Cyclops (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) (64 page)

“They’d make mincemeat of all those armored columns or whatever the things are called! They sweep tanks away with their tails like this,” he flicked a matchbox with his little finger, sending it flying far away from the table.

He felt pleasure at the victorious gesture. With my little finger! And the words sounded warrior-like to him. He embraced the madness which made another assault before a bewildered
ATMAN
. “Yes, Mr. Adam, I could tell you about plenty of other very strange things I saw
out there,”
so let the scoundrel snitch to whoever he reports back to—Kurt or his lame Scarpia.

“Very interesting indeed,”
ATMAN
was saying, baffled: he now was truly at a loss. “It looks like you’ve delved quite deeply into these military matters.”

“I didn’t plumb the depth, but when it comes to signals in lights (this is how Gogol’s Zhevakin II speaks, thought Melkior in passing) it’s not just switching the lights on and off—you’ve also got to be careful which windows are lit, by number and floor, this last is particularly important. It’s a special code, you see, and you can read all the signals to be sent about the alligator if you can crack the code.”

“And you cracked this code?” asked
ATMAN
in a bored way, even with an unconcealed and impertinent yawn. But he liked repeating the phrase
cracked the code.

“I studied it … with the aid of an expert.” Melkior could not hide his smile: he had remembered the Melancholic. “I can’t help laughing when I remember how we decoded it all wrong once. We got something really funny, swears and vulgar words. I expect the counterespionage boys were having a laugh, joshing with the enemy spies. Then again, perhaps they’d merely encoded the signals under a new system and we decoded them using the previous one. Most amusing it was.”

ATMAN
was yawning a great deal by now. His eyes were wandering in boredom, his gaze going hazy. He’ll drop off any moment now, thought Melkior with pleasure. I’ve fixed
ATMAN
the Great with his own weapon!

“But I’m being a bore, Mr. Adam. Apologies.”

“Not at all, it’s most engaging,” but nevertheless he glanced at his watch and gestured, “Bill, please.”

“All the same I
have
bored you this evening, you’ve got to admit it,” Melkior was not going to give up, I’ll finish him off, if only for tonight.

“Oh, no, Mr. Melkior, whatever makes you say that? It’s just that I’m rather tired, I’ve had a very long day to-hoo-hooo … day,” finished
ATMAN
, with a long and seemingly strenuous yawn.

“Doing horoscopes?” Melkior was not letting go.

“No—two maniacal females. Brought by that woman of mine, the one ‘off the rope’ as you like to put it. So, Mr. Melkior,”
ATMAN
suddenly asked in a very serious tone, “do you really believe in these … alligators?”

“What’s there to believe?” said Melkior “sanely,” as madmen are apt to speak. “I don’t believe in death rays, but alligators are aquatic animals, you said so yourself.”

“How strange.”
ATMAN
looked at him in a “certain way.” “I thought you were joking,” he added in a low murmur and with a kind of morose disappointment.

Outside, Melkior offered him his hand, “Good night.”

“You’re not going home?” asked
ATMAN
with what was nearly pleasure.

“I feel like a walk. I’ve been cooped up for so many days now …”

“Only four, Mr. Melkior. Don’t tell me you’re off to the Give’n-Take—your crowd hardly ever goes there anymore. Thénardier’s trying to get rid of them in stages—he won’t let them drink on a tab, someone told him the police are keeping an eye on them. Have a nice time. After all, heh-heh, I spoke to her in the
rosiest
of terms … Help Destiny, Mr. Melkior, and she will reward you a hundredfold,” laughed
ATMAN
out loud. “Knock, and the door shall be opened unto you, ha-ha-ha … Good night, you lucky man!”

Lucky man? He was left alone, lost in the cold dirty fog. There was nowhere to go, the fog had coated all the streets with a smelly cold barren wasteland. He decided to give
ATMAN
a good head start and then go back to his warm nest himself.

Or should I
knock
after all? It was not yet nine o’clock. Destiny was really imploring him to do his part. He responded with an adventurer’s grin. The phone booth on the corner offered itself to him like a harlot, like an old reliable whore mistress: hey, boy, here’s Ambulance Service, make the last digit 4 instead of 3, make the last digit 4, 4, 4 … What the hell, Melkior waved a hand, Destiny calls in person!
ATMAN
said so. Let’s go and knock at the door!
Let this be the ruination of you and of me
… he sang defiantly inside.

