Cyclops (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) (49 page)

Melkior shuddered at the prospect. Nothing had helped: the fasting or the vigils. Pechárek had got him in his clutches after all. He had consigned the fifty-six kilograms’ worth of this wretched body (dwaftees … Kink and countwy) to Nettle the trainer in the royal reservation fenced with barbed wire. Procrastinating, delaying, passing examinations and medical boards—no go! Right, pal, this is where you’ll be preparing to shed blood and lay down your life! And here was Melkior trembling in death’s anteroom with cold and fear and a hundred other unspoken pains. He was not made for Nettle’s “man’s work,” the horse urine and the muck … his masculinity wasn’t adequate, the damned exclamation mark in front of his life!

“There’s some dry straw behind the stable, we might as well hide there until it’s black-chicory beverage time (Ah, Chicory Hasdrubalson, gentle my friend! sighed Melkior). Why, you’re shivering all over, pal! Come along,” Lefty dragged him around the corner of the stable and actually buried him in straw, leaving only his face free—to let him watch the birth of the new day.

“You’ll have to get out of here by hook or by crook,” said Righty seriously, rolling a cigarette from dust he had collected in his pockets. “You’re too weak—and you haven’t seen half the trouble yet. First puff of breeze, you’ll be blown off your horse. Ever ridden before?”

“I have. On a donkey,” smiled Melkior in the straw: he had begun to feel the warmth.

“Yes, well, you wouldn’t have horses down in Dalmatia. I’m a country boy myself, I’ve been riding since I was a boy, but the ones in here have got even me scared. Nasty brutes, every last one of them. And Nettle’s assigned you to Caesar, the worst of the lot. Watch your back—he’s got it in for you. Get out of this place. Your goose is cooked if you don’t.”

In the mess hall Numbskull sat next to him for breakfast. Not purposely—it was a quirk of the seating arrangement—but he seemed to take it as a lucky coincidence; he had wanted to talk to Melkior, who had not touched his food. “Don’t take it personal,” said Numbskull, watching the slice of bread spread with some kind of black jam in front of Melkior. “I did it on purpose, see. After all, you’re a high-class intellectual, a teacher, right? You can tell it just looking at you. Now I, well, I enjoy that kind of thing. I always liked barking—bow-wowing, I mean, doing dog imitations. I can rouse all the dogs within hearing distance. I’ll show you one of these nights, you’ll see.”

“I believe you … uh …”

“Call me Numbskull. Doesn’t bother me, let them get used to it, it serves its purpose.”

“What do you mean?”

“Getting labeled. Numbskull is a pet name for dimwit. I mean all this business about pride … what do we need pride for? A prideful recruit? Pull the other one why don’t you! Aren’t you eating? No? Can I have it then? Thanks, mate, I do appreciate it. So: say I show my pride in dealing with the old whore Lisa (the mare, I mean) and she up and bops me one with her hoof, maybe smack in the middle of my pride, eh? No darn way! I’d rather bark at the lightbulb!” He chewed the fresh bread and black jam with gusto and spoke in confidence, revealing his secret. “He knows he’s a nobody. You think he doesn’t? Come on—he’s got seven Honors degrees! But I, I have nine! Ever worn trousers with a patch on the seat … or not even a patch, just a hole? Well, I’m a graduate of that particular institute of higher learning myself. Nettle isn’t—he’s had the army keep him in new trousers. But he’s got the power and I don’t. So when he’s pleased to have his fun with you all you’ve got to do is guess which road he’s taking. He needs it, see? What would he be compared to you, for one? A beat-up insect, that’s all. A nit. You know about the Pythagorean Theorem, and he knows a horse has four legs. So you want to keep your eyes open … or else he’ll kick you with all four, damn him!”

“But what have I ever done to him?” Melkior pleaded mournfully, on the brink of tears. “I obey him.”

“You obey on the outside, but inside you think this and that … I needn’t quote you. And he knows, see? That’s why he asked you how to turn the light off, to destroy your thinking. Which makes your human dignity protest, doesn’t it? Well, forget it. The insects will sooner or later devour mankind, they outnumber us a zillion to one. I look at everything this way and I don’t get all hot and bothered about my temporary dignity. I leave that to the greats. Future archeologists won’t find a trace of it on their skeletons. A hundred years from now, even sooner perhaps, there’ll be Hitler’s bones on the market—fake ones, of course. The Yanks will be paying big bucks for a single filled tooth of his, for two hairs off Mussolini’s head, never mind that he’s bald as an egg. It’s all a load of pitiful crap, Yorick’s skull, nothing more. The thing to do is stay alive. Make sure your bones survive Nettle’s authority, even by barking at electricity if that works. But you seem to have different tactics. All right. Watch out for him. They say Caesar has killed two men so far. When he kills the third, they’ll have him put down. What a satisfaction for the third guy, eh?”

