Cyclops (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) (53 page)

Slumber is droning a sleepy song … choosing, however, the wrong image, one with angry insects in it. Melkior felt wakefulness on his goose-bump skin. His eyes reject the dream. Another sleepless one is the doctor. He is trying to think of something to do. He is thinking of playing a prank on them by persuading the old seaman to disappear for a few days, to keep hidden, then he will tell the others: there, I did as you said but off he went and sailed away without us. Didn’t I tell you so? But he gives up the tasteless joke, his colleague the Major talks him out of it. The doctor has changed since meeting the Major through Melkior. He has become “a different man.” Melkior is using all his demagogic skill to put the red-haired Asclepian to shame before the humane and sagacious army phthysiologist. But the conversion is not proceeding smoothly—Red has arguments of his own. In your place the Major would be trying to snatch these unfortunate people from the jaws of the cannibals, while you’re relishing their mortal pain. He would at least try to ease their horrible death … It’s not true that you can do nothing—you didn’t even bother to think whether you could. All right, they’re haughty and stupid, as you say, but is that alone reason enough to condemn them to such a horrible and repulsive death?

Granted, any death is horrible and repulsive (particularly one that is imminent), but this kind, you must admit, holds a horror all its own. To be cooked and eaten—good God! —We’re all “cooked” in a way, smiles the doctor, and eaten, too, for that matter. All kinds of crooks cook us in the cauldrons of hellish plots, poison us with their contempt, drive us to madness and loathing, and when they’ve goaded us they push into our hands all manner of contraptions so that we can kill each other. Why? To feast on our flesh? Rubbish. They are disgusted by our carcasses. We are meat to hyenas, worms, carrion eaters, fish, beings unworthy of such delicacies. While over here, these “unfortunate people” will be eaten by people, by our hosts who take the bitter joke of Mother Nature a little too seriously. What particular horror is there in it? They’ll kill us without hatred, at an evening of cultural manifestations and a popular celebration, and they’ll be eating us with gusto as rare game coming from a curious world they cannot even imagine. It’s an honor of sorts, after all, to be eaten by people rather than worms.—And if you, too, were destined to experience the honor (please note the verb
experience
), would you speak with equal cynicism?—Not in so many words, but I would be forced to think so.—And you would attempt nothing to be spared the “honor”?—What
could
I do? Mortify my body like
these people
and yourself? Mortify the flesh? Deprive them of a morsel? Well, my skin would be left in any case! They’d make a drum of it! Or should I set about converting them in the name of our God: Don’t eat me—I’m your brother? (Why, they take particular pleasure in eating missionaries.) Should I pull off a miracle? Stage a putsch overnight, abrogate all laws (go on, living animal, feed on air and stones!), forbid cats to eat mice? Invoke disorder, confusion, and chaos? Of all the known gods, not a single one has managed to abrogate Nature. None of them tried—it never even occurred to them. Each of them is wise in his own way, knowing that Nature is somewhat more powerful than he, that he is unable to change even the destiny of a drop of water. That’s why the gods hold on to Nature rather than going on about
helping poor man.
One man actually tried it and they chained him to a rock and let birds peck out his liver. They preferred to confirm the laws. If a volcano is to destroy a town, they’re for the destruction; if people are to slaughter each other, they’re for the slaughter. They even claim all that to be Their Will. They’re always on the side of what men (out of ignorance) call Destiny. They approved of a son killing his father and marrying his own mother, of his mother giving birth to his sons and brothers, daughters and sisters. One of them even left his own son high and dry and let men crucify him so that The Law might be fulfilled. It must follow then that gods also approve of men eating men in compliance with the laws of hunger. Take this up with them, then, and leave me alone.

Yes, that is what the red-haired Asclepian (with unpleasant subcutaneous gland exudations, we must never forget this condition of his) says, but not even he quite means it. What he does mean is beyond Melkior’s invention. The Major has embroiled himself in the story. What is he to do with the poor Asclepian who, through the Major, is now turning into a Nice Man? As recently as yesterday he was about to play a cruel prank, and now he is trying to think of something to do for
his lot
from the
Menelaus
, who are waiting to be eaten. Possibly out of mercy (if Don Fernando would allow) there is germinating in him a curious ambition to change these people’s destiny. But how? That is what Melkior cannot work out.

