Cyclops (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

  Melkior plunged insolently into the warm torrent of bodies, words, smells, looking impatiently for Dom Kuzma’s scrawny neck. Using his elbows and shoulders, he forced his way through the thick, tough dough of evening strollers, receiving insults and threats and “underwater” blows to the ribs. But he scarcely minded them. The pathetic soul adrift in the town so occupied his attention that he nearly yelled out loud when all of a sudden he discovered in front of him his poor corporeality preparing to cross the street. Dom Kuzma first cast a cautious look to either side and then, hesitating for a moment as if about to step into crocodile-infested waters, hurriedly crossed the insecure riverbed waving his arms about in a curious way as if really walking on water.

  “How prudent he is, the restless soul!” Melkior thought with compassion as he crossed the street with more caution than Dom Kuzma himself.

  “Trams are not what kill you nowadays, my dear sir!” remarked a passing stranger to him. He was not drunk, nor was he a meddling sneerer; holding his evening paper open, he was frightened and desperate, and wished to impart his condition to someone. Melkior decided to ignore the man. Of late, since reserve-training calls to the older age groups had begun to multiply, grifters using the “psychological” approach had appeared in town. An operator of that kind would casually cast his hook at a passerby, gauging from afar the extent of the man’s generosity. The gullible and considerate mark would easily swallow the bait, and the expert would proceed to hustle him: he had been called up, not that it mattered so much except that there were the wife, the children, the aging parents, the ailing mother-in-law (an angel!), not to mention the rent that was due and he stone broke, and winter on its way … God, I’m at my wits’ end! And he would flail his arms about in desperation, and his words would flow easily and convincingly and in the blink of an eye he would mesmerize his victim and break any attempt at resistance.

  Only the other day a man had been hurrying down the street, striding along at a fast purposeful clip. Topped by a greasy floppy hat, his shoes Chaplinian—each pointing in its own direction—his face stubbly and sad, his look worried, he acknowledged Melkior with a casual, absentminded, and almost careless greeting, as if meeting him for the fifth time that day.

  “Hello there, Filipović,” and strode on without looking back.

  Surprised, Melkior stopped in his tracks and turned. The man did not turn around right away: he merely registered that Melkior had halted. Only a moment later, still hurrying, he looked back a little, out of sheer curiosity, gave Melkior a casual wave of his hand, “Hey there,” and a pleasant smile. He was in a hurry though, he had no time for friendly banter on life and health. Melkior was still standing there, sheepishly: he couldn’t recall any previous encounter with the face. On the other hand, he knew he had not returned the man’s greeting and feared the man might take offense. He was even about to run after him, to explain himself, to apologize. But the man knew what was up, knew Melkior had stopped and was looking after him, so he, too, stopped and looked at Melkior with the smile of someone who was in no mood for smiling. Wagging his head slightly in disapproval, he made toward Melkior at a slow and seemingly patient pace. His whole behavior (when he came close) reflected embarrassment at “such an appearance” before a friend who had not even recognized him in such a state.

  “Four Eyes,” he enunciated with a feeling of utter embarrassment, mourning his cruel fate by way of his sobriquet. “I’ve changed, sure,” he added in elegiac tones, gazing mournfully into his past. His eyes actually went moist … or so it seemed to Melkior.

  “I really … can’t …” stammered Melkior, himself ashamed for some reason.

  “What? You don’t remember? Junior year of grammar school, two desks behind you … Four Eyes. Rotten grades in Latin the whole time. Ipse dixit, I was so sure I’d fix it—but I couldn’t. You went on, I lagged behind. I can still see you as you were then, your clever little head. You had sitting next to you that little … what was his name now? … Wait, it was something to eat …”

  “Tokay?”

  “… or drink, see? I knew it had to do with …”

  Melkior felt ill at ease. For all that he had never in his life known anyone called Four Eyes, this fellow was quite at home in their conversation, had even grasped him by the elbow and was shaking it in the manner of a close friend, waking boyhood memories inside him.