There was a command of some kind in the mess hall. Everyone stood up. “All right, get going,” said Numbskull giving Melkior a nudge to get him up.

“They’re issuing boots and belts—it’s fancy leather goods day. We’re going to the company store.”

Numbskull was waiting faithfully outside the storeroom. When Melkior appeared he gave a skeptical smile.

“I’m not sure this is a good idea,” he said looking him over. “You’re much too conspicuous, looking like this.”

“Why?” asked Melkior suspiciously, indeed with some fear.

“Oh, come on, old boy—you’ll have everyone wondering what kind of a scarecrow you are. And now you’ve got the boots to match.”

“What do you mean?” Melkior was still playing it close.

“I mean everything you’ve got on looks like your little brother’s. Except the trousers: it’s as if Falstaff lent them to you. Cap plunked down on those ears, right-hand boot big as a bread pan, left-hand boot … it’ll chafe the dickens out of you, believe me, you’ll be cursing the day you were born. It’s an awful fix in the army, having boots the wrong size: there’s nothing for it if your feet get scraped to the bone, it’s Never mind, soldier, forward march, what you’ve got is not a disease.” He went around behind Melkior’s back and clapped his hands: “Look where his half-belt is! Just how do you propose to buckle your belt, you mighty warrior? Under your breasts, like Madame Récamier, Empire style? You made a bad job of it, pal—you stick out like a sore thumb.”

“It wasn’t on purpose …” Melkior tried to defend himself. “I took what they gave me.”

“Come on, pal, don’t give me that nonsense—you took it on purpose,” insisted Numbskull. “Do you really believe they’re that dense? Do you think they don’t know how to make scarecrows? You make a freak of yourself and you think they’ll be so disgusted they’ll send you packing?”

Numbskull walked alongside him with small steps, but remonstrating with him in a paternally mature tone, knowledgeable, and his manner showed sincere selflessness, worry even. Melkior was wondering: why should he care? I’ve known him less than two hours, and he did not trust him, he withdrew into himself and kept silent.

“Yes, well, you’re wondering why I’m being such a friendly uncle. Well, I can’t just stand back and watch a clever man make a fool of himself, can I?”

“What makes you think I’m … clever? I’m not.”

“Yes you are, don’t piss about. It’s only that you’re a bit of a square peg in a round hole and … no clue, above all else. I’ve been watching you for the past two days: you just sit there, you don’t eat, you show contempt. Do you refuse to eat just for the hell of it … or is this a plan? But you show your contempt in an awfully holier-than-thou way. And Nettle’s got the message. Even dogs can sense dislike in a man—and that kind of instinct is very keen in Nettle, be forewarned. He can read you like a book. You heard him at reveille this morning, that ‘looking for Garbo’ bit, you must have been dreaming of something or other (a sigh escaped from Melkior, painfully, from deep down, over Viviana, in the “dream”). There you are, you’re still sighing over it—and I thought right away, oh-oh, you’d better watch it, pal. And sure enough, as soon as we get to the stable, out he comes with ‘How do you turn a light off?’ And throws you to Caesar, the bastard! I got you out of the ‘turning off’ and the faint probably saved your life. He’s afraid of Caesar himself, he was clearly aiming to drop you in the soup. You should’ve seen how much fun he had slapping your face as you lay there out cold—anybody would have thought you’d called his mother a whore in public. He hated you at first sight. So tell me—do you want to rub his face in it, with those Falstaff trousers and your cap plunked down over your ears?”

Numbskull was right, and Melkior admitted it. Perhaps there really was in the little guy that curious kind of honesty which searches impatiently for a man so he can offer him both hands in friendship. Looking at the glass pane set in the canteen door, he saw a truly weird scarecrow in it. Two days earlier he had dressed in the company storeroom picking up from the smelly rag pile, without any particular intent, the first thing that came to hand, indifferently, what the hell, it didn’t matter what he put on, it was all foul humiliation and dirty travesty. The pieces of dismembered bodies, olive drab greasy-soiled, drenched with the sweat and pain of the poor deceased. From the shambles of the army storeroom of massacred clothing emerged Monster (previously known as Melkior), assembled from various parts of other people’s bodies, himself amazed to be walking on two legs like a man.

