Cyclops (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

  A new law on the invalid’s machine: Earth attracts the starving body of Melkior Tresić with a force that is directly proportional to his army weight and inversely proportional to his resistance. The war being W, a constant. Constantina.

  Constance! Could that be Viviana’s true name? He subsequently found he liked the meaning of the word very much. More so than the word itself. An ugly name, really, but its heart was in the right place …

  He walked with a queer feeling of weight inside. This was a disruption to his ever-scrupulously-tidy mind. It was as if someone had brought a foreign piece of furniture into his familiar, private domestic realm of peace. Apparently he couldn’t accommodate, he couldn’t accept the change without frowning and resisting. Normally, when he was left alone with himself he was able to resume his train of thought as if it were an interrupted game of chess, with the situation precisely defined; but now somebody had been tampering with the chess pieces, changing their positions, leaving a muddle behind. … He could not abide disorder. Everything inside and around him had to be in its place. Defined, arranged to a certain logic, a system of his for classifying things by value, importance—a subjective, ridiculous hierarchy that made no crucial, objective sense. But it was so important to him that he was apt to climb back up to his third floor just to take out a book and put it “in its proper place” because … There was no because, it simply had to be that way for some reason he couldn’t explain.

  This is a stain of some sort of poison spreading inside me. It’s a stain … I wasn’t wary enough to take care, to take care. It’s Enka’s lust that has overflowed over, over … what? He was climbing the stairs to his room to the accompaniment of such faux musings. Everything was unclean, everything insincere! Including the autumn with its faux sky, faux heat, with its greenery tired and withered like the face of old age done up with cosmetics. There were supposed to be rains, sad, autumnal, and yellow leaves in the parks and the sound of wind in the trees, the days gray and gloomy, the nights long and wet and monotonous. Verlaine. Les sanglots longs des violons de l’automne … A surrender to sorrows, a relaxation, ease. Instead, this is all tense expectation outside the operating theater. Inside, the mystery of the to-be-or-not-to-be alternatives is under way. It’s no longer a question, my good prince, it’s a matter of waiting. The only question is: When? When will the blood-stained surgeon slice into my navel and reconnect me to Mother Earth who exerts this gravitational pull on me out of love? But I take away her force. I foster my antigravity using ascetic, saintly, angelical means. Wings will sprout out of my anti-Earth and I will take off for the disinterested, neutral, suprapatriotic, suprahuman skies. I shall hitch myself to a cloud and swing above you, Mère-Folle, I, your crazy son, Melkior Tresić the spider.

  “Ah! Hail-fellow-well-met!” ATMAN surprised him on the stairs. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Adam?” Melkior spoke like someone ambushed by a loan shark.

  “She’s here,” whispered Mr. Adam straight into his ear, so that the vowels tickled him deep inside his Eustachian tube.

  “She’s in here, in my room,” whispered ATMAN confidentially, as if making preparations for a murder.

  “Yes? What have I got to do with …?” But these were not words turned over in the mind in advance, it was just the tongue knitting a small mask for the palmist’s benefit.

  “I promised to invite you when she came by, did I not? Well, she has come. Unexpectedly. I’ve already been upstairs looking for you, in your room.”

  The palmist spoke with elation, as one speaks of an extraordinarily joyous event. He had the air of a man exalted and aquiver. Nervously interlacing his long white fingers, he was making small bows to Melkior like a shop assistant enjoining a window-shopper to step in and have a closer look at the merchandise.

  “Won’t you come in, Mr. Melkior? We have been waiting for you.”

  “But why? She’s your guest, isn’t she?” In fact, he was afraid. Trembling at the very thought that he did wish to go in and was actually going to go in at any moment now. Oedipus facing the Sphinx! But he knew the answer to the riddle, “What animal walks on four feet … on two feet … on three feet …”

  “I don’t think we ought to put this off any longer.” ATMAN was already nudging him toward the door. “Whatever will she think we’re doing out here?”

  The room was spacious. ATMAN had divided it, using a plush double curtain, into a dark anteroom-cum-waiting-room and a studio, which doubled as his bedroom. Melkior stepped into the dark and put out his arms like a blind man. ATMAN was still guiding him by the arm—or rather holding him captive.

