Cyclops (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) (8 page)

“A blonde?” smiled Melkior, and there was an agitated twinkle in his eyes.

“Oh yes, a plump one, with all-around curvaceous qualities. I knew her personally. Pulp novels were the total extent of her interest in the written word. She sat around in bars like this one here. … Her stock reply to compliments was ‘You don’t say’ and whatever she talked about invariably contained the attribute ‘awfully.’ So much for charm and coquetry.”

Maestro spat out the butt, took a sip of the local brandy, and lit a fresh cigarette, which he immediately maneuvered with his tongue to the corner of his mouth to keep his speech unimpeded.

“But it seems that both artists were smitten with her curves, wherefore the performing artist trounced the pen-wielding artist. Mind your step.”

“Why? It’s not as if I …” Melkior felt the need to hide.

“I’m not saying that you …” and Maestro raised his eyebrows in the direction of
her.
“No, that would be a foolishness unworthy of you, great Eustachius. After all, you are different. … Come on, no blushing, I’m old enough to be your father. Ahh,” sighed Maestro with profound sadness, “I have seen Fijan act! That’s why I don’t go to the theater any more. When the late Fijan walked down the street, it was as if King Lear himself was passing by. While nowadays, as you can see for yourself, it’s Freddie! And as for the thrashing, I told you the story for comparative reasons, to draw the distinction between God and a milliner. Fijan was God! Or at least a demigod … a magnificent presence at any rate. People stepped aside out of respect, they made room for him on the street to clear the way for his greatness. And when he shouted, with dead Cordelia in his arms, ‘Howl, howl, howl, howl!’ our very souls shook. Only a jackass could respond to Freddie’s braying, out of brotherly solidarity. I really don’t know what he baits his hook with to catch those eels. Because his sinker has indeed sunk. The man’s impotent. That’s a known fact.”

Within Melkior there shone up a feeling brimming with embarrassment and hope. But it’s all Maestro’s hair-brained malarkey … and everything went dark again.

“I used to have artistic ambitions myself in my younger days,” stated Maestro all of a sudden.

“Thespian?”

“Literary. Poetic. But that was at a time when we drank wine, pagan style, and sang ‘sunny dithyrambs.’ We were all of us phallic instrumentalists, the crazed brethren of Eros. And Zeus was a wonderful god. There was never a poem without something ‘gasping’ in it, the better-class girls were nymphs and our ladies of the night, hetaerae. Vineyards, autumn, the leather flask and Pan. We drank the blazing sun. Bearded satyrs to a man, lustful centaurs, Bacchus’s drunken little apes. Anacreon, little Arinoë, the Argonauts … all from Volume One of the encyclopaedia, under ‘A’ …” He sneered bitterly and poured brandy down his gullet. “And now it’s brandy,” he said, giving a shudder of some brand of disgust. “The alembic. Chemistry. We guzzle formulas. C-H-O-H, Paracelsus’s hell brews. Brandy is a whorish drink, the seducing tart, the vamp with a hoarse alto voice and blue shadows under her eyes, luscious like our Zara—am I right, Chicory Hasdrubalson?”

“Sorry, Maestro?” and a wan young man with a nervous face, slicked-down blonde hair, and red eyes with puffy lids started with a spasm of laughter.

“Zara, our love, I said, isn’t she luscious?” Maestro closed his eyes in admiration.

“Ahh, Maestro, you are so cruel!” Chicory cried out in mock exasperation and burst into laughter, his face twitching nervously.

“Perhaps,” Maestro parried, “but such a cinematographic love does bring a new sacrament to our biography. Chicory met her personally, last year, when she was here on a visit. Well, it turned out she was no monstrance, he was disappointed. Fat and stupid, with a pimp or something in tow, heh-heh. … Ergo, we’re sunk, Chicory Hasdrubalson!”

“Sunk well and truly, my great Master. But Eustachius recommends Viviana, the delectable little fig.”

Melkior felt onanistic shame at the mention of the name.

“I don’t look between the sheets,” said Maestro in an offended tone, “I know none of those Platonic shadows. Explain, Chicory. To what tongue does the fig respond?”

“This fig is Latin.
Figue Romance.
Her little mug drips with nectar for lecherous admirers.”

“Ahh, ahh,” Maestro sighed quite indifferent and averted his eyes in vexation. “All that is just ‘Come out to play, it’s a lovely day’ … while what I need is peace and serenity,” he suddenly addressed Melkior, soberly, as if he had said to himself, “All right, enough of this nonsense.