  Melkior fell to rummaging in his memory to see if he could winkle out this man Four Eyes from somewhere after all. Perhaps Four Eyes had really existed at some desk behind him as a modest, unobtrusive little schoolboy who was in no way remarkable? Meanwhile Four Eyes was eyeing him hopefully.

  “Well? Remember how we put horse chestnuts in the stove in wintertime, the noise they made cracking in class?”

  We did indeed … only my name isn’t Filipović!—and Melkior communicated his reservation to Four Eyes out loud.

  “Filipović?” he said in surprise and smacked himself on the forehead. “God, yes, you’re right! I’ve got it all mixed up, it’s been years, you know. God, yes, Filipović used to sit next to me, he was always writing riddles, making crosswords, reading words backwards, tractor—rot cart … Of course, you can’t be Filipović when you’re … er …”

  “Tresić,” Melkior blurted out imprudently.

  “But of course, Tresić-Pavičić! Christ, I’ve got it all …”

  “No, just Tresić. I’m just Tresić.”

  “That’s it! Why, we even called you Distressić, remember?” said Four Eyes, delighting in his own memory, so much so that Melkior unconsciously confirmed it with a nod, although he had no recollection of anyone ever calling him Distressić. “There must’ve been others who called you Tresić-Pavičić, too, and you telling them ‘Just Tresić,’ and it came out ‘Distressić.’ Somehow or other it just rolls off the tongue together, Tresić-Pavičić, like Rolls-Royce. As if Rolls could not stand on his own without Royce. Silly, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is silly,” Melkior agreed and shifted his weight from one foot to the other, which Four Eyes interpreted as impatience and showed fear.

  “In a hurry, old boy? Now me, I’m fresh out of the hospital. The old kidney problem. The doctor said, ‘We must have it out’—Four Eyes made a sharp gesture as if slicing his own side with his thumb—and I said, ‘Not so fast, doc! I’m not having my kidney pickled in alcohol,’ I said. And so, my dear Distressić, I lost a nice little job with First Croatian. I went to see the Old Man this morning. ‘The Board of Directors meets tomorrow,’ he said, ‘kindly have your resignation in by then.’ ‘With a government stamp?’ ‘Government stamp and all.’ ‘The usual? The one that costs seventy-five in change?’ ‘Seventy-five in change.’

  “Short and sweet. Goodbye—Goodbye. While I was in hospital, the wife pawned all we had. If only I had something to pawn! … but there’s nothing left. No job—no credit. I needn’t tell you, do I, you know well enough what our damned Scrooges are like. Got money to burn while you may as well croak for want of a piddling seventy five in change!”

  Four Eyes fell silent, hanging his head in expectation. It was only out of the corner of his eye that he followed, animal-like, Melkior’s embarrassed dive into the inside breast pocket, where wallets are usually stored. And surely enough Melkior took out his wallet …

  “No, please, I didn’t mean …” and Four Eyes made a belated attempt to stop his arm … “I only told you as an old … I’ve got no one to share my troubles with.”

  “Unfortunately, I …” Melkior stammered shyly. “This is all I’ve got,” he offered Four Eyes a silver fifty-dinar piece and displayed his empty wallet, “Look.”

  “Heaven forbid!” Four Eyes cried out, flinching as if frightened. “Take a fellow’s last penny? Never! I’m not that kind of guy!”

  “But it’s not my last,” Melkior was almost pleading, “I’ve got some coming tomorrow.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Quite sure.”

  “Well then … But listen, I
don’t want you lying to me! If you’re lying, then this is charity, and I won’t have that!” Four Eyes asserted with pride and added in a confidential tone, “And look, I’d like to ask you as a favor, let’s keep this between ourselves, shall we? By the way, where can I find you to pay you back?”

  “No problem, we’ll be in touch …”

  “Distressić, old boy, I can’t thank you enough. I’ll never forget it, so help me God!” He gave Melkior a hurried handshake, looking him in the eyes with sincere gratitude. “Bye then. I’m off to buy the stamps,” and he took off at the same hurried purposeful clip with which he had come into view a little while before.

