Cyclops (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) (48 page)

“A pipe is something you don’t throw away. The longer you use it the finer it gets.”

“Like a violin. The longer you play it …”

“Yes, exactly like a violin.”

“And you will play?”

“Like a virtuoso!”

“Don’t play like a virtuoso. Just plain play.”

“Plain
is how you play the bass. The violin should be played virtuoso. You are a violin. Look at yourself in the mirror over there, full figure, naked—aren’t you a violin?”

“Yes I am. Shall we play?”

“No, we’ll sleep. I’m a recruit. Hair shorn to the skin. Army cap lying low on my ears. Belt above the half-belt, you horrid little man!”

You’ve got to get up, you’ve got to get up
… screamed the bugle.

“You woke it with your
shall we play!
You’re … Where are you?”

“Not looking for Greta Garbo, are you, pretty boy?” leered the drill sergeant from his bunk. “They’re tarts, all those night birds—flitting away at the crack of dawn. Take it from Nettle, old garrison rat.”

The barracks room laughed a dry, flattering laugh in the groggy grayness of the cold, senseless dawn.

…
you’ve got to get up this morning, you
… toots the bugle outside to the gray sky. Screeching into Melkior’s silly, sleepy ear: Rise and shine! Gotta groom the horses for King and Country! This is no hotel, you spoiled brat. Get your ass out of bed and off to the stables with you!

A penetrating jet of stable stench shot up his nostrils. But the equine ammonia cleared the torpid mind and stirred fresh, unsoldierly thoughts.

Is the King really so keen on horses? Each horse is my senior by a year or two. This ought to be very old age for equine gerontology. Hence the care. (Above each stall there is a board with the occupant’s name and year of birth.) So nice and caring. I’m glad to see the horses are well looked after.

“Tennn-shun!” yelled the sergeant, who for some reason called himself Nettle. All the skin-shorn heads under army caps quaked on the spot: through them, down the wire of discipline, had passed a jolt of Nettle. They stood in line along the stable passage stretching all the way down the row of stalls, and waited for Nettle’s command to jump to, each to his horse. The pampered animals are angry and hungry in the morning, biting and kicking, neighing wildly, will not let anyone come close. The recruits were trembling.

Melkior was reading the names on the boards: Prince, Caesar, Lisa (a mare), Boy, Ziko … He was standing in front of Caesar. Rather, Caesar was standing in front of him, idly flicking his tail left and right. Waiting.

Oh mighty Caesar (spake the wretched Melkior, trembling before the powerful rump), my heart is not the heart of Brutus. I kiss thy mighty hoof, not in flattery but with a plea to spare me, so that I might live on after we have parted ways. Receive my tribute as thou would receive the loyalty of Mark Antony who loved and feared thee and fearing thee respected thee even as I respect thy almighty haunches and thy gnashing teeth which in thy just rage …

Caesar gave an impatient neigh—he was bored with the speech. Cut to the chase! But that was a psychological trick of the high and mighty, as Melkior knew, and he clearly saw his plea for mercy had failed; Melkior must not approach the tyrant. He awaited Nettle’s command with trepidation: he knew he was not going to budge.

“Now then, crew,” Nettle strutted before the men (the entire barracks rested on his shoulders!) and issued instructions, “I don’t want none of the you-never-told-us stuff. I want the horses looking like prima donnas! Get it? Hey, new guy over there, whatcha laughin’ at, pretty boy?” This referred to Melkior, who had not been laughing at all. “Y’know what a prima donna is, dontcher?”

Melkior was silent, afraid of this being a trap. The boys nudged each other in the ribs, their cheeks bursting with laughter.

“Well, here’s a fine kettle o’ fish!” Nettle was dejected, omnipotently so. “An in-tel-lec-tual who don’t know what a prima donna is? Didya hear that, my sorry lads?” he asked the men.

The men knew the moment has not yet come and they bit their tongues. “What are ya—a civil engineer?” Nettle asked Melkior as if he had known his father.

Melkior knew it was time to step into Nettle’s trap—further resistance might only worsen the man’s mood …

“A teacher,” he mumbled.

“Don’t say! Teach!” Nettle was overjoyed at the news. “So you oughta know how to turn off a lightbulb, then?”

“Er … yes, I do.” He could not help but reply; it was the rules. He even mimed the switching off of a light switch, to increase the merriment.