That selfsame defiance drove him up the seventy-two steps, and Coco’s honorable nameplate gave a gleam of shame, oh Lord! But Melkior did not look at the honorable face of the spouse and master of the house—he sent his masculine signal (Alligator’s here! and he laughed cruelly): long-short-long.

Presently there was a sound of movement inside (female? male? which?) and then someone said “oh-oh-ohhh …” as if a hen had been disturbed. And Melkior said “co-co-cohhh” behind the door out of some silly need to tell the
nameplate
, See, there
is
a hen inside.

The small brass window set in the door opened; he heard her ragged, excited breathing inside. She’s alone, concluded Melkior, relieved.

“Who is it? Th-that co-code …” he heard her quavering whisper from the dark rectangle. He trembled all over with the nearness of her, he felt the noise of his blood in his veins.

“It’s not
Coco
, it’s me,” he said with as much co-cocky derision as he could muster.

“Kior!” she exclaimed madly. “Kior’s back! He’s back, he’s back. …” she spoke to herself cuddling, confidential, out of her mind with unexpected happiness. She kept turning the key in the lock, right, left, nervously, she barely managed to unlock the door.

“Where are you, where are you, you naughty boy, ahh …” petite and all aquiver, she clung to him in a tight embrace, “Kior, ah, Kior!”

She had an emerald-green velvet housecoat on, closely fitting the body Melkior knew so well … and underneath it—“Here, nothing, I’ve just taken a bath, Kio, I had an intimation, I knew, ah Kio, I was waiting for you.”

“How did you know? Did Adam tell you?” he asked suspiciously.

“Adam who? There you go again with your … Ah, you crazy man!” she got the point of the joke. “Yes, Adam, I’m waiting for you like Eve, see,” she unbuttoned the housecoat, showed herself naked to him; she had not understood which Adam he meant.

He hugged her eagerly under the housecoat and vigorously fell to kissing her neck and breasts, belly, hips, leaving the matter of Adam aside for the moment.

“In here, Kio, come here,” she pulled him into the room with the wide double bed. “I’m all alone, Kio, I’ve been alone for a long, long time, you all abandoned me, you bad, cruel men,” her tears began to flow, she was feeling sorry for herself. “No, he’s not bad, you’re bad, you never wrote a word to me all this time. Ahh, Kio, how I’ve been waiting for you!” She heaved a deep sigh flinging herself onto the bed with panicky speed, as if fearing the elusion of the reward for all the suffering she had borne.

“I’ve had a tough time of it, Enkie, I’ll tell you all about it,” said Melkior throwing his clothes onto chairs, the floor, every which way, he, too, was in a hurry. “I wrote to no one, I’ve been through … all kinds of things …”

“Ssh, don’t talk,” she whispered from the bed, all but pleading with him, “I want us to be happy tonight, to forget everything. Turn off the ceiling light, turn off all the lights. We’ll be watching each other and talking later, now I want to see nothing, to hear nothing. I just want to feel you in the dark, all of you, all of my darling. … Come, Kio. Ah, I can’t see you, where are you? Ah, Kio, Kio …” and she laughed madly in his tempestuous embrace.

They were sharing (of course) a cigarette and lying there in silence. She had her head propped on his lean upper arm and was surrendering with indulgence like a small boat in a sheltered cove; he had one of her small breasts cupped in his splayed fingers, regally, like a monarch’s orb. He felt on his chest the pleasing presence of the heavy cut-glass ashtray, rising and falling on the waves of his breath. He was remembering the dream he’d had on his first night in the barracks. Had it been this one, Enka, or … he could no longer remember. “That’s right, call me a liar!”—“I said
briar
… and anyway, you’re not a liar—you’re a fool, and that’s not a dream.”

“How could you go and spill everything like that?”

“I didn’t spill anything. He already knew all about it. He’s not a chiromantist for nothing.”

“Chee-rro-man-tist,” he enunciated mockingly.

“He got everything right—as if the devil himself was in him.” She snuggled up to him, keeping under his mighty wing, poor, small, helpless, alone. …

“And you believe he can soothsay?”

“I told you—he already knew all about it; I told him nothing, it was he who did the talking …”

“… and you did the confirming,” he said angrily. “Did you mention that you love your husband?” asked Melkior with concealed irony.

“But of course …”

“But of course … You can now expect him to blackmail you for as long as you live.”

