The Life of Polycrates and Other Stories for Antiquated Children

by Connell, Brendan

  V.

  “You are in love?”

  “No. She is meat.”

  Delio had a rash around his nose and mouth. His whole person smelled of solvents.

  The two men were in the city centre. They walked past the statue of Vittorio Emanuele II. An African in a huge yellow t-shirt, seated before the rearing heap of cast metal, motioned to Delio, but the latter ignored him. The Duomo, that largest of Gothic cathedrals, was there before them.

  “Shall we go in?” Delio asked casually.

  “What for?”

  “Don’t you like churches?

  “No. I hate them.”

  “Ah, it is morbid inside . . . inspiration for poetry.”

  Through the huge bronze doors. Into the cool interior. The dark forest of the immense stone pillars. The large crucifix suspended about the chancel contained a nail from Christ’s cross.

  They wandered around, gazed dumbly at the vast stained-glass windows. Massimo’s repugnance was mixed with a gloomy fascination. The place was incredibly grand, dreary, filled with the perfume of incense and the flicker of candles—a place where people suffered and murmured mushes of prayers through n-shaped mouths to the god they would never realise.

  Then the two men found themselves at the entrance to the staircase which led to the roof. Delio took out his wallet and, with shaking hands, paid the entrance fee.

  “Come on, to the top.”

  Massimo shrugged his shoulders and followed his friend.

  They climbed the steps, were soon there, on the roof of that great church looking out over the smoke-stained city. Ranks of spires jutted up hungrily around them, each one dizzily capped by the statue of a saint, the highest of them crowned by the Madonnina, her body coated in gold. Whole quarries of marble had been expended to form this structure of which they stood atop, with no other company than a family of Spanish tourists whose lisps added a disturbing electricity to the environment.

  The roof was bordered by a carved stone railing. The city was there, spread out like a map and Massimo, gazing over it, felt the power of a superior being swell up within him.

  The family of Spanish tourists left, could be heard laughing, talking loudly as they descended the stairs.

  Delio stepped over the railing. “Follow me,” he said.

  “But why? Are you crazy?”

  “It is interesting.”

  Massimo followed. Up amidst the masses of marble, the expressive stone saints. He looked down, at the flying buttresses and then the piazza, dotted with people, small spots of colour; then splashes of pigeons, which looked like ash dropped from a cigarette. Their position was incredibly precarious; and he did feel a vague sense of satisfaction, like Zeus looking down from Olympus.

  “Imagine jumping off of here,” Delio said.

  “Imagine.”

  Delio took a pack of Suzy Longs from his pocket, lit one, and then offered the pack to Massimo, but the latter shook his head.

  The poet, the paint sniffer, dragged at his cigarette, looking intently at his companion.

  “Go on, do it,” he said.

  “Do what?”

  “Fly—like you did before.” He had a wild, unsettled look in his eyes, began tugging at Massimo’s shirt sleeve, motioning the latter out into the abyss. “Fly.”

  “Get away from me, or I’ll smash you and toss your flimsy body off here.”

  Ten minutes later they were back on the piazza, both pale and silent. They walked along the Via Torino. Massimo was angry, queasy, disturbed; felt as if he were being watched and looked behind him, at the African in the large shirt, the same who had been seated before the statue, but who was now following them, accompanied by two other men.

  The Italians turned onto one of the small side streets that lead indirectly towards the Corso Magenta. The Nigerians advanced rapidly, caught up with them.

  “Ciao Bem,” Delio murmured.

  “Mama said you wouldn’t pay Eliza.”

  “I’m going to pay her.”

  “She said you were rough with Eliza.”

  “I wasn’t. Not at all.”

  “Let’s see your wallet ragazzo.”

  “There’s nothing in it.”

  “Wallet ragazzo. Let’s see the wallet.”

  “Massimo . . .” Delio gurgled.

  One of the Nigerians looked at Massimo. “You want trouble?”

