“Was it at least a good binge?” Pupo was smiling contemptuously.
“Binge? No. Insomnia. Can’t sleep.” He smoothed out his rumpled suit, embarrassed. He straightened his tie, too. It was only eight o’clock. “I must have dropped off just a little while ago. Funny, I don’t remember.” But he was still standing in the same spot, face wet, confused.
“Why don’t you put it down on the floor?” said Pupo to the stranger. Indeed, the man was still holding a valise in his hand, undecidedly. A raincoat was draped over his other arm. Tall, fair-haired, lean, fortyish, with a grave, care-ridden face. Melkior finally came out of his trance. He put away the carafe, approached the man, and reached to take his valise. The man put forward his hand. Melkior returned the handshake, cordially. He said his name. The man muttered something unintelligible, looking at Melkior with an apologetic smile. “Right you are, brother,” thinks Melkior, the name remains the Stranger.
Accommodatingly, he opened the wardrobe door.
“This is for your things.” This time he succeeded in taking the valise away from the Stranger. He put it in the wardrobe. “It’s down here. Do sit down. And you, what are you wondering about?” he said to Pupo with erstwhile intimacy. “I haven’t been drinking—here, see for yourself,” and he puffed into Pupo’s face.
The Stranger laughed. “What, does he forbid it?” gesturing at Pupo.
“I educate them. The others are worse,” said Pupo asserting his authority.
“You can imagine the educator: carried by us because he’s been walking on all fours. He chews drinking glasses, not to mention shouting, ‘Down with the monarchy.’ ”
Melkior instantly realized he had gone too far. Pupo gave him a look of contemptuous rage. He had clearly been playing the saint “here,” being in a subordinate position in “those” circles.
The Stranger laughed. But on seeing Pupo’s face he abruptly cut his laughter short and erased it completely from his face. The face was now calm and care-ridden again.
“If you’d like to wash up,” said Melkior to the Stranger, “the bathroom is across there, in the flat proper.” He wished to be alone with Pupo for a moment. He wanted to apologize.
“No, thank you.”
Melkior offered him a cigarette. “Thank you, no. I don’t smoke.”
He offered one to Pupo and smiled in a friendly way. Pupo took it and accepted the smile.
“I always have black coffee in the morning. I’ll fetch some right away.” Melkior was in high spirits.
“Don’t bother on my account,” said the Stranger. “I would like only to sit down here for a minute. I’m tired.” He sat down on the sofa. But he promptly dropped down on an elbow, and then leaned his head back against the cushion. “I’m very tired,” he said apologetically.
“Lie down by all means. I’ve got to go to the office anyway. You can sleep if you like. I’ll tell the landlady not to send the maid in.”
Melkior went across to the flat proper to fetch the coffee. He explained to the landlady that a relative had unexpectedly arrived. He would be staying for a few days. She offered to do the room herself, to make the sofa for the guest, out of curiosity, of course. Melkior put that all off for later. He brought the coffee back. The two of them cut their conversation short. He felt extraneous there between them. He slurped his coffee hastily, explained to the Stranger the technique of living in the room, handed over all the necessary keys, and, with a most courteous Bye for now to both of them, fled.
He may be a future Marat for all I know, he thought, hurrying down the stairs, even though he had no reason to hurry at all. But why Marat, of all men? The man was killed in his bath—the whore Charlotte cut his throat. Danton, Saint-Just, Robespierre? … snick-snick-snick … all three heads—snick!—rolling into a basket. None of the examples is good enough. Not Zinoviev, not Kamenev, not Bukharin, not even Leo Bronstein, it was again snick-snick-snick and crash! The ice pick striking Leo’s head, whereas I wish my guest the Stranger to live. Long live my guest the Stranger!—Hip, hip, hoorayyy! He was rallying in the street, semiaudible even, making people turn around after him. He would have dearly loved to rush into the Give’nTake and tell everyone, like Bobchinsky-Dobchinsky, what kind of a guest had arrived. Mysterious, secretive, yet quite straightforward and likable, tall and fair-haired and lean and decidedly on the shy side, “No, thank you, don’t bother on my account.”
