“Do you know what he does down there?” Ugo was clearly troubled by his father’s sexual roguery. “He listens for sounds from the Ladies! The walls are thin, you can pick up an auditory signal or two from a female organism. Pathetic. But that’s what he goes down there for: an aphrodisiac for a spot of how’s your father with Deaf Daisy. That’s how I know he’s off to meet her. Ptui!” and Ugo spat in genuine disgust.
Melkior remembered Maestro: the whole business was nothing more than old men urinating. Tepid waters gurgling, false signals sent.
“Are you sure you didn’t make any of this up?”
“Make it up? He told me himself, in a state of cruel bliss, how you could hear it aaall through that waaall …” Ugo imitated him with disgusted hatred.
“Now then, this hat … What can I expect from Kikinis for it? Not even ten bucks. And not a single hole in it, as you’ll see.”
He unwrapped the hat from the newspaper and turned it to the sun.
Both their gazes dipped under the brim encountering the sight of a dark night sky thickly strewn with first, second, and third-magnitude stars.
“You can clearly see the Big Dipper, Andromeda, and Betelgeuse Alpha. Happy viewing!” Ugo was watching the constellations with an astronomer’s concern, in dead earnest. “Moth-made galaxies, soup-strainer constellations. A miniature astronomy overhead. Oh well. At least we discovered the starry sky above us and the moral law within us, like old Immanuel of Königsberg. Let us therefore follow our Polar Star like the Argonauts, let us harken to the voice of the categorical imperative within us!”
So speaking, in a kind of rapture, he entered the spacious hall of the Main Post Office, with Melkior hurrying along at his heels.
“What are we doing here?” he tried to pull him back. There were a lot of people about, businesslike, patient, as well as short-tempered, addressers. He feared Ugo’s excesses.
“I’m looking for a dome to present with the sky,” said Ugo, burning with the urge to do a good deed. “Not to worry, it’s all according to Kant: Act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will … how does it go on? Give me a clue—you’re a Kantian, aren’t you? Categorically, imperatively! Caution, the Earth is about to quake, consider lines of retreat.”
He selected an exemplary yellowish bald pate of a hurried-looking addresser and placed his old riddled hat on it with a quick, imperceptible motion. He then casually spoke to Melkior as if asking for a point of information.
“Alea jacta est!” he whispered hurriedly. “The Earth is already quaking with injured pride. This means war. Flee to Switzerland, quick!” Melkior did not hesitate: he almost ran for the exit. This is sheer madness, those people in there are going to kill him …
He just had the time to hear a “Who put this thing on my head?” coming from behind him and then it was, Run for it, run, run! The fear down his back. Knifed in the back, just like that, on account of such a rascal. Death At Main Post Office. Innocent Victim Of Misunderstanding. All over, before the war even broke out. A farewell to arms.
Yes, somebody could really take me for a … seeing that I’m … er, running away … He only calmed down outside, on the opposite pavement.
Ugo’s acte gratuit. Been reading Gide recently, imitating Lafcadio. He always imitates people. Characters in novels. The ape. He’s going to tell about it tonight (to Her). The thought hurts. Still, must admit it takes guts. Takes brass nerve to cut such silly capers. Daring. For example:
An old man, dignified, rugged, a rock, features showing the greatest greatness—a Goethe, in a word—coughs in the street (such things do happen) and spits into his handkerchief, forcefully, quite in keeping with his station, and peers—with scientific interest, as it were—into his all-important gob of phlegm.
“Well? Looks lovely, doesn’t it?” Melkior loosed his acte gratuit and went momentarily deaf, like someone whose rifle had gone off by accident in his hands.
“Im-pertinent cad!” gurgled the rock through his catarrhs, and passersby agreed with him, silently.
“Gratuit,” ejaculated Melkior mechanically, by way of explanation to those who had turned around after him. And he blushed, miserably.
No, I’m no good at that sort of thing. No good at all, really …
“… that it should become a universal law. I remembered it looking at the ungrateful sky-carrier. I’m thinking of the tiny suns that will shine on his bald pate when he goes out again. The bastard. That very hat would have cost him thirty dinars at Kikinis. But he still wanted to fight me.”
Ugo was regretting the gift.
