Melkior was silent, afraid of this being a trap. The boys nudged each other in the ribs, their cheeks bursting with laughter.
“Well, here’s a fine kettle o’ fish!” Nettle was dejected, omnipotently so. “An in-tel-lec-tual who don’t know what a prima donna is? Didya hear that, my sorry lads?” he asked the men.
The men knew the moment has not yet come and they bit their tongues. “What are ya—a civil engineer?” Nettle asked Melkior as if he had known his father.
Melkior knew it was time to step into Nettle’s trap—further resistance might only worsen the man’s mood …
“A teacher,” he mumbled.
“Don’t say! Teach!” Nettle was overjoyed at the news. “So you oughta know how to turn off a lightbulb, then?”
“Er … yes, I do.” He could not help but reply; it was the rules. He even mimed the switching off of a light switch, to increase the merriment.
“Oh, like that,” Nettle was disappointed (and the men were still keeping a straight face), “well, anyone can do it like that, even Numbskull here,” and he pointed at a little soldier with a constantly bewildered face. “Right, Numbskull? Now you know how, dontcher?”
“Know what, Sergeant?” Numbskull was not paying attention, he hadn’t been following the exchange …
“How to turn off a light.”
“Yes I do, Sergeant. By barking!” Numbskull rattled this off like a lesson learned by heart.
“Barking at what?”
“The lightbulb, of course.”
The stable echoed with a burst of laughter, which made the very horses neigh—they, too, found this hilarious.
“You’re lying!” Nettle was outshouting both men and horses, “you’re lying!”
Damned Numbskull had spoiled his fun! That was why the silly idiots were laughing—laughing at him, blast ’em …
“You bark at it, eh? All right, Numbskull—go on, get barking. Bark at the one over your head,” Nettle was taking his revenge. “Bark at it till it goes out. Now!”
And Numbskull started to bark, sharply and earnestly, like the worst tempered of dogs.
But Nettle was not winning: Numbskull seemed to enjoy it. He barked in all registers and tonalities, interpreting various types of canine character—various scenes, too. He whimpered like a pampered poodle, snarled like a mean flesh-ripping boxer, barked in the formal sluggish manner of a chained guard dog, shrilled in a frenzy like a stupid hysterical dog shunned by bitches, yapped merrily teasing the passersby like a roving ownerless dog, and howled piteously as though his master had died the day before. He really had barking down pat. He had them all admiring him, even emotionally moved, there was muttering in the row.
And Melkior envied him. Why the devil hadn’t he known how to turn off a light! (Well, now it was obvious—by barking! Yes, it was obvious, now; like Columbus’s egg. Nuts to you!) He would now have been standing there under the lightbulb and barking away to his heart’s content as if singing under the Christmas tree: “Angels we have heard on high …”
He would not have been forced to approach the great Caesar and beg for mercy from his hoof. For Caesar was a horse known in this stable for his imperial whims. Perhaps he would have deigned to accept only someone who matched him for greatness, some horseman of renown, Colleoni, Gattamelata, Napoleon, not you, shorn-to-the-skin recruit Melkior, full of human fear. Bucephalus would let no one come near him but Alexander known as the Great, Bucephalus was afraid of his own shadow … What are you afraid of, Oh illustrious Caesar? The Ides of March? Shall we ask ATMAN—he will know. Well, it might be later or it might be earlier, dear Caesar, who’s to know about all the beastly tricks that you horses and horsemen use to make history? Anyway, your Capitol is definitely on the cards, you’ll be neighing the famous tu quoque soon enough.
He was hating Caesar and mocking him. And Caesar snorted to placate him “don’t worry” and swished his tail hypocritically.
Sure, don’t worry … and then you’ll make with the hoof! You thick-headed envious brute, you’ll smash all my ribs yet! Damn you and your entire warrior race!
We didn’t want to go to war—they made us do it.
They made you do it? For all your strength? So why didn’t you bite and kick them? Why didn’t you bristle like a cat and throw them? Instead of tormenting an innocent young man here now. Yes, but those were famous horsemen (you were not ridden by Socrates or Plato). The combat bugling, the charges, the gallops! … Monuments in impressive postures! Neither Homer nor Shakespeare nor Dante has such monuments as you, Horse the Great! You’ve become a major celebrity indeed!
