“Very good,” enthused the Major.
“Thank you, sah!” yelled Numbskull.
“Never mind thanking me—get on with it!”
“… and the shadow is, as we know, on the north side.”
“That’s right, on the north side! Damned good show!”
“Thank you, sah!” Numbskull was not forgetting the Royal Regs.
“Right, now establish your bearings. See that dork—thought he’d ask an enemy peasant. So smart he’d try to hitch a ride on a hedgehog.”
“Now that I know which way’s north, I position myself so as to face due north, where the moss is. Behind my back’s south, my right arm is east and my left arm west.”
“Damned straight!”
“Thank you, sah!”
“Wonder which fool chose to call you Dimwit.”
“Numbskull, sir,” Numbskull corrected him shyly and modestly. “It was only a joke, sir. …”
“This is no joking matter! This is not a circus! I’ll get that Nettle yet!”
“Sir, I never said anything about …”
“Silence! I know him—this is his brand of shenanigans! That Cossack from the steppe making my finest men a laughingstock! Here, you knew about this orientation by moss business all the time—why didn’t you come out with it right away?”
“I hadn’t remembered, sir, until you said.”
“Good. Sit down.”
“Thank you, sah!” Numbskull was not letting up. He sat down, broadcasting his pleasure.
The Major was very pleased, too. He was still shouting and swearing, but with a paternal smile—even addressing them as “lads”— “listen up, lads, look at him!” And it was all thanks to Numbskull: he had created a cozy family atmosphere out of nothing, out of a handful of moss, as it were.
“Listen up, lads, look at him! Pay attention to me, slacker! Here, what is it we learned about orientation by moss? Let’s hear it from … you!” and he suddenly skewered a beanpole in the back row with his finger. The beanpole gave a start, jumped to his feet and said all about shadow, damp, north-south, east-west …
And everybody else turned out to have it down pat. Melkior, too, had it down.
“Very good, boys!” exclaimed the Major in delight.
“Thank you, sah!” thundered the boys. The Major marched down the aisle between the benches reveling in the tribute from the skin-shorn heads and went out of the triumphal door: with boys like that he had no fear of Hitler’s moustache or Mussolini’s shaven pate!
Melkior, too, was carried away by mellow thoughts: see how we could live in peace and mutual respect … If we took a leaf from Numbskull’s book … But how did he know which side the moss grew on?
“How? Heh-heh, I told you: nine Honors degrees!” replied Numbskull in the mess hall at lunch, tapping his nose. “You know the year of Luther’s death, not me. You can wipe your butt with all the Schopenhauers. What counts here, as you can see for yourself, is moss!” said Numbskull, eating Melkior’s lunch.
Lifemanship. Melkior felt his being trapped, deprived of ingenuity, exposed to Polyphemus the cannibal, defenseless. Oh Lord (why do you invoke Me, said the Lord, if you don’t believe in Me?), I will have to surrender. I have no choice but to surrender to the man-eating Cyclops, come what may. There are fifty-seven young men and thousands of young men more and millions of young men beyond them caught in a high-ceilinged cave overgrown with laurels, and Polyphemus the huge Cyclops has lifted a boulder and plugged the entrance to the cave … and everyone inside awaits, meek as lambs, for their destiny to be chosen by the Lord. So why should you worry at all about your stunted little body?
Polyphemus does not fancy gnawing scrawny bones. Maybe you will not be chosen at all for his Cyclopean meal? Maybe, maybe … Maybe is worse than “he will not eat you tomorrow.” Oh Lord, I don’t want maybe; give me certainty: deliver me or destroy me now! Throw me under Caesar’s mighty hooves to be trampled in a blaze of glory! Deliver me from Nettle, from fear, from shame, from barking at a lightbulb!
Fear prolongs life, someone had said in honor of Caution, but Numbskull’s uncomplicated art made Melkior’s pitiful cunning seem ridiculous. The way Numbskull had decoded his “secret device” at first sight! Read through it right off the bat and spotted it as naïve … and teased him for it. He was going to make mistakes under the expert’s knowing eye, bog down in details while forgetting the bigger picture, show his hand while hiding his nails. He feared Numbskull’s ingenuity and the man’s taking so damn much interest in him!