  Melkior knew that Four Eyes had duped him, but had been unable to resist the extraordinary form of the effrontery. He then wisely resolved never to heed again any baited hooks thrown his way. So he now thought he’d ignore the Trams-are-not-what-kill-you-nowadays man with the newspaper and to hurry after Dom Kuzma; he had lost him again among the passersby. Nevertheless he cast a glance at the man with the newspaper out of some sort of curiosity. The other perceived the glance as a door that was opened a crack and scuttled right inside:

  “It’s not the trams that kill you these days, my dear sir, it’s this!” and he nodded at the bold headlines in the newspaper.

  Melkior read, BOMBS HIT LONDON IN WAR’S WORST RAID and, underneath, “Six Hours of Hell and Horror—Entire Quarters in Flames” … But he could picture nothing specific behind those alarming words, no dead child, crushed skull, man despairing over his demolished home and slaughtered family, none of those terrible scenes which were really there behind headlines. Melkior remained indifferent, which seemed to offend the man:

  “What do you say to that? Hardly a traffic accident, eh?” he was saying with a bitter smile, proud at being able to comprehend the extent of the horror in the headlines.

  “What can I say? You could have read the same thing yesterday and the day before …”

  “Yesterday and the day before … If it was there yesterday and the day before, does that make today less appalling?” the man asked sternly. “You don’t have to be a doctor to see that. But of course, doctors see only what it’s like to be ill when they get sick themselves. Now, what about when those people over there”—he gestured vaguely with his head—“read about us in the papers one day? When a California doctor starts muttering that the headlines are boring, always the same as yesterday, and the day before? Just because you and yours were spared yesterday and the day before, does that mean you’ll be saying today and tomorrow that everything’s the same?”

  Melkior was finding the conversation strange. … And why the devil had this man picked on no one but him?

  “Yes, well, people are funny that way,” he said, merely to end the unexpected encounter.

  “What way?”

  “Well … if one of us were to be run over by a tram they would be more upset about it than about those thousands killed in the ruins in London. Not because they like us more—simply because they don’t want to expend their imagination on things like that.”

  The man didn’t understand what Melkior was on about, and the word imagination struck him as downright offensive.

  “Imagination?” he asked sternly. He knitted his eyebrows and looked Melkior in the eye with unconcealed disapproval. “Conscience, not imagination! What’s there to imagine? Shall I pretend I’m not afraid of war? No, not for myself! Nor for the wife! I told them this morning at the Mobilization Office … They gave me papers for Apatin … I said, I’m not talking about my wife … If there’s got to be a war, I said, you won’t be canceling it for my wife’s sake. Right? But how can I look my fourteen-year-old boy in the eye and pretend to be as full of cheer as if I were going bowling when the child reads the papers and knows that the Jerries broke through the Maginot Line and took France in a month? Children are no longer babes these days. The boy knows where I’m going and he never says a word … And I hear the little ones talk: Daddy’s going to drive a tank, they say. That’s what things have come to!” and the man spread his arms, showed that they were holding nothing, empty helpless arms.

  “So you’ve been …” but the man didn’t let him finish.

  “Called up!” he cried sharply as if cursing God. “There, see for yourself: youngsters strutting about free as birds, picking up girls, while they go calling us up, the class of nineteen hundred! They told me—because I’m a driver with Impex—they told me I’d been reclassified as a tank driver. But I’ve only seen tanks in the cinema! How on earth am I going to drive one? And Russian—because they say the Russians are going to give us the tanks—Russian tanks are not designed for our kind of terrain, no sir, not by a long shot! That’s something for those bigwigs up in Belgrade to sort out, not for a simple driver like myself, right?”

  Melkior had been looking in all directions in search of Dom Kuzma and scarcely listened to the argument about the tanks. He asked the man offhandedly, only to be polite:

  “Not for our kind of terrain, you say?”

  “By no means! Those are steel fortresses, weighing upwards of ninety tons, what use can they be up our hills? This is a mountainous country.”

  “How strange …” said Melkior quite absentmindedly. He was overcome by an odd kind of queasiness at the word mobilization. “Mobilizing, aren’t they?”

  “You bet they are! My best friend’s been in since last Tuesday. Class of nineteen hundred, same as me. He’s all right, he’s a tailor, they didn’t post him, he’s stitching great coats, sleeping at home. They didn’t even cut his hair. And me they’re sending to Apatin!”

