Cyclops (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) (68 page)

“Not in this rain, shall we, Eustachius?” Maestro was reluctant about coming out. But he can’t stay here either, not with this “mys-tagogic” mask, thought Melkior.

“It’s not raining very hard. And we have an umbrella.” He did manage to draw him out of the doorway.

They went down the street huddled under the umbrella.

“You know what, faithful Eustachius? … I’m going to bite off his ear, you’ll see,” muttered Maestro into the blood-stained handkerchief. “This blood shall be avenged.”

Planning his revenge like a little boy … but how does he propose to bite his ear
off?

“How do you propose to bite his ear off? That’s not easy … not to mention that he simply won’t let you.”

“That’s what I’m figuring out right now …”

Maestro was indeed thinking as he breathed damply, with mucus, through the sodden handkerchief.

“Here’s how: first I’ll pretend I’ve forgiven him, lull his suspicions …”

“Oh, give it a miss,” said Melkior with a kind of disgust.

“Give it a miss and let evil reign supreme! Don Fernando’s right —preventive action is in order.” So he had been telling Maestro about his “science.” But it was clear that Maestro was aligning himself with “science” temporarily only because of the insult … otherwise he didn’t give a hoot for “science.”

“So you think this
preventive action …
”

“Well, it has its weak points, of course, but in essence … the idea of eliminating a bastard before he’s done some evil deed …”

“But what kind of evil deed could be done by that stupid …”

“Stupid, stupid!” cried Maestro, “it’s precisely the stupid who are capable of it! You don’t think Erasmus of Rotterdam would have smacked me one, do you?”

Melkior laughed.

“Funny, is it? Everything I say is funny to … Or is it my proboscis? Yes, well, I am a joker! Circus clowns wear snouts like mine.
Laugh and the whole world laughs with you …
” muttered Maestro through the handkerchief.

“Oh, look up, Eustachius, is this the moon showering its charms on us? Everything’s gone blue,
au clair de la lune …
Marvelous …”

They had entered the realm of the Give’nTake’s neon light. Maestro took a somnambulistic step toward the blue domain; with an alert motion Melkior pulled him back, stopping him at the very threshold of heaven.

“Oh how painful …” groaned Maestro.

“You’re not going in looking like this, are you?”

“Just a peep, anxious Eustachius,” Maestro all but pleaded. “I need Ugo urgently, for …”

“You stay here, I’ll have a look,” said Melkior somewhat sharply.

“Don’t come back empty-handed, Eustachius, I’m badly on the down-and-out …”

Thénardier did not deign to spare so much as a glance at the “regular.” Ugo was not there … and he’ll be lying to me, saying he’d been with
her
, sighed Melkior.

“Has the Parampion been in tonight?” he asked sweetly of Thénardier.

“No,” replied Thénardier arrogantly without looking up from his dirty notebook. “What are you waiting for? Get lost! And stop coming in here looking for each other! I’m sick and tired of the lot of you! Troublemakers!” he abruptly fell to shouting. “Rabble like this, you could end up in the poorhouse …” Melkior heard behind him Thénardier’s remark to his
good
customers.

He came out disgraced and terribly unhappy. Why the hell did I get involved with
them
again?

“Eustachius the Indispensable, what about the shot to shot …?” asked a disappointed Maestro; he had been trembling all the time, hoping for his shot.

“Well, you said yourself you’d switched to beer!” snapped Melkior angrily.

“Did I mention drink?” Maestro was being innocently sheepish. “I only asked you about the crazy Parampion …”

“Why did you send me in to take a peek in the first place? Didn’t you have a clash with him recently, cut him up with glass?” remembered Melkior suddenly.

