“They’we alweady exchanging namth on the bed, hoo-hoo,” stage-whispered Hermaphrodite, his gut rumbling with laughter.
“What does that … character say his name is?” inquired Menjou, with dignity.
“He’s got a nice name—Melkior! Isn’t it lovely?” she spoke to them peaceably.
“Nithe. Hoo-hoo,” hooted Hermaphrodite mockingly.
“What sort of calendar of saints did your old man find you in?” said Menjou contemptuously.
“Christian,” said Melkior. “There were three kings of the Orient. Following a star they came to Bethlehem, to worship baby Jesus. One of them was called Melchior …”
“And that’th you,” mocked Hermaphrodite.
“Well, there is something royal about him, I noticed it right away,” said Tartuffe.
“My word, so there is … and you clods think it’s funny,” stated Menjou, encouraging them to laugh on.
They are laughing like warriors, beating their tom-toms around my stake. My lovable missionary Miss Acika is unable to save me. Lord, how pretty she is! —be it said in passing. Yes, pretty indeed, replies the Lord, as indifferent as a eunuch.
They’ll burn me at the stake like a heretic. They’ll cook me like the cook off the good ship Menelaus. But what’s the use of these scrawny bones, Oh brave chieftain the Great Menjou? They are a bundle of misery, covered with mangy ascetic skin! Nothing but three drops of blood inside—wouldn’t make a proper meal for a domestic flea! Spare me, Oh Great Menjou! Mercy!
“Sister Acika” (Menjou did not sneeze, joking time was over), “the thermometers are boiling in our armpits.”
She stood up (Acika surprised … on my knee, thinks Melkior) and looked at her watch: “Pipe down, it has only been five minutes. You never give me a moment’s respite, I’m on my feet all day.”
“Theuw aww other playtheth to thit,” Hermaphrodite offered her the edge of his bed.
“Thanks very much. Perhaps tomorrow.”
“Tomowow will be too late!” Hermaphro gave an offended grin, spittle spuming through his jutting wide-set teeth.
“There, there, don’t be grumpy,” she stroked his head.
“Who’th gwumpy? I’m laughing: hoo-hoo-hoo …”
“That’s better.”
She traced their temperature graphs in their lists, felt their pulses, counted the beats, in a well-practiced way, deftly, with her small, pretty hands.
Her fingers were soft and moist. She held Melkior’s arm, the hand dangling lifelessly, alongside her hip; her eyes were down on her wristwatch and she was counting off the seconds with her long black lashes. It was as if they were animated by a mute suffering (that’s how eyes prepare to shed tears, thought Melkior). He felt like touching the pain, stroking her in a brotherly empathetic way (darling!), and two of his fingers (two mellow eyes, two pure tears gliding down his loving heart) moved eagerly toward the touch. They felt the cold encounter of stiffened fabric (the consecrated armor of cold chastity). And yet there was she inside, beautiful and alive … The fingers now huddled miserably at the walls of the ivory tower and fluttered in a desperate plea … And lo, the imprisoned body responded, returning the tremor with the trembling of a frightened bird, as though two fears had touched at the border of unexpected happiness.
With a seemingly accidental movement she brushed his hand away from her hip, heaving a deep sigh and closing her eyes. An instant in which Melkior saw the devil with ATMAN’S eyes and Ugo’s fillings, a leering, mocking face: enter my kingdom, Eustachius.
She was by then slowly lowering her hand to the gray blanket, training a dimmed, distant look at his face. The face of a skin-shorn, desiccated, total idiot—those were the terms with which Melkior was now despising himself. While she, on high, above him, was a tower, solid and far too tall! What had happened to the frightened bird? … The bird had fluttered away, silent, soundless …
She entered his pulse and temperature in his list.
“Come downstairs tomorrow morning for a lung X-ray,” she said without raising her head.
“At what time, please?” He wished her to say something more to him, be it no more than the time of their “meeting again.”
“Seven,” she said on her way out, without a goodbye, in businesslike haste.
Leaving angry gloom in the room—nobody even sneezed after her.