What is he to do? he asks his imagination in creative despair. In passing he addresses the poor agent’s destiny. But the very next day the old seaman tells him that Mr. Agent has become a big wheel. He had been given a palm-leaf skirt and a parrot-feather cap, become the High Medicine Man’s chief assistant and a personage close to the Chief himself.—And what about the gold chain? Has he been allowed to keep the chain with the cross and the clover leaf?—But this does not allay the doctor’s envy. The merchant fool making such a career! Mercury’s porter assuming the place of a child of Asclepius! Well, one thing was clear: something decisive and important must be done immediately! But what, but what?

From the corridor came the holy rustle of a stiff dress and hurrying little footsteps on rubber heels. Melkior’s body trembled in fright. He whispered, “She’s coming,” and set about selecting a welcoming face. He felt repeating on his face the selfsame unprepared surprise with which he had encountered Viviana, and closed his eyes like a child, seeking shelter in mimicked sleep. But when he felt her entry he opened his lashes just wide enough to check, will her gaze search for me?

Darling! Even as she was saying good evening her eyes sought his bed. He closed his eyes happily like a blissful little dog being stroked. Darling! He was choking with a thick feeling of happiness.

“The new man … is he asleep?” he heard above him the careful whisper by his cot, in the muddled daze of his childhood fevers, the voice of his young mother. But the happy spasm suddenly receded in an unexpected and mournful recuperation. The cold indifference of the familiar, in-house term “the new man” humiliated him like a number on a prison jacket. That’s the extent of my presence here, as
the new man
, the striped anonymity of one of
those.
And Melkior did not open his eyes. He went into a false sleep, with the breath of a weary sleeper, from disappointment and spiteful misery. He felt her vertical proximity touch him with cold aloofness. She was moving, rustling like paper, in the magnetic field of his great amorous yearning, with the insensitivity of a foreign, indifferent body. She is not sensing the presence in me (under this army-issue blanket) of a wonderful world made for her beauty. My heart is tired and I no longer have a body with which to kiss you. I give you, beloved, the clouds floating over my dead eyes. And Melkior pictured himself dying (in revenge) under the gray blanket loyally trimmed with the royal colors. Inside, in the death of his eyes, he saw a strange life of liberated colors, a wondrous hovering of multicolored fancy over the black expanses of his dejected solitude. He felt the need to crawl inside his quaint kaleidoscope, to hide and vanish before the fear of further yearnings.

“All right then, we’d better let him sleep,” came her voice from that other, former space where life was dangerous and bitter. And he wished to return from the labyrinth of his forlorn absence following that voice, to wake up among things in the grayness of the rainy afternoon under the tender protection of her benevolence. But he heard no benevolence in the casual plural, which meant only the resolution of a dilemma—should she or should she not wake him in the line of duty. So much the better if he’s asleep, that had meant, no need to bother with him, then.

“But he’s not asleep at all, Sister … atchoo!” sneezed the one who had called him Tartuffe; the others responded with a salvo of sneezes.

It’s some kind of salute, that volley, thought Melkior, and he was afraid it might conceal a form of mockery.

“Gesundheit!” she replied with a peal of laughter, apparently honored by it. “The epidemic’s still on, is it then?” and she took five thermometers from a breast pocket, one for each to tuck into his armpit.

But the fifth remained in her hand. “This one’s still asleep.”

“Like hell he is!” spoke up Menjou. “Stop playing the fool, Tartuffe. Reveal the secret of your bodily temperature.”

Why couldn’t I be asleep? protested Melkior in his fake sleep. This is a bit too much, doubting a man’s sleep.

She leaned over the bed studying his face.

“He really is asleep,” she whispered (he felt her breath on his eyelids).

“Leave him alone—he’s tired, poor boy.”

“Tartuffe,” said the little fellow in the bed next to his in a harsh whisper, “there’s an angel hovering over your head. Reach out, embrace the angel, Tartuffe.”

Everybody laughed in an ugly, teasing way. She, too, was smiling, bent over his face. Through his barely open lashes Melkior could see the sun between the black curtains: the beauty of her breasts under the white shield, and the white neck and the smiling eyes. Her breath caressed his face, he felt the fragrance of her nearness, and the Little Mephistopheles whispered on, “Reach out, Tartuffe, embrace the angel …” and his arms really reached out on their own (he knew full well he did not mean to do it), embraced the pretty niece, and forcefully drew her angelic head down to his lips.

