“All right, let’s put it all on the scales. Let’s weigh things seriously, Mr. Melkior. A weighing machine is a precise instrument, no tricks, no teasing. ‘True weight whatever the freight,’ says the peg-legged invalid. I share your respect for it.
“After all, we do check our condition on it, even literally, do we not? How much do we weigh? Because this can be decisive at times, of course. There are such things as the official criteria of fitness.”
“I must tell you, Mr. Adam …” Melkior made another attempt at ejection.
“Yes, Mr. Melkior. You have my undivided attention. I’m always ready to learn something new. Always!”
Melkior was losing patience. He was on the frightening verge of jumping up and yanking ATMAN’S goatee. And booting him in the backside!
“I have an article to write for tomorrow. I’m sorry but I have work to do tonight!”
“I, too, as I’ve said, have work to do tonight. But what kind of future shall I draw for them?” ATMAN rested his brow on his open palm, worried. “If I were a magician, I’d turn the politician into a bird and let him fly where his wings would take him. That’s his future after all: to fly …” Then, quite close to Melkior’s face, so that Melkior felt the noxious breath from his mouth, something reminiscent of dirty socks, “To fly away, eh, Mr. Melkior? Far away from these people,” he nodded in the direction of the barracks across the road. “To safety. But they will not let you go. They bite into your flesh and will not let go. And we, heh, heh … we deprive them of the flesh. No meat, sorry! Skin and bones you can bite if you like. But what if they bite into the skin and bones, what if they do after all? Vicious dogs they are …”
“Let them bite what they like!” Melkior cried out in desperation. “What’s all this nonsense? Please leave me alone, sir! I want to work, to work!”
“Oh, to work, quite so … I forgot we have work to do … the both of us.”
The palmist stood up, tightening the belt of his housecoat as if really about to leave. Melkior felt a surge of hope, even adjusted a fold on ATMAN’S housecoat, in the servile manner of a lackey.
But ATMAN noticed Melkior’s freshly laundered linen laid out in neat stacks on the bed.
“Ah. Fine linen you have there. White shirts. I, too, prefer my shirts white. Buy them yourself?”
“Of course I buy them myself. Who else would buy them for me?”
“Oh, I didn’t mean who does the monetary buying. That would obviously be a bit, er … What I meant was have you got an adviser, an advisoress, heh, heh … in matters of taste. Because they are in very good taste indeed. The finest poplin. Also two-button cuffs. Not one; two. Most fashionable.”
Melkior, as it happened, had not wanted ATMAN’S departure to take the form of ejection. He therefore mustered all of his utterly battered patience to build him a golden bridge for an honorable retreat. But no! ATMAN was not even thinking of retreating. He crossed his arms on his chest and began pacing about, indulging in meditation, “We criticize their superficiality, but look how their little hands make themselves felt on our things. On shirts, for example. That’s their world, those two buttons—indeed their general outlook, their worldview.” He put a strong emphasis on the word “worldview,” as if everything depended on it. “While we chuckle in our wise, masculine way; we are taken up with important concerns. They laugh at our important concerns and go on doing our linen, always after us to change our clothes and take our baths and cut our nails. Being boring. We give martyred sighs, because it is a kind of terror. We long for any form of liberation. You don’t know about these things, Mr. Melkior, you haven’t been married; I have. Well, there comes at long last that blessed liberation. Quite unexpectedly, like drawing a prize at the lottery. So one evening you’re preparing for an adventure. Showered and shaved (voluntarily, not under duress), donning a fresh shirt, humming a little tune, pandering to your freelance-lover style—and all that in front of a mirror, to double the joy, as it were; in a word, you’re a marvelous specimen, you admire yourself no end … and then: hello, what’s this? There’s a shirt button missing! All you find in its place are those broken little whiskers of thread. There was nobody to take care of it, you see … There’s the feeling of loneliness for you! Do you think she would have left a different mark? What if she had been there above the buttons?” ATMAN asked suddenly of Melkior, pushing his derisive smile quite close to his face.
“Who’s ‘she’?” Melkior was gripped by something like fear. “You really are talking nonsense …”
“The one you saw tonight … at the Give’nTake? Heh-heh! Viviana! But her name is not Viviana. That’s your first mistake.”