“To the horses!” bellowed Nettle suddenly, fit to shake the stable. And the words gave birth to a weird bedlam: human and equine voices mingling to produce a horrible shrilling (they feared each other), neighing and the screams of those kicked by the hooves. The men rushed in, storming the stalls, and there went up a terrible supplicant shouting:
Prince, stand!
Lisa, stand!
Boy, stand!
Ziko, stand!
………
………
………
in voices full of wretched human despair as if each man were invoking his own saint. Hooves resounded on wooden partitions and the hapless young men leaped back out of the way, dodged kicks, and coaxed the exalted animals with bread and sugar, and some of them, the more daring ones, pacified them (covertly) with open-palm slaps between the eyes. (Raising a hand against sacred equinity! the crime carried a heavy penalty.)
But Caesar’s glorious name was not mentioned. He was not asked to please “stand.” His groom did not step forward. He did not rush into the stall under Caesar’s hooves. He remained standing in the walk with “Numbskull,” who was still doggedly barking at the lightbulb.
At Nettle’s command Melkior did not move. Perhaps he wanted to move, he hadn’t meant to resist, but his feet would not budge. All his fear had gone into his feet and they anchored themselves in security, knees touching lightly, consoling each other. Then a darkness began to descend, Numbskull’s lightbulb dimmed, and his barking became distant, distant, barely audible, from somewhere beyond the silent hills … “He did it—he managed to turn off the light,” thought Melkior pleasurably, sinking into the murk …
Rain beating on his eyes, lightning flashing, thunderbolts striking his head … He had wisely gone still and was waiting for the storm to blow over. Day was already breaking, he could make out a mournful grayness: his eyes were peering into the fog; he could hear strange voices, up there, above his head, floating in the air, whispering softly, gently, considerately—angels conferring. Never mind, he’d better wait for the sun to come out, to warm him and dry away the rain and the night’s horror …
But the rain splashed down again … Slaps smacking his cheeks … Human words near at hand … Horses, the stable …
He opened his eyes. Faces … a lot of funny noses … Numbskull’s lightbulb shining on above, under the roof beam … The barking had stopped. …
“All right, Mama’s boy, can you see me?” asked Nettle’s face from up on high, enormous, round, painted on an inflated balloon. “A shame we haven’t got a Perfumery Corps, it would’ve been just the job for you, eh, doll? Handling scented soap, not horse shit,” Nettle was joking crudely up there above Melkior, his hands ready for any further face-slapping. “Sorry, ducks, but that’s the army for you—shit and piss. Man’s work. Can you stand?”
Melkior stirred. He felt dirty wetness around and on himself (they were pouring water from the horse trough on me) and sank back down, helplessly. He was lying on wet and smelly straw, in mud. Around him were a multitude of boots in a ring, with legs growing upward from them, slim like sickly trees, swaddled in olive drab nappies. And above him faces, curious, derisive, strange, unknown. I have betrayed Caesar—and a kind of smile tickled his lips.
“Get him up,” commanded Nettle. “You and you, take him outside, let him get a bit of air …”
Day w
as breaking, gray and desperate. Dreadful birds were cawing from bare black branches. In the distance, the city was waking, stretching its limbs, yawning into the hopeless sky, muttering morosely.
Melkior shivered with the cold: wetness around the neck, wet on his back, on his chest, a wet army cap on his head. Wet wetted, wet living.
Two kind recruits helped him up on either side.
“Well done, man,” spoke up the one on the left. “Next stop pneumonia, I shouldn’t wonder. That’s a month in the hospital, plus at least three weeks’ Light Duties Only afterward. With any luck, there might also be a spot on the lungs and a medical discharge.”
“I didn’t fake any of it. I think I passed out.”
“You think, therefore you are—a genuine case, I mean …” laughed the left-hand recruit. “Come on, man, don’t be afraid—you don’t think I’m having it any better than you, do you? We’re in the same shit.”
“You’re shivering—you’ve got a fever,” said Righty with selfless hope.
“You want to report for a medical tomorrow.”