He opted for an unpleasant silence, in payment for the friendly care in bread and meat.
“All right, if you really don’t want it,” Numbskull ate from Melkior’s barely touched plate, but kept on musing in a conscientious and friendly manner: “Thing is, do you propose to wither away here from one day to the next? What difference will it make after all’s said and done: this way or … that? I’m afraid you’re going about this all wrong—your sum is lose-lose, no matter how you slice it.”
But Melkior wouldn’t listen to him anymore. He’d had it with that kind of logic in ATMAN’S school. Too many dreadful truths were concealed in that line of reasoning. He tossed and turned through another pointless night under the olive drab blanket trimmed with the royal tricolor, hopefully counting the beats of his racing pulse. He had trouble swallowing his saliva in his parched throat: a stab of pain appeared as a yearned-for promise. Strep—a warm, indeed seering, medicinal word, beyond the reach of the stable and Nettle, capable of reducing his tense vertical stature to a patient’s relaxed helplessness, to a white scene of whispers and obligatory quiet.
Tomorrow there would be fever to boot … sick bay … that was the proper military term. The next day there was nothing to show for sick bay. The throat fresh and painless; the pulse ticking shyly and modestly, nearly inaudible; the forehead pale, hunger-spent, cold. There you are: a picture of health! And his animal was already looking forward, with thick-headed relish, to the chicory brew and the black jam on fresh, still-warm black bread.
Oh no you don’t, you greedy brute! And the Body, miserable as a starving dog, gave a piteous whine and nearly dropped with exhaustion to the muddy, unfriendly ground. (Well, look at what I’ve been feeding it these days—not enough to keep a fly alive, admitted Melkior loyally, but launched into a didactic sermon out loud): Here, consider the bodies of ascetics and hermits and whatnot. A jug of water and a crust of stale bread are all they got to sustain them for up to forty days, so what?—they were gaunt yet sturdy and resilient, they could take any climate, hot or cold—and they left their Master alone, no dreaming of Enka and similar filthy stuff, they kept themselves to themselves while the Master was meditating and cultivating his soul. You’ll be the death of me (of yourself, too, in fact!) with your “got to guzzle,” you glutton, you Sancho, you abyss of hunger, you lowly earthbound engine of foolish Pantagruelian life! At least remember our castaways! It’s for your sake that I invented that pedagogical “Telemachiad” (although you’re no Duke of Burgundy but merely a greedy intestine) to show you where your stupid motto eat, drink, and … will get you—there, you see, it will only get you into another intestine, and with you all, damn you, it’s nothing but out of one intestine and into another … and so on to infinity, you bloated guzzlers! Given that I was so fatally placed astride you to ride your arched and uncomfortable back (if only I’d sat astride a turtle!) at least be wise as a donkey, mind how you walk through this life of ours, don’t rush and don’t race, nothing is worth haste, see to it that our travel lasts as long as possible, there’s no Promised Land out there. At the end is the Promised Pit, we’ll tumble into it together, you and I, you and I …
“Hey you!”
“Me?” echoed Melkior like distance, surprised.
“What’re you doing here?”
“Trying to report for sick bay, Sergeant. But there are signs on the door, Do Not Knock and Enter Only if Invited, so I’m waiting, I don’t know how to get in.”
“Come in.” The taciturn irascible clerk, a troop sergeant, sat down at his desk, dunked a rusty pen into an inkwell and held it poised over a sheet of paper. He waited, looking distractedly through the window. “All right, shoot!”
“Shoot what, Sergeant?”
“First name, father’s name, last name … Right. Year of birth? Village? County? District?” and handed Melkior the paper. Melkior was still waiting, standing by the desk, this can’t be all, it’s much too quick and efficient, no shouting, no swearing …
“Well?” bawled the sergeant. “Want me to examine you?”
“Y-yes, Sergeant,” quavered Melkior, happiness making him attempt to click his heels like the soldiers he had seen in the films saluting their superiors, but he missed and his boots responded with a dry, hollow sound.
