He very much wanted to run into Don Fernando.
He set off for the Corso; he’s bound to be there at this historic hour. They must discuss the latest news, they must do it for the sake of mankind. Pupo despised them, the “cafe table revolutionaries,” “anarcho-individualistic intellectuals.” That’s how his pigeonholes are labeled, said Don Fernando, but Pupo did turn to them when he needed them. And they listened to him. Don Fernando made fun of Pupo’s “pigeonholes”—little monk, defrocked priest, careerist …—but he listened to Pupo all the same. What was the power that Pupo carried around in his “pigeonholes”? Don Fernando naturally refused to recognize any “forces” there, he was a free agent, and yet he complained about “slowness,” about “cataloguing” (he seemed to have mentioned some such word once) while one should strike immediately—in advance, even, wherever there popped up the merest suspicion of any kind of look in any eyes that might betoken a possible criminal. He was impatient. He saw a man drowning; one should throw him a plank, or even a straw or at least a shred of personal hope … but Pupo said: one plank will solve nothing, the thing to do is cultivate a whole forest. And Don Fernando dutifully proceeded to plant saplings … but thinking all the while: who’s going to bother if there’s no personal hope at all? A forest is, Come on, old boy, sacrifice yourself for future people you don’t even know! For Mankind. For someone named Kikuko who will be born two hundred years from now. Give a kidney, give an eye, give blood, give three meters of intestine … give, give, give your life for a future little Japanese boy. You drop dead—long live the future Kikuko! He will know the exact number of atoms in the dot on the i, he will be traveling at the speed of light, he will be eating pills for food. He will be manufactured in a test tube by Professor Bombashi, who will raise the pumpkin-head (for Kikuko will be more or less all head) under a glass bell. Under the bell will be, among other things, a library of miniature books. Kikuko will spend his youth in space colonies to familiarize himself with the universe. He will travel from planet to planet, engage in applied science. He will collaborate with Martians in vacuuming up moon dust, in draining extra heat from Mercury, he will take part in putting up an electromagnetic cordon sanitaire around our solar system for protection against the invading hordes from the upper galaxies …
There was commotion out in front of the Corso. A group of people had gathered, making a semicircle in front of the cafe windows. Melkior halted and took a casual look: he could see nothing above the heads.
“Has something happened?” he asked one of the spectators.
“It’s this man …” this was all he knew.
“What man?”
The spectator gestured with his head: “The one at the window …” and accommodatingly stepped aside to let Melkior pass.
Standing there was Maestro. He had his hands pressed on the window and his face against the glass, as if watching something inside. A thin streak of blood was dribbling down the pane …
The bleeding is from his face. Melkior passed a palm over his own face; he was removing the blush of an irrational shame. Poor old Maestro …
“Where did he, er …? Did he fall?” he asked the man next to him.
“No. Somebody struck him … in there, in the cafe … punched him. Then the waiters threw him out. …”
“Punched him? Why?”
“Oh, something political …”
“Political? No way! The guy inside, the one with the woman, the young actor, what’s his name …” the man nodded toward the cafe interior, “and the old geezer got caught up with them … that’s why he got the knuckle sandwich.”
Melkior looked inside. Indeed, there on the soft green settee under the long wall mirror, sat Freddie and, next to him, her legs crossed, Viviana. They were facing the window on which Maestro was glued, but were paying no attention to him; that had nothing to do with them. They were carefree and happy: laughing, chatting, displaying the luxury and beauty of their persons behind the glass … two laughs, two blossoms, two precious objects …
Melkior shared Maestro’s pain and humiliation. “You’re next”; why had ATMAN said that? She had never even broken it off with this one! There was the proof, in the lovable tête-à-tête after the inglorious bloodshed. Freddie had a dirty, insidious look in his eyes … according to Don Fernando. But Melkior remembered Viviana was “dead” and squelched his pain; there only remained the odor of the snuffed deathbed candle. … If I quench thee, thou flaming minister, I can again thy former light restore, should I repent me … Othello had said …
Maestro was still bleeding down the glass; the poor bug squashed against the pane.
