Cyclops (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

by Ranko Marinković

  “There, there, Eustachius the Good.” Ugo was smiling, too, with his black fillings. “No need to shout: War! on account of my wee bit of courtship. Let the war go on percolating over there across the Channel. Our uncles will give it a smack or two across the snout for frightening us. We’re good little children.” Ugo was glad of Melkior’s smiling face. “What’s the time? I’m off, bound for the electric chair, brrr …” he shuddered and took on an ingratiating look. “Mercy, Eustachius the Cruel. Let me have at least that tired gait of yours, you read it out to me only the other day. Here I come, the dark hermit … How does it go? Do let me have it, I cannot go like this.”

  He spread his empty hands helplessly.

  “Stop being a bore, Parampion!” Melkior was morose again. Down at ATMAN’S this afternoon, fine. Had she wanted to meet me? Ask ATMAN. “What makes you think she likes verse, anyway? Why don’t you treat her to a beef goulash instead? At least she’ll know what that is.” At “beef goulash” his stomach gave a martyred howl. He’d love some goulash.

  “You know her, then?” Ugo’s eyebrows merged with his hairline in astonishment.

  “To some extent,” replied Melkior, being purposely casual. “She’s shallow.”

  “Ah, that would be the hooves of the Mandrake downstairs!” Ugo stamped hard on the floor. “She told me he was keen on introducing her to you. So: she’s shallow?”

  Melkior did not reply. She hadn’t wanted to meet me? Good thing I went off as I did then. Very good thing indeed.

  “And what would you think,” said Ugo out of the blue, “if I told you that what she wants from me is, how shall I put it … well, support—that is, intellectual companionship at the loftiest spiritual level?” His face was inflating, an outburst of laughter was only moments away. Ugo was relishing this. “Beef goulash, eh?” and the laughter did indeed erupt.

  Melkior laughed, too, sourly, with a moral revulsion. She thinks she’s netted him “at the loftiest level,” he mocks her. She’s building her sticky-sweet relationship with him on a “soulful” foundation, he’s keeping her in that confiture to make her taste sweeter. But they love his kind, they love precisely the rascals like him who tease them. They’ll all let him have his way, all the way, right away. I know you’re only trifling with me, you bad boy. Yet I do love you. And tear slides down cheeks out of genuine yet spurned love. My love for you was deep and true. First you took me, then forsook me, now you’re off to pastures new. Please do not do it, soon you will rue it, no other girl will be so true.—You did love me and adore me, but you’ve rather come to bore me.

  Other Women or Don Juan on Horseback, a handy novel for artless girls who, being gentle by nature and shy through family upbringing, find it difficult in liaisons of the heart to withstand men’s shamelessly rough ways but nevertheless come to believe their false declarations of love. Hence they experience wrenching disappointments which haunt them later in life in the form of soul-destroying memories. When they marry they do not reveal even to their husband, their Savior and Redeemer from all evils, all the painful sorrow over their youth. They were so inexperienced that they were deceived countless times by countless men who smothered their virginal sobs under bearlike chests and forced them to do things so abominable and horrible that they still have dreadful nightmares and while sleeping in the sanctified marital bed call to their kind and patient spouse for a man’s help so that they can find at least temporary respite from their troublesome past and exorcise their unmentionable desires and achieve true feminine purity and live out their lives in marital harmony and love until the day of their death. Amen.

  Ugo was grinning in the middle of the room, watching Melkior with a kind of anticipation. He had become impatient: he was wasting his precious time waiting for this fellow here to sort out his Deep Thoughts.

  “All right, have you worked out how far it is to eternity and back? You’ve left me waiting like a coach horse outside a temple until you’ve performed your intellectual rite inside.”

  “Well, what’s keeping you if you’re in such a rush?” Melkior snapped with impatience. He wished to be left alone to lick his singed paw in solitude. I walked into it today like a tomcat after a goldfish. ATMAN the Demiurge. Is he really “speeding up history” using me? A weird sister out of Macbeth. Thou shalt be King of Viviana, Melkior! Thou shalt be king, Melkior, thou shalt be king! And thou shalt never vanquish’d be until Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill shall come against thee. Who can impress the forest, bid the tree unfix his earthbound root? Sweet bodements! Good! I shall be King of Viviana, Thane of Thanatos, Thane of Methane, Thane of Drum-and-Fife, Cadaver of the Balkans. Huzza!

