Cyclops (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

by Ranko Marinković

  “All I want to know is, who these scoundrels mooch off?” repeated the curious citizen with the CLOSED sign. His question had now been asked aloud of all those present; they were duty-bound to supply an answer. “Hah!” shrugged one of those who sees through everything, in a scandal-mongering tone. “Clear enough, isn’t it? Couldn’t you see how they did it? Making like that Mexican general was his pal, all the ‘bicycletimus,’ ‘bicycletimus’ hocus-pocus, a real circus, the sneak, with this guy on the weighing machine playing his second, making a fool of the poor blind man. … It’s all stage-managed, gentlemen, and now you may as well check your pockets and see if you’re missing anything. Well, I’m not; I’ve been to Mexico, I know all their tricks.”

  Like marionettes linked to a single string pulled by the experienced Mexican, all those present went through identical swift and anxious motions. There was a round of nervous patting of chests, sides, hips, all the places where pockets are to be found. One man even checked whether his wedding ring was still on his finger …

  There was a sudden “Oh no!”—a cry of utter dismay. All arms stopped dead and all eyes stared at the desperate man. He stood there like a man stunned, his arms in an X across his chest, patting his empty pockets; his eyes rolling from one bystander to another seeking help.

  Melkior looked at the victim of the theft: naturally, everyone could see his astonishment at recognizing the man as Four Eyes! His innocent idea to slip away unnoticed (he had no wish to be present when the pickpocket was nabbed) now turned out to have been naïve. It soon became clear to him that he had been, at the Mexican’s suggestion, tacitly proclaimed a thief himself! A thief or partner to a thief.

  Under the accusation of those terrible looks which demanded that he come clean, Melkior quite foolishly stared at Four Eyes in tense expectation of … what? Proof of his innocence?

  He himself did not know what he had expected of Four Eyes. He might possibly have been hoping against hope that Four Eyes hadn’t yet recognized him … the business the other day … the Distressić thing … Meanwhile Four Eyes was giving him a tearful, tragic look, one full of pleading and martyrlike forgiveness (which did not go unnoticed). Then, turning his uncertain and confused gaze somewhere aside, he said in a voice so tearful as to be almost inaudible (but it was audible) … for he was accusing no one, it was only that his paternal heart was breaking:

  “I was going to buy shoes for my boy … Daddy, he said, make them one size too big, I’m growing. The poor little fellow, that he should have to think about such things. And here’s autumn coming, the rains … The child will be off to school soon.”

  The scoundrel’s been reading Dostoyevsky, Melkior thought hastily.

  “Did you lose much?” somebody asked in a voice moved nearly to tears.

  “My wallet with twelve hundred inside. And all my papers.” Then he added, after a well-measured pause, crying out from the bottom of his heart, appealing to all of mankind, “If only he would let me have my ID back! These are serious times.”

  It was touching. A woman’s eyes filled with tears. The poor man, his child walking around barefoot and all he wants back is his ID card! Someone hit on the idea of notifying the police. … But Four Eyes didn’t care much for that idea: he opposed it vigorously, going on at very suspicious lengths: “No, no, please! Fair’s fair, we must show some understanding …”

  “Listen, you!” spoke up the cyclist all of a sudden, angrily grabbing Four Eyes by the elbow. “Who d’you think you’re kidding? You never had a wallet to begin with. Listen folks, he only showed up here a second ago, right after the bloke from Mexico asked what might be missing from our pockets.”

  “Good heavens, me?” Four Eyes rolled his eyes, the very picture of a martyred saint appealing to God to be his witness. “I who have been here all along? Here, this gentleman will tell you whether I’ve been standing behind him or not! Didn’t you accidentally tread on my foot and very politely say you were sorry? Here, look, the footprint’s still there.”

  The Mexican was the gentleman who had accidentally trod on his foot. He confirmed it with a nod.

  “The footprint’s still there my eye! I’ll give you a footprint across your thieving mug! He only got here a minute ago, and the first thing he did was to ask me if the coppers had been around! As if I didn’t know you, you lush! You’d barter God’s child’s shoes for booze, you would! What will he think of next, the creep!”

  “Did you hear him, folks?” moaned the grief-stricken Four Eyes. “As if robbing you blind wasn’t enough, they call you a drunk in the bargain!”