“Oh, like that,” Nettle was disappointed (and the men were still keeping a straight face), “well, anyone can do it like that, even Numbskull here,” and he pointed at a little soldier with a constantly bewildered face. “Right, Numbskull? Now you know how, dontcher?”

“Know what, Sergeant?” Numbskull was not paying attention, he hadn’t been following the exchange …

“How to turn off a light.”

“Yes I do, Sergeant. By barking!” Numbskull rattled this off like a lesson learned by heart.

“Barking at what?”

“The lightbulb, of course.”

The stable echoed with a burst of laughter, which made the very horses neigh—they, too, found this hilarious.

“You’re lying!” Nettle was outshouting both men and horses, “you’re lying!”

Damned Numbskull had spoiled his fun! That was why the silly idiots were laughing—laughing at him, blast ’em …

“You bark at it, eh? All right, Numbskull—go on, get barking. Bark at the one over your head,” Nettle was taking his revenge. “Bark at it till it goes out. Now!”

And Numbskull started to bark, sharply and earnestly, like the worst tempered of dogs.

But Nettle was not winning: Numbskull seemed to enjoy it. He barked in all registers and tonalities, interpreting various types of canine character—various scenes, too. He whimpered like a pampered poodle, snarled like a mean flesh-ripping boxer, barked in the formal sluggish manner of a chained guard dog, shrilled in a frenzy like a stupid hysterical dog shunned by bitches, yapped merrily teasing the passersby like a roving ownerless dog, and howled piteously as though his master had died the day before. He really had barking down pat. He had them all admiring him, even emotionally moved, there was muttering in the row.

And Melkior envied him. Why the devil hadn’t he known how to turn off a light! (Well, now it was obvious—by barking! Yes, it was obvious,
now;
like Columbus’s egg. Nuts to you!) He would now have been standing there under the lightbulb and barking away to his heart’s content as if singing under the Christmas tree: “Angels we have heard on high …”

He would not have been forced to approach the great Caesar and beg for mercy from his hoof. For Caesar was a horse known in this stable for his imperial whims. Perhaps he would have deigned to accept only someone who matched him for greatness, some horseman of renown, Colleoni, Gattamelata, Napoleon, not you, shorn-to-the-skin recruit Melkior, full of human fear. Bucephalus would let no one come near him but Alexander known as the Great, Bucephalus was afraid of his own shadow … What are
you
afraid of, Oh illustrious Caesar? The Ides of March? Shall we ask
ATMAN
—he will know. Well, it might be later or it might be earlier, dear Caesar, who’s to know about all the beastly tricks that you horses and horsemen use to make history? Anyway, your Capitol is definitely on the cards, you’ll be neighing the famous
tu quoque
soon enough.

He was hating Caesar and mocking him. And Caesar snorted to placate him “don’t worry” and swished his tail hypocritically.

Sure, don’t worry … and then you’ll make with the hoof! You thick-headed envious brute, you’ll smash all my ribs yet! Damn you and your entire warrior race!

We didn’t want to go to war—they made us do it.

They made you do it? For all your strength? So why didn’t you bite and kick them? Why didn’t you bristle like a cat and throw them? Instead of tormenting an innocent young man here now. Yes, but those were famous horsemen (you were not ridden by Socrates or Plato). The combat bugling, the charges, the gallops! … Monuments in impressive postures! Neither Homer nor Shakespeare nor Dante has such monuments as you, Horse the Great! You’ve become a major celebrity indeed!

“To the horses!” bellowed Nettle suddenly, fit to shake the stable. And the words gave birth to a weird bedlam: human and equine voices mingling to produce a horrible shrilling (they feared each other), neighing and the screams of those kicked by the hooves. The men rushed in, storming the stalls, and there went up a terrible supplicant shouting:

in voices full of wretched human despair as if each man were invoking his own saint. Hooves resounded on wooden partitions and the hapless young men leaped back out of the way, dodged kicks, and coaxed the exalted animals with bread and sugar, and some of them, the more daring ones, pacified them (covertly) with open-palm slaps between the eyes. (Raising a hand against sacred equinity! the crime carried a heavy penalty.)

But Caesar’s glorious name was not mentioned. He was not asked to please “stand.” His groom did not step forward. He did not rush into the stall under Caesar’s hooves. He remained standing in the walk with “Numbskull,” who was still doggedly barking at the lightbulb.