“I’m wet through, I’m cold,” said Melkior through chattering teeth. “Can’t I report today?”
“Too late. You must report to Staff first thing in the morning tomorrow.” Then, having glanced at a barrack where lights had just gone on, “Oh look, the hotel guests are waking, the pajama boys are getting up.”
“What’s that—officers’ quarters?” asked Melkior naïvely.
“Pajama boys? Golden chains around their necks. Ministers’ offspring!” said Righty, taking off his cap with mocking respect. “Our young Majesty’s nursing cousins,” he added, whispering in Melkior’s ear.
“That, you must know, is the ‘exemplary school of rough military life,’” said Lefty. “They get the exemplary treatment, and the rest of us get the rough. You’ll be hearing about it in Theory Classes.”
“So they … don’t groom horses?”
“No, it’s the other way about—horses groom them.”
“The boys were transferred over here from their regiments to have someone wipe their asses for them,” said Righty humorlessly. “Their daddies came up with the idea of setting up a Motor Transport Company to keep the lads occupied. So they drive army vehicles up and down the capital, going to their Mamas on Sundays. They’re generally back in the barracks by Monday; some don’t come back for days at a time, it all depends on how powerful Daddy is. They’re off to the mess now, for cocoa.”
“And when the war breaks out they’ll be off to Switzerland with their Mamas, to treat their enlarged hila. You and I have to spit blood, my friend, to make it into the hospital. Unless the horses get you first.”
Melkior shuddered at the prospect. Nothing had helped: the fasting or the vigils. Pechárek had got him in his clutches after all. He had consigned the fifty-six kilograms’ worth of this wretched body (dwaftees … Kink and countwy) to Nettle the trainer in the royal reservation fenced with barbed wire. Procrastinating, delaying, passing examinations and medical boards—no go! Right, pal, this is where you’ll be preparing to shed blood and lay down your life! And here was Melkior trembling in death’s anteroom with cold and fear and a hundred other unspoken pains. He was not made for Nettle’s “man’s work,” the horse urine and the muck … his masculinity wasn’t adequate, the damned exclamation mark in front of his life!
“There’s some dry straw behind the stable, we might as well hide there until it’s black-chicory beverage time (Ah, Chicory Hasdrubalson, gentle my friend! sighed Melkior). Why, you’re shivering all over, pal! Come along,” Lefty dragged him around the corner of the stable and actually buried him in straw, leaving only his face free—to let him watch the birth of the new day.
“You’ll have to get out of here by hook or by crook,” said Righty seriously, rolling a cigarette from dust he had collected in his pockets. “You’re too weak—and you haven’t seen half the trouble yet. First puff of breeze, you’ll be blown off your horse. Ever ridden before?”
“I have. On a donkey,” smiled Melkior in the straw: he had begun to feel the warmth.
“Yes, well, you wouldn’t have horses down in Dalmatia. I’m a country boy myself, I’ve been riding since I was a boy, but the ones in here have got even me scared. Nasty brutes, every last one of them. And Nettle’s assigned you to Caesar, the worst of the lot. Watch your back—he’s got it in for you. Get out of this place. Your goose is cooked if you don’t.”
In the mess hall Numbskull sat next to him for breakfast. Not purposely—it was a quirk of the seating arrangement—but he seemed to take it as a lucky coincidence; he had wanted to talk to Melkior, who had not touched his food. “Don’t take it personal,” said Numbskull, watching the slice of bread spread with some kind of black jam in front of Melkior. “I did it on purpose, see. After all, you’re a high-class intellectual, a teacher, right? You can tell it just looking at you. Now I, well, I enjoy that kind of thing. I always liked barking—bow-wowing, I mean, doing dog imitations. I can rouse all the dogs within hearing distance. I’ll show you one of these nights, you’ll see.”
“I believe you … uh …”
“Call me Numbskull. Doesn’t bother me, let them get used to it, it serves its purpose.”
“What do you mean?”