Melkior was speechless. How on earth …? Why, it was sheer telepathy! He hadn’t said a word to anyone. … As for Viviana, he would have called her that himself … No, he simply stared at ATMAN, his flesh creeping with terror: My God, this man knows everything!
“I know everything, Mr. Melkior,” the palmist stated, interrogatorlike.
“Including your suffering over ‘being last.’ That, too, is a mistake. You think that even Ugo is ahead of you. As for the actor, he’s simply a hairpin, a garter, a comb, if you like. Perhaps you’re offended by such comparisons, but take them as figures of speech, in the sense that he’s a toilet article … Perhaps it’s you that she sees as … Mr. Right.”
“You know her?” Melkior blurted out the very unfortunate question, but impatiently, impatiently!
“Do I know her? She comes to me looking for a husband! As if I had one in my pocket and had only to reach inside. What about personal initiative, I told her. You’ve got to seek, and knock, and ye shall find, and it shall be opened unto you. What are those two irresistible eyes for, those two legs above the knee, not forgetting the idea of the pair of breasts that tugs at your heart? That was how I put it to her, almost in verse. You laugh at verse? Well, never mind, I told her that as poetically as I could, in rapture.”
“And she turned you down!” Melkior rejoiced. He was gaining ascendancy over ATMAN, had almost got him confused.
“Turned me down … but not quite.” The palmist was already regaining some of his composure. He was visibly dejected. Perhaps he had come up only to talk about her. “That is to say, she turned me down halfway. In fact, she turned me down two-thirds of the way, but I’ve kept the remaining third—for contact, you see. We are in touch. Was that a frown I saw at ‘touch’? All right then: we maintain diplomatic relations. Mutual interests. She is—I take it you’ve gathered—a parasite.”
“You support her?” and a pain kicked at Melkior’s diaphragm.
“Never. Why should I? There’s another plant that she lives on. Don’t worry, it’s a female plant. Flora. That’s her name. Her aunt. Runs a dressmaker’s salon. ‘Flora’s Fashions,’ perhaps you’ve heard of it. I refer my clients to her. And vice versa.”
“That’s how it is?”
“That’s how it is.”
The sun smiled down on Melkior. He smelled the fragrance of roses from the long ago May festivities of his boyhood. He went to church in his short pants to hear a little girl Ana sing in the choir. He wanted to become an organ player, that was how May-like was his love for Ana. Then a cloud covered the sun for an instant and there was darkness in church and Ana’s voice sang a sibylline death chant. But the sun shook the clouds off and Ana shone again. …
“Is her name Ana?”
“You don’t even know her name! No, it isn’t Ana. What made you think of that particular name? You’d better stick with Viviana, names make no difference anyway.”
“Look,” Melkior suddenly remembered to ask, “how did you know what happened at the Give’nTake tonight?”
“How? What a strange question. I was there.”
“I didn’t see you.”
“But I saw you. Thénardier has a small room in the back, an office. He even sleeps there when there’s a wild binge. He’s got a couch in there. I use the room at times … when necessary.”
“You follow her?”
“Now and then. I play the waiting game.”
“Waiting there? At Thénardier’s, on the couch?”
“Not that literally I don’t. Freddie will soon change her for a fresh princess regent. That’s what I’m waiting for.”
“How will he change her when you said just now that it was she who …”
“… kept him as part of her toiletry? Yes. No contradiction there. He keeps her—beautified by his presence—to sit with in cafés. As soon as they start whispering ‘Freddie’s in love’ in the Theater Café, the princess regent will be replaced.”
“So he doesn’t really care for her?” Melkior’s interest was keen.
“Well … he does all right, but not in that sense. He’s rather a wimp.”
“A wimp? In what sense?”
“It’s ‘I’m not in the mood today.’ It’s ‘I can’t guarantee, I’m playing tonight.’ And so on. A male deferred.”
“How interesting!” Melkior laughed pleasurably. “So Freddie will soon …”
“He will. Word’s got around the Theater Café. It’ll be before the leaves have turned yellow. She was born on December 24, the day before Christmas. She won’t be celebrating her birthday with him. She may celebrate it with me, or even with you, but definitely not with Freddie.”
