“Let’s get this over with, all right?” he whispered in a seemingly casual way, making his preparations.
“Very well, let’s do it,” Melkior proffered his skinny white arm.
“Retouched, am I right?” Mitar tightened the rubber tube around Melkior’s upper arm. “Jeez, not an honest vein in sight. This is going to be tricky,” he said out loud, worriedly shaking his head; as his head moved he whispered hastily: “Fifty up front, the rest when you get your ticket, OK?”
“How much is … the rest?” muttered Melkior all but unintelligibly.
“Well … another hundred fifty. To keep me flush for taking the girlfriend out. She’s into the green liqueurs, damn her … and they are pricey.” He glanced at Melkior’s undecided face. “All right, a hundred, because it’s you—I can see you suffering. Christ, you are a stingy crowd, you types from Dalmatia, strike you … Turds in olive oil! What can you buy for the money? A pair of pajamas, if that … Chic à la française and look at you—so damned miserable you can’t take a decent shit. Look at the state of your veins. Two thimblefuls, you say? Hell, you haven’t got enough to give a bedbug a square meal. Things are tough these days, you know,” Mitar spoke in a whisper again. “There’s a war on, man!” he cried sternly, “and we’re in the army, we’ve got to be prepared!” and he gave Melkior a sly wink: he was saying this for the benefit of “the guys.”
“Shall I give you the money now?” whispered Melkior, watching the short deft thievish fingers on his wretched arm where Mitar was poking around for a spot to puncture with the proboscis of his bloodthirsty device.
“Not here. Meet me in the fancy gents after the morning round.”
“What’s the fancy gents?”
“The better-class bathroom, for you cadet types …” He finally found the vein and thrust the needle in quickly, deft, so skillfully that Melkior hardly felt the prick. He saw the thin pink blood follow the cylinder in the syringe, filling the little glass stomach of Mitar the bloodsucker. My blood, Your Majesty … but he felt himself go pale, the joke had barely begun before it melted away in a strange laxity; sleep seemed to be settling on his lids …
“Hey, look,” Mitar gave him a yank, “there’s a pigeon at the window!”
Melkior awoke with effort and looked gullibly at the window. No pigeon, just a gray day. Dove at the window, he uttered with effort, barely moving his lips, driven by memory’s quaint force as if he’d been obliged to say it, and remained so in a state of apathetic immobility, watching the gray patch of sky above the grim wet roofs. “Taken your fiww of bwood, vampiwe?” Hermaphrodite teased Mitar. “I wouldn’t use yours to fertilize my cabbages,” Mitar replied, but Melkior received it all from a great astral distance and it seemed to him that he was hearing not human voices but the cawing of irritated parrots.
What about the lung X-ray? he thought with mixed feelings of sudden joy and an uneasiness which demanded that he stir from the sweet laxity to which he had fully succumbed. I might see her downstairs … while having my lungs x-rayed. And be alone with her. Alone together—so what? The phrase was so promising and exciting—and yet so meaningless. At least in a certain sense. Alone together meant trying to approach her using excited, inept words—in fact, false words that could rely only on the hands for help. And everything would be fumbling, with both words and hands: the hands impatient and the words deaf, witless, thrown into echoless empty space. She says, “Talk to me,” and what you want at that moment is to seal her mouth with yours, and even if a word or two escapes there is no conversation to it at all. Desire turns you into a stammerer, a quaking imbecile, an epileptic, an impotent lecher, an angry pig, an onanist poet, an abased devotee, a man with no pride. I won’t go and have my lungs x-rayed! Defiantly, Melkior set to thinking about Enka: enter my kingdom, Kior, and he entered with regal triumph, as Kior the Great. Mitar appeared in the doorway.
“I forgot to take your urine sample. Had a piss yet?” He had a glass like a champagne glass in his hand.
“No,” said Melkior, adding to himself: here’s my cup-bearer.
“Come along then, wee-wee for Daddy,” he showed him the glass as bait.