  “Clear enough, isn’t it? That’s their method all right,” said the Mexican grimly, terribly disappointed by something in this world. “Tell the truth and they’ll say you’re a drunk; tell a lie and they’ll buy you a drink. Ptui!” he spat out vehemently and began to push his way out of the circle around the weighing machine. “Let me through before I ram someone’s teeth down their throat …” and so saying he gave Melkior another once-over glance.

  Melkior’s knees buckled for an instant. The Mexican’s threat had met with approval, and Four Eyes’ unheard-of nerve had found a home with the guardians of the sanctity of private property. Melkior decided it was time he lit out from the circle of these highly honorable men, even at the risk of having them yell “Stop thief!” after him. He stepped down from the weighing machine and tried to elbow through by way of the (so-called) “Mexican’s Passage,” but there was instantly a general mumbling … and a closing of the passage. They meant to have the thief identified (and should there be a brawl as well, so much the better).

  This emboldened Four Eyes. The cyclist had failed to shake his reputation. … Impertinently he stepped out in front of Melkior:

  “Hey, not so fast, young man! What about my money? Someone’s got to answer for it!”

  “You go ahead,” and the cyclist gave Melkior a protective nod. He then let his left hand take charge of the bicycle, putting his right on his hip and facing Four Eyes:

  “All right, I’ll answer for it!”

  “H-how do you mean … you’ll answer for it?” stammered Four Eyes, his courage evaporating. “I’m only asking that my money be searched for, no offense meant. … We’re only human, aren’t we? No need to get all hot and … But it’s got to be fair!”

  Melkior then made a gesture of utterly stupid magnanimity: he took out his wallet with several hundred-dinar notes stacked in it and offered one to Four Eyes.

  “Here you are. I’m sure the others will want to give you something, too, but please leave me alone.”

  Four Eyes extended a greedy hand for the money, but the cyclist pushed it aside, scarcely bothering to choose the kindest way of doing so.

  “Why?” wondered Four Eyes. “You can see the gentleman is willing to give it to me. Is that how to be?” he said with mild reproach and made another try to take hold of the note.

  Angered by his manner, the cyclist slapped his outstretched hand and compounded the act by making a fist and pushing it up under his nose.

  “Go on, have a sniff,” he said generously, as if offering him an orange, but the other turned his head aside with a grimace of irritation and disgust.

  “Queasy, eh? But other people’s money smells nice, is that it?”

  “What other people’s? I was robbed …” But this sounded like retreat.

  Four Eyes was indeed backing down, defending himself with a muffled mutter of what sounded like curses. Once outside the circle, he heaved a soul-deep sigh of “Oh, the honest man’s burden!” and went away at his habitual businesslike clip.

  The audience, too, began to disperse, disappointed.

  “Rogues, all of them, I’m telling you, one as bad as the other. It’s anyone’s guess whether he was robbed or not.”

  That was the ear-stroking citizen, disgruntled at the matter having been left unsettled.

  “He’d have hardly spoken like that if he hadn’t been, would he?”

  “Oh come on, it’s
only thieves nowadays who shout ‘Stop thief.’”

  Only Melkior and the cyclist remained. The blind man was there, too, but he was pottering about his machine, covering it with its oilcloth cover (for the night), and was so intent on it as to be actually absent.

  Melkior felt the uneasy accident of his position and said “There” and, a little later, “Thank you” and, in his confusion, buttoned his raincoat up wrong.

  “Yes, well,” said the cyclist, ill at ease himself, but then he remembered Four Eyes: “The thieving scoundrel! The shoes old Owl says he wants to buy his boy … when the rotten lush hasn’t got a cat to call his own.”

  “Owl?” Melkior voiced his surprise. “But isn’t his name …?”

  “Nah! Everybody calls him Owl. God knows what his real name might be. He does the rounds of the bars at night, rolling the drunks, and sleeps in attics by day. The other day he nearly set our bookkeeper’s house on fire. He was playing with matches, some old papers caught fire … the firemen had a job getting him out of the smoke.”

  The cyclist was silent for a moment, then shyly asked:

  “That other fellow … is he a friend of yours?”

