Cyclops (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) (59 page)

“What system?”

“Secret code. They’re doing it again, damn them …”

“The Tartars?”

“Shhh! Don’t interrupt!” whispered the Melancholic sharply, his gaze absorbed by the windows opposite: “One-five, five-two, five-four, ah-ha, five-five, two-five, ah-ha, ah-ha, ah-ha, of course, one-three, of course, that’s what I thought, they’re signaling about the Alligator.”

“What? Signaling what?” asked Melkior eagerly.

“Arranging for the day … of release. That’s why they are keeping it in here!”

“Why, isn’t it ours?” asked Melkior apprehensively, while taking note of his own stupidity in action again, stripping away the selfsame hope it had offered him just hours before. He was not going to give up easily …

“Nah, we have no use for such a monster. It would eat us up along with everything else. We don’t know how to control it …”

But he didn’t seem to feel so strongly about the issue. He was too busy deciphering the signals in the lit windows to pay any attention to Melkior. He was muttering ciphers, delighting in his edifying discoveries.

Melkior saluted this bright morning: joy was twittering in his chest. She’s here, she’s here to see me! That was his first thought, the wave of happiness that had reared up inside him and was standing there, tense, looming, ready to engulf him whole. Darling, darling, he responded to the echoes of the long white corridors, to the footsteps of the burly dull male nurse walking behind him. C’mon, get up, you have a visitor—with these words the man had got him out of bed and into this bright motion. The trip seemed endless, and Melkior rejoiced at the small eternity of expectation. At this right-left, as the male nurse directed him, with her presence resonating around each corner and each window pouring on him another reason for joy.

On top of it, there was in the windowpanes some autumn sun, softly ruddy, there were little birds screeching on dried-up boughs, a rooster was greeting the morning from afar … all to her glory, all to her glory …

“Through here,” the male nurse showed him a door, “your visitor’s inside. I’ll be back later to pick you up,” he said walking on down the corridor.

Standing and waiting in the middle of the room was Numbskull.

Melkior’s wave broke at once, as if all life had left it, and all of the promised happiness spilled away. A wretch’s sigh was conceived in his breast and fluttered timidly, wishing to be born and to fly out of his mouth like a small luckless angel, but Melkior immediately strangled it and blew its soul through his nose, angrily.

“Are you angry I came?” Numbskull asked him with shyness, humbly.

“No. Only surprised,” Melkior tried to explain himself, and a kind of lonely poignancy grabbed him by the throat. He let the sigh be born—stillborn. “How did you find me?”

“I have a brother over there in Pulmonary, he’s a lab tech …”

“Mitar?” said Melkior in surprise. “He sent you for his money?”

“Money, heck! I came to see you … he told me they’d transferred you over here …”

“I got
myself
transferred,” Melkior specified proudly.

“You kissed the Colonel? An interesting idea,” admitted Numbskull, “but how are you going to get out of here?”

“Well, even if I don’t … it’s an interesting enough place. I don’t care if I die here, I’ve been abandoned by everyone,” Melkior put tattered tragedy on and felt like a good cry. All on my own shall I … his throat constricted, he was unable to finish the sentence even in his mind.

“Interesting my foot. I don’t see anything interesting …” Numbskull looked around the room in mournful wonder. “You’ll go to ruin in here, my old friend, that’s what’s interesting.”

“Who sent you?” Melkior suddenly asked with aggressive suspicion. “Own up, who sent you?” He appeared to be pressing for a name. He shook Numbskull’s greatcoat sleeve impatiently.

“Shake on—you’ll shake out a heck of a lot,” said Numbskull indifferently. “The Mikado of Japan sent me to say hello and to bring you these oranges from his own orchard,” he took out an orange from each greatcoat pocket. He was already speaking to Melkior seriously, as one does to a madman.

Melkior was tempted to take up the manner. A thought was smiling fetchingly at him: it was she who sent them, in strictest secrecy … and he suddenly said like a certified lunatic: “I thank the dear Mikado! Give him my regards and tell him I kiss his hand.”

Numbskull was watching with suspicion: is the fellow playing a game, or teasing me, or what? … or is he really off his …

“Look here, pal,” he lost his temper after all, “let’s cut this out, all right? Will you stop playing silly games with me—I’m not Nettle, you know.”

“Very well, seriously now: did she give these to you in person?” and he indicated the oranges.