“Has he been standing like this long?” he asked the political-explanation man.
“I don’t know—I just got here.”
“And yet you say it’s ‘something political’?”
“That’s what they said … he’d been shouting in there that they were all spies, every last one of them … Well, he might not have been entirely wrong,” continued the man in a whisper, looking out suspiciously into the glittering cafe, “this is where all kinds of city lowlifes hang out.”
Melkior kept an eye out for Don Fernando. His “crowd” was not there in “his” corner, which was instead occupied by two corpulent ladies in expensive fox stoles who were browsing foreign illustrated magazines with café-esque dignity.
Lady spies, joked Melkior … but I wouldn’t put my hand into the fire on it. …
A waiter was drawing the curtain in front of Maestro’s face. The show was clearly over. Maestro, too, seemed to have taken this for the end (as spectator or actor?): he came unglued from the window. He left behind the imprint of a bloody mask on the glass. The audience gave a slight sigh of shock, surprise, possibly pleasure even: serves the drunken scum right—a good bashing’s the best medicine! The “scene” was more engaging than the accession to the Tripartite Pact: they generally kept their newspapers folded on their behinds.
Maestro spitefully turned his bloodied face toward them and growled sangrrre! like a hardened bloodthirsty fiend. … Those in the front row stepped back in fear, moved aside, made way. … An awesome face, blood thirst; nose swollen, mouth bloodied; covered in blood up to the ears. A savage look—the vampire has guzzled his fill of gore.
It’s all from the nose, concluded Melkior with relief. But where can he go now, with his snout all bloody? Of course he was drunk: he was walking like … what the hell, he knows only too well where he’ll end up. He’ll be arrested by the first copper who happens by, thought Melkior. They’re aroused by blood like wild beasts. They’ll run you in even if the blood is your own. Prove it! Where are your wounds? The blood’s from my nose. And you’ll get one on the nose, so there, as counterproof. So what if it’s yours, blood is shed for Kink and countwy, not by brawling in cafés. Get your ass into the Black Maria! And in clambers Maestro …
Where the hell had he got to now? He had slipped out of Melkior’s field of vision. The spectators were dispersing. Boring, really. All the fuss over a bloody nose. A nosebleed, hey!
“Something happened?” ask the latecomers.
“Nothing much. Somebody’s caught one across the snout, spilled a little blood …” The informant even spat at that point, blood from the nose was disgusting, dirty cowardly blood.
“Oh. I’d thought it was …”
“So did I … Well, never mind, there’ll be order imposed here soon enough,” said the informant hopefully.
Melkior was about to ask him … but he was afraid for his own blood. Once order is imposed, no blood will be spilled from the nose. You will be able to show your wounds. You will display your severed head and your hands covered in pure blood, it won’t be from the nose like this, disgusting. The informant will not spit in disappointment. That will be to his taste: pure and plentiful. And instead of those bloodied, the police will be arresting the pale, the bloodless: afraid, eh? And what’re you afraid of, eh? A dissenter, right? … and they’ll spill your blood to show that th
e thin, fear-diluted blood you have been carrying in your heart with such anxiety is proof of your having been on the opposing side. …
“Don’t hold it against me, Eustachius, that I should be waiting for you in here,” spoke a battered Maestro from a dark doorway. “Don’t look so surprised, don’t lie, Eustachius the Truthful, that you’ve only just discovered me. You were watching me over there already … I saw you, too, but I didn’t want to compromise you.”
“Sure, all right, but what we ought to do now is get some water to …”
“… to bathe our wounds like chastened warriors,” Maestro attempted a joke. “I’m well aware of it, dear Eustachius—all the same, I’d like to wear this mystagogic mask of cannibal religion a little longer. I’m sure it flatters me, aren’t you? I saw myself in the glass, partly, over there, but it must be more impressive in profile-have a look.”
