Dom Kuzma waited anxiously for the fateful amount which meant to be or not to be. He actually fiddled with the arms of the scale and had some words with the invalid, brushing the latter’s hand away impatiently, but calmed down eventually and made his peace with the scale, collected his ticket and went away, worried.
It seemed to Melkior that he was witnessing a crafty rite designed to test the grace of God, if not His actual existence. With intellectual embarrassment, as if he were extending his palm to be read by a palm-reading neighbor, he stepped onto the platform with an anxious heart. Apatin is a town on the Danube, he thought, or the brand name of an anti-apathy drug. …
“How much?” he asked the invalid, faking a casual tone.
“Sixty-one kilos, seven hundred and eighty grams.”
“It can’t be!” he cried in alarm.
“Oh yes it can,” replied the invalid with self-confidence. He was used to the bickering of skinny clients.
“What? Why, I’m …”
“You’re skinny enough to weigh that much,” said the invalid with a doctor-like cynicism. “My machine does not steal,” he added for the sake of his reputation. “Don’t worry, we earn our bread fair and square.”
“I’m not worrying about it stealing,” he used a smile to explain his meaning. “What I’d like to know is, does it give a little?”
“Neither. The true weight whatever the freight.”
“And that … that priest fellow … how did he fare?”
“Same as this morning.”
“You mean he was here this morning as well to …?”
“Oh yes. Twice a day he shows up.” The invalid had visibly had enough of the pointless conversation; he was finding Melkior’s curiosity a bit suspicious: “This fellow’s too nosey by half …”
“Could it be a case, then, of mortification of the flesh?” insisted Melkior. “He may be trying to become a saint for all you know.”
“I don’t know what saints you have in mind, but he’s a subscriber, if you must know. Pays in advance by the month, he does. Third year running.”
“Third year? And he weighed more then—three years ago, I mean—than he does now, didn’t he?”
“Not up to anything funny, are you?” the invalid shot a glance at the newspaper in Melkior’s hand. “He tipped them at eighty-plus to begin with. He was so strong his eyes flashed. Now he barely makes fifty-six. And that’s with my help.”
“Your help?” Melkior felt fear at the technical term. So the scrawny neck did not come of the cellar and penance at Monte Cassino? To the invalid he said hypocritically, “Well, there you are, it’s like I said: he’s bound for sainthood.”
“Ahh,” the invalid waved his hand compassionately, “he’s bound for Mother Earth, that’s where he’s bound. He’s got this wasting disease, poor man, and every single gram he’s lost has been registered by me—and my old gal,” and he gave the machine’s iron neck a chummy slap. “The twenty-six kilos he’s lost so far, that’s nothing. He never noticed how I slashed them, I did it all little by little. He knows I took them away, of course he does, but he’s not said a word to me about it. But when it’s a question of ten grams … you’re killing me, he mutters, you’re killing me indeed.”
Melkior thought back: perhaps it was all due to the loss of those seven locks while he was sleeping?
“And now I have to drop him by over eight hundred grams a month. The man’s dying on my machine, as it were, before my eyes, and I have to keep a record of it day in and day out. I’m having a hard time of it, but what can I do?” The invalid was not lying, he genuinely felt for Dom Kuzma. “I give him anything up to sixty grams of an evening, to set him up nicely for bed, but come morning I bring him down by a hundred and twenty. He hangs his head, there are tears in his eyes, he doesn’t believe me; you’re lying, he says, how could I have possibly lost so much overnight? Your machine’s out of whack, he says, get it fixed! I’m a human being, don’t forget! and he cries with fear. He goes to the blind colleague over there on the corner, who consoles him—by mutual agreement, shall we say—with a couple of grams. But then he won’t believe him either, and comes back to me again, the pest.
