“Nonsense!” Freddie forced the word through his teeth in unrestrained intellectual disgust as the reporters’ cheeks puffed up with choked back laughter in expectation of Maestro’s rejoinder.
“Nonsense, Frederick, that the Jesuits took a leg for a leg?” asked Maestro patiently.
“The whole story’s nonsense!” said Freddie with undiminished disgust. “That bit about the sawing is the biggest idiocy of the lot. The church, too … How can there be a church in the middle of a forest?” He was trying to show he was nobody’s fool.
The reporters exploded with laughter. Melkior laughed, too, but in a private, separate way, because he was only standing by their table and did not seem entitled to full participation. But Freddie chose none other than Melkior’s “separate” laughter for venting his anger. In addition this was an opportune occasion, there were old scores to settle …
“Look who’s laughing!” he looked Melkior up and down from below. “Plucked a feather from a hen’s bum and took it up to scribble, the hack!”
Melkior said nothing, but he was no longer laughing. He felt the color draining from his face and anger raging in his bloodstream, bestial, murderous. Don Fernando flashed for an instant in his memory: I now have an evil look in my eyes. He failed to decide right away to spin on his heel and leave, and made an immediate note of the mistake. Now he had to stay on, even if only a moment longer.
“All our means of expression come from one bum or another, Frederick,” said Maestro, coughing hoarsely. “Eustachius’s quill, as you have observed, is from a hen’s, and your speaking trumpet is from a human’s. You’re at a higher evolutionary level, no offense meant.”
Right. Melkior’s side had won and he could now leave. It was another blow dealt to the adversary: departing with a triumphant smile.
Maestro shouted something after him, he required his presence still.
“Frederick, you exude the reek of cretinism,” was the last he could hear from behind, as bait for his return.
Where to? Perhaps chance would toss him some small pleasure. To run into Viviana. He had still believed it possible this morning, for love will cultivate just such a religion: that of chance which sometimes transforms the world in an instant, granting the desperate man a rare boon.
He watched the shop windows. He saw nothing but himself. A narcissist projection, he thought. He winked conspiratorially at his reflection in the window, noticing only some instants later that a shop girl who was arranging something in the window had smiled at him from inside. He looked back without breaking his stride: she was still gazing at him, with the same smile on her face. Pretty. There was a chance. The possibility of starting something new. If he now returned and signaled to her: I’ll be waiting on the corner at noon. He would gesture at his watch, count to twelve on his fingers, nod toward the corner, she would give a slight nod, coquettishly lowering her eyelids; she’d agree, happily. Or she would stick her tongue out: take that, you creep! What do you take me for? I’m not that kind of girl. I’m not for sale. They get better offers. Freddie’s hatred is terrible. Murderous. For the sake of twelve female fans. Apostles. Fallen for him. The fallen angels. Is this the region, this the soil, the clime? Everything has its own devil. On top of us and inside us. The patron devil of motion and function. The devil has now set my legs in motion, taking me … where? Well, he will have seen to that.
In a shop window, an elegantly dressed mannequin was in a discreetly balletic stance, a sly expression. Embarrassed at being watched by all and sundry. Melkior gave her a long, hard look. She dropped her eyes in shame. She would have fled if she could. Well, Melkior said to her, that’s what you’re there for, miss—to be looked at. He was trying to imagine her naked. I may have seen you naked, come to that. Many a time had he watched the mannequins at night being changed in shop windows behind carelessly drawn gray curtains. Like in a charmed brothel, those stiff, waxen anemic naked ladies with the faces of virgins. The Pompeiian Lupanar after Vesuvius erupted. He was trying to imagine her naked: the gray fabric flowing down her narrow, curved hips, fitting closely in front over the daintily convex delicate breasts. Tits, he said, because he had stripped her naked. He found himself weirdly lusting after the dainty dead girl. And the painful source of lustful restlessness was surfacing gradually as a fear of the similarity of that waist, those (slender) long legs, the narrow hips, those breasts, that fetching motion frozen in mid-stride, those slim, long fingers which she held slightly splayed like a bather going in for a dip. Look—all of it was actually moving in the window: the legs were beginning to walk, the hips to sway, the arms to swing; all of a sudden Viviana emerged from the mannequin! He thought he had gone mad. But no, it was Viviana moving in the window. She was crossing the street. He drew into himself, staring alarmed at her reflection in the glass. The sun was beaming down all over her, she was carrying radiance. He was already blinded by the terrible glare, and his eyes no longer saw anything. But he sensed with his whole body the approach of the fateful star from the mind-numbing skies of chance. He was being demolished inside by a dreadful disorder in his body and mind and thought. He could make nothing of his entire self except for a chaotic sense of awe. Could chance be so cruel as to catch him totally unprepared? He was aware of his long nose and moronically grinning face. And his arms: long, ponderous. He tucked his hands into his pockets. He felt relieved after this little act of tidying up. After achieving a clearer, better defined, more masculine image of a blasé gad about town with his hands in his pockets, an aimless, boredom-driven stroller. The difference that hands in pockets made! It was a great discovery of salvation, as if a comet were approaching. He was ready for a collision of worlds.