“Glass, yes … but why? Anyway, it was drinking glasses, not just glass. But the reasons are nothing compared to the blood friendship that now binds us. We have already embraced each other and forgiven everything. It was precisely the spilled blood that bound us! Spilled for a common cause … For yours, for your cause, too, ungrateful Eustachius. But it galls me to speak of it now. Perhaps later … Tell you what—I’m going back to my abode,” he declared suddenly and started off right away, only to turn back and pull Melkior along after him. “Come with me, Eustachius, I’m rather wobbly on my feet. Could be blood loss, what do you think? You asked me, what suit? The suit to come back to my place. You promised ages ago! You’ll see everything is … simple there. I’ll make you some hot chocolate, and I’ll have … doesn’t matter what I’ll have. I’ll be looking at you, if you agree, and won’t open my mouth. If you don’t feel like conversing, we’ll just sit there in silence, like saints in a church. Me thinking my thoughts and you thinking yours; who knows, perhaps our thoughts converse by themselves as soon as they’re out of our heads without us being any the wiser. What do we know about our thoughts anyway? We know they mean this or that, but how they come into being, how they move from one head into another, how they work their way into various pots (a Papin’s digester, for instance) and books and machines. … Therefore, I say, it may not be necessary to flog thoughts with the tongue at all. … What matters is that two heads should be there in the same bag … or same dwelling, Eustachius the Wise, and by
dwelling
I mean a kind of sympathetic relation … or antipathetic, whichever you prefer.”

“What do you say we take a tram?” interrupted Melkior, for Maestro was definitely having trouble walking. “Where you live is a long way from here.”

“Never! Even if all my blood gushed straight out of my nose,” protested Maestro most resolutely, indeed with some fear. “But it won’t because … your magic handkerchief has done its job … and I’m not bleeding any more. And my nose feels like a tomato, it’s mushroomed over half the world: I can only see up, not down. But if I look up I’ll see the umbrella, and if I look down … what’s there to see? Thénardier in the thrall of ‘technological progress’: the siphon … that great invention!”

Maestro was laughing bitterly, mocking with ruthless sarcasm. But, thought Melkior, what is it he’s mocking? A pressure cooker? The pot calling the kettle black. … The senseless waste of spiritual energy in the manufacture of pots, machines, even books? Flogging thoughts with the tongue. Thoughts conversing by themselves in a sympathetic relation … it was clearly a flattering invitation to have a talk. Melkior wished to get him indoors, under a roof, as soon as possible.

Maestro was gesticulating, drawing the attention of the passersby to his blood-stained face. Melkior was using his umbrella to hide from people’s looks, he was protecting himself from embarrassment. He was in a hurry to reach Maestro’s “dwelling” and get rid of him.

“But you, fleet-footed Eustachius, have launched into a marathon race! What’s your rush? You don’t happen to be one of those impatient ones who are forever after some
solution
or other, do you? Easy does it, Eustachius, you need to walk at a thinker’s pace, peripatetically.”

“It’s raining, man! We ought to get somewhere dry!” said Melkior impatiently.

“Somewhere high and dry? Man, we
are
under a roof !
Spreading far above our heads, black as dreadful night …
that’s how the purple poem
The Umbrella
runs. Has anyone written the poem about the umbrella? No? Of course not …
black as night snuffed …
” declaimed Maestro using pathos to summon his next line. “Lend us a hand, Eustachius, I’ve hit a snag, it’s a pathos-ridden ascent …
black as night snuffed …
never you mind, I’ll write it later.” He fell silent for a moment, wiping his nose. “Right—let Cyrano’s humiliated comrade breathe his fill of the evening’s rainy air,” he took the handkerchief off his nose and inhaled greedily. “They’re right—contact with Nature … even by way of the nose, is contact with—that is, a stab at—Nature … by which I mean nothing but the pure fragrance of dainty flowers. … Hey, I’ve come to the conk-lusion it’s pretty stupid to tote about such a big conch of a conk. And duels are a thing of the past, more’s the pity, I can’t do a Bergerac and … I would have challenged him to one … without using a glove—just giving him a plain old slap in the face …
à la barrière
and may the best man win! As it is, all you get is Bergerac, an honorless hunk of nose, leaking snot beneath an umbrella. You rode to a duel in a coach: black redingote, top hat, pistol-case—heroism and toughened honor. Nowadays drivers stink of petrol and fight with their bare fists. En garde, sir, en garde! But the driver spits on his palms and then it’s whack! in the chops—there’s progress for you, Eustachius my dear companion.”

“And you would challenge him to a fencing duel?” grinned Melkior.

“So I would, Eustachius! Whooosh! and off with his ear!” Maestro swung his saber at Freddie and took keen delight at the sight of Freddie’s severed ear flying off. “And then a cat that was following us (cats can sense this sort of thing), that was on the lookout for scraps of flesh …” giving his fancy free rein, relishing his revenge. “Or what do you say I lop off his nose? The effect’s even greater! and then the cat …”

He’ll have read this in Edmond About, thought Melkior, a Croatian translation of
A Notary’s Nose
was published not long ago. …

“A noseless Lothario, ha-ha,” rejoiced Maestro. “Cat got his nose!”

