Cyclops (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

by Ranko Marinković

  “But of course … You can now expect him to blackmail you for as long as you live.”

  “Why should he?”

  “Why shouldn’t he? He now knows you are anxious for your husband never to learn about … this … well, you can see for yourself, can’t you?” He was ashamed to talk about it; he was getting irritated.

  “But I paid what he charged!”

  She paid what he charged! “Oh what naïve little creatures you women are!” He was angry and prepared to approve of ATMAN’S behavior. “You think your special little fifty dinars bought you the privilege of enjoying your safety? Oh no, that’s nowhere near enough, Madam! He hates you, he hates your pleasure and wants you to pay him for it!”

  “Pay him for hating me?”

  “You seem to be beginning to understand.” It was again he who had grown tired of her; he enjoyed being in a position to torment her. A fresh arousal; he saw tears in her eyes.

  “Oh, Kio, that’s awful! You frighten me!”

  “No fear … as long as you can afford to pay him.”

  “Well, how long will he go on demanding it?”

  “He may not ask for just money every time, heh-heh. …”

  “That’s repulsive what you are saying!” she moved a little way away from him and removed the trophy ashtray from his hand; she gave a shiver and covered her breasts with virginal shame.

  “Repulsive it may be … but there it is. He would do it to spite me, for one thing. Aren’t you flattered that he should envy me?”

  He pulled her to him again and made a round of his little kingdom with a ruling hand. She clung gratefully to him and put herself fully under his aegis.

  “Oh, Kio!” she kissed his hairy chest. “But even if he told Coco something, Coco wouldn’t believe him,” she laughed in a way that Melkior hated.

  “Well, did you tell him that?”

  “Tell who?”

  “Adam.”

  “Adam who?” she laughed; the conversation amused her.

  “ATMAN. The chiromantist. Why are you laughing?” Her laughter irritated him.

  “I’m laughing, oh God …”—can’t he see the point?—“isn’t it funny, a chiromantist called Adam, telling people’s fortunes?”

  “It’s just a name. What’s so funny about it?” But there is something, damn it! he was admitting to himself, it really was funny.

  “I mean the Adam of Earthly Paradise, that’s why I’m laughing.”

  “You mean his original sin, too …”

  “That business with the apple, Kio?”

  “Yes, with the apple,” he firmly cupped her breast.

  “Oh, Kio!” she was getting excited. She was imagining Eve, naked, with Adam, naked, in Earthly Paradise. Like the two of us here now—oh, Kio!

  She sought the tree of knowledge that had grown tall and stiff in the midst of the garden.

  “Oh, Adam, Adam …” whispered Enka in abandon, offering herself madly.

  Adam the aphrodisiac, thought Melkior.

  “Don’t smirk at me, you tormentor!” Enka surfaced for an instant with a martyr’s face and immediately sank back into the silt, as ATMAN would have put it.

  “See how Adam works.” Melkior was resisting ATMAN’S “Destiny.” He had knocked on the open door, given her first aid—he now wanted to lord it over her, to be a little god in this mini-paradise.

  “Didn’t ATMAN prophesy it … ‘in the rosiest of terms’?” mocked Melkior.

  “Yes he did, and you came back quick, quick, you’re here, take me, Kio,” she was writhing, possessed by the devil of Eden. “Kio, let’s sin here like Adam and Eve in Earthly Paradise, let’s sin, Kio. Come on!” The biblical tableau would not let go of her. “Don’t you want it, don’t you want me anymore?”

  “And what if God were to appear and …” God nothing! she was not believing in God—the devil was tempting her with the tableau “… and to …” He heard a noise from outside the door “… and to shout: Adam …” The sound was now repeated clearly: someone was trying to put a key into the lock … For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return, uttered Melkior inside through force of memory, with a strange feeling of wakeful cataleptic dying. His legs went icy, for he could clearly hear someone trying to unlock the door.

  “Listen, someone is unlocking the door.” But the meaning of the words was not getting through to her. “Someone is unlocking the door, do you hear?” At last she was present.

  “He can’t do that, the key’s in the lock on the inside,” she said carelessly and began sinking again.