At Nettle’s command Melkior did not move. Perhaps he wanted to move, he hadn’t meant to resist, but his feet would not budge. All his fear had gone into his feet and they anchored themselves in security, knees touching lightly, consoling each other. Then a darkness began to descend, Numbskull’s lightbulb dimmed, and his barking became distant, distant, barely audible, from somewhere beyond the silent hills … “He did it—he managed to turn off the light,” thought Melkior pleasurably, sinking into the murk …

Rain beating on his eyes, lightning flashing, thunderbolts striking his head … He had wisely gone still and was waiting for the storm to blow over. Day was already breaking, he could make out a mournful grayness: his eyes were peering into the fog; he could hear strange voices, up there, above his head, floating in the air, whispering softly, gently, considerately—angels conferring. Never mind, he’d better wait for the sun to come out, to warm him and dry away the rain and the night’s horror …

But the rain splashed down again … Slaps smacking his cheeks … Human words near at hand … Horses, the stable …

He opened his eyes. Faces … a lot of funny noses … Numbskull’s lightbulb shining on above, under the roof beam … The barking had stopped. …

“All right, Mama’s boy, can you see me?” asked Nettle’s face from up on high, enormous, round, painted on an inflated balloon. “A shame we haven’t got a Perfumery Corps, it would’ve been just the job for you, eh, doll? Handling scented soap, not horse shit,” Nettle was joking crudely up there above Melkior, his hands ready for any further face-slapping. “Sorry, ducks, but that’s the army for you—shit and piss. Man’s work. Can you stand?”

Melkior stirred. He felt dirty wetness around and on himself (they were pouring water from the horse trough on me) and sank back down, helplessly. He was lying on wet and smelly straw, in mud. Around him were a multitude of boots in a ring, with legs growing upward from them, slim like sickly trees, swaddled in olive drab nappies. And above him faces, curious, derisive, strange, unknown. I have betrayed Caesar—and a kind of smile tickled his lips.

“Get him up,” commanded Nettle. “You and you, take him outside, let him get a bit of air …”

Day was breaking, gray and desperate. Dreadful birds were cawing from bare black branches. In the distance, the city was waking, stretching its limbs, yawning into the hopeless sky, muttering morosely.

Melkior shivered with the cold: wetness around the neck, wet on his back, on his chest, a wet army cap on his head. Wet wetted, wet living.

Two kind recruits helped him up on either side.

“Well done, man,” spoke up the one on the left. “Next stop pneumonia, I shouldn’t wonder. That’s a month in the hospital, plus at least three weeks’ Light Duties Only afterward. With any luck, there might also be a spot on the lungs and a medical discharge.”

“I didn’t fake any of it. I think I passed out.”

“You think, therefore you are—a genuine case, I mean …” laughed the left-hand recruit. “Come on, man, don’t be afraid—you don’t think I’m having it any better than you, do you? We’re in the same shit.”

“You’re shivering—you’ve got a fever,” said Righty with selfless hope.

“You want to report for a medical tomorrow.”

“I’m wet through, I’m cold,” said Melkior through chattering teeth. “Can’t I report today?”

“Too late. You must report to Staff first thing in the morning tomorrow.” Then, having glanced at a barrack where lights had just gone on, “Oh look, the hotel guests are waking, the pajama boys are getting up.”

“What’s that—officers’ quarters?” asked Melkior naïvely.

“Pajama boys? Golden chains around their necks. Ministers’ offspring!” said Righty, taking off his cap with mocking respect. “Our young Majesty’s nursing cousins,” he added, whispering in Melkior’s ear.

“That, you must know, is the ‘exemplary school of rough military life,’” said Lefty. “They get the
exemplary
treatment, and the rest of us get the
rough.
You’ll be hearing about it in Theory Classes.”

“So they … don’t groom horses?”

“No, it’s the other way about—horses groom them.”

“The boys were transferred over here from their regiments to have someone wipe their asses for them,” said Righty humorlessly. “Their daddies came up with the idea of setting up a Motor Transport Company to keep the lads occupied. So they drive army vehicles up and down the capital, going to their Mamas on Sundays. They’re generally back in the barracks by Monday; some don’t come back for days at a time, it all depends on how powerful Daddy is. They’re off to the mess now, for cocoa.”

“And when the war breaks out they’ll be off to Switzerland with their Mamas, to treat their enlarged hila. You and I have to spit blood, my friend, to make it into the hospital. Unless the horses get you first.”