“Your machine’s good, he says, all things considered. On second thought, he says, you can lose weight overnight, through the digestive process and so on. … All the same you should keep an eye on it, you should indeed! As for that man on the corner, his contraption’s no good at all. If you ask me, he says, his license should be revoked. Chose a corner position, no less! You think he’s really blind? That’s their cover, no doubt about it. … And I have no choice but to say yes. Now then, he says, let’s have another go in the name of God. So I weigh him again, pressing a wee bit, to reassure him. I’ve driven this here nail into my peg leg for him special, and I press the bottom bar, careful like, as if I am squeezing drops into his eye. But he smells a rat, thinks the measure’s now too good all of a sudden, and he won’t believe me. Go on, he says, press your scale! There will be somebody to press the scale for you, too, when your soul is weighed before God! And off he goes, all angry and unhappy. He was unhappy just now, too, over weighing the same as he did this morning. He’d had the feed of his lifetime, he said … he even showed me his belly. There he is now, over at the other fellow’s, he may yet be back here again. I feel sorry for him, you might say. The man’s wasting away like a leaf in autumn, and all I can do is look on. Not to mention that he still owes me over two kilos.”
“Oh, you give credit then?” Melkior joked to hide his feeling of shock. The invalid did not like the joke and let it pass with a sigh:
“Ahh, he’s to be pitied, believe me.”
“Pitied indeed,” Melkior echoed in all sincerity, but presently hastened to undo it, “and yet conceivably he can retrieve his kilos, while you can’t get your leg back. Your loss is greater than his.”
“But he’s going to die!” the invalid cried didactically.
“Meaning you won’t? Haven’t you in fact been at death’s door, weren’t you dying in Galicia when the Russian Emperor’s brotherly shell kissed your leg? And later on, in the field hospital in Káposvár or somewhere, bedbugs eating you as punishment, as if you’d invented war! ‘Wasting away,’ indeed! Come off it, man!”
Without bothering to collect his ticket, Melkior hurried over to the corner where Dom Kuzma was standing on the blind man’s weighing machine, leveling the arms himself, seeking a balance for them. His fingers were trembling in the prayer wherein he supplicated God to stretch forth his arms and show His mercy by way of the arms of the scale. And, lo and behold, God lent him a hand, Dom Kuzma stepped down, elated, and began hurriedly emptying his pockets, as if preparing to rob himself. He piled his keys, wallet, watch, coin purse, breviary, and handkerchief and other odds and ends on the small bench next to the scale. He even took off his hat—and stepped back up. The inspired machine mercifully overlooked the fact that the client had divested himself of a thousand grams and showed his previous weight with a smile. In vain did the priest and the blind man shake and whack it (Dom Kuzma actually struck it)—it stood firmly by its statement, suffering for the truth.
Dom Kuzma took offense at the act of consolation. What was the point of sprucing up reality so stupidly? “Damn you,” he said and decided to weigh himself once again, with all his possessions back in place.
The scale now gave a joyous leap of a full one thousand two hundred grams and stood steadfastly by its assertion. It bore all the torture unleashed upon it by its frightened rider, stubbornly repeating what it had said before. The martyr. Its beaklike weights were seeking each other with the yearning of amorous birds, to come together in an everlasting kiss of equilibrium, harmony, and peace.
“At last!” Dom Kuzma sighed with relief and gave his blessing to the innocent kiss. “See?” he said to the blind man. “Obviously it got it wrong the first time. It’s not without reason that I keep telling you to have it fixed. Oh well, third time’s a charm, as they say …” He pai
d the blind man twice as much as usual, but warned him before leaving, “Anyway, you’d do well to have it checked. You’ll lose your customers, my friend!” and away he went, his faith shaken in all the scales in the world.
“How interesting,” thought Melkior, himself feeling a weakened confidence in the invalid’s machine. Dom Kuzma’s mistrust was weighing on him; God only knew how many tricks of the trade those people had up their sleeves. … Nevertheless he stepped onto the blind man’s machine.
“Oh Eustachius the Long Lost! Oh Ineffable Eustachius!” called out a clarion voice behind his back. Melkior broke out in goose bumps: he had a sudden feeling of standing stark naked on the scale watched by all the passersby. He pretended the cries had nothing to do with him: he went on talking with the blind man.
“Defies the imagination, gentlemen, defies the imagination!” The man with the clarion voice was laughing an ugly laugh, baring front teeth pocked with large dark fillings. “An intellectual, a Schweik, speculating on the weighing machine. Look at him! Take a good look, all you sharp-eyed people! The military speculator! Heh, heh, heh … Going to the blind man! Good-looking people!”
