by John K. Cox
“It’s super that you were actually able to hear that!” said Igor with irritation in his voice. “So is that how you went deaf?”
“For sure!” said the old man, glumly. “I couldn’t keep watching that. That’s why, one evening three or four days ago, I said: ‘Leontina, in case you . . .’”
“Let’s leave him alone,” said Igor. “It doesn’t seem like he’s spoken with anybody about this till now, and he wants to serenade us strangers with it like an old frog . . . Nevertheless, we will have to look for this Leontina.”
Our idea for a little taverna was truly outstanding. Since we were disappointed with everything, and as incapable of love and unqualified for life as we were, we resolved to withdraw from the world. But because we weren’t able to take off to some deserted island, as we had intended at first, we decided to open a restaurant and bar in a small town along the coast. Both Igor and I like the autumnal peace and quiet in these isolated little towns with their narrow streets. Therefore we had resolved to sell all our stuff and save all the money that we earned from giving private lessons to the girls and whores of the city, and then we would rent a little taverna and dedicate ourselves to our studies.
“This is the only way that one can study life,” said Billy Wiseass. “Books are an invention. Stories for toddlers. But we will gather around us all kinds of desperados (we especially liked this word in those days) and listen to authentic stories, authentic life experiences. Only that will constitute the true school of life,” Billy explained excitedly.
I joined the game with enthusiasm:
“It is not we who will have to go out into the world; the world will come to us. Bringing the best that it has to offer. Ships will provide us with sailors, in whose eyes we will discover continents and climates, landscapes and horizons . . . Everything, Igor, everything! We will only accept those people who have seen as much of life as a living person can! Only the ones bearing scars . . .”
“The ones with callouses . . .”
“The ones from the streets . . .”
“The ones from distant lands . . .”
“The ones who lowered their colors . . .”
“The ones with no future . . .”
“The ones with colorful pasts . . .”
“The ones without love . . .”
“The ones who have already experienced everything . . .”
“Seen everything . . .”
“And desire nothing more . . .”
“Nothing . . .”
“Don’t you think,” I said, “that it would be good for us to accept women as well? Raunchy harbor chicks? The kind who carry profound mourning in their eyes.”
“Provided, of course, that they have remained chaste. Without hackneyed tales of infidelity, betrayal, misery, rape . . .”
“The ones who have sought love . . .”
“And not found it . . .”
“The ones who have loved, body and soul . . .”
“Body and . . .”
“And with their whole Body and . . .”
And they wandered through the world so wide
embracing everything they did find.
Then Igor picked up where I left off, or vice versa:
And now they pursue their requiems
for their white bodies
“For their white bodies.”
The specialty drink at the Two Desperados restaurant—a specialty that Billy Wiseass especially envied me for inventing—had the very prosaic (and, incidentally, blasé) name “The Desperados’ Pistol.” On our menu, it was located right after the Wiener schnitzel and it cost the same.
I couldn’t blame Igor if he was jealous; it was really a devilish idea!
We got an order for it right away, on our first night of business.