“We should have looked at it not against the sun but in the dark. And then gone to Kikinis the astrologer. He would have shelled out ten dinars for it, at the very least. We played at being anonymous benefactors and eccentrics, Kantian philistines, victims of the categorical imperative—phooey! When we could have used the ten dindin-din to giventake till lunchtime. A fatal mistake!”
They walked in silence. Melkior was deliberately steering the stroll toward the Theater Café. Toward Viviana. But how is it, if he was with her last night, how is it that they have arranged nothing? Oh but they have. For tonight.
Under cover of darkness. He’s avoiding his fiancée. Let us hide our loves. They’ll get married after he’s done his National Service. And a war. They’ll have children. War orphans: enormous heads, large eyes, tiny skeletons, ribs, kneecaps … “Have you made your last wish, Eustache? Here comes Scarpia.”
Melkior said nothing: his jaw had gone stiff. He had a dreadful fear of the police. The Platonic Politeia.
The man was limping toward them on uneven legs, but with a “Make way!” face. Uniformed, gilded …
“E lucevan’ le stele …” Ugo burst into song while the man was still quite some way off, following his progress. But just as the man came in line with them he elocuted in the manner of the ancient, pathos-ridden school of acting: “There is something rotten in the state of Denmark.”
Scarpia paused in the arsis (on the longer leg) with the thought “Should I take this as …?” and while he was making up his mind Ugo pulled Melkior around the corner. Any port in a storm.
“It would have been an uneven struggle. Don’t be ashamed of the retreat. The day of reckoning is at hand. The exact date is known to don Fernando, they told it to him at the Corso.”
“Don Fernando” rang inside Melkior like an alarm bell, like the fear of being seen with Ugo in street excesses. Don Fernando was a profound mystery, a myth, a “something else.” The approach to problems. The responsible care for mankind. No less.
“Who told him?” The mood for joking fizzled out in Melkior.
“The bearded bods. The sternfaces. At least, not bearded, these days they’re clean-shaven; let’s say the morose, the men with the furrowed brows. All in the name of mankind.”
“While you … you don’t give a tinker’s for mankind?” asked Melkior, suspiciously, even with a shade of moral contempt.
“Frankly … no!” whispered Ugo repentantly, while at the same time swelling with incipient laughter. “Somehow I don’t seem to care for it at all. While mankind, I know, suffers horribly because of me. Heh, heh … I’m an ingrate, mon ami, and a bad one at that.”
“That you are indeed,” said Melkior from his sudden solitude. What’s to be said now? Mankind? Well, that’s everybody. Including Enka. Including Freddie. Including Maestro. There are various mankinds. The Enka mankind, the Freddie mankind, the Mr. Kalisto mankind … don Fernando’s MANKIND? The word and the pathos. You can say anything in a solemn tone—“the Dardanelles,” for instance. So what do I care? Rot the Dardanelles.
“Did he smite you hard, good my friend?” he suddenly asked Ugo with ardent sarcasm. “Show me.”
“What? Oh, you mean last night, in the battles with Fredegarius? Who told you—Chicory? Yes, it was a nasty altercation, my good friend. Blood flowed in streams. And I got my share of the wounds—a bludgeon in the face. He swings a heavy punch, does that
Roscius-Rostratus. I was being your outer wall, antemurale Melkioritatis! My physical person stopped the cabotin’s creative force, as shown by the upper lip enclosed herewith. Here, look at the left corner, that’s where the celebrated protagonist’s front hoof landed.”
Yes, that part of the lip was still swollen. Melkior eyed the wound with sympathy.
“But we won the war, pardieu! Fredegonde has been won and is standing firmly by us. No problems there.”
“Standing by you,” and a sigh uprooted itself from Melkior.
“No need to sigh, is there? By me, by you … Insomma, she’s with us! And for my sacrifices and bravery in combat, I took my slice of the spoils of war, you understand.”
“You were with her, afterward?”—bandaging his wound with a smile.
“Naturellement, mon petit!”
“At her place?”
“A studio flat, couch, (two couches!), bathroom, hot water. Et, ce qui est le plus important, elle m’aime.”
“What about you?”
“Fou d’amour!”
Peeking up her skirt while she wiped the blood from his snout—that was “amour”? No, he couldn’t take any more. Tension had reached a high point and suddenly he blew a synaptic fuse. Flash!