“Getting labeled. Numbskull is a pet name for dimwit. I mean all this business about pride … what do we need pride for? A prideful recruit? Pull the other one why don’t you! Aren’t you eating? No? Can I have it then? Thanks, mate, I do appreciate it. So: say I show my pride in dealing with the old whore Lisa (the mare, I mean) and she up and bops me one with her hoof, maybe smack in the middle of my pride, eh? No darn way! I’d rather bark at the lightbulb!” He chewed the fresh bread and black jam with gusto and spoke in confidence, revealing his secret. “He knows he’s a nobody. You think he doesn’t? Come on—he’s got seven Honors degrees! But I, I have nine! Ever worn trousers with a patch on the seat … or not even a patch, just a hole? Well, I’m a graduate of that particular institute of higher learning myself. Nettle isn’t—he’s had the army keep him in new trousers. But he’s got the power and I don’t. So when he’s pleased to have his fun with you all you’ve got to do is guess which road he’s taking. He needs it, see? What would he be compared to you, for one? A beat-up insect, that’s all. A nit. You know about the Pythagorean Theorem, and he knows a horse has four legs. So you want to keep your eyes open … or else he’ll kick you with all four, damn him!”
“But what have I ever done to him?” Melkior pleaded mournfully, on the brink of tears. “I obey him.”
“You obey on the outside, but inside you think this and that … I needn’t quote you. And he knows, see? That’s why he asked you how to turn the light off, to destroy your thinking. Which makes your human dignity protest, doesn’t it? Well, forget it. The insects will sooner or later devour mankind, they outnumber us a zillion to one. I look at everything this way and I don’t get all hot and bothered about my temporary dignity. I leave that to the greats. Future archeologists won’t find a trace of it on their skeletons. A hundred years from now, even sooner perhaps, there’ll be Hitler’s bones on the market—fake ones, of course. The Yanks will be paying big bucks for a single filled tooth of his, for two hairs off Mussolini’s head, never mind that he’s bald as an egg. It’s all a load of pitiful crap, Yorick’s skull, nothing more. The thing to do is stay alive. Make sure your bones survive Nettle’s authority, even by barking at electricity if that works. But you seem to have different tactics. All right. Watch out for him. They say Caesar has killed two men so far. When he kills the third, they’ll have him put down. What a satisfaction for the third guy, eh?”
There was a command of some kind in the mess hall. Everyone stood up. “All right, get going,” said Numbskull giving Melkior a nudge to get him up.
“They’re issuing boots and belts—it’s fancy leather goods day. We’re going to the company store.”
Numbskull was waiting faithfully outside the sto
reroom. When Melkior appeared he gave a skeptical smile.
“I’m not sure this is a good idea,” he said looking him over. “You’re much too conspicuous, looking like this.”
“Why?” asked Melkior suspiciously, indeed with some fear.
“Oh, come on, old boy—you’ll have everyone wondering what kind of a scarecrow you are. And now you’ve got the boots to match.”
“What do you mean?” Melkior was still playing it close.
“I mean everything you’ve got on looks like your little brother’s. Except the trousers: it’s as if Falstaff lent them to you. Cap plunked down on those ears, right-hand boot big as a bread pan, left-hand boot … it’ll chafe the dickens out of you, believe me, you’ll be cursing the day you were born. It’s an awful fix in the army, having boots the wrong size: there’s nothing for it if your feet get scraped to the bone, it’s Never mind, soldier, forward march, what you’ve got is not a disease.” He went around behind Melkior’s back and clapped his hands: “Look where his half-belt is! Just how do you propose to buckle your belt, you mighty warrior? Under your breasts, like Madame Récamier, Empire style? You made a bad job of it, pal—you stick out like a sore thumb.”
“It wasn’t on purpose …” Melkior tried to defend himself. “I took what they gave me.”
“Come on, pal, don’t give me that nonsense—you took it on purpose,” insisted Numbskull. “Do you really believe they’re that dense? Do you think they don’t know how to make scarecrows? You make a freak of yourself and you think they’ll be so disgusted they’ll send you packing?”
Numbskull walked alongside him with small steps, but remonstrating with him in a paternally mature tone, knowledgeable, and his manner showed sincere selflessness, worry even. Melkior was wondering: why should he care? I’ve known him less than two hours, and he did not trust him, he withdrew into himself and kept silent.