No, I must give Enka a buzz. Poor Enka. I’m really a … He nevertheless went by the Theater Café and the Give’nTake, just in case. Perhaps Viviana had decided to parade her pretty self there. But the score was zero and … zero. Making a total of zero. Too early. A rest after last night’s gentle breath. He did not telephone Enka either. He mounted the stairs to the office, tired already. Wilted enthusiasm. See proof of review, it’s to go to print today. The day’s copy was no longer with the arts editor, it was already in the composing room.
“The Old Man crossed out a paragraph.”
“Censorship, eh?”—ready for a big showdown.
“Nonsense. Too much copy. Had to trim all around.”
“Which paragraph?”
“Do me a favor. What do you care anyway—it was only ten lines or so.”
“You could’ve asked me—I would’ve done it myself.”
“I looked for you at the Give’nTake last night. ‘He’s just gone out with Don Fernando,’ and you haven’t got a phone at your digs. How was I to ask?”
“It’s wrong all the same.”
“Don Fernando’s with the editor now. He’s brought some article or other, but it’s a no-go. They’re having a discussion … matters of principle.” The arts editor was sneering with mild derision.
That was precisely what Melkior had long wanted—coming to a “matter-of-principle” grips with the editor. But when he entered the editor’s “Black Room” (so-called because everything in it was black, himself included) the two of them were heartily laughing at something. Don Fernando was sunk in a black leather armchair, his long legs crossed so high that one of his knees touched his chin and his glass of cognac, but he couldn’t drink for laughing. The editor seemed to have just finished telling him something and was laughing himself, but his laughter had pauses and long intervals in it, during which he was making it known to his silliness that he could stop this nonsense at any moment if necessary. But he was not stopping it, which meant that this—the nonsense, the laughter—was necessary.
So this was what the “matter-of-principle” discussion was all about. The embittered realization could have been read in his face, had there been somebody to read it. They went on laughing. The editor only spared a hand to gesture toward a seat. In a little while Melkior, too, touched his chin to his knee and poured himself a cognac, only he didn’t hold it to his nose—he downed it; he did not laugh. Must be something silly to make them chortle like this. A “matter-of-principle” laugh. He was irritated by the laughter. Late for the show everyone else was enjoying, he was the only one without a clue. Damned silly business! He was hurt. For we are hurt by any laughter we can’t understand.
“I thought there were big issues being discussed here, I thought I would learn a thing or two …” and he knocked back another brandy, miffed.
“Oh, so you think … what is it that Maestro calls you—Eustachius? …” (the two of them burst out laughing again) “… that big issues can’t sometimes be handled with laughter?” Don Fernando dropped the question from on high, adding the necessary breezy tone to accentuate his condescension.
“They can,” Melkior swatted at the question as if it were a moth flying across the room, “if it’s a Molière doing it.”
“You wouldn’t settle for a lesser authority then?” The moth was losing altitude.
“It’s the nature of laughter that doesn’t settle—it’s choosy.”
Don Fernando didn’t reply. He tried to catch the editor’s eye, to assert their spiritual bond. But the editor paid no attention. He got up and sat down at his blac
k mahogany desk. This meant, “We’ve had our fun, now back to business.”
“We’ve trimmed your review a bit,” he said to Melkior with a considerate smile. No more than ten lines or so. Had to trim everything today. A lot of small news items.”
“Sorry I was unable to mention personalities …” Melkior was trying to provoke the thing, the “matter of principle.”
The editor flashed a wry smile.
“I wouldn’t expect that from you anyway,” he said with a pleasant look at Melkior. “The fellow yesterday was a different case altogether. He himself regretted that he hadn’t remembered to look around the stalls. That’s why I gave him a piece of my mind. He was all excuses and sweet talk, where you would have stalked out and slammed the door on me.”
Melkior was overjoyed that this was said in front of Don Fernando. He actually mumbled a thank you, which mercifully went unheard.
“Here you are, then,” the editor handed a manuscript to Don Fernando. “Regretfully. All right?” They smiled at each other with an already hammered-out understanding.
Melkior caught up with Don Fernando on the stairs. They descended in silence. Don Fernando was trying to slide the manuscript into his inside pocket, but something was in the way, blocking passage, so much so that Don Fernando’s small eyes flickered a bit in irritation.