“You’re such an asshole!”—and then darkness … and peace.
“Oh?” Ugo was surprised. “And you’re some kind of hysteric, Eustachius the Most Pure? That’s what comes of abstinence. I practice sexual congress. Why not follow my example?”
Melkior chuckled inside. Enka. What was she doing now? He felt the tug of desire to call her. No, Coco was back from the clinic. They were now mourning his failure with the heart. Well, who ever had any success in matters of the heart, mon Coco?
“Date tonight?” he asked ingratiatingly, begging.
“No.” Ugo was being appreciative of his own importance.
“What, the brush so soon?”
“No—at ease. For today.” And Ugo smacked his lips, with gusto.
Suddenly he gripped Melkior’s shoulders and turned him so that they were face to face. He looked into Melkior’s face roguishly, derisively.
“Hurts you, Eustachius, doesn’t it?” and he burst into laughter. “Well, in that case none of it is true. Not a thing.” He gave Melkior a protective hug. “Not a thing, get me? She’s as pure as Ophelia. She can go to a nunnery if she likes. But … but perhaps she won’t, eh? The fair Fredegonde. Perhaps she prefers this sinful Giventakian life? Ha-haaa, my good prince!”
And I still don’t know her … Viviana’s … name. Now she’s Fredegonde on top of all else! Oh Lord, what is the matter with me?
You’re in a bad way all right, replied the Lord.
“Hey, Parampion, tell me,” he asked hesitatingly, “who is that woman?”
“A mystery woman!” said Ugo seriously. “Like any other. Perhaps even …” He did not want to finish. “Here comes my tram. Kalisto ringing for lunch. Tired. See you at the Give’nTake tonight,” he added from the tram step.
“Perhaps even” what? A mystery woman. He seems to have a way with these mystery women. All sorts of thing can lurk there. Various possibilities. Anything is possible. Nothing is ruled out. Not under the rules. Under rule. Under their rule. Like the fragrance of spring’s breath they pass by; that is how it all begins. Like a bolt of lightning they strike our nerves, batter us, roll us, cut us up, cook us, soften us. We spread ourselves docilely, mushlike, jamlike, over their whims. As long as the whims last. Then they get us unstuck, scrape us off, clean it all out, every last bit, so as not to leave behind a single crumb of “the past,” so as to consign all to utter and eternal oblivion.
They course through our veins like poison—a melancholy, moody flow. We yearn for an ending, any ending, for a finality, any finality, for somewhere to stop, to lie down peacefully, on our backs, to watch the branches sway with the wind, to help the ants in their small lives. We shamble like sick dogs along the fences of the happiness of other people, other people’s laughter. We give an occasional bark alone in the night. We watch warily, cross-eyed, both sides of life, we are careful. Poisoned. Crippled by missing the warmth of touch, the fragrance of flowers, by missing springtimes, mornings, awakenings, the meaning of walking, of motion …
Where to? Poisoned. Poisoned. Poisoned.
And then … we take them like a shot of cognac at the bar, hastily, in from the cold, strangers, aloof, accidental passengers through all those distant, random, other people’s lives. Indifferent. Locked. Cynical. That is the end.
Oh Maestro, you rhapsody of filth!
And yet he is making for the Café, hoping unconsciously … No! Hoping consciously, indeed aspiring, to meet her. To find out, somehow to read in her person “the night before” … and all the rest of love’s hieroglyphs inscribed on her by all the various pharaohs in all the nights of her dirty history. Damned Sphinx!
“Perhaps even …” Perhaps even a whore, is what he wanted to say? Ugo knows something about her, something nasty, something you don’t tell about the woman whom you … whom you … whom you … he kept repeating in his mind while his thoughts floundered elsewhere, enraged, mad. Is she … that kind of woman? Or did he mean something else? She doesn’t work for a living, what does she live on? Gentlemen friends? But if she’s not that kind of woman, if she isn’t a … Oh, Manon! Yet another name for her.