The shop window had attracted her attention. But he thought she had spotted him and went immobile like an insect faking death. He got interested in something or other down there in the corner, he even bent down to take a closer look. The eccentric; God knows what he’d discovered. She had flown up to the window like a butterfly, indeed she collided with the glass in her greed of watching; he heard a slight tap, that must have been her forehead. He felt his playacting falling flat and was out of his role again. There were his hands—not in his pockets—and the nose, and the moronic face. And he made an attempt to flee the stage. The movement near her broke off a morsel of precious attention (a male was standing there, after all) and she discovered him like a frightened cricket in the grass. He surrendered. Mercy.
“Well? What do you fancy?” she asked suddenly.
“Her,” he said pointing at the mannequin. He was being “bizarre.” “She looks like you.”
“The mannequin? I don’t know whether I ought to take offense.” As indeed she didn’t. She was smiling irresolutely, fifty-fifty, just in case.
“She’s awfully well built.” He had his hands in his pockets again by now, and that was how he delivered his line: hands-in-pockets style. He was pleased to be carrying it off.
“Yes, that’s all you men care for—the body.”
The body disturbed his diaphragm, queasily. Maestro had sold his body to the clinic, yes, but the word she had chosen hurt Melkior much more intimately, more sadly, like grief over the loss of a kind of innocence.
“You’re frowning? Would you say it wasn’t true?”
“What?” He was losing the thread. Chance’s festivity had been disturbed.
“That men …”
“… have generally had their way with her? No doubt.”
She gave him a surprised and hurt look. “Who are you talking about?”
“Her,” and he nodded in the direction of the mannequin. “I’ve seen her naked at night, being pawed by men. Lustfully, with no tenderness at all. I think they’re all harlots, those shop window dolls.”
She was laughing. But seeing that he was not, she got serious and anxious. “How strange.” And she touched him with her hand like someone touching a sleepwalker to wake him.
He had come to feel at home playing the madman and was loathe to abando
n the role so soon. He felt confident and superior in psychological games where she could not follow him while he could say just about anything in lunatic allegories.
“Those shop windows are nothing but small-time brothels. The girls stripping naked at night, receiving customers, mainly shop assistants who behave like impoverished princes of dethroned dynasties. All but dancing with them.”
She gave a short, insecure laugh.
“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about, Mr. Tresić. Have you by any chance been celebrating something today?”
“Drinking? No.” He was feeling a kind of wretched happiness; fearing that it was going to leave him, he quickly went on in Ugo’s manner: “ ‘No, my lady, no, I’m sober indeed, of intoxication. I have no need when in such a fetching patch of sky, made golden by the sun on high, I behold …’ and so on. We could have a drink somewhere though. But not at the Theater, if you please. Maestro and Freddie are in there, unless one or the other isn’t dead by now.”
“They can both be for all I care,” she said coldly and maliciously. “I’m afraid I can’t have that drink. I’ve been making a round of the shops all morning, looking for some fabrics for my aunt. Why don’t you come along to keep me company—if you have nothing more worthwhile to do, that is.”