“Why me?” Melkior tried a laugh, without any convincing success. He was growing fond of ATMAN.
“You’re a serious candidate.” Adding, as if worried, “She has asked about you.”
“You’ve just made that up!” and his heart beat a crazy tattoo. This is the beginning of love, he thought.
“By no means. She asked. Freddie had warned her, because of your reviews. He hates you. With a passion.”
“I know. He tried to provoke me tonight at the Give’nTake.”
“I know. He wanted to have it out with you as well. She was egging him on. Ugo threw a wrench in the works. She wanted to see the two of you fight.”
The cloud had covered the sun again. Or is ATMAN pulling my leg? He would have loved to press him with questions, but restrained himself, with a scowl. The palmist was studying him seriously, compassionately even, as one who shared his fate. At length he cracked his long fine fingers and spread his arms like a priest at Mass, with resignation, “Oremus.”
“Oh, well, there’s no understanding them. Apparently they like that sort of thing. They like watching people run over by trams, too. The gore. The torn limbs. Whereas they sob in the cinema over the lost doggy looking for its master.”
“How did you know she was egging him on?” Melkior succumbed after all.
“She said so herself. I joined them, later on, after you left. ‘I so wanted to see a good bash.’ Bash, that’s her word. You ought to know her education is minimal. When you meet, she may well ask you what exemplar means. She’s ignorant.”
Melkior was disturbed by the information. He felt a stupid need to ask questions. “So what does she do?”
“Reads love stories. Looks for a husband. Perhaps you could … No, you couldn’t. Too ordinary. Her idea of a husband is somebody who’d stir things up. If she marries again it will have to be a scandal, in one way or another. My chances are better than yours. ATMAN the palmist. Now that’s shocking!”
“Oh, she has been married then?”
“Once. An ordinary sort of thing. To a nice, young, hard-working man. Ordinary. Her aunt Flora says she could not ‘look up to him.’ The aunt is an old maid with an Angora cat. They don’t live together.”
Better and better. But why, why was ATMAN saying all this? Was he in love with her? And what was the point of the nocturnal visit? What kind of game was this?
“What did she ask you about me?” said Melkior with a touch of the stern.
“Well, certainly not your mother’s maiden name …”
“Then what?”
“Well … there are all kinds of questions, are there not?”
“Such as?”
“Can’t a young man like you be broadly interesting to a woman like her?”
“What’s ‘broadly interesting’ supposed to mean?”
“Perhaps it’s ‘just you wait, you night owl of a hermit, you’re the absolute opposite … but I want you all the same’ … or something. And anyway, who can ever tell what intrigues a woman in a man? It’s a good job something does. I’ll introduce you to her.”
“Why? If you’ve staked your own claim … including marriage?”
“I didn’t mention marriage explicitly. But it is a possibility, as they say in the classified ads. Thing is, I am patient. And patience is a virtue. I’m letting her have her little fling first. Until she reaches the I-can-always-find-an-old-man-to-darn-socks-for stage. And I won’t be an old man all that soon; I consequently offer greater mercy. I’m gaining the edge. And you must admit she is a beauty.”
“Sure, she’s beautiful all right,” said Melkior in the tone of someone who has added a silent curse.
“Very beautiful. I’ll introduce you to her so you can see close up. Seeing tears in her eyes would make you write poetry! I myself have moments when … But hell, I don’t know how to do it, I have no talent, words elude me. I generally employ ‘heart’ and ‘sorrow,’ but it’s hardly poetry, heart and sorrow, is it? Ugo will be writing sonnets for her. He’s made a date.”
The news slashed him like a saber. Had he not sensed that she would fall for the ass?
“A date … with her?”
“Or on her, as they say in a play. Do you imagine it’s any easier for me? Only I’m armored. Patience is my armor, as I have said.”
“You really love her?”
“What’s ‘really’? I love her with all my heart, not really. To the death!”
“And yet you joke about it?”
“Perhaps it’s just my turn of speech. But I have in me a deliberate realism: I wait. After the lot of you, I want to have her finally. Do you understand—finally! After me, the flood! Is that a joke? Can’t you see I’m letting myself be crucified?”
“What about jealousy? Aren’t you jealous?”