“Leave it for now, Maestro, damn it!” said Melkior angrily. “Your nose is still bleeding. Have you a handkerchief?”
“A handkerchief? You’re asking me the way Othello asked the all-pure Desdemona. Wait, I’m not joking. I have no handkerchief. What do you need one for anyway? This is a trick to put me from my suit.”
“What suit?”
“Oh, that’s a quote, Eustachius … but there is indeed a suit. It’s because of you I fared like this. I’d been looking for you all evening and I ran into …”
“But why did he …”
“How do you know it was a he? Perhaps it was a she? … but with his fore hoof, so it was in fact a he, which puts you in the right. As to the how and why, it’s a long story, Eustachius, and right now I’m not in the mood …”
“All right then, let’s go.”
“Go where, Eustachius? You’re always keen on going somewhere. As if somewhere else was something else. And apart from that, I can’t very well go anywhere before my nose subsides.”
“Oh, I see—it’ll subside right here in the doorway?”
“It won’t, but it’ll have a rest. People keep looking at it: the return of the wounded warrior. …”
“Here’s my handkerchief, staunch the warrior’s bleeding; it’s dripping on you, you’re bloody all over. Right. Now let’s go.”
“Not in this rain, shall we, Eustachius?” Maestro was reluctant about coming out. But he can’t stay here either, not with this “mys-tagogic” mask, thought Melkior.
“It’s not raining very hard. And we have an umbrella.” He did manage to draw him out of the doorway.
They went down the street huddled under the umbrella.
“You know what, faithful Eustachius? … I’m going to bite off his ear, you’ll see,” muttered Maestro into the blood-stained handkerchief. “This blood shall be avenged.”
Planning his revenge like a little boy … but how does he propose to bite his ear off?
“How do you propose to bite his ear off? That’s not easy … not to mention that he simply won’t let you.”
“That’s what I’m figuring out right now …”
Maestro was indeed thinking as he breathed damply, with mucus, through the sodden handkerchief.
“Here’s how: first I’ll pretend I’ve forgiven him, lull his suspicions …”
“Oh, give it a miss,” said Melkior with a kind of disgust.
“Give it a miss and let evil reign supreme! Don Fernando’s right —preventive action is in order.” So he had been telling Maestro about his “science.” But it was clear that Maestro was aligning himself with “science” temporarily only because of the insult … otherwise he didn’t give a hoot for “science.”
“So you think this preventive action …”
“Well, it has its weak points, of course, but in essence … the idea of eliminating a bastard before he’s done some evil deed …”
“But what kind of evil deed could be done by that stupid …”
“Stupid, stupid!” cried Maestro, “it’s precisely the stupid who are capable of it! You don’t think Erasmus of Rotterdam would have smacked me one, do you?”
Melkior laughed.
“Funny, is it? Everything I say is funny to … Or is it my proboscis? Yes, well, I am a joker! Circus clowns wear snouts like mine. Laugh and the whole world laughs with you …” muttered Maestro through the handkerchief.
“Oh, look up, Eustachius, is this the moon showering its charms on us? Everything’s gone blue, au clair de la lune … Marvelous …”
They had entered the realm of the Give’nTake’s neon light. Maestro took a somnambulistic step toward the blue domain; with an alert motion Melkior pulled him back, stopping him at the very threshold of heaven.
“Oh how painful …” groaned Maestro.
“You’re not going in looking like this, are you?”
“Just a peep, anxious Eustachius,” Maestro all but pleaded. “I need Ugo urgently, for …”
“You stay here, I’ll have a look,” said Melkior somewhat sharply.
“Don’t come back empty-handed, Eustachius, I’m badly on the down-and-out …”
Thénardier did not deign to spare so much as a glance at the “regular.” Ugo was not there … and he’ll be lying to me, saying he’d been with her, sighed Melkior.
“Has the Parampion been in tonight?” he asked sweetly of Thénardier.