Her scream shot the two predatorial limbs through, they released the victim and dropped back lifeless onto the royal colors of the army blanket.

Melkior started from an insane dream (and he really felt like a man waking up), propped himself on his elbows, and peered around in surprise—he was understanding nothing. “No, it wasn’t an
acte gratuit
, I was dreaming, ahh, I was dreaming … Not an
acte gratuit.”
Stammering it forth like an explanation to his awakened consciousness.

She had her face covered with her hands and was still shaking all over.

Moustache à la Adolphe Menjou was already there at her side, trying to peel her palms from her face: “But what did he do to you, Nurse, what did he do to you?”

“Nothing, nothing,” she replied from inside the palms, fighting back tears. “He didn’t do anything to me. He was dreaming … God, it gave me such a fright!”

“Thtuff and nonthenth! He wathn’t dweaming at all!” lisped a fat, toothy hermaphroditic individual from the bed by the door. “He wath going to kith her, that wath hith dweam.”

“Listen you, whatsyourname,” Moustache a la Adolphe Menjou said threateningly to Melkior, “what were you trying to do to the nurse?”

She had now moved her hands away from her face and stepped protectively between Menjou and Melkior: “Leave him alone, it was in his sleep. Go back to your bed.”

“Hee-hee, he was prompted by my suggestion,” triumphed Little Guy. “I had him hypnotized.”

“You what? Don’t be ridiculous!” interjected Tartuffe angrily. He wished Menjou would tackle Melkior.

“No, honest! I’ve worked at it!” protested Little Guy. “We did suggestion and hypnosis at the university. I’m a psychologist.”

“You
are
a psycho all right! Don’t give us that crap!” Menjou was really angry. He had not succeeded in hitting Melkior. He was jealous. He thought he was entitled to be because he was handsome.

“Tell me, sir,” Little Guy pleaded with Melkior, “tell me, please —did you do it at my suggestion?”

“I don’t know what I did,” replied Melkior worriedly and somehow tired. “I must have done something in my sleep. I’m so sorry, Sister.”

“Why, he’s insane!” exclaimed Tartuffe delightedly. “Can’t you see he’s insane? Look at his glassy eyes! I saw right away he was mad as a hatter.”

“Why a hatter?” Little Guy the psychologist was being the derisive expert.

“That’th how the thaying goeth, thtupid,” Hermaphrodite informed Little Guy. But Tartuffe didn’t feel like talking to Little Guy: “Hey look, he’s out of his mind. He’s dreaming about something again … Look at those eyes!”

Melkior was still sitting motionless in bed, mournfully gazing into an invisible distance. He was muttering the same question over and over again: “Was that an
acte gratuit?”
No, it was not an
acte gratuit
, he replied, seemingly disappointed, but that was not what was on his mind at all. He was only using the words to build a roadblock to another thought struggling to break through to his consciousness, a thought he feared and consequently set a trap for in the form of Ugo’s leering black fillings: now that’s what I call an
acte gratuit!
Well done, Eustachius! But no, no, it wasn’t an
acte gratuit
… He was fighting for the truth. And while the fight went on he could hear his thought outside, outside this fog enveloping his consciousness, from a clear world where things could be seen for what they were: why, he’s insane! Can’t you see he’s insane?

This, then, was insanity? Melkior lay down on his back and drew the covers over his head. Such a strange condition: nothing going on in the head, a roar of blood in the ears, and a terrible desire in the arms. I’m insane, then. The thought sounded almost funny in his mind. He was smiling under the blanket. Well, perhaps I’m sly, eh castaways, perhaps I simply
pulled a good one
with that kissing business? She’ll be feeling sorry for me yet. So, it wasn’t an
acte gratuit
after all, it was simulated madness. Which is much more preferable in my situation. A military situation. A thtwoke of geniuth! he marveled at himself. It’ll get about, that kiss. And tomorrow I’ll kiss the Major, too, to dispel all thuthpithion. Deprive them of a “sexual” explanation. Never mind an
acte gratuit
, I’m insane! Parampion, I declare myself insane.
Orate, fratres!