“Of course I am. But what am I to do? Murder, strangle, poison all those whom she temporarily fancies? Temporarily, I say. It’s her I want, not your death. It’s Ugo’s turn now, or perhaps yours, I don’t care. That’s exactly why I want to introduce you to her—to accelerate the course of history. To have you finish your reign as soon as possible. I’m not saying I’m in a rush. Anyway the war’s coming closer. It will drag you all into armies, into battles for someone’s complicated Futures. I’m staying behind. It’s simple—Unfit For Service. I have a certificate signed by a general, heh heh. Perhaps you will all get killed. She doesn’t need dead men.”
The account was about to be closed. Melkior felt his skeleton inside him moving comically in front of ATMAN’S grin that was eyeing him from beyond, from life. Like in a grotesque parade, Melkior found himself in a column of history’s dead marching past life into oblivion, while up there on the stand sat the timeless, eternal ATMAN the palmist, the charmingly grinning and kindly connoisseur of the future.
ATMAN smiled politely standing in front of Melkior and offered him his fine white hand for a “good night.” Melkior did not register ATMAN’S hand, he was feeling his body as if this were an outspread, undeniable, indestructible fear of everything that moved, that breathed, that lived.
“Well, good night, Mr. Melkior.” Mr. Adam accepted Melkior’s hand and pressed it hard, in cordial friendship. “I’m sorry to have kept you so long. I badly needed to lay bare my soul to someone. I’m in pain. Good night.”
And ATMAN trudged out dejectedly like a wretch who had just confessed all his weaknesses. He closed the door behind him softly as if it were his very soul that had left.
Loneliness welled inside Melkior as a painful physical condition, as an infinitely sad sense of being lost.
Begone now, leave me be, ’tis solitude I need
softly to approach the grass, my mis
tress wild,
to tell the nettles, thorns, and prickly weed
of love for Earth in a picture green.
In the picture: dead men, with no arm or eye,
heads in helmets floating down a stream,
a headless eye watching from a tree
the dagger duels of men soon dead to be.
With mortal fear my body has grown numb
—this body of sob, of ache, of grieving herd.
Glory for country, my skin for a drum,
and my bones …
He could not remember the rest. “… will be broken by sticks and stones,” he added mechanically. Oh Lord, forgive me, Lord, forgive me. She doesn’t need dead men.
He blew through pursed lips and the air came out as a whistle. It sounded like stage wind in a Shakespearean tragedy. Quiet, you fool, you’ll have the Weird Sisters upon us! After he had clammed up there came the voice of Dom Kuzma: “Forgive me for those slaps, my son, I only meant to raise you with the fear of God.” A feeling of goodness came over him. He had been moved today by the sight of Dom Kuzma with his scrawny neck quarrelling with death on the weighing machine. He wanted to find an excuse for him. Perhaps God dislikes me and Dom Kuzma is merely here as the executor of the dislike? The entire fault lay up there. Then. Today Dom Kuzma’s hands were a discarded, condemned tool. The tyrant had rejected his faithful servant. Sent him wandering from one weighing machine to another to weigh his poor body and defraud his death gram by gram.
The death of all. There is but one death. For the crocodiles and the bumblebees, there is but one death. ATMAN knows it, the Great Spirit ATMAN the Enamored who can see the Future, even accelerate it.
In what way does the Future exist? Does there exist something that has yet to happen? If not, how can something take place that does not exist? Does there already exist the bullet which will bore through my head? That very bullet, fitted into rifle cartridge number such and such, manufactured this afternoon at a Krupp factory in Essen, which will pierce my brain in a single second selected out of all of Time for this very purpose? In my mind I follow the bullet from its birth all the way to my head: manufacture, sorting, packaging, delivery. The large ammunition convoys. With the little bastard traveling in a crate just for me. And they have determined exactly where it will arrive, to whom it is to be issued, when it will be inserted into the rifle and then … and then, in my second, bang! and I stop writing its biography. It has spat into my inkwell itself. Finito, I follow it no more. It was alive in my thought. It has killed my thought and itself. It, too, is dead. There is but one death. It exists and it shall happen, Oh Immortal ATMAN. “Divinity of hell.” A good thought before sleep, Iago, a good thought indeed …