“Hypnosis is monkey business? Is that the way for a psychologist to talk? You saw that nobody else understood anything. They just marveled. But you, Mr. Melkior …!”
“Flattery will get you nowhere,” says Melkior almost threateningly. “Why did you bring Four Eyes here?”
“Here, you even know his name! Yet you pretended not to know him.”
“Just tell me why you brought him here.”
“Why ask me? He’s your friend, ‘Votre ami,’ am I right?”
“I heard four feet when you were going up the stairs …”
“Well, well, you are good at colorful insults! What a clever way of calling me a jackass! Four legs, huh? There, there, don’t be afraid. You don’t have to be literary about it—insult me directly. I won’t sue you.”
“I’m … I’m going to …”
“Kill me?” the palmist whispers sensuously, squinching an eye. He is offering his cheek to Melkior’s blow wholeheartedly, almost politely. It is as if he asks for nothing but being strangled by Melkior forthwith.
He is standing dreadfully close. Melkior feels some maddened cat move inside him because of that nose, those ears, those cheeks … But the eyes, the palmist’s eyes, set so close to each other under the straight line of the eyebrows, watch him from under a mask, as if through slits, with a different look, one that does not go with his words. With a distant, threatening look that “knows all” and means business.
His beast takes fright, bends its spine, curls into a cuddly ball, meows ingratiatingly.
“Why do you follow me around?” he asks of the palmist in an almost supplicating whisper, despondently.
The palmist’s eyes go mellow again, come closer, amicably, intimately touching Melkior’s with a sort of kindness.
“Tut, tut, Mr. Melkior,” ATMAN was shaking his head, “what an idea! Follow? Me follow you? Isn’t it in fact you who are the follower of certain interesting persons?”
“Follower? Of what persons?”
“Follower is a deliberately chosen word to underline a certain little idea. Follower of interesting, truly interesting persons, Mr. Melkior. I repeat—interesting.”
“You remind me of a fishmonger in my hometown. He would invent things all day long at the fish market and confound people. He ‘knew all.’”
“The fishmonger may have invented things; I do not. Try to remember, Mr. Melkior … today, this afternoon …” The palmist squinches an eye again, derisively. Then Melkior remembers. Prompted by the squinch, perhaps. He had indeed followed Dom Kuzma. So …
“So you were following me this afternoon as well?”
“Hah, you think I have nothing better to do? You’ve lost a great deal of weight lately. Do you weigh yourself every day or just now and then?”
“What concern is that of yours, damn you?” shouts Melkior, quite furious now.
“I wonder myself. What concern is it of mine? Well, I am concerned—not so much with your person as with your error. Your erroneous reckoning, that is. Circulus vitiosus, is that right? Because what’s the use of a life that you are bound to lose in another way—to disease, I mean? You saw the catechist. But he had been mortifying his body for different reasons. And even he changed his mind. He would now like to live. Too late. He had been renouncing life through penitence, whereas you, contrariwise, want to live. Which is why you’re killing yourself. I perceive the absurdity of it, that is what I have long meant to tell you.”
“I’m not killing myself in any way. This is just another of your ridiculous conjectures.”
But Melkior suddenly realizes he is defending himself, retreating. Why on earth is he letting the cad meddle in his affairs in the first place?
“And stop speculating about my private life!” he says vigorously and somehow definitively.
“Why, Mr. Melkior, it’s not your private life I’m speculating about. It’s the problem itself, the very interesting problem of saving one’s life from one peril—a grave and dreadful peril, granted—at the price of bringing on another peril which is no less grave or dreadful. You are not aware of the latter peril now—you are overpossessed by the fear of the former. I can understand a prisoner mortifying and thinning his body in order to fit it through a hole. His object is right there: getting through, and after the hole come recuperation and fattening. But what’s your hole? Where’s the hole you wish to fit through?”
“Leave me alone!” cries Melkior in desperation. “Anyway, good night.” He turned around and was about to leave, but ATMAN stabs his back with a pointing finger.
“Are you quite sure it will be a good night, Mr. Melkior?” and gives him an insolent grin.
Melkior looks at him with impotent scorn. He is on the verge of riposting, but the staircase lights go off. What can he say to him now in the dark?