  Massimo frowned. “No,” he said, turned and walked off, in back of him could hear the high-pitched cries of the paint sniffer poet, as the latter was throttled, kicked and finally stabbed.

  VI.

  He spent his time lying on his bed, smoking cigarettes, envisioning acts of grand destruction: glass flying through the air, fountains of flame roaring skyward. A shrine of beer bottles accumulated in the kitchen. He formed vague plans for poisoning the city’s water supply with LSD, for assassinating the prime minister and destroying the seats of government through violent means. His mind floated off, plunged itself into the bowels of the earth where it heard the tortured screams of the damned, gazed on lakes of molten brass and lava. He imagined himself as god, created a mentally-generated body: with dark blue skin, four arms, the head of a camel. He rose into the air and stroked the moon.

  After all, even slime-minded Delio had known he had power.

  Massimo perceived two selves: the one a man—worm with bones, a piece of red meat garnished with cognitive faculties; the other a being of great strength.

  Issuing out onto the street, he saw the citizens not as sentient human beings to be loved and cherished, but as walking skeletons—skeletons covered with so many pounds of flesh, veins filled with so many litres of blood. When a beautiful woman smiled at him, he saw not her plump, cherry-like lips, but her skull filled with a wet and barely functioning brain—of little more value than an oyster in its shell. But what agitated him the most, what made his teeth grind and his armpits sweat, was the sight of rich gentlemen in suits. These he wanted to grind up, blow up, douse with acid, turn to dust. One day he even went so far as to assault one of these gentleman on the street—for no reason—simply in a mood of anguished rage. . . . After pummelling the man for five minutes he turned and stalked off, thinking mountains of bones would not be adequate to satisfy his gnawing hunger.

  “The people should worship me,” he thought, “offer me garlands of cop flesh. Skewer themselves on giant blades at my feet—for my pleasure. . . . Swallow bombs and let me see them blow themselves to shreds.”

  Volleys of fury; lashed by amethyst thunder.

  VII.

  Klaus leaned back in his chair, gravely stroking his beard.

  “The static misery of today’s electro-mechanical civilization . . . because there is always a surplus population, to be used as fodder for wars—a population which is daily being reduced to the powerful chemico-gelatine which feeds the Machine.”

  “The question really is what to do.”

  “The world has to be destroyed before it can be rebuilt.”

  “We will see. I will go to Genoa.”

  The German lit a cigarette and gazed, through the window, onto the street, with far away eyes.

  VIII.

  He wrapped a black bandanna around his face and walked with the crowd. Officers, a wall of riot shields banged by batons, advanced down a side street off the Via Giuseppe Casareggi. Clouds of tear gas; bottles hurled in counter-attack. Stun grenades. The panicked shriek savage demolition spat star-shaped forward bricks a stink human vapour tangled joy in wads of angry meat. One man took a pole and shoved it through a window, others smashed up shops, howled like dogs. A woman was seen kneeling by a lamp-post her face buried in her hands. Cars overturned and set to flame amidst howls of frightened and angry glee, paving stones ripped up and tossed at carabinieri.

  “Avanti! Avanti!”

  He hurled a Molotov cocktail at an armoured police transport. It smashed against it, spreading out into a sheet of flame.

  Blood-stained pavement, sobs, the patter of running f
eet.

  Next thing he knew he was struck—a massive blow of a truncheon to the back of his head;—grabbed and violently pushed to the asphalt. Two policemen dragged him over railway lines towards a signal box.

  “Sono Dio!” Massimo screamed. “I am God!”

  The officers kicked him and beat him with their batons while he, instinctively, curled up into a foetal position for self-protection. Finally a group of protesters, throwing stones at the police, managed to free him. He stood up, not even fully conscious, his face painted with blood, and stumbled away.

  IX.

  In Milan. Evicted from his apartment, he squatted in an abandoned building in Gratosoglio, now a creature who lived in dark places, like a centipede. Tired, impoverished, gloomy, he went unshaven, lurked around the train station, that nest of vice and criminal misdeed, magnet for human leeches.