They had reached the unpaved, muddy, dark reaches of the city outskirts.

Dogs started barking at them from small fenced front gardens.

“You’d better take the lead now, Maestro,” said Melkior, “I can’t see a thing, nor do I know the way …”

“This way, just follow me along these fences,” Maestro directed him with assurance. “Only mind the barking guardians of private property, they’re very eager. If you so much as touch the fence they’ll think you want to steal a head of cabbage from their garden and they might trim your fingers for you. ‘Hands off!’ is what this barking means,” prattled on Maestro tottering on ahead of Melkior. “And when an old muzzle starts snarling on the left, we’re to turn right; he is the lighthouse in this nocturnal cruise. When he dies I don’t know how I’ll manage to find my way when in
a state of illumination.
”

“They’ll put up electric lights,” chuckled Melkior.

“Electric lights … that’s not
my
way,” Maestro halted warningly. “If your
electric lights
was meant to provoke me, Eustachius, I can tell you it went wide of the mark.” Although he was leading the way, Maestro was speaking very seriously. “I don’t care much for people thinking my convictions backward and laughable. I’m capable of laughing better than any of you Parampionists, thank you very much.”

“You took offense all the same, didn’t you?”

“Well … not exactly. You can take offense if you’re … disappointed, if you’d expected
something else
or … but that’s beside the point. … That is to say, if you’re promoting your ideas, seeking followers … and I don’t give a tinker’s for the whole ballgame, cherished Eustachius. I’m not being ironic at all when I say
cherished
, because …” Maestro seemed to hesitate for a moment before deciding to keep something to himself. “Careful now, there’s a ditch here with a lot of mud in it, they’re laying an idea of sewage-pipe order, ha-ha, you’ll have to jump across it. Hop!” Maestro swung his arms and jumped across, “right, from now on it’s all safe going, down along the fences.” He was silent for a moment, struggling with the mud in which his feet were sinking. “I’ve got you into a nice mess, haven’t I, Eustachius—quite literally so.”

“Isn’t there some other way?”

“Yes there is—a roundabout road.
Electric lights
and all—but I wanted to show you
my
way, my dark way. Perhaps it will help you understand me better. Here he is, snarling—now turn right, Eustachius, after me.” Indeed a dog did heave a geriatric wheeze, as if too feeble to bark. “Did you hear that
memento
along my way?
Dies irae.
He’s got nothing against me, he only gives voice to guide me. The lighthouse keeper. And up there, look up, Eustachius. … Ah, the umbrella! Fold the umbrella, look up … those black lines, those staves, empty of notes, across the sky, That’s It—the Powerline. You, of course, find my hate of those copper wires ridiculous?”

“I’m already used to your bizarre views. …”

“But I’m not after anything bizarre, kindhearted Eustachius—I genuinely hate the thing,” said Maestro very quietly, indeed with a kind of modesty.

For some time they trudged squelching on across the slippery mud. Maestro had trouble pulling his feet from the clay dough. Melkior had to help his unstable guide several times. A kind of mud Inferno, thought Melkior, with Virgil somewhat tipsy and crazed. He has changed—he is not mad for the sake of madness but with a sincere and true madness. Perhaps the spirochaetae are adding to it by completing their arduous work. Gnawing asunder the last of the filaments for the proper connections, as in a telephone exchange …
wrong number, this is a private residence
, yes, yes, the last digit’s
four, four …
I still have Enka’s key … Put it in a small oblong box (toothpaste?) and send it by registered mail. … But leave that for tomorrow, leave it for tomorrow … without a word, thank you for
everything
, I think we are now
quits.
Even if she writes another letter, if her words bring those waves of goose bumps down the thighs and desire starts snailing up the spine … it should all be shaken off—
apage! apage!—like
Saint Anthony, the anchorite of Thebes. Very good, sir, but what if she appears in person? Shall we do
apage!
Like … the anchorite saint, chop off a finger on the block like Father Sergius … (the film with Mozhukhin, what rot!), shall we
refrain
, following the doctrine of the aged Count Leo …

“So, Eustachius,” spoke up Maestro, “this is where we leave the fences. We strike out diagonally across this little field, down the path, toward that black silhouette—There Is My Home,” he finished in a tuneless version of the Czech national anthem.