Passersby stopped and watched with interest. Somebody asked his neighbor: What did he steal? You were here when it started, weren’t you?
No one knew anything about the curious incident, nor was anyone able to make sense of it. Was there going to be a brawl?
The drunkard had come right up to Melkior and was touching his ears, his chin, displaying him to the audience as if he were a carnival barker showing off a freak dwarf, a two-headed pig, a shark that had devoured a Swedish tourist …
The blind man extended both hands to fend off the drunkard, but the other pressed a two-dinar coin into each: “Not a lot, but it’s the gesture that counts,” and patted them.
The audience was now expecting an amusing spectacle: the man was totally drunk. … Having got his first laughs, the drunkard went on with his makeshift show.
“So, dear bard,” he addressed the blind man, “how heavily does the fear of war weigh upon the mind of this Eustachius the Peaceable?”
“What’s this nonsense? You’re mad!” Melkior whispered in his ear.
“How about you, Monsieur Boulechite?” the drunkard addressed a short stout man who was grinning with glee and stroking his ear with pleasure. “What do you think of my madness?”
“Listen, you …!” the short fatty took offense. “Watch it or I’ll box your ears in, you …!”
“Oh, that I will, you … Stroking your ear, I see? Is that ear your breadwinner by any chance, working in the capacity of eldest son for May I See Your ID Card Ltd? If so, please treat it paternally; such an ear is worth more than seven plump cows. Also, by all means protect it from contact with heavy fists wearing bulky rings.”
Fatty had not been able to pull the right strand out from that tangle of words: he was thrown off by “ID card” and “heavy hands.” He plunged sensibly in among the overcoats and umbrellas, muttering unlikely threats.
The drunkard meanwhile leapt onto the platform of the weighing machine, waved his hat and shouted: “Drive on, izvoshchik!” He had one arm around Melkior’s neck, waving with the other and clucking his tongue: driving horses … and, closing his eyes, enraptured, he began reciting Yesenin:
… a troika is dashing across the field
but I’m not on it—someone else is instead …
My joy and my happiness, where have you fled? …
and tears welled in his eyes. He kept repeating “My joy and my happiness, where have you fled?” as tears streamed down his cheeks.
The onlookers watched as he wildly drove the troika on the weighing machine, tears flowing from his eyes, and someone whispered respectfully, “He’s crying.” And he, perhaps having heard the whisper of sympathy with his grief, suddenly jumped off the machine and bared his dark fillings in a grin.
“Eustachius Equivalentovich, I haven’t got a kopeck to my name, you pay the izvoshchik,” he said to Melkior. “Citizen Ferdyshchenko, I think it’s time to shut up shop,” and on the overcoat button of a curious passerby who had just stopped to see what was going on he surreptitiously hung a CLOSED sign he had kept tucked under his overcoat, having apparently lifted it from a shop door. The curious citizen had no idea anything was hanging down his belly and was laughing with the others. Meanwhile Melkior was still standing on the scale sweating in dismay. He’ll slink away as soon as Ferdyshchenko spots the sign, and then Ferdyshchenko will take it out on me …
“Tell me, Ugo,” he said pleasantly, “where might I find you later on?”
“Ugo, quoth he! Have you forgot my Giventakian moniker?”
“Parampion, I mean. Where will you be later this evening?” Melkior corrected himself patiently.
“Now you’re talking! At Hotel Pimodan, dear Eustachius, of course, at Hotel Pimodan … or, in our parlance, at the Give’nTake. Everybody will be there. They are looking for you. … Maestro the Mad Bug has been asking after you for months. Over and over he asks: where’s our sagacious Eustachius? Don Fernando will be there, too, for a change. Do come.”
“I’ll be right behind you. There’s just a thing or two I …”
But Ugo was no longer listening. He had already turned around to face the audience and was bowing to someone in Spanish ceremonial style:
“My humble respects to the noble hidalgo!” It was the choleric tobacconist who was busily closing his little corner kiosk for the night and had looked back to see what the monkey business was all about. “Your generosity, señor, will surely harvest a cigarette on the tobacco island o’er which you rule?”