  He scratched himself, peeled back his eyelids and gazed at the passers-by: huge maggots wrapped up in cotton, shod in leather, draped in synthetic fibres. He walked, lifting his leaden feet; stared at the ground like a man searching for treasure;—a stinking cigarette butt, some small coin, riches of the gutter.

  On the corner of the Via Vittor Pisani and the Via Napo Torriani, that busy intersection at the Piazzale Duca D’Aosta, he noticed a man waiting for the stoplight. He was well dressed, with the wispy, pointy beard of a mystic.

  It was Klaus and he approached him.

  “Ah, it’s you,” the German said. “You look horrible—filthy. . . . You must be living outside the capitalist system. Surviving off its refuse like a famished rat.” He ran his hand through his beard. “I would join you if I could, but unfortunately I am a political animal. You can eat away at its exterior, I will burrow inside like a worm. . . . Yes, we are both, each in his own way, despised creatures, seeking revenge on the monopolic giants who have chained us.”

  And his voice, that of the professional lecturer, droned on, vaguely delineating the man’s philosophy and morals.

  Massimo, who had eaten nothing but garbage for the last three days, had difficulty listening. He felt his stomach churn; asked for a handout.

  Klaus looked slightly astonished. “Give you money? I am afraid I can’t. It is against my principles to give only for the sake of charity. Private property is not yet abolished and . . .”

  His words were lost in the roar of a truck engine. The next moment he was waving goodbye and crossing the street.

  Massimo shifted his way along the sidewalk; fell into the shade of an alley, removed from his pocket a can of spray paint not yet empty, and proceeded to let the golden girl rape him.

  Vishnu had once descended to earth and lived his life contentedly as a pig. Massimo was the new Avatar—drowning in the waste and crime of the city—feeding off filth and drinking industrial piss. God, revolution, love, prosperity: words for him as empty as the monotonous tone of a bell drifting through space.

  The Chymical Wedding of Des Esseintes

  Holiday was not all it was made out to be and he was no longer a young man and it was difficult for him to find pleasure in tramping about the streets of some foreign city with his nerves grated on at every turn.

  Des Esseintes sat wearily in the café, gazing out at the pedestrians as they passed, marvelling at how ugly they were: women like giant lizards strutting about in silk, men with stovepipes balanced on their meagre craniums, children who looked like over-sized rodents and went by nibbling on apples, their eyes darting around suspiciously.

  But then, he reasoned, he was no beauty himself, his once handsome face lined with wrinkles, his head bald, his body thin and covered with loose flesh.

  He sipped at his glass of slivovitz, knowing very well he was beyond the time when such things could possibly stimulate his mind.

  He wished he had been back in Paris, not because he liked the place, but at least there he could exist without effort. Here on the other hand it was all wrong. His digestion had been violently upset for the past three days due to the concoctions of cabbage and old meat he was served up nightly, which he was forced to wash down with some acid beverage the hotel keeper tried to pass off as wine. He had looked over the architecture and tried to keep from yawning, but in the end, the inertia of the man who has seen too much overcame him.

  “French?”

  Des Esseintes looked over at his questioner, who sat at a table next to him: a small individual with a neat brown beard and large eyes that stared at him from behind spectacles.

  “Yes, I suppose so,” he said in a tone that did not invite further conversation.

  “And do you like our city?” the other persisted.

  The Frenchman smiled bitterly. “Like would be a strong word.”

  “But you have come here.”

  “Arbitrarily.”

  “Nothing is arbitrary. The world is guided by karmic principles. Human beings ebb and flow according to the laws of gravitation.”

  Des Esseintes was silent. He couldn’t very well disagree with that. He had exhausted all of life’s pleasures many years earlier, but due to some force he himself could not explain still found himself lingering about, waiting without interest for something, though he knew not what.

  The man introduced himself. “My name is Harro. Harro Pernath.”

  Des Esseintes murmured his own name and watched as a waitress deposited a glass of slivovitz in front of the other man, who winked, pulled out a little flask and poured a few thimblefuls of its contents into his drink.

