Cyclops (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) (44 page)

London in Flames! We’ll Fight Alone, Says Churchill! London Burning!
Latest edition! bellowed the news vendor to outshout MAAR’s mighty acoustics.

“That’s what they’re calling us up for,” Melkior heard a voice at his side. “As if we were firemen.”

The man was alone. He was watching MAAR’s magic tricks sadly, as though bidding farewell to something. An orderly city dweller with modest habits. Judging by his appearance, he needed neither the Singer nor the Remington, but he enjoyed watching the luxury of pretty things in the “free cinema,” the guileless play of light, during his evening stroll. This, too, was going to be taken from him by …
them over there.

We’ll Fight, Says Churchill!

“So fight,” muttered the man cholerically. “You cooked this up yourselves … years ago, at Versailles. Now you can eat it—piping hot!” said he with a gloating laugh.

Melkior felt like slapping the man’s face. Instead he stepped very convincingly with all his (admittedly modest) weight on one of the “implacable” fellow’s big toes. And said “Oh, so sorry” to him with an expression of the most sincere regret. Don Fernando’s prescription for “murderers in trams,” he thought, and this fellow does have an evil look in his eyes.

“Sorry, hell!” screamed Mr. Trodden Underfoot. “Go back to tending your goats if you haven’t learned how to walk in a city!”

“Goats?” The insult shot through Melkior’s body with lightning speed. He turned to face the city dweller in confused indecision and, trembling all over, repeated, “Goats?”

“Yes, goats!” said the city dweller definitively, ready to take him on.

A circle of curiosity seekers instantly formed around. “What’s this about?” one of them asked his neighbor. The man gave an indifferent shrug. “Any fighting yet?” asked Curious. “Not yet,” replied Indifferent. “What did the fellow say to him?”—this from Curious. “Nothing much. Goats or something.” “Meaning what? Something political?” “Could be.”

Melkior was unhappy … and afraid. What the hell had he got involved for? Everyone around was against him, they knew he’d done it on purpose. … He had a feeling of miserable solitude … and thought of Ugo. How he would have worked wonders in a trice, won over the lot of them, how everyone would take a shine to him. Ugo, Ugo, he cried wistfully, like the captive Croesus of the moralizing legend.

“Leave it to me. Gangway!” he suddenly heard a voice from heaven, the angelic voice of Ugo. “I said gangway!” and there he was within the circle, stern and purposeful. Eyebrows gathered in an awesome frown, he drilled Mr. Trodden Underfoot with a tracer-bullet look.

“So you’re the one, eh? … Well, well …” nodding victoriously.

“I didn’t do anything …”

“… worthwhile! Not that you ever did.” Ugo appeared to mean business.

“… but don’t tread on me!” the city dweller was offering resistance in retreat.

“Oh, you’d prefer us kissing you on the lips? Judas!”

The last word had the effect of a spreading stench: the circle began breaking up, crumbling, dissipating. Everyone was trying to sink back as soon as possible into the innocent mass of people charmed by MAAR’s capers, to camouflage themselves with carefree civic loyalty.

But Ugo was not falling for it. He knew there were at least twenty eyes following the denouement within the abandoned triangle, wishing to read
THE
END
in large capitals at the close of the film. The soccer fans seeing the match through until the referee’s last whistle. He therefore went on with his game.

“Follow me,” he whispered sternly to the petrified city dweller, plucking one of his overcoat buttons. “You come, too, Eustachius.”

“Oh, so you …” stammered the fear-frozen prisoner.

“… know each other? You bet! You’re in luck though: I’m feeling a bit indulgent today—it’s my mother’s birthday. Come along, come along. Follow us!”

The city dweller was making his docile way in the wake of his destiny, following Ugo’s restless head of hair, the black star of his undoing. Ugo knew it. He suddenly pulled Melkior into the thickest of the crowd, bent his head down as if his neck had been broken and said to him: “Head down! Turn off the beacon and our prisoner will run aground.” And sure enough they presently heard the man’s forlorn supplication: “I’m over here, sir. Where are you, sir? I’m over here.”

“Search on, you pest, just you search on! Let’s play hide and seek, shall we, Eustachius?” They stepped into a doorway and lit cigarettes. “So how did you make contact with the enemy?”

“I stepped on his foot.”

“God, don’t tell me you did that on purpose!”

“I did,” admitted Melkior boastfully: he wanted to show off for Ugo.

“You
are
a piece of work!” Ugo was glad of the feat. Melkior felt a stupid kind of glee.