Numbskull was silent for a moment, watching Melkior with no hope at all, now. “What do you mean, she? The grocery girl across from the hospital?”

“Not … the nurse? …” Numbskull had shattered his last illusion. He hated him for it. This is the end, thought Melkior. He offered Numbskull his hand with the oranges in it: “Here, take them back, I don’t need them,” and took a deep breath to quell a sob.

Numbskull put his hand on Melkior’s shoulder and, being short, looked in his eyes from below: “What the heck’s the matter with you, man? They’ve driven you right off your rocker. You’ve got to get out of here double quick! You’ll go nuts. As for the oranges, I bought them—I didn’t get you any cigarettes … Throw them away if you don’t want them, but talk to me, will you?”

“I don’t need anything,” said Melkior tragically. “A cubic centimeter of water (dirty water! he specified vehemently) to live in like a microbe, that’s all.”

“A microbe, he says … You’re an intellectual, a clever man,” Numbskull fussed over him. “Gosh, if only I had a grain of your salt in my head …”

“What would you do with it?” asked Melkior brusquely.

“Do? … I don’t know … all kinds of things. Write books, think, explain things to dolts; salt the stupid world, in short. I’d be erudite … did I get that right?” he looked at Melkior in fear: was the man laughing at his ignorance?

Melkior was not laughing. He was angry at having to be embarrassed. He was pursing his lips as if about to spit on something.

How do I get rid of this “believer”—he thought cruelly—without disappointing him … unless he’s doing a masterly job of pulling my leg? What is it he sees in me? Or was he sent to see what’s wrong with me? By those from the barges … Then again, he may have come as a “follower.” God, I’d now have to assume a role for his benefit, playact in public, be an ideal, a leader. … Rubbish! But what if he’s mocking me? Trying to mount me on Rocinante … and canter on his donkey behind me, laughing and showing me up to the Medical Corps? Why, I’ve asked him after Dulcinea already! A dangerous idea flashed in his mind: were the oranges sent by her or by …

“Tell you what—give them to me!” He suddenly snatched the oranges from Numbskull’s hands and shoved them down his shirt. “Right. Not too big, are they? No, they’re just right,” and patted his chest, insanely, girl fashion. “Then I’ll put my belt on à la Récamier (that was a good idea you had!), it’ll hold them in place. Ha-ha, what do you say? I’ll keep the skirt … I really ought to be there when they let it out … and then I’ll run down the corridors and shriek, shriek, a frightened Foolish Virgin. Tell me, how does that strike you as an idea? Is it good?” He trained his wide-eyed stare at Numbskull.

“Fine, fine …” Numbskull was backing in fear toward the door. All the same, just in case, he asked: “When they let out what?”

“The Alligator. Shhh, it’s a terrible secret. Crunches everything in sight, not even a tank can hurt it,” he whispered to Numbskull in the strictest of confidence.

“Watch out now, here comes a Tartar, pretend you don’t know me …” Numbskull went out tearful and broken. Melkior saw it. He was broken up himself by inner tears over the friendship he had so crazily rejected. A belated discovery. Oh Lord, allow me to trust at least one man!

He felt the “silly” breasts against his body. A smile played on his lips, but his entire soul suddenly went dark and he wished, in fear, to run after Numbskull and shout “wait, I was only joking,” to flee from the darkness … But there were already someone else’s steps in the corridor—the orderly was returning. Fifty percent is certainly there, in these breasts, fifty percent pure madness, he thought in haste before the orderly came in, as if hurrying to hide a terrible secret.

“Brother gone?” asked the orderly.

“Gone.” Melkior took an orange out from his shirt. “Here, take one. Look, I’ve only got one tit left,” he was cracking jokes, establishing “relationships,” giving the world back its banality.

The orderly gave him a weary look.

“What the hell did you go and kiss the Colonel for?”

“I don’t know, really … Like he was a father to me.”

“You were disrespecting him. Now you’re rotting in here for it. As punishment. ‘Under observation.’ What’s to observe, you nasty no-good? You could have got court-martialed.”

The orderly was peeling the orange. A holiday fragrance filled the bare room. “You came out of it all right, considering—you didn’t even get the showers.”

“What showers?”

