Cyclops (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) (67 page)

There was the sound of conversation on the stairs; it was carried on the wave of some kind of mirth.

“Put up or shut up, heh-heh. …” That was the judge.

“Might is right, they ought to have known that from the start.” The lawyer from the first floor.

“Better late than never. (Another proverb! Lovers of folklore.) What matters is now we’re safe and sound. They could’ve squashed the lot of us like … They’ve shown considerable patience, if you ask me.”

“Considerable indeed. After all, you can’t sneeze over here without them knowing, heh-heh. …”

“Heh-heh …”

They parted in brotherly satisfaction. The judge was on his way up to the third floor, humming like a happy man. What matters is that now we’re safe and sound.

Melkior let him climb up and enter his flat; he had no wish to meet the man. But he dropped his umbrella coming out. The judge stuck his head out at the sound: he was looking for someone to share his joy with.

“Did you hear the news?”

They’ve attacked Russia! In the same flash of thought he imagined the Stranger trekking his lonely unhappy way through the world. …

“You don’t know?” the judge was fervently preparing his revelation. “We’ve signed on to the Tripartite Pact! Job done! Here, look, signed at the Belvedere Castle in Vienna,” he was waving the newspaper.

“Now we’re safe and sound,” said Melkior ironically, but the judge missed the irony; being safe was a serious thing!

“Exactly what I said to that fellow downstairs!” he was glad to have found a kindred spirit. “Now, you see,” he brought his voice down to gossip level, “he is more on Hitler’s side, while I … frankly … so long as they leave us alone. What’s the sense of small fry like us getting caught up in this, am I right?”

“Snug as a bug in a rug,” said Melkior.

“You said it …” laughed the judge; the flash of humor rounding off the pleasure. “Hitler and Churchill can go to it and … why not?”

“Sure, they can indeed go and …”

“They might as well hash it out, I mean.”

“So do I—let them put up their dukes. But it must be said Hitler
has
got things sorted out in Germany,” Melkior offered him the thought wholeheartedly.

“Yes, that’s the truth,” the judge took it up readily. “You’ve got to give the devil his due. Only,” he hesitated for a moment, watching Melkior with a tinge of suspicion, “they often go a little too far, don’t they? On the other hand, that man with his Bolshevism …”

“That’s why it’s best to do like the Americans …”

“Yes! You took the words right out of my mouth!” exclaimed the judge in delight.

Heavens, why we agree on just about everything! Melkior sneered at himself. We are all for middle-of-the-road, no risk, no danger, all in the circle of the family … Bingo, Parcheesi … let the lunatics kill each other.

“We are all for middle-of-the-road,” said Melkior out loud.

“You’re so right! Not the left or the right—the golden mean.”

“The soundest way there is.”

“And the most prudent.”

They said goodbye as wise men.

“Signed on to the Pact,” and Kurt’s gone,
ATMAN
gone … something weird is going on, all right. Signing on to the Pact means no war (here). … Does it? He was asking himself in a formal tone, as if it were Don Fernando doing the asking. He was smiling like Don Fernando did when putting questions to him, derisively. But to go back to our … So you think it does?—Well, given that we’ve signed on to the Tripartite. …—We who?—Well, we … the country.—“We, the country.” Are you telling me you’re a country?—No, I’m no country.—What are you then?—A
sensitive individual
, you called me that yourself.—All right then,
sensitive individual
, can you now go back to your third floor and knock on the individual-within-the-circle-of-his-family’s door: Hey, how about a game of Parcheesi, now that we are safe and sound …

He very much wanted to run into Don Fernando.