  “What do we do now?” Here comes the Lord! Melkior straightened his legs to get out of bed, but she turned him back preemptively, without a trace of kindness. She had taken the matter into her own hands.

  “Do? Stay put, that’s what. You had to invoke those gods of yours!” she whispered in a rage, swearing. “Why didn’t he send word he was coming? He can go to a hotel, I’m fast asleep, he ought to know as much!” She was now raging at the man outside.

  In the silence of the flat the bell sounded irresolute as it rang, tearful, open up, it’s me. … But Melkior heard it as an angry scream, as the voice of the Lord, Adam, where art thou?—In here, Lord, naked, in thy marital bed. … The second round of ringing was anxious, what’s the matter, why isn’t she answering the door? and the third was already panicked: intermittent, long, short, chaotic. …

  “All right, I’m not asleep anymore, I can hear you, dearest,” she whispered with a smile of sorts. But she was not stirring from the bed. She had a firm grip on Melkior’s arm, listening to that thing going on behind the door.

  There was the sound of minor, muted demolition coming from the hall.

  “Get dressed,” she commanded.

  “What’s he doing?” asked Melkior, his foot missing the trouser leg.

  “Smashing the door light …”

  “It’s too narrow—he couldn’t even get his head through,” said Melkior foolishly.

  She gave a soundless laugh and waved a hand in dismissive contempt.

  “He’ll put his arm through, take the key out from inside,” she said calmly, getting up deliberately slowly, “then he’ll unlock the door …”

  “Do you think I could get out somehow?” said Melkior, his fingers barely managing to find the buttons. “Is there another way out?”

  “Yes there is,” she said mockingly. She had put on some underwear, and her housecoat over it. And was listening again.

  The demolition was now much more hurried, more impatient; the job was clearly progressing well under his deft fingers.

  Unraveling his tie with fear-maddened fingers, Melkior tried to imagine poor Coco in his full dignity: at the clinic, surrounded by a suite of assistants, nurses, technicians, over a patient’s wide-open innards, his calm, wise fingers carefully … smashing the door light at his own flat! He wished to save him in his mind, to lift him out of his embarrassment and shame, out of the bitter humiliation of a man betrayed and derided. …

  “He knows someone’s with you,”—you damned whore, Melkior added inside, outraged.

  “He’s imagining me with my veins slashed, seeing me poisoned, raped, slaughtered.” She spoke with an odd kind of enjoyment. “He’s hurrying, he thinks he may still have time to save me …”

  “The wretched man!” sighed Melkior sadly.

  “You’re the wretch! Why do you want to feel sorry for him in front of me? Who are you? The bastard who’s cuckolding him! He has such a … beautiful imagination,” she said without irony, indeed with a brand of delighted admiration.

  O Lord, what is this thing? asked Melkior. Mimicry, replied the Lord scientifically.

  She had remade the bed (as if nothing had happened); she was preparing for his entry.

  “Right,” said Melkior after she had tucked in the sheets, “now go on and open the door to him. He’s going to find me here anyway … Wouldn’t it be more sensible if you opened it yourself?”

  She gave him a glance and a
contemptuous smile. She didn’t bother to hide her contempt. She was unnaturally calm, composed, even certain she had nothing to fear. Why, she was innocent! … though the circumstances were a trifle … “unusual.”

  She’s thought of something … but Melkior was leery of relying on her certainty. She had already “dethroned” him, dispatched him to the outside world where she had picked him up in the first place. He felt rejected, excommunicated from the family consecration, an intruder, “the fourth ape.” What’s this, she seems to be looking at me with surprise: what’s this guy doing here? Who does he think he is, speaking to me in such an intimate tone? How dare he!

  Coco had broken through the door light; the brass flap clanged on the anteroom floor. He’s already reaching through, thought Melkior, the “encounter” is only minutes away. He’ll strangle me, he thought, gulping air.

  Enka had by then locked the bedroom door and gestured him on. She led him through cold dark rooms (… where to? wondered Melkior in a dungeon where languished incarcerated furniture). She locked each door behind her, giving a mumbled “hem” every time the key clicked in the lock.