He lay in state: arms down sides, chin above blanket, eyes closed. This is what it will be like one day. Candles, flowers, whispers all around, everything in black. The widow. Acika. An unfitting name for a widow—too coquettish. She “exchanging” glances with “Menthou,” with my nose not even cold yet. It’s best to beat them while you’re still alive, preventively. “Why are you beating me? For staining my memory, you bitch! Two strange trees will grow at the head of my grave, your monument to me—the horns of a cuckold!”—and I’ll carry on: bam! bop! … Or I’ll dispense with the explanation and just beat. No, Acika doesn’t suit her. Not the right name, Acika. Lucretia.—I would have liked your name to be Lucretia.—Why?— Lucretia was a legendary woman. She killed herself after being raped. —I’d kill myself too if that happened to me.—I don’t believe you.—Why? Just because my name is Acika?—I don’t believe in rape any more than I believe in the immaculate conception. I don’t believe a woman can be raped.—It has happened to more than one woman, you know.—It may have happened to some, but only partially. I don’t propose to go into the details, I’ll leave them to your imagination, but the second part of that violent act is no longer violence.—Well, what is it, then? (she, flushed with anger).—A kind of … acceptance, and I won’t swear there isn’t a certain sort of pleasure in it either; a “peculiar” kind of pleasure to be sure; “painful” even, as you might put it. It’s only afterward, when it’s all over and exists only as a memory, that the “shame” sets in. But the shame stems mostly from disappointment. With the man’s savagery and, even more, his lack of consideration, his selfishness and cynicism. If a savage were to convert while on top of her, in a manner of speaking, this could even blossom into love. She would forgive him everything thanks to his subsequent redeeming tenderness. “Ah, I remember how rough you were when you first took me! But I can now confess I liked it so much. What a he-man! A warrior! Then again, perhaps it’s the only way to find true love. You know, we women actually prefer to believe we’re being raped. We would ‘never’ have acquiesced if we hadn’t been ‘forced’ into it. We say, ‘no, no, no,’ don’t we, but woe to him who believes us: we never forgive him for it. Now I’ve told you all.” And then he beats her for being sincere (there, that’s the thanks you get for being sincere with them!) and calls her the worst names he can think of, as you can well imagine. —Ugh! That’s a fine opinion to have of women! Since you’re like that, you can’t really love a single one. It can’t be that all women are tarred by the same brush. Do you really think so about all women?—No, Vivi … er, Acika. That’s what the Parampion—my friend Ugo—thinks, and he fancies all women.—Well, that’s the most repugnant thing—fancying all but loving and respecting none.—But they like him, too!—Every one?—Well, most of them. You, too, would find him appealing if you knew him, precisely because he’s like that. —Then you don’t know me at all! (deeply offended).—No, no, I’m sorry (Melkior took fright), I really don’t know you yet. Nevertheless … (after some timid hesitation) I daresay you, too, are unable to love someone truly—a man, I mean. You belong to the Major’s Samaritan school (that’s why I’m going to give him a kiss tomorrow): a soldier in hospital is a miserable patient and nothing more. Your kindness has only sanitary value. Duty. Therapeutic, optimistic, a cheery atmosphere for the pulmonary patients: the cheerfulness of a headwaiter in the service of good appetite—have a nice time in our establishment. The winsome blandishments of an air hostess at celestial heights. The angelic smiles for sick bodies, for boils, for wounds, for the reek of rotting lungs, the stale stench of candidates for death. What’s a white swan doing in life’s repulsive hellholes? Is this a climate for
love? Swan lake …
“You there … whatever your name is,” spoke up Menjou in the end.
“Melkior.” Of course. Here it comes. He had been expecting it.
“You there, Meteor …”
“Melkior!”
“Listen, Meteor,” said Menjou with the greatest contempt, “have you been up to any funny business with her?”
“You won’t thcore with her, my boy …” Herma was saying in an almost friendly tone.
“There have been better Toreadors before you, Mon-sewer Matador, and they’ve all drawn a blank.”
“I was polite with the young lady …”
“Listen to this—he was polite!” exclaimed Menjou, stirring them up.
“She never, never went away like that before, without a goodbye,” said Little Guy to him in a low, confidential voice. “You must’ve offended her in some way.”
“Tho, thee!” jubilated Hermaphrodite maliciously. “You offended the wady!”
“I didn’t say anything bad to her …”
I’m being defensive, thought Melkior, and that’s not good, damn it. The Parampion would have attacked. He would have pulled off a putsch and taken control.