“What, it won’t fit in the pocket either?”
“Sorry?” said Don Fernando unpleasantly and rather sharply.
“I said, the article won’t fit. Why did he reject it?”
“What makes you think he did?” Don Fernando had flushed a virginal pink.
“I know he did. Do you expect to keep a secret in a newspaper office? I don’t have it from the editor—there are at least three people upstairs who are delighted.”
“I don’t know the other two,” said Don Fernando, trying to muster a smile.
“But you know one? And that’s me?” Melkior paused for a moment on the stairs. He suddenly felt a kind of painful sadness at the insinuation and asked Don Fernando, looking bemusedly down the stairs, “Why are you so evil-minded?”
“Who, me personally?” Don Fernando had regained ascendancy over Melkior.
“Both you personally and … people in general,” and Melkior gestured hopelessly.
“My dear Eustachius, whatever’s come over you? Ha, why does Maestro call you Eustachius, anyway? The editor told me a couple of first-class stories about him. That’s what we were laughing at. Maestro is a splendid variety of madman.”
“Splendid? I wouldn’t say so. He’s more of an uncorrupted cynic. A Thersites among all the shining heroes up there.”
“So he is, up to a point …” Don Fernando was clearly trying to be nice. “As a matter of fact he ought to live in a tub, ha …”
“With a mind like his, an unwashed bottle would do every bit as well. He guzzles brandy. The tub is for the Dionysian liquid … or Diogenes, if that’s what you meant.”
“Yes, well … sure … But the way he does that job of his! I mean, the way he runs his city desk! The way he pecks passionately like a sparrow among the trash brought in by his garbage collectors (that’s what he calls his reporters), as if he would use all that fecal waste matter, like a crazy alchemist, to distill at least a drop of some ‘genuine’ essence or other, be it somewhat dirty and poisonous—it would nevertheless be the genuine truth about people, a truth more authentic and real than all those majestic and authoritative political, and even so-called cultural, scribblings.”
“He enjoys his mucky alchemy!”
“Well … I wouldn’t rule out the personal experience.”
“But he simply bathes in feces! He identifies with garbage because he’s a piece of garbage himself, and there are no libations there apart from the libation of filth dripping from his …”
“Why the sudden loathing, dear Eustachius—if you’ll allow me to call you that?”
“Why the sudden love? I don’t hate him—I feel pity for him if you must know, because I have a fair idea of where his reveling in stench comes from. But you, you’ll never understand it. You’re too busy tinkering with the model of your proto-Man to be able to perceive the dirty and swinish, semisuccessful and quite unsuccessful versions of him in the phenomenological world. You cannot love Maestro, you can’t even see him. What you said about him isn’t true. Anyway, you were not speaking because of him—you had something else on your mind.”
“Your thought is far-reaching … and dangerous. You reveal … No, seriously now, the editor may have suggested such an affinity to me in the kind of laughter (and here I’m quoting you) Molière uses to deal with big issues. All I wanted to say was that even such a man—while being, as you put it, swinish, and while reveling in stench (which is, among other things, a well-turned phrase indeed) —even such a man has in him an integral, essential something, a nondegradable form that always manifests itself in some way, even as it revels in stench. This is what defines the personality after all. You yourself call him Thersites. So, what makes the parallel doable for you? Were nothing to him but the … fecal bath, how would he rise to the level of Thersites?”
Why’s he saying all this? It’s certainly not about Maestro. But what is it about?
“The editor, for one, thinks very highly of him—in a certain way, of course.”
“He thinks very highly of anyone who can be useful to him.”
“You’re wrong. The editor is useful himself; I daresay he’s very useful.”
Don Fernando stressed the last words with a certainty stemming from a distinct way of looking at things. “You seem to buzz around petty details and get snared by them.”
“What about his refusal to print your stuff in his paper? Do you find that useful, too?” Melkior tried to draw him out through vanity. Don Fernando smiled.
“Refusal to print my stuff? Only this one article … which is truly not suited to his paper. Or any other paper … for the time being.”
Such an air of the clandestine!