He was approaching the Café. There were guests on the terrace, loud, vivacious. Having preprandial cognacs. Journalists. Waiting for proofs of their papers. In one of the groups, Maestro, mind-blowingly drunk, reciting “I have been on a cloud o’er the sea …”
She’s not there. She’s not inside either. Now then … Now then, the thing to do is abandon my self. Leave it here in the Café to wait for her. While I go to … go to … Go where, miserable, alone, without my self? But I’ll find her! I’ve got to see her today, have to think of a way …
He realized he was singing nonsense in his head. What sorrow! To sing my sorrow. Or to have lunch? He felt hunger in his entire body. It was Enka’s doing. All your doing, baby, billing and cooing, baby. Maybe. Then, to his body: No way. You’re not getting anything to eat, not as long as the reason’s valid, and I want you to remember it. Be patient and … disintegrate, melt into air, into thin air. I let you have a sausage at Kurt’s last night, didn’t I? I’m speaking to you as if you were a dog. Forgive me, poor body. The fault is not thine. The fault is not mine. You know, bud, Pechárek’sh going to eat ush up if we gain weight. Off to the barracksh with you, he’ll shay. And den to Hishtory’zh cauldron where the fate of dish faderland izh being cooked.
Those words aroused reflexes in the stomach. It gave an angry rumble. Don’t be a fool, stomach, we’re in danger! What if someone heard you? They would say, Poor father, such a willful child! Did Pestalozzi live in vain? Moderation, moderation, as the Greeks taught. Epicurus, you say? He was not referring to food only! And you do get “the rest,” according to your just desserts. Be a Stoic. Renunciation, my boy, that’s the yardstick of true greatness. Dom Kuzma was a giant of a man, sobbed Melkior-the-body, and look at him now! What do you think you’re doing? Taking you to be weighed, that’s what I’m doing, you greedy bastard! You’ll be the death of me yet! replied Melkior-the-mind and resolutely led his beast to the invalid’s weighing machine.
The man was holding a pot between his knees and using his spoon to dunk the bits of bread he had dropped into his soup. Sitting beside him on the small bench was an old woman with a basket: the other pot contained meat and potatoes fried with onions. There was a smell of food. Melkior’s stomach reared in anger, only to subside into hopeless whimpers like a puppy being punished.
When Melkior stepped onto the machine the old woman stood up to attend to him. The invalid didn’t even look up. Tant mieux. He was slurping his soup with gusto and … leave me be.
“Sixty-two,” pronounced the old woman in a businesslike, even mildly unpleasant tone, having cursorily read Melkior’s weight from the ca
librating bar.
“You didn’t round it off, did you? That was a bit quick.”
“No haste, no rounding off!” said the old woman sharply, so much so that the invalid looked up, ready to defend the quality of his service. “That’s what it showed, no two ways about it!”
The invalid nodded with satisfaction and went back to his meal. Approving of his wife’s resoluteness.
“But I couldn’t have gained that much overnight, could I?” I’m turning into a Dom Kuzma, noted Melkior, and he felt something akin to shame.
“You can put on up to eight hundred grams, you know,” said the invalid with professional patience through a sizeable bite he was pleasurably preparing in his filled-to-capacity mouth. “You’re forgetting the eating, sir. You have dinner, you have lunch, well, it all adds up, and the machine only shows your weight, whatever the freight.”
There it was, the “freight-weight” again. The firm’s slogan.
He paid and went down the street, worrying. Say what you like, I would have to weigh less following the simplest bookkeeping logic. There have been outlays, damn it! fumed the unhappy proprietor of a fresh two hundred and forty grams. And no receipts at all, no dinner or lunch, no food or drink.
Lunch, dinner: what pedestrian explanations. No, no, there is definitely a mystery to this weight business, a whim of physics. Exactitude? Exactitude my foot! There are deviations, exceptions, paradoxes, in the laws of physics. Water gains volume by freezing, said Melkior, triumphing over physics. He tried to recall another example. In vain. Perhaps there is no other. After all, weight is gravity. Newton’s law: mass attraction. Does the Earth attract me more strongly today as a result? The mass of Melkior Tresić is today drawn more strongly to the mass of the Earth, if you please. By two hundred and forty grams. Exactly. On the other hand, mightn’t the Earth have gained weight from some sort of cosmic nourishment and consequently exerted a greater pull? Who knows what stellar spaces Mother Earth traipses about in, what galactic feasts she fattens at. Finally to descend, having eaten and drunk her fill, to attract my underfed self. Will you just look at her? Metamorphoses!
Cyclops (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) Page 17