  “Would you believe he’s afraid of you?” he called through the curtain to her over there in the well-lit part of the room. She shrieked a little laugh, which meant nothing, or merely, “How amusing.”

  The palmist pushed the curtain aside and ushered Melkior into the room. She had clearly taken up a pose for the encounter: she was sitting crossways on the sofa, her legs out in front of her, a thick volume on her knees. Melkior recognized it as a book of his—a translation of Alfred Adler’s Individual Psychology; ATMAN used its size to impress his customers.

  “Here he is,” the palmist said as he set Melkior before her like a wooden dummy. “Introduce yourselves.”

  In reply to his Tresić she mumbled out some name or other and immediately said with genuine modesty:

  “I should be afraid of you—you’re a critic.”

  “You have nothing to be afraid of,” Melkior replied with conviction.

  “That’s right, is it not? Nothing!” ATMAN jumped with delight. “And let me tell you he’s not just being flattering!”

  The corners of her lips curled upward with pleasure. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful … the words were dripping sweetly inside Melkior like honey being poured out golden-transparent, slowly, long, lazily. She had spread her skirt peacocklike about herself on the sofa so that her waist in the high-necked tight pullover showed itself slim, narrow, and the breasts, large, round, jutted out proudly, self-confident. The hair light brown, slick, drawn into a chignon, two thin laughter lines—that’s what makes her look older. But the eyes, the mouth, the chin … no, I’ll never be kissing them, concluded Melkior and this gave him a sense of inner peace, a resigned satisfaction.

  “This is your book, isn’t it?” She raised her pretty, bright eyes toward him. “And you’ve read all of it?”

  “Yes,” said Melkior with a shade of embarrassment.

  “What about you, MacAdam? Have you read all of it, too?” she asked scornfully of ATMAN.

  “Of course I have. That is, I haven’t finished it yet. But I am in the middle of reading it …”

  “But what do you need it for? Those old hags of yours? Mr. Trešèec is a teacher … You are a teacher, aren’t you?”

  “Bachelor’s degree in philosophy,” answered Melkior, aware that his ears had gone red, and added for good measure, “And my name is Tresić.”

  “Yes, well, Professor Tresić. I heard it the first time. Sorry.” She blushed slightly, which Melkior took as small change for his fiery ears and felt good.

  “I don’t understand a word of this. I tried to read it. What’s com-pen-sa-tion?”

  “There you are—exemplar. What did I tell you?” ATMAN gave a happy jump and snapped his fingers with satisfaction.

  “You shut up, I wasn’t asking you!” she snapped. The palmist hung his head in shame, ingratiatingly, like a child who has intruded on a grownup conversation. But he was smiling with a corner of his eye, slyly.

  What kind of relationship did they have then? Melkior was saddened by her authoritative intimacy with the palmist. Why was she free to use such a tone? But he noticed immediately, with doubled sadness, the way ATMAN took pride in showing Melkior her behavior. As if it was his right not to be offended by it, to take it as something familiar, domestic. He even grinned at Melkior—“This is the kind of terms we’re on, get it?”

  He
felt dreadfully lonely in their company. He thought it best to leave while he still stood a minimal chance of having got it all wrong. But he found it hard to relinquish her presence. Better to risk a horrible revelation than interrupt this happy moment … Rubbish! they’re acting out a charade for my benefit. This is a trap! He realized it in a flash. ATMAN had set up this ambush: they had been lying in wait with that book on her knees. With com-pen-sa-tion.

  “Do sit down, please, Mr. Melkior,” the palmist got suddenly fussy and flashed him a servile grin. “You’ve frightened him, kitten. Won’t you sit down here, on the sofa? You won’t mind him sitting next to you, will you? But why do you hesitate, Mr. Melkior? Don’t be afraid, she’s only arrogant with me. Am I right, kitten—he’s not to be afraid of you? There, the kettle’s boiling.”

  “You’re talking nonsense, Mac. You’re making me look the monster,” she said flirtatiously. “Please sit down, Mr. Tresić, I should be truly glad to learn something from you. All these characters ever do is talk nonsense.”