  “Hail to thee, Thane of Give’nTake!” he spoke to Ugo with a low bow and a manic laugh. “And farewell. We shall meet again to-night upon the heath of Give’nTake. Thrice to thine, and thrice to mine, and thrice again, to make up nine. Farewell!” and he turned away from Ugo, lay down on his stomach, buried his face in the pillow and said not a word more.

  The wounded tomcat purrs away. Having been left alone (Ugo had tiptoed out, terrified. And crossed himself at the door: he had this from his mother), he is busy spinning wounded thoughts. Such as: a town built of empty bottles. A crowd of drunkards have guzzled the bottles empty and built the town. A transparent town, chock-a-block with bottles. Glasstown. Soundville. Wind has strayed inside making the glass throats sing to the townspeople, asleep in their drunken stupor. And in each bottle, each transparent dwelling, there is either a wide-awake Lar or an angry Penate. Are you asleep, Lar? asks the angry Penate. How can I sleep when I am duty-bound to watch over the slumbering home? Call this a home? says the angry Penate angrily. There was a time when we stood in patrician atria on pedestals of marble, side by side with Jupiter and beauteous Venus. Look at us now. Here I choke with Bacchus’s sour smell. That rancid reek, that sour stench! To live in a glass bottle, Oh almighty Jupiter, and to be called a Penate! This is habitation for dead lizards and frogs, for porcine embryos and fetuses and premature aborted babies in university collections and Institutes of Pathology, not an abode for what is, after all, a god. For God’s sake, Penate, retorts in anger the patient Lar. We are not drenched by rain or stricken by frost; we are bathed in light and warmed by the sun and comforted by the wind’s sweet strains that are like music issuing from the sublime lyre of Orpheus. I think it was a very good idea these people had to build Glasstown. Oh kindly Lar, those drunkards are now steeped in foul dreams, but when they wake they will fall to barking at each other like dogs and fighting like wild elephants and will smash and break this laughable, transparent Bottle-town of theirs for it has the wild spirit of Bacchus dwelling herein.

  The patient Lar is unconvinced. But one fine day, just as Glass-town is glittering prettily in the sun, white and green and greenish-blue, the accursed drunkards wake and stretch their limbs and rub their eyes and by dint of loud dumb yawns break into a fight and go after each other in a most savagely cruel manner and raze to the very foundations their greenish-blue Glasstown that had glittered so prettily in the sun. Not a bottle is left intact.

  And the homeless Lar and Penate join forces and resolve to seek other, better towns. And they find fresh, indestructible towns and take up honorable employment therein, working as caretakers, directors of old peoples’ homes, and doormen in three-star hotels, for the uniforms are very nearly like those of admirals.

  The pillow under him was all slimy, from envy. Is she Ugo’s? Why flee from the bitter thought? Ugo’s she is, (his own) Viviana. Ugo’s. I have been preserving the thought in order to say it at this precise moment, inside. To exist is to keep shaking off the sadness. In there, in the bowels, it wells from a secret source, to spread all over the body, bitterly. Sad skin, sad eyes, nose hanging down, dejected. To batten up the source?—Here, I am no more. Would I were no more! Would I were the shimmering air which makes her lips … Poem for Viviana. Poem One … which makes her lips smile so prettily. Why am I not a demon spreading darkness around her (an adjec
tive here) room?—Wait: her what room? Lustful. Her lustful room. But keep this out of the poem for the moment.—At night I keep a tremulous vigil over her and the dawn finds me between the curtains with the song of her dreams and sighs.—Song of dreams, no less … with sighs to boot. But let the poem sing the cold pane trembling with her breath at night. … Right. If I were no more, I would be with you everywhere forevermore—a perfect pair, my heart in yours and yours (of course) in mine. Your arms have no notion that, moving, they’ve set me in motion …

  As if he did not have enough troubles, the damned fool had turned to poetry. Unrequited love. There is something rotten at the root of poetry. Even flowers grow from manure. Soul fertilized by Viviana, the best-known natural fertilizer in town. Nitrogen and phosphorus. The exact formula known to Maestro. Ask Justus von Liebig if you want the secret revealed. The mysterious generative force, the spiritual impregnation, the poetic florescence: Ugo, ATMAN, Maestro, myself, Freddie as a possibility—the Pleiad of passionate Vivianic poets. Plus God knows how many besides, onanistically fainthearted, anonymous, hidden in their gloomy rooms and behind their desperate beards, whimsical troubadours, inspired nocturnal rodents who by day collect the bliss of her movements and ruminate by night filled with her, a random, passing figure, oh girl from my neighborhood whom I saw as she … un éclair … puis la nuit!—Fugitive beauté … ne te verrai-je plus que dans l’éternité? Eternities germinating from her phosphates and sulphates and nitrates.