  “Yes. Don’t mind his behavior, he was a bit …”

  “Mind?” said the cyclist genially. “I like his kind. He made fun of us all and went away singing. He can’t be a bad man.” He then asked in a confidential tone:

  “Do you by any chance have any connections with the newspapers?”

  “Yes I do. I write for one.”

  “Well, uh … what’s the word about us getting into the war?”

  “I don’t write anything political … but they say we might …” Melkior shuddered as if they were invoking the devil.

  “Well, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if Hitler bit off more than he can chew here in the Balkans! Mark my words!” said the cyclist with fervid conviction. “We may meet again somewhere. You’re an honest man,” he added with a cheery laugh, then mounted his bicycle and, tossing Melkior a “Bye now!” sped off down the street.

  What’s this? The words were thought soundlessly and had a blind man’s meaning of: Where am I? All of a sudden everything seemed strange: the streets, the trams, the houses, the people … even the human faces themselves. He had been transported here in his sleep, he had woken up on the corner by the weighing machine. … He felt ashamed, naked as he was, he feared they might be watching him, those passersby and those women up there leaning out of windows and laughing in such a …

  “You didn’t pay for the weighing!” The blind man’s rude voice brought him back to familiar relationships. He paid the fee. The small task reminded him of his other duties. In his pocket he still had a ticket for a film with von Stroheim and Viviane Romance, but instead of going to see it he had followed Dom Kuzma down the path of childhood memories. … And ended up by the weighing machine … weight control … Ta-ta-taaa, ta-ta-taaa, ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-taaa … the bugler from the barracks was announcing the sad taps of army life. He started down the dark alley of the 35th Regiment, and the sad go-to-sleep tune robbed him of any desire to go up to his rooms across from the barracks.

  He was treading on autumn leaves. The leaves rustled with a withered voice … and I remembered my sweet dreams; happy days, where are you now? the song inside him complemented the rustling of leaves underfoot. He was supposed to do a review of the film that night in time for the next day’s issue. Beautiful Viviane Romance played debauched vamps. He was overcome with sadness every time he saw a film of hers. And his heart fluttered inside him for Viviana, the woman he had so dubbed for the sake of purging his love, sad and hopeless …

  The autumnal melancholy. The aimless streets, the web of tangled dreams. A warm south wind caressing his features with a harlot’s breath; he ran his hand over his face, revulsed.

  On the corner glowed the letters of the Give’nTake, blinking on and off, winking to the passerby, “Come on in, have a drink, have a laugh.” Melkior, too, understood their wink. He had passed the place twice already, the blue Give’nTake winking to him from above: “Come on in, don’t sulk, Viviana’s here.”

  Viviana, here? That was why he was not going in. How many times lately had he responded to the hint by defying the malicious destiny beckoning to him. “Come on in, come on in, she’s here.” He had resisted, letting time heal … or however it was that the saying went. But tonight it had extended its magical finger, tracing Viviana’s name in the dust …

  Behind the steamy glass panels there was an orgy of laughter and, surely enough, Ugo’s voice.

  “They are having a good time of it,” he said like a miser watching others squander their fortunes, and decided to move on. But suddenly he spun around and in he went. The bell above the door (fitted to chime after the fleeing drunkard) dutifully announced Melkior’s entrance.

  Another drunken night, smoke and antics, he thought with a touch of malice. Where’s it all going to end? But Maestro was already wheezing in a cloud of smoke—“Ah, at last, here comes Eustachius the Sagacious!”—and Ugo was rushing up to meet him and showering kisses on both cheeks, one of them planted on the eyebrow “for the pure mind.” The entire bar had to hear that Eustachius had returned from his splendid isolation. Using sweeping oratorical gestures and most scrupulously chosen words—with a special bow to the cash-register girl, “Madam!”—all according to Giventakian ritual, Ugo delivered an éloge in honor of his friend.

  Melkior made his shy way through the clamor and rhetoric and headed for the familiar table at the foot of the bar, where the full complement of the “boys” was sitting.

  “Approach, Eustachius the Lampion, approach the Parampion Brethren,” howled Maestro, pulling Melkior down into the chair next to him. “I’m no longer the Mad Bug, I’m the Inspired Bug—a new title, acquired during your absence,” he confided. His nose tonight was like a ripe plum and his hands were shaking badly.