“More worthwhile—well …” he made a sweeping movement with his hand as if to indicate something far away. “But I truly have nothing more pleasant to do,” he said with unrestrained delight. “I’ll follow you anywhere, even to … Cythera, which doesn’t exist, Viviana.”
“Funny you should say that. I had almost forgotten about my name. I like what you call me very much.”
“So do I. But Viviana doesn’t exist either. I invented her.”
“I thought I was Viviana?”
“You are and you aren’t. You are to me. Or not. What you really are I don’t want to know. Nonny nonny no—I don’t want to know.”
“Singing?” She was laughing. His elation flattered her.
“That was the Duke of Mantua’s aria. Does my singing bother you?”
“Not at all. Do go on.”
“Unfortunately that was the end of the aria.”
“You’re such an amusing fellow. That time at MacAdam’s I thought you were a horrible pessimist.”
So much for “exemplar,” thought Melkior in passing.
“Indeed I am something of the kind on working days. But today’s a holiday. Incidentally, why do you call my friend MacAdam?”
“That’s what that stinking, rotten …”
“Maestro?”
“Yes. That’s what Maestro calls him. There’s a language, he says, where it’s the word for asphalt. Stupid as asphalt, he meant.”
“And you hate him terribly?”
“Mac?”
“No, Maestro.”
She halted in front of a shop window. Offended. To avoid replying. But Melkior, too, seemed to have vaporized beside her: she was totally absorbed in observation, taking no further notice of his presence.
He felt miserable and superfluous. He followed her faithfully and dejectedly. She went into shops with the self-important dignity of a grand customer. Rifling, plucking, touching, pinching … Pushing away mountains of fabric. He could see the assistants’ sweaty armpits: lifting their arms, taking down bolts of cloth from the shelves, stars from the sky, here you are, Miss, rolling out the bolts with easy sweeping gestures, intoning the usual textile lauds. She turning away with the fetching disgust of an overpampered taste, spotting this, that, the other, it can’t be, you had it only yesterday, here, let me see that one up there, no, not that, darn!, hands up, armpit sweat, armpit smell, oh for fresh air! Give it a miss, Miss! The mess on the counter tops, the multicolored massacre of merchandise. You don’t seem to have anything I need. The grand exit. Dignified. Taste above all.
Melkior felt the shame of shared guilt for torture inflicted. But he went on following her docilely like an Ivan, a servant, a martyr. She gave him only an occasional smile to show that she now acknowledged his presence. The insult of it he felt only later, when considering the small kindness thrown his way. But the kindness began recurring at ever shorter intervals as an apology, as tidbits to a lapdog, as a reward for fidelity. And he followed her with gratitude, aquiver with the pleasure of her nearness. A wealth of curves moving within reach. The up-down-up-down of the two exquisite hemispheres of most holy flesh (kiss left, kiss right), the rustle of tightly stretched stockings, of full legs passionately fondling each other in the skirt’s semidarkness, joined to the Mound of Venus, to the Delphian gorge at the foot of Parnassus. Oh Pythian mystery, Oh weird sister, will I ever be the thane of Viviana? Nay, you shall be more, king, you shall be king! screamed the astounded Fool as if seeing the blood of one murdered in his sleep. He hankered for grapes, for the eating of grapes: the crisp globules popping open between the teeth (the cranky worm? it’s in the apple), the juice flowing down the throat, the sun’s sweet juice that has not matured to the vertigo of fermentation and become wine-the-lad, the alcohol brave. Ugo drinks the must, acidy-sweet, at the Give’nTake, at doctor’s orders, he has a spot on his liver. From alcohol. For he’s a jolly good fellow. October’s gentle breath …
“He’s nowhere to be seen today,” he said, glumly contemplating the barrow of the man who bought used bottles and kept shouting at the top of his voice that he did. For Glassville, he thought in passing. “Was he out drinking last night?”
She gave him a cursory interrogative look, but all her attention was directly sucked in by the shop window.