“A cozy little house with flowers all around (so let it be ‘idyllic,’ never you mind it, I
want
it that way!), a table under the green arbor, a glass of wholesome wine on the table. Inside the little house, the devoted housewife with white arms (that business with the elbow just like in
Oblomov
, remember?), the smells of cooking wafting from the kitchen, whetting the imagination and the appetite, and me all pure and solemn. There, that’s the dream I had and still have. And still have, that’s the nasty part. And it will be found inside my head when those professors up in Anatomy open it up. The dream that never came true. How on earth can you make a dream come true here and still remain pure and solemn? Where can I lose myself, disappear, when everybody knows me? There I am, walking down the street, daydreaming, polishing a line or two, all I need is to get it down on paper, when somebody or other jumps out at me, ‘Well, hello there, how are you?’ and it all goes down the drain. If only he cared about how I was! Like hell he does! He’s only being a nuisance. … Or perhaps he wants to show that he, too, knows me, Yorick the fool, the highbrow drunkard. All right, I know,” Maestro went on after a swig, “I can’t very well write another
Crime and Punishment.
Where could I find a Raskolnikov here? Are you Raskolnikov? Is anyone in this lot? Well, all right, I suppose you might do, but this one,” he indicated with his eyes a skinny student at their table, “is he Rodion Romanych Raskolnikov, the redeemer of mankind? The little bastard, they say he robbed his father and set up house with a little tart (a pro) whom he chooses to call
Sonya
, can you see the presumption of the cur? I would kick him out with the tip of my shoe if I didn’t respect Chicory who brought him here. He needs just such a ministrant at the table,
ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam
, to pour the wine for him (there, look!) and tuck him into bed. The little deer tick. What can there be inside the head of such a louse—what am I saying? A nit!—but then a nit hasn’t got a head at all. Ideas? Ideas, hell! The nit lives snugly on top of your head, keeping warm, the little bastard, having not the haziest notion about what goes on inside. And finally, why am I cooking and kneading all that stuff in my mind—that is to say, for whom? That’s what halts my hand over the blank page, leaving me with nothing to show for my pains. Nothing. Nothing ever.”

Yes, that was it: nothing. At first Melkior had listened to him with naïve interest, seeing him as a failed genius. But now, after the “nits,” he saw a repulsive brandy lush with a permanently frozen snuffling nose and swollen bluish hands, and regarded him with disbelieving wariness. There could well be a tiny animal with horrible instincts hiding in the flowery idyll like a spider. The lecherous libertine, with a penchant for fat, sweaty women, his entire flesh already poisoned with syphilis, they say. … Melkior moved away from him and lit a cigarette, disinfecting the air around him.

Maestro was sensitive to such behavior: in retribution, he moved his chair closer and whispered into Melkior’s mouth, poisoning him with his breath:

“I could introduce you to that one,” he nodded in
her
direction with offensive intimacy. “I know her. This business with Freddie is of no consequence, it’s just mutual ornamentation. Their use of each other is a matter of taste: both are in vogue at the moment and are wearing each other like the latest fashion. So if you like …?”

“I wouldn’t want the history of my colleague to repeat itself on my back,” quipped Melkior and felt pleased at his success. “So he really beat him in earnest?”

“Like a madman. Slamming him right and left. The poor critic didn’t even run, no, he just stood there and took it like a martyr. He covered his eyes, for shame I suppose, and never moved an inch. I happened to be standing by the newsroom window and yelled, ‘Run, man, run!’ But he did nothing, he just stood there in a cloud of dust. I tell you, there’s nothing like a dog whip for beating the dust out of clothing!”

“There he goes again: on and on about dogs!” chimed in Ugo from the other end of the table. “If I may ask, is it Zhuchka or Perezvon?”

“I’m not on about dogs, I’m on about dog whips,” replied Maestro with a patient smile. “And you, Par-ara-rampion,” he stammered with anger, “you really should remember that Zhuchka and Perezvon are one and the same person—I mean, dog; it was only that Kolya Krasotkin called Zhuchka Perezvon in a moment of surprise, in a moment of compassionate surprise.”

“You ought to know, gentlemen,” said Ugo to the house at large, “that he is by way of being a specialist in Dostoyevsky’s beasts. If you please, Maestro, what’s the name of the dog in
The Insulted and Injured?”

“Azorka. It was Azorka,” Maestro replied nonchalantly.

“Why ‘was’?” asked someone at the table.

“ ‘Was,’ ” Maestro retorted punctiliously, “because Azorka died early on in the novel, Chapter One.”

