieve life eternal!” He then puffed out his chest boastfully: “At least I am a Superpig! That
is
something, after all! What matters is being above average. I hate the average, even the porcine average. But where were you dashing off to, Eustachius the Purest? Wait, there’s something I have to tell you! It’s important. It is about her.”

In vain. Melkior had taken off at a brisk trot and hopped aboard a tram that was just pulling away from the stop.

He could not resist looking back. Ugo was not watching the tram move away. He was walking purposefully toward the corner, entering the street where Melkior had left Viviana. He was going to run into her there. He did not need the mercy of Chance; he was guided by the smiles of angels. Black envy darkened Melkior’s thoughts. He fumbled, like a blind man, through the previous night’s uncertainties—but his tentacles found nothing. Nothing that the imagination could offer as a visual document of Ugo’s sortie. The studio flat. A projection of his ex-girlfriend Mina’s studio: the shortwave radio always on—the nocturnal green eye of the basilisk lulling the beauty to sleep on the chest of the weary hero, the display panel with its tiny illuminated windows
KALUNDBORG
—
HILVERSUM
—
MOTALA
—
NWDR
—
GLW
—
SWF
—
GLW
—
HöRBY
… oops, this was the wrong film. Melkior was booing, I’ve been swindled, I want my money back! Show aborted. House lights up. Imagination threading in another reel … Now presenting
GENTLE
BREATH
, b/w, love story/pornographic exploit, starring
BLACK
FILLINGS
and
VIVIANA
PUTTANA
—directed by
MELKIOR
—produced by
TRESFILM
—stunts by
UGO
—masks:
DON
FERNANDO
… and that’s it. The film proper never begins. The same opening credits keep running again and again: starring … directed by … produced by …

“Tickets please?”

But the show hasn’t even started! protested Melkior in the darkened auditorium. The voice had golden wings on its hat, with the heraldic arms of the city between. A dignitary of the tram line in visitation. Each of the faithful receives a blessing and absolution upon presentation of a ticket. Melkior, too, presented his credentials with due contrition and received blessing and absolution. And he felt pure and worthier of continuing his ride on the City Transport system. The sheer satisfaction of it! A clean-shaven ticket inspector in a dark blue uniform, with gold on his hat, a strong, tall man moving from one passenger to the next, distributing indulgences: May I see your ticket? Thank you. May I see your ticket? Thank you. …
Te absolvo in nomine tramcar, amen. Te absolvo in nomine tramcar. Amen
… Hallelujah, hallelujah, respond the passengers while wheels under their feet sound Bach fugues. And the sun shines on the honorable tram windows … Melkior felt a traveler’s piety in his weary heart and said contritely to himself: what a joy it is to be alive once you’ve settled your accounts with the electric tram.

But what about the
iron mammoth
, what about the
big oaf?
It’s a sly challenge to the big benefactor who would never—and this deserves repeating—
never
entertain the idea of running someone over. Never trust the scoundrel-automobile. But the Tram …

Rolling on, rolling on … one
tram
, one
way, tram-tram
…
bus-bus trambus
, the lyre on the roof thrumming
way
, the wheels drumming
tram-tram
… But the rhythms shaking his body went for nothing; his thoughts kept stealing back to Viviana. Now that’s love. What on earth am I to do? He knew that tonight and tomorrow and the day after and all the days of his brief civilian life until the day Pechárek howled
dwaftees!
he was going to be searching for her …
Roaming street after street, just hoping we’ll meet, and when at last we do I’ll give my heart to you
… his thought itself gave forlorn and dejected voice to the banal tune, and a welling of pain rose in his throat. He fought back sobs. He leaned his forehead on the window pane and sought to disperse his thoughts by paying attention to the world around him.

A drunk was speaking loudly:

“I’m taking no orders and that’s final!” he gave a formidable hiccup and reared to his full height, driven by the spasm in his stomach, making it all look like the position of attention, clicking his heels and raising his arm in salute:

“Humbly report, I’m taking no orders from anyone! That’s first—and most important. Secondly … if you want to put me in the cavalry, the answer’s yes. Then I’d be a cavalier, right? Make me see the horse’s ass. So what. Like the Sergeant used to say—horse’s ass. To me. And there I was serving King and country at the fortress in Petrovaradin. And the Sergeant had Mitzi a singer across the river in Novi Sad. Fine, but old Mitzi needed to be kept in her liqueurs … So … who was chosen to do the honors? Yours truly, of course. With the blue Danube out in front of me. But they never asked
Can you handle it, soldier?
oh no, it was
Forward, march!
(that’s what
must
comes from—march or bust, get it?) But who should I get killed for, eh, a horse’s ass? Ever seen the Danube?” this to Melkior, his sole listener. “No? Well, it doesn’t matter if you haven’t. It’s water plain and simple. Common or gar-(hic)-den variety water. Flowing all the way from Germany. And I pissed in it at Petrovaradin. Heh heh. But that was before Hitler’s time, just to be perfectly … I’m not the kind to muddy a Führer’s waters. No, it’s just I wanted to send something of mine to the Black Sea, get it? If only the Danube ran upstream, eh? Wouldn’t that be something, eh? Got your call-up papers yet?” he suddenly asked Melkior, dropping his voice confidentially. “No? I have. So will you. Anyone with two arms and two legs will be served. I’m in a Camouflage Company, camouflage kit to cover your shit. That’s the long and the short of it. Reporting tomorrow. Oh what a brave fighting man I am …” he sang in a magpie voice, twisting his neck derisively this way and that, as if defying someone in the tram.

Melkior jumped off the tram before it stopped. He was not far from home and hurried along, the sooner to shut himself up in his room … unless the Stranger is back, he thought morosely … to think about everything in solitude, in the peace and quiet of a horizontal stretch on his back, reading from the white ceiling the invisible letters spelling his idiotic fate.