The palmist’s nearness makes him shudder. Instinctively he stretches out his arms and touches ATMAN, who is coming near step by tiny step with an accelerating hiss of “kill … kill … kill …” He pushed him back hard, in terror, and begins a panicky grope for a wall to cover his back. And fumbles for the switch with all ten fingers to turn on the lights. But the switch is gone. The wall is gone, too. Nowhere around him is there a single solid object to protect him, anything firm, secure, anything but emptiness and dark. And ATMAN is gone, too. There is only his laughter from some strange, sobbing distance ha-ha-ha. And repeated striking sounds, a bang, shouts. As if someone is calling out to him in French. And the light suddenly comes on.
He opened his eyes. The light was on in his room. How long had he been asleep? Snoring? What snoring? He had been hearing himself snore. Something struck his window again. A pebble. And someone shouting in the street, “Mon ami, mon ami!”
He went over to the window. Ugo was gesticulating in the middle of the street. Drunk, of course. Melkior opened the window.
“Elle m’aime, elle m’aime!” Ugo was shouting from down there, sending him kisses blown with both hands. “Elle m’aime, mon cher, elle m’aime, Melchior!”
Melkior’s heart sank. Elle l’aime! Well, let ATMAN hear it, too.
“But who? Qui est celle qui vous aime?” Let it be all spelled out to “him below.”
“She, la Grande!” Ugo shouted dementedly. “Tell you all about it tomorrow. Ah, l’amour! À demain, mon cher. Good night, Oh noble and wise one. Ah, l’amour!”
And off went Ugo, declaiming Baudelaire in some version of his own, with much pathos, assuredly with tears in his eyes: à la très belle, à la très bonne, à la très chère … qui remplit tout mon coeur, tout mon coeur… salut à l’immortalité …
Melkior closed the window. Lost in thought. So they did it straight away, the same evening. No sooner had she met him than … The harlot. That’s their taste in men—talkers and drunks. Didn’t I tell you she’d … said he to himself. This is how ATMAN talks to himself. Me and “myself.”
Hang it all, am I in love? Or is this envy? The thing, I think, is to drink (hey, a rhyme!), to be a lush, a swooze. The floozy! He even felt sorry for Freddie. Sparing but a single thought for it. Hypocritically. How easily this comes to women! And then Ugo walks about shouting L’amour. This is all a brothel.
He threw himself onto the bed. He bit a corner of his pillow and began tugging at it furiously. He felt a chicken feather in his mouth. There you are. L’amour. The hen. She will lie down under any rooster. La cocotte. In any backyard. She will even lie down under a parrot, multicolored, chattering.—Sorry, I thought you were the new rooster.—Not at all, Madame. I’m a general. Nice uniform, eh?—Divine!—I’m a hundred and twenty. A young parrot.—And a general already, eh?—Yes. That is why, Madame, I suggest un peu d’amour before the war.—So there will be one?—Certainly.—And you will kill me.—Yes, and eat you, too. I can already see you, Madame, in soup. Two drumsticks …—Enough of your lasciviousness, monsieur le Perroquet!—Oh no, I’m only a gourmet. Troop movements. We have no time for the finer points. Be mine.—Just like that?—Yes. But with love!—O
h, you’re not to be trusted. All you males are the same. You want everything straight away.—Oh no, not straight away. Half of you boiled today, the other half roasted tomorrow, Madame la Poule. Orderly! See to it that Mrs. Cocotte does not suffer. Use a sharp knife. Give her the Marie Antoinette treatment. Boil the rump.—How tenderhearted you are.—That’s what I am like. My profession is something else altogether. I hate cruelty. Do you like my beak?—It’s divine!—It’s terrific in lovemaking. Il est formidable. You will see. I could tell you my memories. We live long. We, crocodiles, elephants, and porpoises. Pity you’re not a porpoise. You will grow old soon.—I can’t help it, can I?—No, indeed you cannot. Do you lay eggs every day?—How indiscreet you are! I do only when I’m pregnant.—By cocks?—By a cock, by a rooster. By my Coco.—All he does is make noise, the fool. Cock-a-doodle-dooo … What does that mean? Nothing. Rubbish.—You’re jealous of him. It means “the dawn is breaking …”—“… a new day’s in the making.” So much for “cock-a-doodle-doo.” For all that he was a colleague of mine, truth be told. Anyway, they will screech in the middle of the night, too, the fools. And you admire them for it. Women love noise. Women generally love dunderheads.—Not all of them do.—I know. You don’t love them. Those who love us are always the exception.—I did not say I love you.—Never mind. You will. It’s my charm. We parrot-generals are a charming lot. Shall we have a drink?—Heavens, you’ll get me drunk.—Stewed hen. I have seen it before. Not bad.—You are trying to seduce me.—I admit a glass of cognac makes it easier for a woman to understand love.—Is this what you call love?—Well, what do you think love is? Clucking? At least I’m a realist.—You are a seducer of poor helpless women. You are low.—And you are marvelous when angry, Madame la Poule! I’m going to kiss you.—No! Oh, no. For God’s sake, no. Oh, what are you doing? What are you doing to me?—Loving you, my darling. My one and only love.—But I, I love only Coco, my Coco. Him, only … Oh you are terrible, you are!—I am, darling, I am. I’m crazy, my sweet little Poulette!—My little Pappagallo!—I’ll devour you, my sweet little Poupoulette! I’ll devour you!—Eat me, my little one. Eat me, eat me, eat me … ohh …
Tomorrow I’ll give Enka a buzz.