“See? He knows it all!” exclaimed Ugo in buffoonish rapture, as if he were offering a parrot for sale. “Please, Maestro, what’s the title of that poem by Captain Lebyakin? You’ll see, he knows that, too.”

“I can’t say,” Maestro smiled slyly. The unexpected reply left a palpable impression on his party. Ugo was stumped.

“I can’t say,” Maestro went on after an effective pause, “because Lebyakin has several poems. I’m sure you mean ‘The Cockroach.’”

“But of course, ‘The Cockroach’!” cried Ugo delightedly. “The Cockroach, the cockroach, ha-ha, I told you he knew! How could he not know about the cockroach, he, the Mad Bug—”

“Inspired!” Maestro corrected him.

“Ah yes, inspired, the Inspired Bug! Of course he knew, the cockroach is an animal, is it not? I would also have you know, gentlemen, that he, too, has written a number of poems. They are not about animals, they’re sort of inspired, melancholico-anatomical, ‘snip-snap.’ May we have
Snap
, Maestro, please? There may be a few disbelievers in our midst, so let them hear it! Here, Don Fernando’s smiling skeptically as if to say, ‘He a poet?’ Why, it’s something right up your alley, Don Fernando, it’s humane and all that. … So, Maestro:
Snap
, if you please.”

“I am not smiling,” muttered Don Fernando, blushing horribly, because everyone was looking at him as if he were to blame.

Indeed, he was not smiling. He had hardly been listening to Ugo’s silly patter (or at least so it seemed), but nevertheless his expression smiled all the while, and it seemed to be smiling all on its own while he, preoccupied with his thoughts, was unaware of what it was up to.

He had sat there all evening with that derisive smile on, never deigning to say a word; he was watching everything from some distracted, wise height.

Moreover, the self-important smile never left Don Fernando’s face. It was, in a way, central to his physiognomy. Ugo said he put the smile on in the morning, in front of the mirror, and then went out, wearing it all day and taking it off only in bed to put it under his pillow before going to sleep. Who knew what lay hidden behind the mask? Revenge against mankind perhaps … or some small advance on a great future triumph?

Don Fernando wrote in the same way, wearing his inscrutable smile. A critic had written that he flogged his characters with nettles and tickled them to insanity. There truly was a sadistic side to his writing: he invented people to torture them. But the torture was by no means cruel or painful. On the contrary, the characters laughed and rejoiced, but they laughed like madmen and were bathed in the cold sweat of dismay, as if the author were flogging them into merriment.

“No, I’m really not smiling,” said Don Fernando almost angrily, feeling the reproachful glances of the entire company on his person. “What have you gone silent for? Please proceed, Maestro.”

“Oh no, no way,” grumbled Maestro in a hurt voice, “I can’t do this in front of Europe. The scornful face of the most exquisite taste is standing over my piggish talent and smirking. The talent may be piggish, but the pride is not,
Monsieur le GoÛt!”
He gave Don Fernando a sharp, almost menacing look.

“No, Maestro,” interceded Melkior, in a placating tone, “he really is not smiling. It’s just his face.”

Don Fernando lashed Melkior with a quick scornful glance, but, as if afraid of being caught out, he immediately diluted it with the saintly mercy that he had gushed tonight from his bright eyes all over the Give’nTake.

The Give’nTake did not very often have the honor of being caressed by Don Fernando’s eyes. It was a house of drink-sodden madcap living, of devil-may-care and mindless time-wasting, whereas he was a serious and responsible man. He worked, he wrote, he thought. No, by no means did he belong here, and it was a mystery why he came at all. It was where the Parampions performed their lunatic “shows,” while he, sensible and sober like a gracious Sun, would spare a ray of attention to throw some light on the silly muddle, and then put its lights out again and, in full blackout, sail away into unreachability.

Don Fernando was simply impregnable. How hard had Ugo tried to disarm the man and subject him to the power of his “eloquence,” to topple him from the throne of indifferent and silent derision, to bring him into line and make him one of “the boys”! Don Fernando would immediately surrender, lay down his arms, put his hands up, even insist that there was nothing special about him, nothing unusual, he was an ordinary man, perhaps even … well, an inferior man; all the same he remained alien and aloof which was after all what he wanted to be and seemed to relish.

The silence had become oppressive, as though everyone were waiting for something to happen. Even Ugo was wordless. Or was he purposely letting seriousness kill the fun, rob the jollity, so that he might come on in “grand style” to save the day.