  Jumping over hurdles, poor Coco. Running from a pursuer in a dream, thought Melkior, bound to end at an impenetrable wall where to await Destiny’s strike to come … but that is the point at which we wake up. In the cinema, too, there is a way out in the nick of time. … This is ATMAN pitting Destiny against me. “Knock,” ATMAN had laughed. So I gave Destiny a hand and here I am—trapped!

  Enka had turned a light on at last. They were in Coco’s study. Floor-to-ceiling bookcases lining all four walls, a set of leather armchairs; a skull grinning on the desk. That was where Melkior’s gaze rested: had Coco cut the head off?

  Alas, poor Yorick! The dead man’s mocking face watched him from the empty sockets.

  “A chimney sweep,” explained Enka as indifferently as a tour guide, stroking the dead man’s pate. “Fell off a roof, probably drunk; you can still see the fracture.”

  Here’s what they’ll be saying about Maestro’s skull: a journalist, a character, a terrible lush. Long before he died he sold his body to the Institute of Anatomy; we got his skull for a song from a lab assistant, a lush himself. …—What did he die of?—Syphilis, we think; rotted alive. There: it’s like this, on a desk, my poor Maestro, that you’ll be Yorick the jester in the dull day-to-day routine of some dolt who will now and then, yawning, say to himself Alas, poor Yorick and Yorick, thou fool, all thanks to the presence of your skull, to give himself a smidgeon of Hamletian subtlety. Anyway, who can be sure his skull won’t end up on top of a wardrobe?

  “Sit down for a minute, why don’t you,” said Enka insultingly coldly, her tone suddenly formal, “we’ve got to wait a bit.”

  “Wait for what?” asked Melkior, irritated. What do you know—we’re formal, are we! He felt as if he was going to slap her face at last.

  She had of course sensed the “great moment”; she smiled at him in that fetching way which had always worked wonders before.

  “Don’t be cruel, sir,” she whispered seductively next to his ear. “We’ve go to wait before you can leave, you fool.”

  “So there is a way out!”

  “Didn’t I say so … back there?” she was smiling in a kind of sly triumph. “Why do you think I’m doing all this?”

  “Why, you’re an …” Melkior was about to give her a kiss in his delight, but she held him off with both hands. “Tell me, how do I get out of here? Am I to jump out the window?” He could see no other way.

  “That would be the best thing all around … seeing what you’re like,” she said with a kind of serene malice. “Wait a bit more … and don’t worry, big brave boy, you’ll get out just fine.”

  Her showing off her own bravery struck him as ludicrous. It was like reproaching a trapped mouse for its cowardice. …

  Over there, several rooms away, Coco was vainly calling out to Enka in a discreet, familial voice. In front of locked doors the frightened, worried man was crying for a breath, a single sign of her being alive … and had she said: I’m in here, darling, I’m alive and in bed with another man, he would have heaved a sigh of relief: never mind, sweets, so long as you’re alive.

  But there was no sound from her, and he tackled the first locked door. There were muffled breaking and crashing sounds (he was careful after all to make as little noise as possible), followed by his forlorn voice in the distant room, Enka, where are you, answer me, Cookie … and then another cry, a despairing scream of a hopeless man … if you’re still alive …

  Something repulsive flashed across her face, something like victorious jubilation. She was parading it triumphantly for Melkior: see how much I mean to him? What would you do for my sake?

  “Would you be prepared to stay here … for my sake?” she asked him in her cuddly, insidious way, and laughed provocatively.

  Melkior gave her an astonished look: “That’s what you seem to have arranged in the first place! There really is no other way out!”

  “Oh yes, there is,” she laughed with pitying scorn.

  He had no time to note the humiliating manner of her cinematic rescue (exit in the nick of time)—in the adjoining room Coco was going through a mad fit of utter despair: Cookie, please stop playing with me! Oh God, what is this? If only she’s still alive! The hapless man was weeping as he forced open the last door.

  Enka then soundlessly opened a concealed door in a bookcase; a black hole leading into darkness opened up in front of Melkior.