He was tired and out of sorts. He remembered Enka’s furious lovemaking and felt a fierce desire for her. Perhaps Coco was on night duty at the clinic? Should he go down to the pay phone and call her right now? How delighted she would be, now, in the middle of the night. She would say, Quelle surprise! She liked to clothe her adultery in French phrases. For the sake of the décor. Costume muck. À la Pompadour. She was with him, that is to say under him (as Iago would have put it) on the broad canopied bed. The telephone on the night table rang. He tried to prevent her from lifting the handset. No, she wanted to take the call. Precisely because of the situation! She winked at him. It was Coco. Ringing from the university, between two lectures. “How are you, ma poulette?” He was bored stiff. She answered him in French. Mon bichon, mon chéri. She was reading the book he had recommended. She did not like it. Boring. When are you coming home? Two more hours of lectures. Come back as soon as you can, on fera des chikki-chikki. Coco was chuckling into the receiver. Happy. She rang off. She was laughing. “Now then, where were we?”
“What a harlot you are!” he told her with awe. He, too, was laughing. Everyone was laughing.
“And you’re a stupid little burglar. What did you expect me to tell him? That you were here?”
“You could have let it ring.”
“Oh, shut up. You’re so stupid. He would have rushed over in a taxi to see if anything had happened to me.”
“Poor Coco.”
“He’s happy because he knows nothing. He’s wonderful. So clever.”
“You love him?”
“Very much. In a different way.”
“And you have a good time with him?”
“Marvelous. In a different way. You wouldn’t understand.”
“Indeed I would not. Perfidious creatures. We love you, trust you …”
“Why shouldn’t you trust me? Come to me, my skinny one …”
Not tonight. He would have probably slapped her cheeks. He would ring her tomorrow. The petite, perfidious, laughing Enka.
“The tormentor” was jangling eagerly. But its clangor burst into the sleeper’s slumber like a bully and a heedless drunk. What a mess! Sleep sprang into action, slamming windows and doors, putting out lights, letting night flood in and restore peace. Telling a story about sailing the seas on a big white ship. “The tormentor” is now clanging deep down in the bowels of the ship, signaling the engine men to change speed: go slow, go quiet …
Smooth sailing. Stars. Lighthouses winking in the distance: hello, skipper, old chum. He, up there on the bridge, in the dark, smiling: hello, boys, you old night owls. His cigarette pushed to a corner of his mouth, to keep the smoke away. Sea wolf. To the helmsman: fifteen to starboard. Fifteen to starboard, echoes the helmsman as though chanting a litany: pray for me. He harkens to everything. Leading the ship as a general leads an army. She, Viviana, wrapped in a plaid blanket, peers at the compass and trembles like the night. He offers her his hand, she does not take it. He grabs her hand, she pulls it away timidly and tucks it under the plaid. He pushes the cigarette over to the other corner of the mouth with his tongue, squinches the other eye, and says to the helmsman: steady on. To her: let’s go. She (docilely): Where? He (resolutely): To die. She (worriedly): What about the ship?—It’s sailing on.—And the passengers?—They’re asleep.—What about the lighthouses?—Ahoy!—She: I can’t do it.—Why not?—I’ll show you something. Opening the plaid: look. And shows him a tiny penis and tiny, dovelike testicles. He slaps her lightly using only his fingertips, painless, symbolic. She: Does that mean you love me?—Yes. Pointing his cigarette at her miniatures: is this for fidelity?—Yes.—Penelope!—How dare you?—You aren’t familiar with the word?—No, I am not. It must be insulting.—It is not insulting. He’s no Ulysses. He’s a drunk.—It’s insulting anyway.—Helmsman, stuff the ears with wax. Lash me to the mast. One-eighty to port.—One-eighty to port.—Back to Polyphemus.—Back to Polyphemus.—Let the Cyclops, one-eyed beast, eat us all.—Let the Cyclops, one-eyed beast, eat us all.—There is no Ithaca.—There is no Ithaca.—Penelope has a penis.—Penelope has a penis.—Let’s toss her to the sharks …
“Skipper! The sirens, the sirens!” shouts the helmsman all of a sudden.