He set off for the Corso; he’s bound to be there at this historic hour. They must discuss the latest news, they must do it for the sake of mankind. Pupo despised them, the “cafe table revolutionaries,” “anarcho-individualistic intellectuals.” That’s how his pigeonholes are labeled, said Don Fernando, but Pupo did turn to them when he needed them. And they listened to him. Don Fernando made fun of Pupo’s “pigeonholes”—little monk, defrocked priest, careerist …—but he listened to Pupo all the same. What was the power that Pupo carried around in his “pigeonholes”? Don Fernando naturally refused to recognize any “forces” there, he was a
free agent
, and yet he complained about “slowness,” about “cataloguing” (he seemed to have mentioned some such word once) while one should strike immediately—in advance, even, wherever there popped up the merest suspicion of any kind of
look
in any eyes that might betoken a possible criminal. He was impatient. He saw a man drowning; one should throw him a plank, or even a straw or at least a shred of
personal hope
… but Pupo said: one plank will solve nothing, the thing to do is cultivate a whole forest. And Don Fernando dutifully proceeded to plant saplings … but thinking all the while: who’s going to bother if there’s no personal hope at all? A forest is, Come on, old boy, sacrifice yourself for future people you don’t even know! For Mankind. For someone named Kikuko who will be born two hundred years from now. Give a kidney, give an eye, give blood, give three meters of intestine … give, give, give your life for a future little Japanese boy. You drop dead—long live the future Kikuko! He will know the exact number of atoms in the dot on the
i
, he will be traveling at the speed of light, he will be eating pills for food. He will be manufactured in a test tube by Professor Bombashi, who will raise the pumpkin-head (for Kikuko will be more or less all head) under a glass bell. Under the bell will be, among other things, a library of miniature books. Kikuko will spend his youth in space colonies to familiarize himself with the universe. He will travel from planet to planet, engage in applied science. He will collaborate with Martians in vacuuming up moon dust, in draining extra heat from Mercury, he will take part in putting up an electromagnetic
cordon sanitaire
around our solar system for protection against the invading hordes from the upper galaxies …

There was commotion out in front of the Corso. A group of people had gathered, making a semicircle in front of the cafe windows. Melkior halted and took a casual look: he could see nothing above the heads.

“Has something happened?” he asked one of the spectators.

“It’s this man …” this was all he knew.

“What man?”

The spectator gestured with his head: “The one at the window …” and accommodatingly stepped aside to let Melkior pass.

Standing there was Maestro. He had his hands pressed on the window and his face against the glass, as if watching something inside. A thin streak of blood was dribbling down the pane …

The bleeding is from his face. Melkior passed a palm over his own face; he was removing the blush of an irrational shame. Poor old Maestro …

“Where did he, er …? Did he fall?” he asked the man next to him.

“No. Somebody struck him … in there, in the cafe … punched him. Then the waiters threw him out. …”

“Punched him? Why?”

“Oh, something political …”

“Political? No way! The guy inside, the one with the woman, the young actor, what’s his name …” the man nodded toward the cafe interior, “and the old geezer got caught up with them … that’s why he got the knuckle sandwich.”

Melkior looked inside. Indeed, there on the soft green settee under the long wall mirror, sat Freddie and, next to him, her legs crossed, Viviana. They were facing the window on which Maestro was glued, but were paying no attention to him;
that
had nothing to do with them. They were carefree and happy: laughing, chatting, displaying the luxury and beauty of their persons behind the glass … two laughs, two blossoms, two precious objects …

Melkior shared Maestro’s pain and humiliation. “You’re next”; why had
ATMAN
said that? She had never even broken it off with
this one!
There was the proof, in the lovable tête-à-tête after the inglorious bloodshed. Freddie had a dirty, insidious look in his eyes … according to Don Fernando. But Melkior remembered Viviana was “dead” and squelched his pain; there only remained the odor of the snuffed deathbed candle. …
If I quench thee, thou flaming minister, I can again thy former light restore, should I repent me
… Othello had said …

Maestro was still bleeding down the glass; the poor bug squashed against the pane.

“Has he been standing like this long?” he asked the political-explanation man.

“I don’t know—I just got here.”

“And yet you say it’s ‘something political’?”

“That’s what they said … he’d been shouting in there that they were all spies, every last one of them … Well, he might not have been entirely wrong,” continued the man in a whisper, looking out suspiciously into the glittering cafe, “this is where all kinds of city lowlifes hang out.”

Melkior kept an eye out for Don Fernando. His “crowd” was not there in “his” corner, which was instead occupied by two corpulent ladies in expensive fox stoles who were browsing foreign illustrated magazines with café-esque dignity.