“No,” replied Thénardier arrogantly without looking up from his dirty notebook. “What are you waiting for? Get lost! And stop coming in here looking for each other! I’m sick and tired of the lot of you! Troublemakers!” he abruptly fell to shouting. “Rabble like this, you could end up in the poorhouse …” Melkior heard behind him Thénardier’s remark to his good customers.
He came out disgraced and terribly unhappy. Why the hell did I get involved with them again?
“Eustachius the Indispensable, what about the shot to shot …?” asked a disappointed Maestro; he had been trembling all the time, hoping for his shot.
“Well, you said yourself you’d switched to beer!” snapped Melkior angrily.
“Did I mention drink?” Maestro was being innocently sheepish. “I only asked you about the crazy Parampion …”
“Why did you send me in to take a peek in the first place? Didn’t you have a clash with him recently, cut him up with glass?” remembered Melkior suddenly.
“Glass, yes … but why? Anyway, it was drinking glasses, not just glass. But the reasons are nothing compared to the blood friendship that now binds us. We have already embraced each other and forgiven everything. It was precisely the spilled blood that bound us! Spilled for a common cause … For yours, for your cause, too, ungrateful Eustachius. But it galls me to speak of it now. Perhaps later … Tell you what—I’m going back to my abode,” he declared suddenly and started off right away, only to turn back and pull Melkior along after him. “Come with me, Eustachius, I’m rather wobbly on my feet. Could be blood loss, what do you think? You asked me, what suit? The suit to come back to my place. You promised ages ago! You’ll see everything is … simple there. I’ll make you some hot chocolate, and I’ll have … doesn’t matter what I’ll have. I’ll be looking at you, if you agree, and won’t open my mouth. If you don’t feel like conversing, we’ll just sit there in silence, like saints in a church. Me thinking my thoughts and you thinking yours; who knows, perhaps our thoughts converse by themselves as soon as they’re out of our heads without us being any the wiser. What do we know about our thoughts anyway? We know they mean this or that, but how they come into being, how they move from one head into another, how they work their way into various pots (a Papin’s digester, for instance) and books and machines. … Therefore, I say, it may not be necessary to flog thoughts with the tongue at all. … What matters is that two heads should be there in the same bag … or same dwelling, Eustachius the Wise, and by dwelling I mean a kind of sympathetic relation … or antipathetic, whichever you prefer.”
“What do you say we take a tram?” interrupted Melkior, for Maestro was definitely having trouble walking. “Where you live is a
long way from here.”
“Never! Even if all my blood gushed straight out of my nose,” protested Maestro most resolutely, indeed with some fear. “But it won’t because … your magic handkerchief has done its job … and I’m not bleeding any more. And my nose feels like a tomato, it’s mushroomed over half the world: I can only see up, not down. But if I look up I’ll see the umbrella, and if I look down … what’s there to see? Thénardier in the thrall of ‘technological progress’: the siphon … that great invention!”
Maestro was laughing bitterly, mocking with ruthless sarcasm. But, thought Melkior, what is it he’s mocking? A pressure cooker? The pot calling the kettle black. … The senseless waste of spiritual energy in the manufacture of pots, machines, even books? Flogging thoughts with the tongue. Thoughts conversing by themselves in a sympathetic relation … it was clearly a flattering invitation to have a talk. Melkior wished to get him indoors, under a roof, as soon as possible.
Maestro was gesticulating, drawing the attention of the passersby to his blood-stained face. Melkior was using his umbrella to hide from people’s looks, he was protecting himself from embarrassment. He was in a hurry to reach Maestro’s “dwelling” and get rid of him.
“But you, fleet-footed Eustachius, have launched into a marathon race! What’s your rush? You don’t happen to be one of those impatient ones who are forever after some solution or other, do you? Easy does it, Eustachius, you need to walk at a thinker’s pace, peripatetically.”
“It’s raining, man! We ought to get somewhere dry!” said Melkior impatiently.
Cyclops (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) Page 53