“OK, OK,” the attempt did manage to bring a thin smile of satisfaction to the sergeant’s strict (but fair!) lips. This is Numbskull influencing me already, thought Melkior about heel-clicking on his way out of the company office.
There was a smell, in the infirmary, of hot, undressed bodies, all of them feverish, sweaty, red. The orderly, a private, gave Melkior a thermometer patched with a strip of plaster and explained that you stuck this in your armpit. I now ought to tap it on the tip (literally, that is) so the mercury will rise above ninety-eight point six, but how? it’s got a hole in its head underneath the strip. All the same, he flicked his index finger from his thumb, knock knock knock and knock, three strong knocks and one weak, then took a cautious peek at the resultant ninety-nine. Was this a reliable enough thread for a Lost One to follow?
The young doctor in the infirmary thought it was. He listened carefully to Melkior’s lungs and heart and stated with amicable satisfaction that he had heard nothing of interest. But he did not hide his concern over such an assertive presence of Melkior’s skeleton: you’re only skin and bones, man, you haven’t got an ounce of flesh on you. He drew two semicircles across Melkior’s chest with his thumbnail; the nail left a red trail. Of course! nodded the doctor, something was matching his expectations one hundred percent. “Here, this is a note for Pulmonary,” and then privately, as if to a younger brother, “you must eat, you must eat a lot. You’re dangerously thin.” This ended the examination.
So danger lurked in the bones. Melkior was gladdened by the Medical Corps care: it was their business to upholster the skeleton with sound patriotic flesh, to make the King happy by producing an army under whose feet the very Fatherland shook.
“You here for the ‘special’?” a sergeant greeted him outside the infirmary.
“C’mon, fall in!” he ordered the seven unwell soldiers in the yard. “By twooos, numbah!”
“One, two, one, two …” the garrison rejects numbered off halfheartedly.
“Double file, right!” clack-clack, responded the boots submissively. “Here, you, new guy, look where your belt is! You’re not according to regs!”
Of course—Numbskull said so! thought Melkior. But I’m not à la Madame Récamier … and he made a surprised face at the sergeant.
“Belt above half-belt, understand?”
“Yes, Sergeant,” said Melkior and hoisted his belt; the half-belt was halfway up his back. “Wouldn’t this be too high, Sergeant, across the chest?”
“Never mind!” yelled the sergeant. “Look who’s complaining—a real scarecrow! Who the hell took you into the army—a blind man? Move to the rear, I don’t want to have to look at you!”
Melkior moved to the rear so that the sergeant didn’t have to look at him, belt across chest (above the half-belt), well now he was according to regs. Forward march, direction gate!
This is town. Melkior was sniffing the streets like a city dog: he felt like trotting to the corner, roving a bit, stopping to examine the posters, perhaps even cocking a leg … with joy. And back there, in the stable, Caesar had by now been served. That, too, was a pleasure: knowing that Caesar had been served for today. Oh illustrious Caesar, I am on my way through town! I am marching down the middle of the road (in the rear, for the sake of the Sergeant) where your less fortunate brethren pull appalling loads; they are whipped and sworn at by drunken carters, their haunches are sweaty and their eyes frightfully sad, but I would rather change places with them than with you. None of them is good enough for a monument—and a monument is a dead horse …
Several passersby had stopped on a corner, watching the soldiers and laughing. One of them pointed a finger at him, Melkior, and instantly they all laughed anew.
The sergeant slowed down his pace, dropping to the rear, and spoke through clenched teeth without looking at him: “You’re putting me to shame, damn your eyes, I don’t know where to hide my damned face! I could kill you here and now, you seditious bastard!”
Numbskull said so, thought Melkior. There was no going back under Nettle’s wing, now: the sergeant had supplied him with all the strength he needed. The specialist checkup was sending him benevolent smiles already: there’s the hospital, hopefully there would be red crosses there, too … white all around and a tinge of illness. The entire tableau was less ambitious now: no need for a terrace at Davos, or glaciers, or pedestrian reading matter. All I need is just to get my head under the sign of the red cross, out of reach of Nettle’s and Caesar’s world.