The customer had a red, puffy face with bags under his eyes. He stared at the menu for a long time with his beady, watery eyes. The menu was bound in golden-green snakeskin and the letters on the cover were emeralds:
CARTE DE VINS OF THE
TWO DESPERADOS TAVERNA
IMPORTED WINES
Malaga à la Orpheus
Eyes of Eurydice
Desperados’ Dream
Magnolia Maraschino
Glutteus aeburnea à la Leontina
Satyr’s Ambrosia
Gelosia vecchia al Umberto
Brandy à la Mansarde
Arpeggio à la Mansarde
Žilavka Mistress of the Lute
Hosszú lépés Smart Ass
Thea-Lipovanka á la Mary Magdalene
Evening Star, bitter
Morning Star, violet
The Song of Tam-Tam
Moonlight of Delphi
Palm Frond Vugava
Primavera marina
Mezzogiorno adriatico
Cyclamen Sailor’s Duel
Le temps retrouvé
Dollente, lis blanc
Allegro, ma non troppo
Allegretto (108), red
Allegro vivace (152), white
Ritardando brillante, maestoso
Doloroso espressivo
Dolce, ma con fuoco a l’Euridice
Desperados’ Soliloquy
Boule-de-neige
Il Sueño della Vida
Balata, bitter opal
Tourmaline bicolore
Tourmaline rose (rubellite)
Saphir cagochon
Calitera menandar (Asia)
Precis heleida (Madagascar)
Precis eurodoce
Anea Orphilochus (Sumatra)
Arhonias Bellona (pierides)
Byblia ilithya
Agerona mexicana
Chrisidia madagascariensis
Eucalitia clemante
Amethyst blue (sapphire)
DOMESTIC WINES
Fruška Gora Pearls of Dawn
Dubrovnik Madrigal
Ohrid Legend
Gračanica Dawn
Slavic Legend, bitter
Morning Star over Herzegovina, bitter
The Highways of Prince Marko (dark)
Scutari Gold (gutedel)
Mother Jevrosima’s Hair
Banović Strahinja’s Goblet
Lazar’s Bicep
Vuk Mandušić’s Dream, white
Maternal Curse
Word of Love
Simonida’s Eyes
A Monk’s Manuscript
And then, as far as the food on the menu went—
FISH AND SEAFOOD
Dragonfly in mayonnaise
Poison d’avril
Barbus de Sumatra in palm oil
Danio Rerio with lemon
Egg of Columbus
Girardinus Guppi (Arc-en-Ciel)
Chinese warrior with mint
Barbillon Galapagos
Aquamarino adriatico
Speckled lutist with mustard
Flying coral with French fries
Seaweed with spaghetti
Mistral with orange
Mistral in olive oil
Mistral from the grill
Mistral in a tin can
South African diamond
Gavial of Celebes
Tahitian pictor
White Tahiti-flower with rice
Rouge-Gorge of the Adriatic
Rouge-Bleu of the Adriatic (with cream)
Tomatoes with Greek olives
Tern with eggs
Bouquet de mariée with mustard
Cleaning lady in lemon juice
Shark à la Sumatra
Ageronio Atlantis
Catenofele salicia (Nymphalisis)
Hvar Guitar without Sordino
Hvar Guitar with Sordino
Brač shipwreck in white wine
Rose of the winds
As he pored over the menu, a cut diamond in the shape of a skull and crossbones twinkled on his short index finger. I observed the way his fingers slid perplexedly over the snakeskin.
But, finally—after he had drunk an absinthe—the
man said, “The specialty of the house, please.”
His voice wasn’t trembling when he said it.
“How’s that?” blinked the old man Barba-Umberto, whose eyes were following Leontina’s butt under her black apron as she walked away.
The man with the swollen eyes cast a brief glance at Leontina, who was washing glasses behind the bar. Then he repeated:
“The specialty of the house. A Desperados’ Pistol . . . That’s what it’s called, isn’t it?”
Barba-Umberto blanched.
“They promised me that they would look out for her. I said: ‘Boys, if anybody so much as taps her a single time on the . . .’”
Then Igor jumped in:
“What may I bring you, sir?”
“A Pi-stol. A Desperados’ Pistol. How many times do I have to repeat myself?”
“Excuse us,” said Igor, wiping the crumbs off of the Brač marble in front of the man with a white napkin.
“Our interpreter is a bit hard of hearing . . .”
“A double. Don’t forget: a double.”
“As you wish.” Billy bowed formally and headed to the bar, as the man called out after him:
“Noch ein Bier!”
Igor bowed.
The man had hooked his short little thumbs into his suspenders and was watching the dark, wintry sea through the window. A black and white ship was trying to draw up to the breakwater through the waves. From time to time its howl could be heard over the wind and it immediately awakened in me the memory of a train embankment, of Eurydice.