Lady spies, joked Melkior … but I wouldn’t put my hand into the fire on it. …

A waiter was drawing the curtain in front of Maestro’s face. The show was clearly over. Maestro, too, seemed to have taken this for the end (as spectator or actor?): he came unglued from the window. He left behind the imprint of a bloody mask on the glass. The audience gave a slight sigh of shock, surprise, possibly pleasure even: serves the drunken scum right—a good bashing’s the best medicine! The “scene” was more engaging than the accession to the Tripartite Pact: they generally kept their newspapers folded on their behinds.

Maestro spitefully turned his bloodied face toward them and growled
sangrrre!
like a hardened bloodthirsty fiend. … Those in the front row stepped back in fear, moved aside, made way. … An awesome face, blood thirst; nose swollen, mouth bloodied; covered in blood up to the ears. A savage look—the vampire has guzzled his fill of gore.

It’s all from the nose, concluded Melkior with relief. But where can he go now, with his snout all bloody? Of course he was drunk: he was walking like … what the hell, he knows only too well where he’ll end up. He’ll be arrested by the first copper who happens by, thought Melkior. They’re aroused by blood like wild beasts. They’ll run you in even if the blood is your own. Prove it! Where are your wounds? The blood’s from my nose. And you’ll get one on the nose, so there, as counterproof. So what if it’s yours, blood is shed for Kink and countwy, not by brawling in cafés. Get your ass into the Black Maria! And in clambers Maestro …

Where the hell had he got to now? He had slipped out of Melkior’s field of vision. The spectators were dispersing. Boring, really. All the fuss over a bloody nose. A nosebleed, hey!

“Something happened?” ask the latecomers.

“Nothing much. Somebody’s caught one across the snout, spilled a little blood …” The informant even spat at that point, blood from the nose was disgusting, dirty cowardly blood.

“Oh. I’d thought it was …”

“So did I … Well, never mind, there’ll be order imposed here soon enough,” said the informant hopefully.

Melkior was about to ask him … but he was afraid for his own blood. Once order is imposed, no blood will be spilled from the nose. You will be able to show your wounds. You will display your severed head and your hands covered in pure blood, it won’t be from the nose like this, disgusting.
The informant
will not spit in disappointment. That will be to his taste: pure and plentiful. And instead of those bloodied, the police will be arresting the pale, the bloodless: afraid, eh? And what’re you afraid of, eh? A dissenter, right? … and they’ll spill your blood to show that the thin, fear-diluted blood you have been carrying in your heart with such anxiety is proof of your having been on the
opposing side. …

“Don’t hold it against me, Eustachius, that I should be waiting for you in here,” spoke a battered Maestro from a dark doorway. “Don’t look so surprised, don’t lie, Eustachius the Truthful, that you’ve only just discovered me. You were watching me
over there
already … I saw you, too, but I didn’t want to compromise you.”

“Sure, all right, but what we ought to do now is get some water to …”

“… to bathe our wounds like chastened warriors,” Maestro attempted a joke. “I’m well aware of it, dear Eustachius—all the same, I’d like to wear this mystagogic mask of cannibal religion a little longer. I’m sure it flatters me, aren’t you? I saw myself in the glass, partly, over there, but it must be more impressive in profile-have a look.”

“Leave it for now, Maestro, damn it!” said Melkior angrily. “Your nose is still bleeding. Have you a handkerchief?”

“A handkerchief? You’re asking me the way Othello asked the all-pure Desdemona. Wait, I’m not joking. I have no handkerchief. What do you need one for anyway? This is a trick to put me from my suit.”

“What suit?”

“Oh, that’s a quote, Eustachius … but there is indeed a suit. It’s because of you I fared like this. I’d been looking for you all evening and I ran into …”

“But why did he …”

“How do you know it was a he? Perhaps it was a she? … but with his fore hoof, so it was in fact a he, which puts you in the right. As to the how and why, it’s a long story, Eustachius, and right now I’m not in the mood …”

“All right then, let’s go.”

“Go where, Eustachius? You’re always keen on going somewhere. As if
somewhere
else was
something
else. And apart from that, I can’t very well go anywhere before my nose subsides.”

“Oh, I see—it’ll subside right here in the doorway?”

“It won’t, but it’ll have a rest. People keep looking at it: the return of the wounded warrior. …”

“Here’s my handkerchief, staunch the warrior’s bleeding; it’s dripping on you, you’re bloody all over. Right. Now let’s go.”