“He was exulting about London being bombed, the dolt,” he hastened to consolidate his merit. “He gloated out loud about London burning.”

“Oh, you did it for London?” Ugo was disappointed. “I did have a hunch it wasn’t an
acte gratuit.
Aah, if I’d left you to the mercy of the violence lover it would’ve been no more than you deserved. Will you look at him—he’s sniffing the air in the street: looking for his master.” Indeed, the city dweller was anxiously peering this way and that, looking into the faces of passersby like a dog that has lost a scent.

“I bet he’ll be off on his own to report himself to the police. Conscience? No. All he wants is to sleep in peace tonight, even if it’s on straw. I think he’s been sufficiently punished. Let’s get out of here.”

Melkior remembered his guest and felt what is generally described as a stab of conscience. He felt guilty in advance of any possible … Perhaps the man was already back there and
ATMAN
was dialing a number: Hello, have I got a bird for you. Yes, a redwing, I think you’ll be interested. … He was overcome by an odd kind of anxiety at evil forebodings and suddenly tugged himself free of Ugo’s arm.

“Where will you be a bit later? I’ve got to dash over to my place now.”

“To look at the ceiling? Take me along. We’ll look at it together.”

“No, really I must. I won’t be long. Where can I find you?”

“Nowhere. I’m coming with you. Where
can
I go now, on my pitiful own? It’s too early for the Give’nTake … or anything else.”

“But I might be as long as half an hour …”

“No more? And you keep wondering why women shun you. I devote my whole life to them!”

They walked in silence past well-lit shops through the evening throng. Melkior was thinking about Enka. Half an hour? Well, that was precisely how she liked it. Ugo had lifted his moist, runny, funny nose, miming an offended wisdom.

“I could have taken a different approach back there. For example: What, this character? (Pointing at you): I’ve seen him collect money from
them.
He works for the you-know-who, of course. Or: I know him as well as he knows my pocket. He’s robbed me blind, too. How much did he steal from you, sir? Or: hold him, gentlemen, and I’ll get the police. (To you): Are you aware she’s about to give birth, you scoundrel? She’s my sister, gentlemen, a teenager, her whole life ruined. Or: who did he claim to be—Napoleon or Mohammed? It all depends on which way the wind is blowing. (Taking the audience into my confidence): We’ve been looking for him for six days, the Head of Psych’s beside himself with worry. Or would you have preferred me to introduce you to the honorable citizenry as a pervert, an escaped convict, a forger, a crazed arsonist, a grave robber, a fratricidal maniac, a paralytic, an epileptic, a phantom ripper, the founder of a sect of cut-off ears collectors, a cannibal … ? I could have done any of those things, but I saved you from a certain lynching instead. And how do you thank me? By dumping me in the street, that’s how. Got to nip over for half an hour. A half-hour secret? Some damned secret! Ptui!” and Ugo spat forcefully on the window of a gourmet cafeteria famous for its delicate delicacies. But presently, as if regretting the gesture, he went inside following his “mad inspiration,” and for Melkior’s benefit (who had remained standing at the door in bewilderment) he performed an impromptu pantomime:

He selected the fattest customer, one with a hunting hat atop a fat head who was bent religiously over his plate. Ugo approached him from behind; nobody noticed. Using both hands, he lifted the hat off the man’s head, solemnly, like a priest lifting the monstrance at Mass, and gave him a brotherly and very loud kiss on the denuded and shiny pate. He then covered his kiss with the hat, still ritually serene as if concealing a holy secret beneath it, bowed to the bar—the main altar—crossed himself meekly and went out into the street, his face piously upturned, his gaze directed skyward.

The scene had taken no more than half a minute, but everyone was too surprised to utter a sound. Even the “kissee” did not protest: he was taken so much by surprise as to “comply,” he even helped Ugo so as not to spoil the performance of the rite. It was only a moment or two later, when Ugo was already outside, that they realized something odd had occurred. Whether it had been a lunatic or a joking rascal was now being loudly discussed. There was laughter, too.

“Now
that’s
an
acte gratuit,”
said Ugo didactically, “not treading on someone’s foot for London.”

“I wasn’t trying to …” Melkior cut his sentence short: he realized he was “explaining himself.”

“Yes, yes, you sought to avenge mankind. To squash Hitler on someone’s corn.” Ugo was poking provocative fun at him. “Petty malice was all it was.”

“What about the kiss on the thinker’s head then? What was that?”