But how do you go about it? (He had long been trying to think of a putsch whereby the red-haired Asclepian would take control of the cannibals.) Perhaps if he opened the window overlooking the courtyard and spoke from there, made a demagogical speech … Oh no, friends and countrymen, I come not to the window to denounce, for Menjou is an honorable man; so are they all, all honorable men … (muttering in the courtyard—a sign of protest) but only to vindicate my vain heart. You know how weak the human heart is for you are good, kindhearted men; and mine is wounded withal. I would show you my wounded heart, but this dare I not, for I should do Menjou wrong, I should do them all wrong, and they, as you know full well, are honorable men. (Hem, hem—uncertain muttering in the courtyard.) I choose, then, to keep my silence and bear my pain for the sake of peace and for the esteem in which I hold so honorable a man as Menjou. But he says I offended her and was up to, ahem, funny business with her … and his words are prompted by love, by care of her honor, for he is an honorable man and doth love her honorably. He knows, therefore, what love is and could certainly tell you what offense there be in one man’s love that there be not in another’s. I know not—alas!—how my sighs can be an impediment to his love. Can sighs infect the air wherein basks a man’s bliss? I am not the orator Menjou is; I have not the power of speech to couch in sweet-sounding words that which you yourselves do know. But he is wise and eloquent, and thus bound to tell you wherein my offense lay. (Let us ask him! Let him tell us!) He will no doubt answer you for he is indeed an honorable man.
But what will he be able to tell you? That I did with but one finger touch her dress; that and nothing more. What private griefs they have, alas! I know not, that made them call me impertinent. They know it. But what impertinence be there in that light touch of a finger—a finger which fear had made to tremble withal? (A voice: Oh woeful day!) Sweet friends and countrymen, a brazen fellow hath not a blushing cheek, as you know full well. Not a trembler he, but a grabber. And I tremble e’en now at the thought of the touch of that sacred dress. Perhaps she expected me to grab her hand and kiss it. What woman does not? As she was counting the beat of my maddened pulse, perhaps she felt the same stirrings in her own blood? And what is it I did? Nothing, or nearly nothing: I touched her dress with a finger. Did this in me seem brazen? (A voice: Never! Another voice: If thou consider rightly of the matter, he has had great wrong. Third voice: Truly spoken! He is a just man, and they are villains! First voice: We see it now—Menjou is a traitor! Second voice: Let not the traitor live! We’ll burn the bed of Menjou!)
Stay, gentle friends! You go to do you know not what. Wherein have I thus deserv’d your loves? What am I to you? (Voices: You are our leader! The Admiral!) Other voices: Hear! hear! You are our admiral! Let us board ships and sail away! A voice (poetically): Let us sail away. Gulls and clouds will ask us: who are you? what do you seek? … and our sails will reply: Melkior sails! Melkior seeks a barren reef … (the poetic voice drowns in tears. All the others begin crying, too).
Blessed be those tears, my people! Away, then! But … wait an instant … for I wish to be quite clean before you. (Voices: It’s all right, you’re clean! Let’s go!) Not quite I’m not, friends and countrymen. (Yes you are, pure as an angel!) No, no, I have passions and lusts flaming inside me. (All the better—that means you’re a man! ha-ha laughter full of admiration.) Yes, but what kind of man? One with low, Priapic passions. Priapus, Priapus, exclaimed … I can’t tell you who, she’s a married woman. As for our chaste, white nurse … Acika (indeed a name to sneeze at, he thought in passing), I tried to embrace and kiss her, too, by force, friends and countrymen, because she’s a smashing little muffin, is she not? (Wow, Admiral, you do take the cake!—this in admiration and approval down in the courtyard.)
“You’re not to trust him, good-looking folk, you’re not to trust him!” shouts a voice from above (deus ex machina, thinks Melkior). “You’re not to trust him, he’s up to his ears in love—I know him! (Goodbye Viviana, mutters the voice in passing.) Lets on he’s a cynic—and him an honorable man indeed. Eustachius, be our leader! Our admiral!” and the huge black fillings darkened the sky. Ugo’s appealing voice. But what is he doing here? “Exalted Parampion, it’s you!” exclaimed Melkior joyously and heard his voice strangely distant from himself as though it had been an echo exclaiming.
