Cyclops (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) (73 page)

“So he actually kicked her out … naked … into the street?” he asked all the same. Perhaps the old boy did invent it. …

“Precisely. It was as if he’d taken my advice. As a matter of fact, there was a wee suggestion to that effect in the anonymous letter, if my memory serves me well—it has been a good number of years since.”

“She’d have been very young?”

“Very, very, veracious Eustachius. If you want to find an excuse for her in it. …”

“I want nothing!” said Melkior, irritated. “Why would I care?”

“Ah, on the subject of ‘care,’ I’ve been meaning to ask you—how well do you know her?”

Melkior gave him a sullen and distrustful look:

“We spoke once at Adam’s, the chiromantist’s …”

“Well, did they, heh-heh … take you into the partnership?” squinted Maestro maliciously. But this may have been from the cigarette smoke in his eyes, thought Melkior, anxious: the question had been all too clear.

“I’m not with you … What partnership?”

“Don’t listen to me, Eustachius, I’m a nasty fellow,” said Maestro and gave another inexplicable squint. “But verily, verily I say unto thee: beware of the magician Adam. This is my testamentary advice to you: A perfidious bastard is capable of doing what no one else can. Remember, mortal, that dust thou art … he’ll get his neck wrung yet. …”

“Get his neck wrung,” that’s
preventive action!
Melkior detected Don Fernando’s fingers in this. So he’s exerting his influence all right … but only as fingers, Melkior dismissed.

“And as for the bait,” went on Maestro in a kind of hurry, “I’ve told you: spit thrice. I used to shave three times a day, and you, Eustachius, should spit three times in a row!” he lifted an
ATMAN
-like index finger, “those are the words of your ruined parent on his deathbed.”

Maestro looked at the folded-up cot with regret.

“It would be meet for me to lie down full length upon it and give you my blessing … but I can’t be bothered to open it out … not merely for the sake of ceremony …”

“I’ll do it …” hastened Melkior only to bite his tongue, “I mean, it would do you good to lie down, it’s late, you’re tired, also you’ve had a lot to drink. …”

“What, and let you escape? Uh-oh, I won’t have it, Eustachius! Your testimony will be my protection against slander.”

“Who would slander you … and why?”

“The Corso humanists … for ‘defeatism.’ I told them, over my shoulder, that I didn’t give a fig for their Future. I don’t give the toenail from my little toe for their hydroelectric power plants. Anyway, I haven’t even got toenails on my little toes—what I have is hooves that have become corns … from walking. There, I don’t give a single pedestrian corn of mine for all the electrical powers of the Great Future. What use are they to us pedestrians? I respect human walking.”

“You said so to Don Fernando?”

“To him … and to the rest of them. I respect perpendicularity, human dignity! A huddled fool in a tin bucket hurtling up and down the street—is he still a man? Staring in front of him, his eyes bulging from their sockets like those of a mad believer; he mustn’t turn around or he’ll be turned not into the biblical pillar of salt but into a pile of iron and shit … and he in such a hurry to reach the
FUTURE
, heh-heh, my dear Eustachius!”

“So mankind ought to relinquish technological progress?”

“Mankind …” Maestro gave a mournful smile. “Perhaps ‘mankind’ would give it up after all, if anyone were to ask. But who ever asks ‘mankind’ anything, Eustachius? ‘Mankind’ has only hands, the
energy
of its ten fingers. … Mankind does not know what ‘horsepower’ is … unless it’s the power of a four-legged horse. Now do you, Eustachius, know what ‘horsepower’ is? Well, you don’t! You will look it up in the
Petit Larousse Illustré
when you get home. In this powerful horselike day and age, Eustachius, it’s a shame not to know what horsepower is. HP. Now do you know, you delegate of mankind, what
energy
is?”

“The capacity …” Melkior was laughing, the night had taken an amusing turn, he thought, “the capacity to perform an action … something like that …”

“Wrong, Eustachius! Sit down!” cried Maestro tutorially. “The ability of a
body
—yes,
body
, you silly lad—to perform an action! You must emphasize the body, with a focus on the substance. The soul doesn’t come into it at all—that comes under theology. Here, my body is getting up and walking,” Maestro took several resolute steps, “and that’s
ENERGY
: a body being capable of performing an action. Right, but what about that
invisible
thingy which courses through a wire, has no body and is not the soul of a dead tightrope walker … eh? You think this is … no more than a folk riddle?”