“You, over here!” yelled the sergeant after they had entered the hospital grounds. “Wait here.” Melkior waited. The others knew their way to wherever they needed to take their maladies. But they envied him, they told him, “Goodbye, you’ll be staying here.”
The sergeant returned. “Through this door. Assembly point outside the canteen. Over there, see it?”
“Yes.”
“Like hell you do! Be the best thing for all of us if you kicked the bucket while you’re here!” the sergeant bared his teeth in a canine grin. “Rid the army of the likes of you,” and he went off, lighting a cigarette.
True to form it was white all around … He was greeted by a white nurse, young, white arms to the elbow, hips, a pleasant smile as she entered Melkior into the large logbook. This was perhaps how you were admitted to Paradise—a heavenly secretary …
“Tresić?” smiled the secretary above the book. “Perhaps we’re related. My name is Tresić-Pavičić, the poet’s my uncle.”
“Well, I’m just Tresić,” Melkior smiled modestly, his heart fluttering with gratitude.
“But you know Uncle, don’t you?” She lifted her heavenly head and looked at him with her pretty eyes. “I mean, you’ve read his poetry?”
Melkior recited a handful of the poet’s pathos-drenched verse.
“Ahh,” she marveled. “Tell me, are you from one of the Dalmatian islands, too?”
“No, I’m not.” He did not want to afford her even that little pleasure. “I’m from …” but he was interrupted by the buzzer: the major wanted her.
“Excuse me.” She went through a white door and returned in a moment.
“The Major will see you now. Step in here, please, and strip to the waist, then go through the other door. Don’t be afraid, the Major’s a very nice man,” she added in a confidential whisper, like a cozy secret.
“A very nice man …” He undressed in a dark cubicle saturated with the smelly fumes of sweaty bodies. She’s in love with him. Common knowledge: doctors and nurses … and there’s bound to be a couch inside … “Such a nice man …” Stripped to the waist, a half-peeled banana, a white … no, a dried fish in oversized trousers, a cartoon character in boots … He hugged his emaciation with a virginal shyness. Actresses and directors, horizontal occupations … then go through the other door. He went. The “very nice man,” tall, slim, with a touch of gray at the temples … they go for that particular type of intellectual. With a slow and weary gesture he was told to approach. He felt respect, bowed with the bare half of his body. The Major gave an amicable smile and put his paternal hands on Melkior’s pointy shoulders. Melkior was afraid the man would be disgusted by such a body. …
“Breathe normally, please. Breathe deeply. Cough. Breathe fast. Faster.”
Melkior panted like a dog, fast, comically, immodestly. He looked at the white couch … the panting … that’s where they, the poet’s niece and … but he couldn’t believe it. A nice man, really.
“Now please lie down.” Melkior hesitated: to lie down on that white couch … he feared desecration. That tableau: their love … he thought like a romantic knight. Well, if they’re truly in love … “Do lie down—it’s clean,” the Major pleaded.
He lay down on the clean, cold sheet and begged forgiveness (inside).
The Major tapped all over him, listening carefully, seeking out the hidden enemy. Nothing. The X-ray machine also revealed nothing.
“Nothing,” said the Major with a smile of hidden satisfaction. “Serious asthenia. But you’ll stay here, you need to convalesce,” entering enigmatic words in the Medical Corps form as he spoke. He then pressed the buzzer button.
How do you mean “you’ll stay here”—Caesar, the sergeant, and Nettle are waiting for me! It’s not as if you had a sun here under which I would be warmer than under the sky of their love and affection. Do you realize the implications of depriving Caesar of such a soldier? The centurion Nettle will be terribly worried about me. Also Major Moss, listen up, look at him … Ugo would have made that into a number for his show by now. He’s still asleep at this hour, the cur!
They’re all still asleep, the curs! It’s too early. They’ve got it made. What about Ugo (his liver is swollen), hasn’t he received his call-up papers yet? Mr. Kalisto must have some good connections in the right places, because in these war-threatened times Pechárek will not pass over people so easily, dwaftees, hell no! we’re all equal and naked before the King.
She would come in any moment now, and here he was, all gangly in his trousers, all pitiful and naked …
Cyclops (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) Page 40