  “These characters are mostly me,” explained the palmist with a pride of sorts. “You are so kind, kitten, thank you very much. But at least I know what compensation is—which Freddie for one does not, I’ll stake my life on that.”

  “Freddie’s a dolt,” she said in irritation. “And so are you. You only differ from him as much as a melon differs from a pumpkin.”

  “Well, at least that makes me the melon. Admit it—I’m the melon, right?”

  “No, you are not!” She showed her beautiful teeth, spitefully. “Melons are sweet.”

  “There you are, I’m not even a melon. Did you hear her, Mr. Melkior—not even a melon.”

  ATMAN placed a small coffee table near the sofa, laughing brightly. Melkior noticed the table had already been set with three teacups. So everything had been planned ahead, premeditated. This actually alarmed him: what are they up to with me?

  “So Freddie’s the sweet one, then,” prattled the palmist brightly, laughing, fetching butter, liver paste, sliced sausage, cheese, bread, doing it all with hostlike, familiar alacrity, with measured, feminine motions. “Whereas I’m the pumpkin, ha-ha. A squash.” He poured out the fine fragrant dark amber tea, smiling at some unspoken thought of his. “Shall I spread some páté for you, kitten? It’s genuine liver paste, fat-free. Do help yourself, Mr. Melkior. I recommend the sausage, it’s very good indeed. A bit on the spicy side, just the thing for us men.”

  Melkior’s beast gave a start and trembled with hunger. It fell to voraciously gobbling the food with its eyes. But Reason gave the beast a bash on the maddened snout and calmly proclaimed:

  “No, thank you very much, Mr. Adam, I’m straight from lunch … Just a cup of tea will be fine. Thank you.”

  “Straight from lunch? You’ve given up then? A wise thing, if you ask me. I mean, what’s the use? I keep asking myself if it really made sense. That treatment you’re in for, as it were. Women go through it for their figure, which is also …” he gave a hopeless gesture and a benevolent smile.

  “Yes, I heard that, too, about you undergoing a treatment. But I don’t think you should really, you’re far too thin.” Her teeth sank into a thick layer of páté. She bit off a mouthful and fell to chewing daintily.

  “Who told you that?” Melkior asked fearfully. “Ugo? He’s made up some sort of cock-and-bull story about me and is peddling it about in the Cafés. He’s mad.”

  “Ugo? Ugo who?”

  The one you slept with last night, you bitch! She read some such thought in Melkior’s look and her eyes flashed with malice for an instant, but she drove it all away with a very surprised smile.

  “Mac, do I know this Ugo character?”

  “By my method of reckoning time you’ve known him since last night,” mumbled ATMAN through a mouthful of food, vengefully. “The wounded guy last night at the Give’nTake, the one you ministered to.”

  “Oh, the one Freddie clouted?” she remembered very convincingly. “The poor man, he had blood all over his mouth. That brute packs a punch.” She laughed aloud, throwing back her head on the sofa backboard. “But he was absolutely brilliant, poor Ugo. I had no idea what his name was.”

  So much the worse. An unknown with an unknown. Perhaps even … Ugo’s meaning was now clear. An unknown physiognomy steps into our lives, out of nowhere. Our smooth (smooth, eh?) sailing is boarded by a mysterious passenger who instantly steals our entire sense of reality. Sucks our willpower dry, and our secret wanderings begin. Through a terrain of illusions.

  Melkior was already feeling helplessly drawn into this woman’s magnetic field. He did not even know her name yet. The damnation —the sense of letting go, the senseless fattening of one’s vanity. The words which issued from the charming mouth to sail through space following the most pedestrian auditory patterns assumed higher significance in our intricately distorted mind. We readily spread underneath them our ridiculous expectations, our hopes, for each word to drop where we chose. To cover, cleanse, comfort, delight, stroke, caress, to bite, cut, to draw blood and inflict pain, for that, too, now and then, is something our vanity needs.

  Do I love her? And he glanced at her in step with the question … as if to make a snap check. Don’t speak to me of love! Here, if she were to fall on her back right now in death throes, mouth frothing and body in torment, if I were to see death in her eyes—would I go out of my mind with fear, with despair at the loss? And there surfaced, by way of reply, an entirely cold, cynically grinning wish that this should actually happen, that she should die right here and now, in agony. There’s love for you!