  The man had softened with self-pity, so much so that his eyes went moist. Melkior felt the pointless need to offer consolation which humans resort to when failing to find a better or more sincere feeling.

  “Who knows? Perhaps it’s only exercises. After all, there’s a war on in Europe, nobody wants to be caught by surprise.”

  “That’s just it!” cried the driver with desperation as if Melkior has guessed what he feared most. “That’s what Hitler is counting on—surprise!”

  Coming quite close to Melkior, he said in a confidential whisper, “There are Jerry spies and fifth columnists everywhere. They’ve been paddling about in rubber boats since nineteen thirty-seven, photographing the natural wonders. Tourists,” and he laughed with bitter irony as if he had found some relief in a shot of stiff drink.

  “But you’re busy,” he added, self-conscious, having noticed Melkior’s impatience. “Yes, well, we’ve all got our worries. Goodbye,” and off he went, opening his paper again with an air of importance, like a caring man among the lot of happy-go-lucky fools.

  Melkior remained where he was. What was his rush? His pity over Dom Kuzma’s fate struck him now as ridiculous. The word mobilization had filled him with a feeling of unbearable dread, the restlessness of a terrible anticipation had come over him. This was now something he would have to live with. … There appeared (childish, of course) images of deserted streets, of doors and shops boarded up. … The dead city has shut itself into its walls, with not a sound to be heard, not a light to be seen. Behind closed shutters cautious matches were struck, papers burned in stoves, things piled into suitcases: people packing, hurrying, leaving. … The streets were deserted and silent. The eerie quiet was disturbed only by an occasional government motorcar driving past at breakneck speed; it carried urgent orders: burn the documents … submit the report. … The echoes of horses’ hooves in the night, the whisper of mysterious words among the sentries, top military secrets.

  Unrealistic and childish, like Dom Kuzma’s Samson story in Melkior’s boyhood. Nevertheless Melkior found serious, military pathos in those images. He pictured himself as a muscular, strapping soldier decked out in full army gear (isn’t that what they call it) standing at attention in a column of awesome Samsons about to slay the Philistines with the jawbone of an ass. … All they were waiting for is the order from the officer on the white charger …

  Ref
lected in the plate glass window, among the shoes on display, was Melkior’s thin, unprepossessing silhouette, a poorly built city dweller. The slanting image reflected in the shop window triggered a crafty sneer inside Melkior, and the word mobilization suddenly found itself in autumn mud churned by a squelching olive drab monotony of dejected strangers on some endless trek; there was the bluster of angry sergeants, the tired voice of sodden boots, and the mysterious word “aide-de-camp.” Here was born a fear of the new events around him: the driver bound for Apatin to drive a tank … across our mountainous country. … Oh for a mountain and a forest in which to go quiet and still like an insect curled deep inside the bark of an indestructible tree: I’m not here … and to live, to live. … How to conceal one’s existence, steal from the world one’s traitorous body, take it off to some endless isolation, conceal it in a cocoon of fear, insinuate oneself into temporary death?

  Dom Kuzma had no idea that he might be the object of envy. … Arriving at a weighing machine tended by an invalid in a passageway, he doffed his hat, ran his handkerchief over his small moth-eaten head with ears—as if two angels were carrying it, ran his handkerchief over his thin sweaty neck and the inside of his hat, donned the hat, put the handkerchief in his pocket and stepped up onto the platform.

  The invalid was waiting only for him (it was getting very dark): he stirred obligingly and made a hurried stomp with his wooden leg, put on his thread-reinforced glasses and weighed Dom Kuzma with what might have been due reverence. By all appearances, Dom Kuzma was a good regular customer who had long since earned the man’s full confidence. The question of confidence was key here.

  The patient whose life depends on testimony from a common weighing machine is likely to have little confidence in a commercial device (which was after all invented for the purpose of deceiving), and even less in its master. He is suspicious and thinks everyone is out to con him, to do him out of several precious decagrams, of the last thing supporting his life—his very life, my friend!