“The cold showers. Shocks … to bring you back to your senses.” He was wolfing down the orange segments. Melkior watched his Adam’s apple bobbing inside his throat and nostalgically remembered
ATMAN
, Ugo, Viviana—the far-off beings from “that other world.” “I think your Major put in a good word for you … else you would’ve really been in for it.”

“How do you know he put in a good word?”

“I just know. He spoke to our Major about you. They won’t keep you in here much longer, just long enough for the Old Man to forget about you. They’ll send you back to the barracks then.”

“Why to the barracks? I’m not fit,” complained Melkior and shivered at the dreadful image of Caesar. “Here, look at me,” and he showed the orderly his arms bared to the shoulder.

“Don’t know about that. Maybe they’ll post you … Let’s get a move on …” The orderly motioned him out with his head and followed in step.

They had sent him back to “his” Major. They took him directly to the examining room.
She
was not in the anteroom. She knew they were bringing me here, she doesn’t want to see me … and that made it easier for him to harbor a feeling of suffering when he came before the Major. On top of that, he was filthy, in need of a shave, and so unkempt and miserable that he could not even imagine how he looked. He had refused to check out his reflection in the passing windows. I probably smell bad, too, it’s better she shouldn’t be here, really …

“Well now, what are we to do with you?” the Major tried to lend some military sternness to the question, but his warm, worried eyes betrayed him.

“I don’t know, Doctor,” said Melkior indifferently, at the moment he was indeed all but unconcerned for his life.

“Get you posted to the Quartermaster Training Course (there are no horses there, he added with a smile) … or perhaps send you home?”

“Whatever you think best, Doctor,” said Melkior with uneasy shame as his heart started beating faster at the word “home,” which showed ingratitude in a way … But he may only be testing me, he thought all the same, just in case.

“All right, we’ll see,” concluded the Major. “Now go upstairs to the ward, report to Nurse Olga. And clean yourself up, man!” added the Major informally. “You look a hideous mess! We do have a hospital barber … there’s a bath available, too …”

Melkior reddened. I clearly reek … Good thing
she’s
not here …

“I’m sorry I’m in such a …” he stammered, “…
over there
I simply had no opportunity to …”

“Yes, yes, I know.” The Major stood up and, dropping a hand on Melkior’s shoulder, said in an intimate and “confidential” tone: “Why are you ruining yourself? You’re still a very young man, for God’s sake, you’ve got your whole life ahead of you,” then turned around and went out almost angrily.

A man feels his stench as a personal, homely, tamed odor. An atmosphere of confidence. The nose steeped in one’s particular smell: olfactory solidarity—let’s be helpful to one another … That was what Melkior was saying as he went up the stairs on his way to the ward, but his thoughts were not with the words. He was thinking: he has read me through and through. He’s not sending me back to
Her
, but to Nurse Olga,
you’ve got your whole life ahead of you, man!
Let Olga be your life, man, and let
Her
be spared from your life which you’ve got in front of …

In front of you, see, is a female body, a rustling one, with the broad cheeks of a saint on an icon. Her eyes are mournfully surprised and she has a regulation voice as if it had been laid down in the Minaeon:

“Are you the one from Neurology?” Nurse Olga was saying with a wooden face. “Come with me, this way,” and she set off down the corridor in the opposite direction from Room Seven.

Melkior had a feeling of being defeated in battle, on his way to a place of exile. The dirty, smelly prisoner of war, long unshaven, had been hiding out for days among lunatics … Numbskull “found me out.” Perhaps he arranged my transfer with the Major. I’ve got my life ahead of me!

He sneered bitterly at his momentum. Oh where have they hidden her?
Her
presence will rustle any moment now around this corner, where the corridor bent with a fresh little hope. He stopped at a few doors: he thought he heard her voice in there in the cacophony of rasping, coughing, hawking, and spitting, he peeked through doors left ajar, but
she
was nowhere to be seen.
She
was nowhere to be found anymore.

“We’ll put you in here … for now,” said the white icon.

Two long rows of battered white beds with a lot of haggard pale faces above the army blankets. A rotten reek encountered his olfactory sense as the local worldview. Now to readapt. To tame this general smell, too, make it his own, familiar … he almost said “belief.” Struggle for survival through olfactory adaptation. And he lay down immediately, the sooner to make the dirty rags reveal themselves to him, to exchange touch and warmth with them, to establish a close relationship. Melkior was settling in to live there, his whole life was ahead of him, man!