  He hated her. He hated her with a motivated, cruel hatred, which was taking its revenge in advance for the future. His future. For there had already sprouted a shoot of pain inside him, he knew it had, and he was watching his tender stalk sway its bitter fruits.

  “He’s a poet as well, isn’t he?” she asked, but didn’t wait for an answer. “He recited me some poetry. I don’t remember any of it, but it was very beautiful. I mean, soulful,” she corrected herself, noticing an ironic twitch of Melkior’s lips. “I believe Ugo’s an excellent actor. Better than Freddie anyway.” ATMAN gave Melkior a look: what did I tell you? His face shone with professional triumph.

  “Better as an actor, too, did you hear that, Mr. Melkior?” ATMAN’S face dissolved into ambiguity: two conflicting expressions were mingling there like two opposing winds on a water surface; his face was slightly shivering both with hatred and a genteel smile. “So Freddie’s quite without talent, is he?”

  “Do you know what he did to him?” she turned to Melkior for help. “It was the opening night of I forget which play and Freddie was having this wonderful scene all to himself, and this Othello here …”

  “That’s not true!” the palmist interrupted her, alarmed. “It wasn’t me, it wasn’t me.”

  “It was you, yourself!” she outshouted him. “You eat pigeons.”

  “What’s this got to do with me eating pigeons? I ask you, Mr. Melkior! She’s crazy, is she not?”

  “Crazy, eh? You know what he did? Freddie was just into his big scene, dramatic pause and all, you know how it goes. Everyone was dead silent, you could have heard a feather drop, and at that very moment this man …”

  “I told you it wasn’t me. It was his fellow actors who did it, out of spite.”

  “And this man, would you believe it, lets loose a pigeon from the box where he is sitting! You must have been there, surely you remember?”

  Yes, Melkior did remember the pigeon. Freddie’s soliloquy had indeed fallen flat. The women protected their hairdos, believing the assailant to be a giant bat. The pigeon kept hurtling into the darkness of the box, into the galleries, terrified, miserable, panicking for its columbine life. There was a pigeon hunt on all over the place, nobody took any further interest in the play. The hunting interlude went on for a long time before it occurred to the pigeon to make for the stage and up to the dome where at last it settled down.

  “T
here you are, Mr. Melkior, is she possessed by the devil or is she not? Even the devil himself wouldn’t have …”

  “… could have come up such a nasty prank,” she completed his sentence with malicious glee.

  “But I tell you it wasn’t me. I would have owned up, now. I might have done it if I’d been able to think of such a thing, but I’m afraid I’m not as clever as you. I’m just not. The pigeon must have flown in on his own through a hole in the roof—they have their nests up there …”

  “Oh my pigeon!” she sang derisively. “You did think of it, it came to you as you were going after pigeons up in the attic. He eats pigeons, you know. And how does he kill them? He drowns them. Imagine those darling little heads that look at you so coquettishly, well he pushes them under water till they drown! Oh, Mac, you are a butcher.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, kitten, you eat pigeons—right, Mr. Melkior? You must drown them to keep the blood in the flesh.”

  “Do you hear what this cannibal is saying about blood and flesh? Shut up, you horrible man!” and she turned away from him capriciously. “All right, sir, I know you don’t like Fred, you’ve never given him a good review, but I’m sure you would never do such a beastly thing to him. While Mac here … He pretends to be his bosom pal, mind you. Fred was marvelous, if it hadn’t been for the stupid prank with the pigeon he would have got a round of applause on stage, but he loosed the pigeon himself! No, you’re a terrible Jesuit! Don’t believe a word he says, Mr., Mr. Trecić.”

  “Better use my first name,” said Melkior, offended, “you seem to have difficulty remembering my last. My name is Melkior.”

  “That’s even worse. Did I make a mistake?” she said coyly. “Why do you dislike Fred?”

  “Well, you don’t have to love everyone, do you?”

  “But Fred isn’t everyone. He’s a prominent artist. A protagonist. What are you smirking for, you sadist, isn’t protagonist the right word?”

  “Oh, definitely, kitten, definitely. Exemplar!” and ATMAN gave Melkior a wink.