Maestro made a rhetorical pause, watching his “lad” with derisive expectancy.

“Even the religion of the Future, dearest Eustachius,” he went on didactically, since his “lad” had failed to come up with an answer, “has its own incorporeal, invisible deity, present in all things, in Heaven and on Earth. Danger of death! Thou shalt not needlessly touch thy God!—That is the first and supreme commandment. Old God-the-Creator can no longer frighten anybody; he used to frighten people naïvely with fire, which firemen can nowadays put out in no time flat. But The Invisible One coursing madmanlike along wires (Maestro gestured at the window with his thumb over his shoulder), well, just try pointing your hose at Him!—He’ll fry you like a fish. There you are, Eustachius, that’s the distinctive feature of the new theology.” Maestro gave a sigh of relief. He had done a meaningful job: winkled out that “new piece of human folly,” that “mystical entity of inestimable importance for mankind” from science’s mystery. … Using persiflage and extravagant metaphors all the while … because he, as everyone knew, did not care a rap for anything in this world. Or the next … if you wanted to know that, too.

He was satisfied. Melkior saw his chin tremble slightly with a happy smile, but he would not let his face glow with visible pleasure. He had to sustain his role of sufferer.

“Demanding sacrifice,” Maestro went on, taking evident satisfaction in the malicious pathos of his own voice and filled with an urge for contrariety. “Put your fingers on Future’s anvil so we can smash them! So we can tear off your arms, fracture your legs, use your skull for a flowerpot! Be a martyr! We shall give your name to the gigantic hydro-temple of our God,
ELECTRON
! My dear Eustachius! But I’m an atheist! I don’t fall for ditties sung to marching tunes.”

Maestro was laughing bitterly, staring sardonically into Melkior’s eyes as if challenging him. His hair stood up like the plumage of a rooster enraged.

His eyes were quite glazed, demented from drink; his nose featured a cracked crust of dried blood, his face swollen, red, with purple blotches and a dense web of swollen capillaries. Faces like this loom in imagination’s horrible projections before sleep, thought Melkior.

“Please lie down, Maestro,” (if only he would, he’d fall asleep). “I’ll be sitting here and talking to you. Let me open your bed …”

“No, Eustachius,” Maestro raised a resolute hand, “I won’t have it. If I lie down I’ll fall asleep like a foolish virgin. I must be awake, Eustachius, I’m not giving up this night. I want to share it with you like Socrates with … the one who tried to persuade him to flee. But you’re more like the other one … what was his name? … the tearful disciple. Socrates was killed by hemlock and I’ll be killed by the invisible God
ELECTRON
! What an honor, ha-ha … God strike me! God nothing!” Abruptly he was angry, it seemed. “Nnoo, this is no honor! Some God, coming from resin, amber (the ancient Greeks called it
elektron
); we would therefore render it as Gum God, my kind Eustachius. By gum, I’ll come to a sticky end, I will.”

Melkior was alarmed:

“What are you saying, you lunatic?”

“What’s wrong, Eustachius? Heh-heh, afraid of me shaking your faith? We can’t even tie a shoelace any more without believing in something. Don’t be afraid, most kind one, there will always be one sort of bait or another in front of your nose, just close enough to tease your sense of smell, but your teeth will never reach it. Well, go ahead and believe in that Eternal Sausage (Melkior remembered Kurt and shuddered), follow it … but bear in mind:
you
will never sink your teeth into it.”

“Perhaps I’m not after anything,” Melkior tried to justify himself, at the same time irked: “If you think I’m a fool …”

“You’re no fool, wise Eustachius, but you don’t know how to live in
in-dif-fer-ence.
”

“And you do?” said Melkior, irritated.

“Don’t be angry, Eustachius, even heads wiser than ours didn’t know. They’ve left behind temples, children, pyramids, symphonies, books … mummies. You, too, would leave a mummy behind, even if it is only this big, so long as the embryo of your glory reaches the Future in a jar of alcohol.
Ambitious
types like you imagine …”

“Leave me out of this!” interrupted Melkior angrily: had he not himself thought about …

“All right, not you—the … others, the fu-tu-ristic lot,” conceded Maestro, in a placating tone, “picture the Future as a Final Ceremony, a Grand Parade: everyone will be there, sporting their decorations … and afterward—nothing, just a dream. Everything will stop in incantation, in apotheosis—something like Gundulić’s dream, painted on the stage curtain at the Zagreb Opera House, a tableau vivant, for eternity. Ha-ha, most kind Eustachius, the picture of Judgment Day is every bit as naïve, but at least there’s some dynamic and fear in it, something earnest … Oh why didn’t I have the acquaintance of all men!” sighed Maestro with pathos.