Melkior felt his nose being pulled. He woke up instantly and opened his eyes wide in surprise. Sitting on his bed was a bulky young man in white, his mouth stretched into a make-believe smile, looking at him in a sticky-sweet way, “Good morning” fairly flowing from his ocular liquid.
“Name’s Mitar. Vampire, they call me. Shh, don’t wake ’em up, I got the moniker here in this very room,” whispered the man in white. “It’s all right—I’m just a lab tech, I came for a drop of your blood.”
Melkior thought he was dreaming. “Friends and countrymen,” he said mechanically and propped himself on his elbows to clear his head. They come to suck your blood in your sleep, the vampires … Old wives’ tales. All the same horror slithered up his back.
The others were still asleep, slurping up the last dregs of sleep before morning wake-up. They blew in and out cooperatively at their common task, Hermaphrodite’s lusty snore taking the lead. Melkior heaved a sigh of envy.
“What do you need my blood for?” he said, looking hopelessly at the gray wall in front.
“All right, so you refuse,” Mitar concluded indifferently. “I’ll report that to the Major.”
“I only said, ‘What do you need my blood for?’” Melkior now fully awake. “I haven’t got two thimblefuls in me.”
“I can make do with one,” smiled Mitar sweetly. “But it doesn’t follow that I’m just a lightweight … I do have some say in things. Know what blood work is?”
“No.”
“Well then.”
“Where will you take it from?” Melkior offered him an arm.
“Take it easy. We don’t have to do it right away. Just relax and lie back down.” He cautiously laid Melkior down on his back and covered him up to the chin. He even pushed Melkior’s arms under the covers. “You’re a patient, you must take care of yourself. If you want to get well again, you’ve got to comply. What do you think we’re here for?”
Melkior yielded. He couldn’t understand what this Mitar fellow wanted.
“Well, there you are, you’re saying nothing. Not that you could say anything—it’s true what I said. Everything can be read from your blood: health and disease and malingering. It’s all written in there as in the Bible, your destiny. That’s why it’s called blood work, and that’s where I’m in charge. What I say goes. And there’s no ‘let me see’ or ‘I wonder if’ with me. I give it to you plain: sedimentation rate, Wassermann reading, erythro and leuko counts, bilirubin, the whole kit an
d kaboodle. And if I mark it all ‘Negative’ and ‘NTR,’ it’s forward march, direction barracks and not even God Himself can get you off.”
Mitar the Vampire made a telling pause. He then brought his broad, greasy face over Melkior and ran his gaze over him: searching for a likely spot to grab.
“Then again, there’s blood work and there’s blood work …” he cast a cautious glance around the other beds and whispered with a kind of considerate contempt: “Sleeping, the weary heroes … It’s like having your picture taken at a photographer’s: you can ask for it to be warts-and-all or you can have it retouched. Now retouching’s no problem, you just leave that to me.”
“Is this expensive?” whispered Melkior conspiratorially.
Mitar seemed not to have heard the question and went on whispering; this time, in what was more like a private lament:
“Oh, oh, what a greedy bastard I am, from head to toe, God strike me! Look at the size of this!” he boastfully displayed his rotund belly with his trouser belt buckled prudently below it, “that’s my lord and master! The only one I serve—the rest can go to hell. It’s grilled meat, grilled meat makes the world go round, as the poet says—and that’s what’s going to bankrupt me, too. Braised heart, grilled liver, lamb chops, mincemeat steak, not to mention tripes on the fatty side … you’ve no idea how much I like gourmet food, God help me! Funnily enough, I don’t go in much for kebab, not even with sour cream—unless it’s tucked into a grilled bread pocket. I’m a big man for young spitted duck, with fat dripping from the tip of its crispy little bum, he, he,” tittered Mitar licking his lips and purring hoarsely: “Grrr … grr … grill grrates, grrill grrates, that’s what the Gypsies shout who hawk them. Find my taste amusing, don’t you? Your shit’s fat-free, right? A piece of boiled fish, an olive or two, that’s more the way you like it, eh? Oh, and Swiss chard, I bet. I can just see your gut piping ake me back to my home by the sea …”
One of the sleepers grunted before waking. Mitar quickly got going with his instruments.
Cyclops (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) Page 43