  A man not too old but already dissipated, a brandy-soaked drunk, the City Desk editor. His fingers and teeth were black with nicotine, his mouth reeked with the odor of an animal’s lair. He got ahold of Melkior’s neck and blew the horrible breath into his face.

  Melkior coughed, expelling Maestro’s “inspiration,” and nearly choked with revulsion. He longingly remembered his peaceful room with his books; the blank white sheets of paper passionately offering themselves—“Write upon us”—he, watching the play of the flames in the cast iron stove and saying, “Wait until I’ve come up with the right words for you, my chaste little virgins.”

  Female titters at the “virgins” splashed upon the play of the flames and put them out. She was here! He also knew that she was with Freddie: the man’s cloying breakfast-spread voice was clearly audible. He was just in the process of generously presenting her and that other female at the table with the outer leaves of his cabbagelike wit. Melkior monitored the voices from the other table with both ears and transmuted them into the evil and bitter flowers of his envy.

  Ugo spoke movingly, with tears in his eyes, about Melkior’s “return” and finally asked the owner of the Give’nTake to pronounce a word or two of welcome.

  “And now it is your turn, Papa Thénardier, to welcome the return of your favorite customer.”

  “Oh, nonsense, I’m not much at making speeches,” stalled the owner with a dismissive wave of his hand. “I have no favorites among you, it’s a pleasure to welcome any and all of you here …” which actually meant: I am over the moon …

  Nevertheless he put up with the “Parampion Brethren,” even encouraged them, as a kind of advertisement for his establishment. He was aware of the tongue-in-cheek mockery of their dubbing him Thénardier, but business was business, damn it. The unruly gang, “artsy types and bohemians,” drew the theatrical and journalist crowd; the masterful pranks, the salvos of laughter, who wouldn’t down a drink just to watch them! Mouths cramped with leering, throats scratchy with laughter, let’s have another round, by God, this beats the circus any day of the week!

>   Ugo’s inspired scenes were more useful than the blue neon tubes flashing Give’nTake above the entrance; knowing this, Thénardier even took some pride in his “arty moniker.” They all had funny nicknames, well, it was apparently the thing to do with this crackpot set, and he permitted himself, for the sake of business, to act the role of “Papa Parampion, otherwise known as honorable Thénardier,” as Ugo had once proclaimed him to be. All the same, he kept a Thénardierian eye on things, seeing to it that glassware breakage was kept to a minimum and the bills duly settled—or at least entered on a tab —and a zero or two was even added to the bill when the brethren went too heartily into their frolicking.

  “No, no, Papa Thénardier, I want you to tell it straight: who is your absolute favorite?” insisted Ugo, shoving the man’s long equine head toward Melkior’s. “As Christ said of the lost sheep: he rejoiceth more of that sheep than of the ninety and nine which went not astray. Say it, Papa, like Christ in the Bible: I rejoice most in Melkior Tresić, the lost one.”

  “Eustachius Lampion the Ineffable!” Maestro wheezed professorially, as if Ugo had got a historical name wrong.

  “No, Maestro, sorry! For the moment he’s still Melkior Tresić the Apostate. There’s rehabilitation in the offing, before full privileges may be restored. … For half a year (rhetorical pathos) he has been purifying his mind of Give’nTake smoke, inhaling inspirations from the fragrant ozone of the soul’s storms, fattening his head with sagacious volumes. … Shutting himself away in his room and himself, not answering the door, hiding out like a culprit or someone with bad debts, veiling himself like a nun or a lovely doe-eyed virgin from the lustful looks of this low and crass world … Given up smoking, started going to the blind invalid to weigh his hermit’s body prior to boarding the next God-bound aeroplane. … In short: he entered a loftier sphere of being and opted for the miserable life of a solitary sage dwelling in silence and contemplating his mortal navel with tear-filled eyes. … He has quite possibly fallen in love … (her laughter and Melkior’s saintly pallor) but we shall leave that satisfaction to his destiny. … Nevertheless, brethren, he is back among us in his penitent’s sackcloth (Melkior remembered Dom Kuzma), ready to drink his full of Giventakian smoke and Parampionic wit! Once again he is our Eustachius the Lampion …”