Next to me I sensed the haste with which Igor was working. He unfastened the pistol from its hook (where it hung over the bar like a museum piece), and then I heard him cock it and eject the four remaining bullets from the magazine. After he had inserted one bullet into the barrel, he brought out a silver dish from under the bar. He wiped it off and then laid a small white silk napkin, folded into a triangle, onto it. Carefully he placed the pistol onto the napkin. He was then ready to head to the table but something else occurred to him. I noticed that he was agitated, although his hands weren’t trembling. He moved the napkin with the pistol over to the side of the tray, and on the opposite side he placed a mug of foaming beer. Then he nodded to Barba-Umberto and handed him the tray, motioning with his head toward the guest with the skull-and-crossbones. The man was still watching the ship roll around right outside the entrance to the harbor. Without a word Umberto took the tray and set it in front of the customer. The man with the suspenders glanced at the pistol, poked around at it intently with his small index finger, and then drank down his beer. Then he sat there for another quarter of an hour, immersed in the sight of the ship. Then he gestured to Umberto to bring the check.
“This is too hard,” he said in German. “An excellent imitation. Eine schöne Imitation. But very hard. I don’t want to bust my teeth. Auf Wiedersehen!”
Umberto brought back the tray with the empty mug and the pistol. He was muttering something to himself, of which I was only able to catch the words: porca miseria, porca miseria.
The stranger had not left a single dinar as a tip. Porca miseria!
No. That’s not how it was.
First he drained the mug. Then he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and lit a cigarette. When the cigarette had burned down to his fingernails, the man stubbed it out in the ashtray. There was desperation and determination in this gesture. He licked the barrel of the pistol, and I saw Barba-Umberto making idiotic faces at him. Then a shot rang out. It was so unexpected that even I started.
He did not fall over backward, as I had expected. Rather he slumped forward with his face on the marble table, as if he were dozing.
Umberto covered the blooming skull with a white cloth. Billy was screaming hysterically into the telephone receiver: “Hello? Hello? Hello?”
“It had to be this way,” I said in a conciliatory tone, almost to myself. Then I hung the pistol up again on its hook above the bar. Naturally I had already reloaded the magazine.
Barba-Umberto held up unexpectedly well at the interrogation. Billy was kind of nervous. We were fined a trivial sum.
But the memory of the Island never left me, even for a moment. This time I said nothing at all to Billy Wiseass about it. I wanted to liberate myself from my selfishness. That’s why I told him nothing. Right up to the day I left, unexpectedly. My God, it was also quite unexpected for me.
To be honest, the idea of a taverna was nonetheless an excellent one. Not only because we would then no longer need to knock about in filthy harborside dives (if Muhammad won’t go to the mountain . . .), but also because it allowed the world to come to us (. . . then the mountain will come to Muhammad). Everything that we had ever imagined became reality. We were not to be trifled with!
We wanted to purchase—that is to say, we did purchase—every kind of musical instrument possible, from accordions to Tahitian guitars. Otherwise we provided no music. The guests were informed by means of the menu that the instruments were at the disposal of anyone who knew how, and, of course, had the desire to, play them. Thus, late one winter evening, we had the chance to hear a young woman (I never saw her again) play Debussy’s “Clair de lune” on her harp. Her dignified features betrayed her affinity with the nostalgic and anachronistic sense of refinement of the nineteenth century. She had sickly, dark green eyes and pale, fragile hands. While she played, her hair fell onto the gilded baroque harpstand and concealed her face. Never before had a Corinthian column been crowned with a more noble capital. Her long fingers, with nails the color of old silver, glided over the strings, and everything would have ended beautifully if BarbaUmberto hadn’t wanted to stroke her hair. Her fingers paused on the strings as if they had been bewitched. She then swiftly put the harp aside and took her blue raincoat from the hanger. She didn’t even turn around as she exited. She made use of the general astonishment and disappeared forever.