“Nothing. I kissed Stupidity, through one of its models, if you must have ‘meaning.’ Kiss thy neighbor rather than tread on him, my dear Eustachius. That’s how we reveal our true nature—by those small acts in moments of inspiration. You’re inspired to tread on feet: a future dictator. Did you at least tread on him good and proper, Eustachius the Purposeful?”

“Go to hell! I’ve no time for your shenanigans!” Melkior was terribly irritated; he was wishing he could shake free of Ugo and dash home, but how, how? He was raging. “I’ve got to go, do you hear me, I’ve got to go back to my place … to see if my papers have come,” he lied in the end.

“You have your evening papers delivered?” smirked Ugo. “How nice.”

“My call-up papers, blast you! I’ve been out all day. I wish you would stop hanging on to me like a … Leave me alone!”

“Think very carefully, unreasonable Eustachius—do you mean precisely what you say?”

“Yes, I damn well do!” yelled Melkior, now quite beside himself. “I’ve had enough of your damned romping around, understand? I have
serious
business to attend to. Get lost!”

“Oh, so we’ve come to damned this and damned that,” grinned Ugo, taken aback. “This can only mean things are very serious indeed. Couldn’t you grant me pardon all the same, Eustachius? Mercy please!” and he attempted a laugh, his lead-dark fillings managing to elicit a kind of sad sympathy in Melkior. But he would not give in. Indeed his rage flared afresh.

Ugo had felt the new outbreak coming and took care to weather it in the shelter of his resourcefulness.

“All right, Eustachius dear one, all right.” He spoke feelingly, his voice drenched with invisible tears. “I shall remove my disgustingly feather-brained self from your sight, perhaps forever. Perhaps indeed in a way that will make you sorry when you have learned all the details. Farewell.” He turned and walked off.

“Wait, you crazy Parampion, wait!” Melkior ran after him and spun him around. There were genuine wet tears rolling down Ugo’s face. For all that he well knew all the many sources of Ugo’s tears, Melkior fell again for the old trick of Ugo’s, which after all was not entirely false. Ugo had the knack of instantly imagining himself the most wretched creature in all the world: a down-at-the-mouth, despised, rejected orphan suffering from solitude, hunger, and cold, driven from pillar to post in this cruel world and having no recourse but to “end it all,” that is to say take his own life. But the most moving part (and that was where the tears flowed most copiously) was watching “from beyond” the doings of
his set
, who had been “spared.” There: it is evening, the Give’nTake has come to jovial and noisy life, but he is no longer there. The girls are pretty (well, females, generally speaking—he preferred the more mature, plumper variety), they think of him and of the times they had while he was … But there is nothing to be done—he is gone. As for the fiancée, she already married “the monkey man”—
Mr. Romp
—and thinks of Ugo no more. Only his aged mother, silver-haired and despondent, weeps at dusk … and the tears flow on and on …

“My dear Parampion. Listen,” said Melkior, moved in some silly way himself, “wait for me here, at the Cozy Corner. I’ll be back in a flash.”

“Wait at the corner …” repeated Ugo in a childishly artless voice.

“That’s right, sit at a table, have a drink …”

“Sit how, dear Eustachius?” sobbed Ugo, his manner quite infantile now.

“On your behind, dear boy, sit on your behind … until I’m back.”

“Money,” stammered Ugo in a paroxysm of sobs, “I’ve got no money. I was trying to sell my old nappies today … the ones I had as a baby … Kikinis wouldn’t buy them.”

“On me,” said Melkior on his way off. “Tell Kurt to put it on my account.” “He invented this nappy business to make himself cry. His old nappies … the ass …” he laughed inside with relief.

Strangely enough, he did not run into
ATMAN
on the landing. He skulked past the palmist’s door cautiously, on tiptoe, holding his breath, then hurried up the stairs three at a time and lurched breathlessly into his room. His guest was not there. He locked the door behind him without turning on the light. He sank, exhausted, on the first chair he came to and, propping his elbows on the table, dropped his head between his palms. He felt his face under his palms, finding it a curious sensation: it’s as if I were fending off slaps in the face. … At school, in Dom Kuzma’s class … what is love, Seal Penguinsky? … Dom Kuzma’s slaps burned his cheeks with a new, “adult” shame as though he had just brought them, still fresh, back to his room. He felt the heat of his cheeks on his palms. Slaps. So insignificant the physical pain, so lasting and incurable the burn! A slap is the fault of the victim, that is what makes shame indelible.