  “Ether, sweet vitriol, or, as some call it, the astral light, which mixed with spirit becomes earth. Capricorn and Taurus meet Mercury. The quintessence of matter.”

  The man began to interest Des Esseintes, who took a swallow of his own drink and observed the other’s eyes, which flashed with an odd intelligence. The fellow reminded him vaguely of a Japanese curio he had once had at his house in Fontenay.

  “So, you have seen the sights of our city?”

  “I suppose so. I have seen what is around me. But . . .”

  “But?”

  “Nothing. I have not been caught much by the motif.”

  Pernath looked at him with what seemed to be genuine pity.

  “If you wish to be entertained . . .” he suggested.

  “I don’t.”

  “When you need food, you make a calf.”

  “And you know how to make a calf?”

  “Well. . . . But, have you ever been to a Prague wedding?”

  “No.”

  “A dear friend of mine . . .”

  “They would not mind having a stranger among them?”

  “If you are with me, you are no stranger. You will be welcomed, and no doubt impressed, because not everyone can see . . .”

  Des Esseintes, though not terribly tempted by the offer, acquiesced, as much out of a sense of boredom as anything else. Anything would be better than going back to his hotel and placing himself in the hands of its cook.

  He paid for the drinks; they rose and left the café.

  Night had fallen, and a reddish moon had risen up in the sky.

  “There are four ways to get there,” Pernath said. “The first is short, but unpleasant. The second is quite nice, but takes a long time. The third is really beautiful to go by, but I am not sure you would appreciate it.”

  There was silence.

  “And the fourth?” Des Esseintes asked, without a great deal of curiosity.

  “No, better leave the fourth alone,” Pernath said hastily.

  “Well, you decide.”

  “I’ll take you by the first. It is a bit rough, but we’ll get there more quickly.”

  He pulled the flask of ether out of his pocket and took a swig.

  “Go on,” he said, handing it to Des Esseintes.

  “And why not,” the latter murmured, taking the flask and lifting it cautiously to his lips. He felt the beverage slip down his throat, move about in his stomach like a live frog.

  They made their way into the Josefov. Des Esseintes had
been under the impression that a great portion of the ghetto had been destroyed, but the area they went through seemed vast and there was no evidence whatsoever of rehabilitation.

  He was being guided through narrow lanes. Disagreeable looking prostitutes hung their heads out of the windows of sooty dwellings and offered their services in strange tongues but unmistakable terms. Children with intelligent faces walked by and winked and showed mouths of moon-coloured teeth. A man with a beard dripping down to the ground sat at his doorstep constructing human figurines out of clay by the light of six candles. On the doorway behind him, beneath a mezuzah, was a small sign which read:

  Here Lives Zambrio, Magician

  Des Esseintes looked at his guide questioningly.

  “No,” Pernath said. “You don’t want to be caught up with him.”

  A dog with a long, thin muzzle walked by and Pernath weaved his arm through that of Des Esseintes and led him on.

  They turned down a remarkably narrow alley, which led up a series of steps, which were moist and very slippery. The alley dead-ended abruptly in a high wall in which rested a small door.

  Harro Pernath opened the door and the two men stepped into a tavern in which the shapes of men could be discerned amidst great clouds of tobacco smoke.

  “This is a shortcut.”

  They moved through the low tables, around which men were hunched, drinking glasses of brandy, slivovitz and beer; smoking pipes and long cigars. Then along the counter, behind which were ranged beer engines, huge bottles of liquor with Hebrew written on the labels and a table on which sat baskets of bread and three or five cooked cow tongues.

  A huge man with broad shoulders and a bristling black moustache came and clapped Pernath on the back, crying out in a language Des Esseintes assumed to be Yiddish.

  “This is my cousin Lipotin,” Pernath said shyly. “He insists on treating us to a drink.”

  Before Des Esseintes had time to say anything, a huge tankard of beer was thrust into his hands.