“Why should he?”

“Why shouldn’t he? He now knows you are anxious for your husband never to learn about …
this
… well, you can see for yourself, can’t you?” He was ashamed to talk about it; he was getting irritated.

“But I paid what he charged!”

She paid what he charged! “Oh what naïve little creatures you women are!” He was angry and prepared to approve of
ATMAN’S
behavior. “You think your
special
little fifty dinars bought you the privilege of enjoying your safety? Oh no, that’s nowhere near enough, Madam! He hates you, he hates your pleasure and wants you to pay him for it!”

“Pay him for hating me?”

“You seem to be beginning to understand.” It was again he who had grown tired of her; he enjoyed being in a position to torment her. A fresh arousal; he saw tears in her eyes.

“Oh, Kio, that’s awful! You frighten me!”

“No fear … as long as you can afford to pay him.”

“Well, how long will he go on demanding it?”

“He may not ask for just money every time, heh-heh. …”

“That’s repulsive what you are saying!” she moved a little way away from him and removed the trophy ashtray from his hand; she gave a shiver and covered her breasts with virginal shame.

“Repulsive it may be … but there it is. He would do it to spite me, for one thing. Aren’t you flattered that he should envy me?”

He pulled her to him again and made a round of his little kingdom with a ruling hand. She clung gratefully to him and put herself fully under his aegis.

“Oh, Kio!” she kissed his hairy chest. “But even if he told Coco something, Coco wouldn’t believe him,” she laughed in a way that Melkior hated.

“Well, did you tell him that?”

“Tell who?”

“Adam.”

“Adam who?” she laughed; the conversation amused her.

“
ATMAN
. The chiromantist. Why are you laughing?” Her laughter irritated him.

“I’m laughing, oh God …”—can’t he see the point?—“isn’t it funny, a chiromantist called Adam, telling people’s fortunes?”

“It’s just a name. What’s so funny about it?” But there is something, damn it! he was admitting to himself, it really was funny.

“I mean the Adam of Earthly Paradise, that’s why I’m laughing.”

“You mean his original sin, too …”

“That business with the apple, Kio?”

“Yes, with the apple,” he firmly cupped her breast.

“Oh, Kio!” she was getting excited. She was imagining Eve, naked, with Adam, naked, in Earthly Paradise. Like the two of us here now—oh, Kio!

She sought the tree of knowledge that had grown tall and stiff in the midst of the garden.

“Oh, Adam, Adam …” whispered Enka in abandon, offering herself madly.

Adam
the aphrodisiac, thought Melkior.

“Don’t smirk at me, you tormentor!” Enka surfaced for an instant with a martyr’s face and immediately sank back into the silt, as
ATMAN
would have put it.

“See how Adam works.” Melkior was resisting
ATMAN’S
“Destiny.” He had knocked on the open door, given her
first aid—he
now wanted to lord it over her, to be a little god in this mini-paradise.

“Didn’t
ATMAN
prophesy it … ‘in the rosiest of terms’?” mocked Melkior.

“Yes he did, and you came back quick, quick, you’re here, take me, Kio,” she was writhing, possessed by the devil of Eden. “Kio, let’s sin here like Adam and Eve in Earthly Paradise, let’s sin, Kio. Come on!” The biblical tableau would not let go of her. “Don’t you want it, don’t you want me anymore?”

“And what if God were to appear and …” God nothing! she was not believing in God—the devil was tempting her with
the tableau
“… and to …” He heard a noise from outside the door “… and to shout: Adam …” The sound was now repeated clearly: someone was trying to put a key into the lock …
For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return
, uttered Melkior inside through force of memory, with a strange feeling of wakeful cataleptic dying. His legs went icy, for he could clearly hear someone trying to unlock the door.

“Listen, someone is unlocking the door.” But the meaning of the words was not getting through to her. “Someone is unlocking the door, do you hear?” At last she was present.

“He can’t do that, the key’s in the lock on the inside,” she said carelessly and began sinking again.

“What do we do now?” Here comes the Lord! Melkior straightened his legs to get out of bed, but she turned him back preemptively, without a trace of kindness. She had taken the matter into her own hands.

“Do? Stay put, that’s what. You had to invoke those gods of yours!” she whispered in a rage, swearing. “Why didn’t he send word he was coming? He can go to a hotel, I’m fast asleep, he ought to know as much!” She was now raging at the man outside.