The Quartermaster Corps second lieutenant, an effeminately pretty and dandified young man, gave a giggle when Melkior came in to sign for his kit and asked him in an offhanded tone: wasn’t there anything better in there? Melkior replied: no there wasn’t, and set off, with a sleepwalker’s feeling of absence, across the empty parade ground, as if walking across some strange world invented by a cruel mind.

Encountering an officer there, he nodded and said, “Good morning, sir,” his hands dangling from the too short sleeves. The officer, a portly good-natured soul, burst out laughing and returned the greeting: “And a very good morning to you, lad. New boy, eh? My word, do you look elegant!” and gave another burst of laughter.

A father, thought Melkior with emotion. Perhaps he has a son, a gangling galoot like me … He didn’t realize he was now smiling as he thought back to the officer father. …

“Having a quiet chuckle, eh?” spoke Numbskull at his side. “Think I don’t know what I’m talking about, is that it? All right, just mark my words when you get yours, that’s all.”

“Not at all, sorry, it’s something I remembered …” He’s taken me under his wing! thought Melkior, but stifled the smile. “But what if
you
got yours? You keep fussing over me … Nettle could ‘read’ you ‘like a book,’ too.”

“Me? … unh-unh,” he shook his head with conviction. “I’m in his ledger as Numbskull, he doesn’t even waste his time reading me. Not interesting,
tabula rasa.
But you, now you’re a book, attractive reading, a chance for self-assertion: ‘watch me whup the bejesus out of the teacher.’”

“Well, you’re an intellectual, too—you attended the university …”

“Three semesters of chemistry, and even that wasn’t … I don’t even know all of the stuff with H-2 … But the University of Life, hah, now that’s something else again! … I had this pal, he was a real character! Lady walking a dog in the park, lets it off the leash, a bit of exercise, so good for iddy bitty’s digestion. So the doggie romps about, enjoying itself, and my pal gets to barking, lures it into a bush, tosses it into a sack … and sells it in another part of town. It became quite a case in the end, got into the papers, you might’ve read about it. Well, he taught me to bark. He was an expert at doing impressions, he could do anything: idiots, animals, a squeaking wheel, bedsprings, an oil lamp fizzing out, you name it. We spent a winter in an abandoned barge on the Danube. Ice all around, we’re sitting there frozen to the bone, and he starts doing mosquitoes and summer bugs, conjuring up summer, God strike him (and He did) —and sure enough, it got warmer and somehow brighter, cheerier, as if it was a scorcher of a day outside. He could even do impressions of moths eating his ‘cold weather apparel.’ Will you listen to me: ‘cold weather apparel!’ Matter of fact, we had only a smelly sheepskin shepherd’s coat, Gosh how the fleece stunk, it had people running away from us, we wore it on an alternating basis, you put it on only when it was your turn to go out and scare up some grub. Grub meaning vittles—well, food.”

“So what happened to your pal? He’s no longer with us?”

“Probably not. He went over to this towboat—a boatman was giving a party for his saint’s day—and I never saw him again. Fell into the Danube drunk, maybe dragged off by the current?” Numbskull was speaking with indifference, as if about a lost bauble.

“But I still think he got out of the country—stowed away in the towboat. He had a fine singing voice—baritone—it was a treat to listen to him sing this Czech song ‘Water Flowing, Flowing’ … I’m thinking he cleared off for Czecholand up the Danube, got rid of me, well, I’d only have been a hindrance to him …”

“And you were left alone in the barge?”

“I went respectable. Got a job. Had a paper route, a milk route. Worked in a nightclub later, dress suit and all that, assistant to their magician, learned the tricks, coaxed watches off people’s wrists … set up in the watch-coaxing business on my lonesome, got locked up. ‘Water Flowing, Flowing’ … I was a circus ticket vendor, spare clown, too, the full understudy bit; I knew the program inside out but generally I was the one who got the pie in the face and the box in the ear—for real, I mean; no tricks. But that doesn’t matter. Love, love was my undoing. The prima donna Marie, star acrobat, missing her little finger—hang it all, which hand was it? Funny, I can’t remember anymore, a polar bear did it. She thought, What a lovely fur coat! And stroked him, and the fur coat went zap! and bit her pinkie off. But she was so clever at hiding it I can’t remember which hand it was. Well, left or right, it doesn’t matter, neither ever reached for me, for all that I would’ve loved to kiss all ten of her fingers. Well, nine.”