  Troooo-toot-toot, trooo-toot-toot, toorootoo, toorootoo, tooroo-too … The bugle in the barracks opposite playing taps. Eight o’clock. Head tucked under wing, the soldiers, like hens, and off toooSLEEP! Without a care in the world. Watching over you are the sentries, the Orderly Officer, the picquets, and your uncle the Minister of Defense, and your father the King and your Mother Country.

  The bugle summoned Melkior to rise, to be alert to his fear of the morrow. He rose with a nervous yawn. The word morrow in the mouth, well shaped for a yawn. Another yawn, a deaf-and-dumb’s mute song. Standing in the middle of the room, idle. What now? The worm of solitude started drilling, insupportably. And the stomach gave a sorrowful whine, like a dog locked out.

  The little old white man was sitting with the giant. The sergeants were there, too, At Ease, with Else at her corner of the table. At a third table: a party of veterinary students, large specimens all, using the heavy gestures of the Heavy Drinker variety. Make no mistake, those boys are having one hell of a carouse. Kurt was dissolving them, drunkenly tamed as they were, with his nihilism. This was in progress.

  “Got a girlfriend then, Kurt?”

  “What’s the use?” said Kurt with a hopeless shrug.

  “Well, I’ve got one, and I do know what use a girl is.”

  The future physicians to domestic and tamed animals were chortling, seeing the matter from a medical standpoint. They had vivid imaginations. Kurt sat in solemn silence, his face gilded with very refined contempt.

  “If you’d ever had your hand up inside a mare …?”

  The vets had taken the initiative, Kurt was lost in their laughter.

  “But …” he tried to say, but nothing was heard.

  “Think I’m cracked or something, do you?” shouts an offended sergeant. “Why shouldn’t she marry me? Tell ’em yourself, Else, I want them to hear it loud and clear.”

  “What are you so riled up about it?” Else had her white arms crossed over her chest as if hiding something. “You are a strange one.”

  “There, did you hear that, you garrison dolts? Just you wait and see. I’m going to have her dressed in white from head to toe, like a real lady-in-waiting. Cheers, Else, here’s to looking at you!”

  “Sheemsh to me dey’re weak, bud,” slurs the little old white man.

  “No,” bellows the giant.

  “No? What about the bombingzh den? Dere’zh bombingzh every day. Dey say London’sh gone for good.”

  “Rubbish.”

  “Rubbish? But have Dey got anyting like the Bizhmarck? Dey shay it’sh sho shtrong it hazh no match but God Himshelf. Dere’zh no gun in the world can shink it.”

  “Can, too.”

  “Can? I shaw the Viribush Unitish, you know, bud, back in nineteen-fifteen, in the Bay of Kotor. A dreadful shight it wazh, too. And the Bizhmarck’sh even shtronger. It’sh dreadful.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No. The English have the George V.”

  “Fifth? Izh it shtrong enough?”

  “Yes.”

  “Azh shtrong azh the Bizhmarck?”

  “Stronger.”

  “Twishe azh shtrong?”

  “Three times.”

  “Timezh?”

  “Yes.” The giant made a gesture with his fist, which he then dropped on the table, forcefully, making the glasses jangle.

  Melkior settled at the table next to the door, modestly, though he could well have entered the Cozy Corner with a regular’s swagger. His entry saved Kurt from the veterinary crowd.

  “Ah, Herr Professor! Good evening.” Kurt’s hand sought Melkior’s of its own volition and kept it cordially pressed. “What’s your pleasure, Herr Professor?” Melkior asked for a bit of broiled veal or something lean like that.

  “Ach, Herr Professor, I’m very much afraid, you know … we’re a bit short of meat today,” spoke Kurt, so unhappy, adjusting the tablecloth. “Meat-free day today, Herr Professor. Armies eat meat,” he was saying with emotion.