“Because he usually makes a night of it,” insisted Melkior, as if he meant to extort an admission from her. “He would still be asleep now.” He looked at his watch: “Why, of course, it’s not ten yet. He’s asleep.”
“Who’s asleep?” she asked distractedly, absorbed in some fresh textile phenomenon in a display. “What do you think of the yardage over there for a two-piece suit? A nice classical one, close-fitting, eh? Let’s go in to have a closer look—it doesn’t look bad in the window. Who did you say was asleep? I’ll be disappointed again when I see it up close, I know myself. It all looks lovely in the window, but as soon as I take the stuff in my hands it feels like matting, like a horse blanket. Sackcloth, really. I’m awfully unhappy when I have to buy something. I keep thinking there’s got to be something better somewhere else. That’s the story of my life. I always end up disappointed.”
Sure enough, she bought nothing this time either. She had everything taken down from the shelves, turned the lot upside down, and went out again. Disappointed.
“What did I tell you?” she said all hot and bothered, splotches coming out all over her face. Who is she angry at? She’s gone a bit ugly even, he smirked to himself with a kind of glee. Look, she’s even got tears in her eyes!
“No, no, I tell you,” she said, barely managing to hold back the tears. “Nothing ever works for me. Nothing, nothing, ever! Don’t laugh at me, it’s true.”
“I’m not laughing,” but inside he was, impudent and vengeful. He was deriding the mannequin-like sorrow that robbed him of the importance of his existence with her, making him a lonely companion: he was trotting along by her side all but unnoticed. He suffered grumpily. Homeomeries, the great-grandmothers to atoms, the seed of the world according to Anaxagoras, I know about them, too. He was reminding himself of his own importance, to prevent himself from sinking. He was clutching at straws. At homeomeries. Embraced by Aristotle, too. How well-shaped and pretty her mouth is, the lower lip slightly swelling—for a kiss! But no, it’s not only a kiss. Oh love, for delights! The subjective derivative of proliferation. The bait. The biblical apple. The warbling. Come to me, darling, we’ll have a lovely time. Enka naked. Kior! Oh, Kior …
He kept trying to ward off the black fillings in Ugo’s wide-open, lustful mouth, which guzzled lechery with kisses. The fleshly feminine existence. If I am then I am what am I. The pride of the body. The breasts making their announcement in advance, trum
peting to the world to tell it who is coming. The fascinating damned holy leg tapping the patient Earth’s head with pointed sandal, the elevation of the rump. Here she comes, here comes the proudly exalted empress of the world. Noses jerking after her, eyes staring, tongues dropping. The great drooling of mankind. While NATURE, the old seductress, the Madam of The Great Brothel, murmurs contentedly, Aren’t my girls lovely?
“I buy bottles! Bottles! Old newspapers, bottles!” the voice of one crying in the wilderness, issuing a final warning. Vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas. Repent while ye still have time. The Great Pestilence is upon us. It’s ravaging these lands. Say your prayers and sell your bottles. Old newspapers, too. Bottles.
“I just don’t see what they want those newspapers for,” she spoke up derisively. “Forever whining about things. Now, the bottles I can understand … but the old newspapers? What can they possibly need trash for?”
“To cook and recook, and make into new newsprint.”
“New newspapers from old? No wonder you can’t find anything worth reading in the papers. Just a load of rubbish, nothing but war and bombs. They’ve nothing better to do.”
“While they could be weaving marquisette …” Where had he come up with “marquisette”? He wondered himself.
“Why marquisette?” But the penny dropped: “You’re making fun of me, aren’t you? Well, I did tell you I was looking for cloth … for Aunt Flora. But there’s no point in boring you. I’ll go on alone.”
Melkior was afraid she might abandon him mid-street. “No, Viviana, please don’t, I’m not bored at all. I only said, wouldn’t it be more useful to weave pretty fabrics for pretty women? To make the world a more beautiful place. Then you’d find what you’re looking for.”
“Ah, if only I knew what I’m looking for!” she admitted with a sincere smile. “I have to find it first to discover what it was I was looking for. I’m over the moon when I finally find it. And I don’t mean just the cloth—that’s who I am.”