The tobacconist took this as an insult. He resolutely dropped his keys into his pocket, muttering angrily, “Damned spongers.” And spat as he left.
“But, sir, what if the tuberculosis you just spat out comes back to your daughter on the eve of her marriage as her paternal dowry? You cannot be too careful. Therefore, no spitting on the floor, gentlemen! Right, Comrade?” he said to a man with a bicycle putting up posters.
“Right,” said the cyclist, proud at being addressed.
“And what are these, swastika posters? Not by any chance working for the German consulate, are you, von Velocitas? Dropping hooks among us, eh?”
“No,” the cyclist laughed artlessly, “I work for Franck-O.”
“For Franco? Well, well! I said you were up to some Fascist business. Working for the Caudillo himself! So how’s General Queipo de Llano? Getting old, isn’t he? Hemorrhoids, confession, come over all holy?”
“Listen, you!” the bill-sticker went serious. “A joke is a joke, but this …! Me and the Fascists? Think I’m crazy, do you?” The last sentence was directly linked with his right hand, which had already handed the bicycle to the left …
But Parampion … was his grinning mug to be punished for the mischievous little game of the harlequin who was performing his silly show inside his head?
“Bicycletissime!” he cried with delight and went on in a sober, bright, and solemn tone, “May I, before the honorable folk of this ancient, royal, free, capital city, firmly shake your hand for your proud and manly revulsion at the idea of being in any way connected with mankind’s greatest enemy, illiterate Fascism!” and he grabbed the cyclist’s abovementioned right hand, all ready to do a job of another kind, and pumped it thoroughly to mark “eternal friendship.” There was even a kiss to the man’s brow, the seal on the covenant.
The well-pleased employee of Franck-O, whose job it was to stick up posters advertising the Franck factory’s chicory coffee substitute, was happily excited over the public proclamation of his political integrity.
“And now, gentlemen,” Ugo addressed the audience, “I’m off … perhaps to Pampeluna. This concludes our Street Treat Show for today. We wish our listeners a very pleasant goodnight. The anthem —and we’re done. A propos, bicycletissime, would Your Velocipederasty happen to have a cigarette to spare?”
“Make it two, make i
t two,” and the cyclist took out a large pigskin cigarette case, filled to bursting. “Here you are, help yourself.”
“I thank you from the heart of my bottom! No, no, only one, for what the Ragusan gentry called harmonious memory. Then again … perhaps another one for my Eustachius. No, not a parrot, it’s that friend of mine on the weighing machine. Certain specialists he has been seeing prescribe smoking for his condition. Look, I’ve got him riled, heh, heh … Right, thanks a million and a half. Such a velocipederastic gesture shall never be forgotten. Hail, fair knight!” exclaimed Ugo.
Taking three steps backward he made a flourish with his hat, bowing to the cyclist in a ceremonial manner. He then shot Melkior a quick glance and burst out laughing.
“Hah, good-looking people, pay attention, he’s angry. No, both smokes are for me actually, and the third … if I may, bicycletissime” —and he slipped one more cigarette from the posterer’s case—“the third I will give him tonight at the Give’nTake. He’s ashamed of me for the moment, but as a rule I enjoy his affection and respect. And you, honorable Mr. Ferdyshchenko … open Sesame!”—and he surreptitiously lifted the CLOSED sign from Nosey’s belly. Nosey took offense at the drunkard handling his person for a second time and calling him what could only be an insulting name, but he wanted to be sensible and only said in a cautious mutter:
“Wonder who these scoundrels mooch off.”
“And now, gentlemen, hah … you thought I was off to a place called Pampeluna? No, they were wrong! I am now off to Pantogegone. And Pantogegone is … nothing. Zero, nihil, nitchevo! Adieu, perhaps pour toujours, you never can tell …”
Ugo elbowed his way through the crowd toward a passerby on the other side of the street, cadged a light off of him and went on his way singing Auprès de ma blonde without a care in the world.
Melkior remained alone before the crowd of disappointed spectators, like a culprit who was now to answer for the letdown. They were looking at him as if he had invited them to a show which had not amused them and they would now ask him to explain. Indeed, he began behaving as though he had really wronged the disgruntled mob …