  “War is a big gourmand, eating only the best. Meat …”

  Preferably man, said Melkior to himself, loudly enough for Kurt to overhear some of it.

  “Preferably canned? No, preferably fresh, heh, heh,” joked Kurt sweetly. “I’ll go and ask Mother if she has something for you.”

  He presently came back with glad tidings, conspiratorially, a tasty piece of veal, just for you, we can do you a Wiener schnitzel, all right? All right, Kurt, all right. Excellent. Kurt nodded “all right” to Mother and immediately sat back down at Melkior’s table, until Mother got the schnitzel ready.

  Could be I’m anemic, I’ve got pale gums. Hence, conceivably, all the defeatism. Liver’s good for the blood, they say. Got to have some blood to shed for King and country. Got to fight, boy, got to shed blood! Yes, Your Majesty, that is why I order liver from Kurt, for that very reason: to have the blood to shed. I mean, I would be a poor subject of yours, Your Majesty, would I not, if I were bloodless. What else would there be to shed? Tears? Shut up, you lily-livered ass! Old women shed tears, heroes shed blood. I know. You are right. Blood is the Constitutional essence, the quintessence of my subject-hood, the apotheosis of royalty. So, do you think I could, er … siphon half a pint off into a bottle for Your Majesty, and then be left off the hook? Because, truth to tell, I haven’t got all that much … No way! No cheating! Save that for the bedbugs and the barracks fleas! What do you think I am—a louse? My humble apologies, Your Majesty. I only thought, why not set an amount, that is to say … well, yes, an amount, a quota to be met by each of us. Because, the way things are, one never knows how much will be required. And Your Majesty knows full well what the Royal tax people are like, not to mention the generals, the corruption, the friends in high places, the Old Boys’ Network. … It’s only that I should like to see the whole business better regulated, that’s all. Also (save your presence), there are other liquids in our subjectful bodies. Why insist so much on blood? Couldn’t we shed something else as well? Our Maestro, for instance, has switched to beer precisely because …

  “A beer, Herr Professor, or perhaps a glass of wine?”

  Kurt’s reading my lips, blast him—or is he telepathic or something?

  “Did I say ‘beer,’ Kurt?” he asked suspiciously.

  “Well you can always have wine if you prefer—at least that’s something there’s plenty of in this country. But beer goes better with a schnitzel, doesn’t it?”

  Yes, beer goes better with hmm … a schnitzel. Maestro knows this: it g
oes better with a schnitzel—hence his beer-drinking.

  “And they call themselves intellectuals. Heavens!” Kurt launched into his lament. “Vulgarities and nothing else. You can’t say a word to them. As if they were from another planet.”

  “Out on a spree,” said Melkior, bored. “Celebrating something, no doubt.” He wanted to get rid of Kurt and give some thought in peace to the matter of blood … on the thresholds of the institution …

  “And then I say to her, here, let me whisper something in your mouth, baby, heh, heh …”

  “And you got one across the snout, right?”

  “I did, yessirree. Mind you, I said it dead cool, but I did.”

  “There you are, Herr Professor, that’s their idea of humor,” said a scandalized Kurt, rubbing together his moist, pudgy-fingered hands. “Nothing but vulgarities. My sister no longer sits with them. Upon my word, the NCOs are better men. Uncouth but well-behaved. When my sister sits at their table, you don’t hear a single coarse word. One of them is in love with her as a matter of fact, he wants to marry her, hm, hm,” smiled Kurt, forgiving the man his presumption. “Actually he’s not a bad man at all, he’s nice. We wouldn’t mind him being an NCO—after all Else’s not so educated herself—but what kind of future is there in it? An NCO in a weak army, what can you expect? And anyway, how much longer is that going to last? The war’s practically here. It’s only a question of months … if not days,” he whispered confidentially.

  He knows, he knows, he’s got his pudgy fingers in all sorts of pies … Melkior had the impression of having felt inside him, in some tangential and accidental way, something like a fear of Kurt. Or … how to explain it? A presence of the fearsome—and he caught himself developing unconscious cunning designed to keep himself inside the circle of Kurt’s goodwill, to retain his confidence, with a view to squeezing that Future a bit more clearly out of Kurt, learning the precise day, the day … It would be a good move to contradict him just a wee bit, to voice the tiniest doubt … to make an ahh-who-knows-there’s-no-telling-when-it-will-happen gesture to provoke Kurt’s in-the-know-ness.