“What use would that be now?” laughed Melkior. “So you could leave them a memory of you?”

“All I wish to leave them now is my undamaged skeleton, Eustachius,” said Maestro gloomily and, it seemed, with reproach, “as stipulated in my contract with the Institute … So that students may study me and become doctors, eventually to become skeletons themselves. There’s
equality and fraternity
for you, Eustachius!”

Maestro’s head then dropped with fatigue and drink, first to his shoulder, but finding no support there it slid powerlessly forward and thumped against the bare wooden tabletop. The sound was dull and probably painful, but he seemed to feel nothing anymore.

He’ll drop off now, hoped Melkior. He watched the dried mud on Maestro’s bare pate: “the grimy bald spot.” They threw him about and beat him before her very eyes. Freddie thrashed him and she, in all probability, enjoyed it. Viviana.

Melkior pronounced the name with mournful scorn and this concluded all he had to think, completed all he had to say. Over and done with. Shot dead. He ordered the volley himself. Fire! He repeated the punishment with a listless and miserable despair.

He was tired. How long the nights still are in March … His eyes closed of their own accord, they had nothing to see anymore, they longed for sleep.
But the head is not abed …
he repeated mechanically inside, yet the words remained meaningless,
in-dif-fer-ent.

He noticed that, too. Maestro is not moving: dead or alive?—everything is now
in-dif-fer-ent
, as if this were a dream. And the words were an echo from a fast forward, agitated image sequence on the borderline between fancy and dream … a park with a dead man in white floating in a pool … a jet of water spouting between his legs … a silent screening, no splashing to be heard. (The rain had stopped.)

Dogs barking: night agitated; train squalling: faraway places sobbing; a young, vernal wind sighing outside Maestro’s balcony. … Melkior was explaining everything to his numbed senses.

Zee-zee-zee …
piped up outside the house in its nocturnal, homely hum, like the Dickensian cricket, It, the Powerline.

“Can you hear that, Eustachius,” spoke Maestro all of a sudden, sullenly, without lifting his head, “can you hear the siren song? Plug my ears … with wax, Eustachius.”

“Go back to sleep, Maestro,” Melkior reassured him, “it’s the breeze, soon it will be day.”

“The proper phrase is
a new day
, Eustachius … for the sake of ex-pec-tancy and mi-ni-mum optimism …”

He stood up and stretched, in a seemingly sober way.

He wasn’t asleep, concluded Melkior, he was only resting his thoughts on the knotty tabletop. Embossed on his forehead was a starlike imprint of a knot in the wood: there, he’s one of the marked …
a star on his forehead, a sparkle in his eye …
thought Melkior by way of the poet’s line.

Maestro opened the balcony door, fragrant fresh air burst into the close, smelly room.

“Can you smell the breath of spring, Eustachius?” he asked with concealed irony. “That’s why I feel the torrents of spring inside me. I’m not partial to Turgenev, are you? I’m off to point my hose, Eustachius,” he said going out onto the balcony, “perhaps I’ll touch Eternity with my arc. Adieu, adieu! Eustachius, remember me …”

“Remember thee! Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat in this distracted globe,”
recited Melkior with pathos. He noticed his voice had gone hoarse. It’s the waking and the smoking, I’m going to take it easy all day tomorrow … and sleep, sleep … This “tomorrow” struck him as exquisitely lovely and he smiled.

Maestro had already “pointed his hose” powerfully, there was the splashing sound of a waterfall …

A boyish game, the little Brussels piss-kid playing with his wee fountain in the park. Melkior was smiling as he listened to the noise of the cozy little cascade. A-ahh,
mannequin-pisse …
he said yawning. But before he could close his mouth he noticed his hearing turn around with an earnest interest in the sound outside … he saw a glittering arc rearing defiantly, shooting across the night, bound for somewhere far away: it aimed to sprinkle its badmouthed, symbolic water over the whole of the Future and all it concealed … to reach Eternity with its defiance.

From outside the house there came again the ingratiating, warm stridor
zreee …
zreee …
as though wishing to offer the warmth of the home fires and the comfort of sleep.