“You, Barba-Umberto, are a regular moron,” I said, when we had pulled ourselves together. “A mo-ron!”
“So you think so too?” he said, like an idiot.
“Moron,” I repeated. “A senile moron.”
“Indeed, I’ve never heard anybody play more beautifully either,” came his naïve reply.
Igor practically jumped down his throat and said testily, “He’s telling you that you’re an idiot. Nothing but an idiot! Capito?”
“You are right, my boy,” said Barba-Umberto. “Indeed, I never even saw hair like that in Constantinople . . .”
“What do you think?” Igor asked, turning toward me. “Is he pretending to be crazier than he really is . . . ?”
“What else could it be?” Umberto interrupted. “It seemed to me that moonlight was dripping through her fingers.”
I swear to you that this feeble-minded old Umberto said exactly that: “I had the impression that moonlight was dripping through her fingers.”
Can you imagine? That idiot, Umberto!
We wanted to become wealthy, powerful. In order to buy ourselves a yacht (it had already been named Eurydice, what else?) and sail the seven seas, visit all the continents. Of course our first mission would have been to visit the Bay of Dolphins. To verify its existence.
So who says that it isn’t out there somewhere?
“Look, this is why we must resort to poison and dagger,” said Igor. Or I was the one who said: “To poison and dagger.”
“Salted sardines aren’t poison.”
“At any rate,” we said, “they make you hellishly thirsty. Therefore everyone should have a barrel with sardines close at hand. Free poison.”
Thus we bought a barrel of salted sardines and put it in the middle of the taverna, at everyone’s disposal. We assigned Umberto and Leontina the task of placing a few sardines onto the little ceramic plate in front of every guest, so that everyone would drink at least a liter of table wine afterward. We were counting on human greed.
That’s how it all began. And, sure enough, everything went well at firs
t. Late on winter evenings we listened to sailors’ laments on the accordion; we became the port’s confessional; we became the resonant seashell that sings with the voice of the Sirens when you hold it up to your ear. Here and there burned a candle or two, and at “Desperados” people were always singing as piously as they would at Mass.
But soon everything went to hell in a handbasket, in the way that only a dream can go belly up. We became a hangout for bums, a nest of thieves, a bordello, a snack bar where generous portions of salted sardines are handed out for free. We became a gambling joint, a forge for foul, pithy curses, a den of bloody showdowns, a font of outrageous vices and pathologies.
I swear: all of this could really have happened. It was all so beautifully conceived!
Igor, my friend, we have nothing left except the desert island! Did we not give our word ages ago that we would never kill ourselves? For the sake of a moment in the future!
Do you remember our conversation? In the attic—where else?
You: “Why don’t you kill yourself, Lute-meister? I know you’re just a shadow of your former self without Eurydice.”
I: “Mephistopheles! Satan!”
You: “Kill yourself. Be done with your shadow. You were not born to compromise.”
I: “And I didn’t compromise.”
You: “So isn’t Eurydice just a shadow as well? Tell me, Lute-meister: what is she?”
I: “The Ideal, Satan. The Ideal! The life-principle, if you will. That’s why I will not kill myself.”
You: “A striptease-ideal! Was it not you who asserted that the ideal ‘was not allowed to have freckles’? Did you not say, Lute-meister, that God could not become an ideal for you because He makes compromises with evil? Were you not gloating over the fact that you wouldn’t even bow to the sun, since it has spots? Did you not, my little lutie-pie, cease worshiping your erstwhile Eurydice (is that what she was called?) as soon as you got close enough to her to see the freckles on her nose? Did you not assert that the ideal, Eurydice, is not ideal if it isn’t perfect?”
“Silence, Billy! I’ll kill you, Satan!”
“Kill your own self. Out of consistency, at least . . . Or make a compromise. Reconcile yourself to the fact that the sun has spots. And bow to it!”