“Wax! Stuff the ears! Lash yourselves to the mast!”
A siren was already screaming over the city. Melkior leaped out of bed. Is this it? Or is it just an exercise? People were walking calmly down the street. The sentry was gazing at the passing women with a lustful gaze. No, this is not it, not yet. An exercise. Let’s phone Enka.
He was possessed by urgency, like someone completing a task against the clock. He rushed downstairs acknowledging no one to avoid being stopped for the ridiculous questions about his health, the war, politics. Many dreams, gentlemen, many dreams lately. Erotic ones. We haven’t the time.
Dial Ambulance Service, but make the last digit 4 instead of 3. That was how Enka had instructed him to call her. Busy signal. The coin dropped down. Again. He was dialing with furious intensity. He used to dial numbers on Enka’s breast, for a joke, after love-making, as they relaxed, naked, next to each other.
“Hullooo?” Her crooning voice over the telephone had always excited him.
“Hullo, Ambulance Service?” in a shaky voice, as if this really was an urgent matter. Grave emergency.
“Wrong number,” she answered in a convincingly cold, even bored voice. And, without replacing the receiver, she said over there, to him, “That was the fourth ape this morning.” And there was laughter, somehow insulting, over there, between them.
Even though this was not the first time, he felt like a stranger, an outsider. Ape! She allotted him the same treatment as the three who had dialed the wrong number that morning, as the people who were a nuisance. She did it on purpose, for him to hear
. She knew his voice, oh yes, she knew! Why did she choose today to let him overhear that he was that morning’s fourth annoying ape who didn’t know how to dial a number properly? Something like a trace of jealousy surfaced … No, not jealousy! He was fending off the feeling. She had slammed the door before his outstretched beggarly hand. Beggar? No: burglar! He was giving himself cynical airs. I’m plainly not up to the harlot’s clever tricks. After two years he still had not learned to adapt his sensitivity to her complicated conjugal situations which she breezed through using her innate low cunning. No amount of experience had protected him from being easily stung. She would laugh at his naïveté, later on, advance sensible reasons, bring him around. But she was not taking the smallest of risks. Moreover, she acquired security, she fortified her marital fidelity at the expense of his pride, his honor, his courtesy as her lover. With her cynicism she was far above his sensitivity, laughing her superior, her wanton laugh, being dreadfully distant, opaque, elusive, disgusting. How many times had he gone to her intending to have it out? To smack her right in her lying mouth, to yank out her tongue, to leave her, forever. And then he had again kissed the mouth, held the satanic little tongue between his teeth and felt its morbid softness as the truest truth in the world.
Someone grabbed him by the neck and spun him around. He saw Maestro’s unshaven face. They were standing in front of the newspaper building. “If you were going upstairs, don’t.” Maestro’s words were consecrated by matutinal brandy breath.
“I’ve got a review to …”
“Later. After it’s blown over. There’s one hell of a kerfuffle going on up there. The Old Man’s tearing jumbo-sized strips off the music guy.”
“What for?”
“I should hardly think it’s over Beethoven. They’re raging about technology and politics and what not … ‘Who cares about the music!’ I didn’t quite get it. Anyway, you know well enough what kind of a fix we’re in.”
“I don’t understand. Why should he shout at the …”
Cyclops (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) Page 13