“Tell me one thing …”
“You’re sounding like Hamlet,” Don Fernando gave an almost offended smile. “Never mind—I’ll tell you everything I’m able to tell.”
“What did you write about?”
“Oh, that?” Don Fernando reflected for a moment. “About the need for preventive dehumanization … or, shedding tragedy through skepticism.”
Melkior made a stupid face.
“Is this something I could understand?”
“Maybe, if you try. You’re a theater critic, after all.”
“Then help me, for God’s sake!” cried Melkior.
They were strolling around the square by the National Theater.
Don Fernando had dropped his arms to his sides and was staring straight ahead as he elaborated on his thoughts. Melkior watched him, tensely awaiting the results of the process.
“In buildings of this kind,” Don Fernando pointed at the theater building, “people force themselves to be naïve for a few hours. Most tragedies, if not all, are founded on false assumptions. Take Hamlet: how is it that it never occurred to him, so intelligent and consequently so full of doubts, way back in the beginning—before the play begins—that Uncle Claudius might be capable of killing his father? I mean, wasn’t the uncle a cad, a drunkard, and a lecher the whole time? Hamlet was bound to have noticed. How is it that he was not wary of the bastard rather than wondering after the fact how someone could be such a scoundrel? All right, granted, Othello is naïve (though again you feel there must be a limit to his naïveté), he could not imagine Iago to be such a beast. But whence the naïveté in Hamlet?”
“It’s his youth, his faith in life, in people, in love.” Melkior didn’t think so.
“And all of a sudden, as the tragedy begins, he ages, he no longer has faith in life, in people, in love? Isn’t this a false assumption? Is this not a false assumption that Hamlet fails to realize that his mother is a woman capable of going to bed with another man, or that Polonius is a prof
essional Lord Chamberlain who will ‘loyally’ serve any king, or that Ophelia is a woman whom he might as well have dispatched to a nunnery long before using the same arguments, or that his school friends are young careerists who stand by their royal pal only as long as he is Crown Prince … and so on. It took his father getting murdered, his mother marrying his father’s murderer, Polonius setting a trap that Ophelia walked knowingly into as bait, his own friends sending him to his death, for him to realize finally he’d been living among scoundrels. Too late. Too late for a Hamlet, and too naïve.
“Or imagine, for instance, just how idiotic Andromache is. She thinks she’s being sly, but hers is a naïve and not at all feminine wile. To save her son she marries Pyrrhus formally, the Hyrcan beast as Hamlet described him, and immediately after the ‘cunning’ wedding she kills herself to remain faithful to Hector. How very clever! She’s met Pyrrhus’s condition for sparing her son’s life: she has ‘become his wife,’ ha, and killed herself directly afterward, double ha-ha! Tragic indeed! And what, pray, is this terrible tragedy rooted in? A goose’s logic: Pyrrhus must not kill my son now because I have done what he asked me to do. He is bound by his word. My dear fellow, don’t you see that this is a piece of nonsense, though we are asked to see it as sublimely moving? I’m asked to believe, together with the tragic hen, that Pyrrhus is a gentleman. That he won’t go berserk when he catches on to how he’s been manipulated by a birdbrain and slay her entire household, all the way down to her cat, to take his revenge. No, I’m asked to believe in human greatness. Merde!”
What’s Andromache to him or he to Andromache that he should be so wound up about her? For these were merely the advance troops, Melkior was waiting for the main body of Don Fernando’s thoughts.
Don Fernando sensed the question with the instinct of a passionate analytical thinker.
“Odd, isn’t it, that I should be talking about this?” He halted for an instant, looking Melkior in the eye in an almost provocative way. “I mean, what is Andromache to me? Or Hamlet for that matter? Or all that tragic affectation? And yet you didn’t think to bring up Horatio. That would have been an objection worth making. Tragedy presupposes faith in goodness. Horatio is pure goodness, a naïve, magnanimous fellow, and yet he’s merely a supporting character. That is why the existence of such a Horatio is not subject to doubt. He is an assumption outside the sum and substance of the tragedy, an almost accidental phenomenon. A satellite, which hasn’t quite grasped the ins and outs of the dark constellation of tragedy. That is why I permit him to be good, because he doesn’t matter.”
Cyclops (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) Page 27