  “Quick now!” she whispered hurriedly. “The anteroom’s down the corridor, to the right,” and she had already pushed him into the darkness. “The door’s there, as you know … Here’s the key to the front door … Give me a ring, Ambulance Service, as always …”

  The door closed behind him and the darkness pressed his eyes with its black fingers. The wall responded with cold unpleasantness to the touch of his fingertips. Melkior was nevertheless heartened by the cold presence: he was able to orient himself by it. Curse you and your home! He cursed with hatred, feeling the inimical walls. I just hope I don’t stumble over a box, a pot, a bell, these bourgeois types leave all sorts of things along their corridors … hurdles and traps for thieves, intruders, luvvah boys … he finished with mocking satisfaction. Oh where’s the door—this gate, that let thy folly in, said mad King Lear. It seemed to him that he would never get out of the insanity which was pressing the darkness against him between the two icy walls.

  She had defended herself Troy-like … Troy as he might, Coco had been hampered by having to force open three doors … or was it four … to reach Helen, the pretty harlot. Odysseus groped over the walls inside the horse seeking a way out of the abdominal darkness, like a piece of feces on its scatological journey down Enka’s spry intestine. O damn you, damn you! cursed Melkior in the dark, where’s the door that let my folly in? Menelaus must have entered Troy by now and is begging forgiveness for besieging it, pleading mercy on his bended knee. … There were no more sounds of breakage—all that was to be heard in the silence was, perhaps, sobs … hers, brought on by the joy of it being him, Menelaus-Coco, and not a murderer, robber, despoiling lecher, sex maniac. That was why she had put herself behind so many locked doors, trembling, trembling … oh God! … perhaps even fainting at the last moment. …

  Finally there was a ray of light; ah, here we are, here was the anteroom and the gate that let … with the door light broken … And the staircase! Escape from the dungeon, ramparts, ropes, guards, the jailer’s daughter, the hopeless love … the whole romantic bit. He broke out in goose bumps as he glanced down the dark abyss of the stairwell: no, sir, not a joke, going down that on a rope … For Viviana?—eh? eh? … but he made no reply.

  He hurtled down the three flights of stairs with all the acceleration physics would allow, even on the turns, bumping into walls …

  Freedom!

  The street was slushy with uncertain snow that was attempting to hold his footprints. No go, it was not
hing but water in a loose state of failing firmness; ha-ha, he triumphed treading on the signs of old December’s impotence. Nevertheless he looked back: no, no footprints. … A lit window on the third floor was what he had left behind. A nighttime dispute in the study, long, insatiable, sucking the poor couple’s blood and sleep.

  He suddenly felt terribly unhappy. Sent out like a dog into the street, into the night and winter, while behind the lit window they warmed each other with kisses of unexpected happiness. Robbed, tricked, bamboozled, alone in the night … on top of which I happen to be convalescent! (this was a reproach to him, the doctor) and he nearly broke into sobs in the middle of the empty, slushy street. He felt wet, sticky coldness on the soles of his feet. Oh no, not that, too! Leaky shoes! They had dried up in civilian rest while the master was being borne by government-issue boots; the poor black orphans were squealing tearfully as they squelched their way through the dirty slush.

  “Wanna come and get warm, boy?” the question came from a doorway out of a fiery rouged face peeking momentarily out from the warm nest of a large yellow fox-fur coat.

  “You’re freezing, too …” replied Melkior in passing. I’ve had enough of women, of woman. Less than an hour ago I was lying as naked as Adam …

  “Let’s you and me have a rub-a-dub-dub, eh?” the yellow fox fur voiced hope. “Wait a sec, I’ve got something to show you. …” Melkior turned and saw, from the open coat, a long beautiful leg in a provocative advertising posture.

  “Take a good look—the other one’s just like it, wanna see?” This is such stuff as dreams are made on, he thought hurriedly.

  “Don’t part them for my sake,” he tossed to her, moving by, “let the sisters live in harmony … and say hello to their Mama.”

  “And you, dimwit, stop flogging the lizard!” she grumbled crankily after him.

  “It’s mine to do with as I please. …”

  “Boil it for your girlfriend’s birthday dinner!”

  “Give me your address—I’ll send you the soup. …”

  Melkior let her have the last word, but the distance rendered what she said unintelligible. Who would ever go to bed with someone so … yellow? Mr. Kalisto, the papal namesake. He remembered the man’s pink gums and spat in disgust. The father of such a son!