“Yes, Meteor, come along—Mitar’s just had his snack,” spoke up Menjou.
“Is it today your sister’s supposed to drop in? It’s visitors’ day,” said Mitar with such an overpolitely fraternal and innocent face that Melkior was greatly surprised to see an object flying toward the spot where the Vampire’s head had been a moment ago. “A moment ago,” of course, because no sooner had it inquired overpolitely about Menjou’s sister’s visit than it ducked away.
“Leave my sister out of it, you bastard!” bellowed Menjou suddenly. “I’ll tear out his throat with my bare teeth … drink his blood!” he was writhing in his bed, waving his arms about in a curious way, as if torn by horrible pain.
The other three hurried over to pacify him, stroking his face, patting his head, slapping his hips, ostler fashion.
“He’th weally cwuizing foww a bwuizing,” raged Herma, clenching his hands in fists.
“Next time he comes in we give him the blanket treatment … We beat the shit out of him, word of honor!” said the one who had called him Tartuffe the day before in a solemn tone, like someone taking a vow.
“Just let me work him over—his own mother won’t recognize him!” Menjou was simmering down already, the thirst for revenge was fading.
“Unleth thomebody betwayth uth!” Hermaphrodite gave Melkior a suspicious look; he was taking the matter very seriously, as a conspiracy.
“The traitors will get their just desserts!” threatened Menjou.
“He won’t betray us,” said Little Guy confidently. “It’s all about a sister’s honor! You won’t betray us, will you?” Little Guy was applying the power of suggestion on Melkior, ogling him weirdly and circling his open palms over his head: “You will not betray us, you will not, this is about a sister’s honor, you will not betray …” he was hypnotizing him.
Melkior barely heeded the mumbo-jumbo. With laughter bubbling inside him, he kept thinking about Mitar’s glass, which had aroused in his body the urge to urinate. And he felt it as an undeniable imperative, which he was presently to obey. He was going to get up and follow Mitar’s glass like a sleepwalker, like a hypnotized fool. Conditioned reflexes, as defined by Pavlov. Thank you for doing me the honor, my dear Little Guy, but I was already in a trance, he thought, getting up. This, I expect, is how poets follow their inspiration. That glass is now my Laura. And Melkior’s mournful face cracked a smile.
“He’th waughing at uth,” said Hermaphrodite.
“Are you off to snitch to Mitar?” Menjou leapt out of bed, menacingly.
“I’m off to fill his glass.”
“You’re OK!” he heard behind him their assessment and their laughter in reward of his loyalty.
Oh Lord, my cup shall be full! Knowing you, it will overflow, replied the Lord.
And indeed it overflowed, just as the Lord said. For great was the need in him and he rushed into the better-class bathroom and snatched the cup from Mitar’s hand, greedily, like a drunkard, and like an utterly lust-crazed lecher he sought his uncaring member in fumbling haste, so that it slipped away at the first try, listlessly, as though this was not its job (well it isn’t either, the conniver knew that all right) but on the second try brought he out, in the manner of a vainglorious man, all his fortune plainly to be seen and then the terrible rain was upon the glass for forty days and forty nights …
“Hey! Stop it, will you!” cried Mitar in fright. Say Enough! to the raging torrent, stop the mighty wave rolling in from the high seas! …
“Look what you’ve done—there’s piss running all over the place,” Mitar tittered brightly: he liked abundance. “Pour out a bit over there, damn you …”
Ha, Maestro, remembered Melkior, what an outpouring! I would have overshot the rooftops, extinguished the Lilliput royal palace fire like Gulliver! He felt pride at some kind of virili
ty, though it was in fact a feeling of quite pedestrian relief which he was interpreting with arrogance.
“Did you bring the money?” asked Mitar with a full cup in his raised arm, as if proposing a toast to him.
“Yes. Here you are,” Melkior was doing everything with delight, in a hurry, full of cheer, which made Mitar watch him with curiosity and feel sorry for not having asked for a higher price. The stupid nut would have coughed it up easy.
“By the way, what did that character say? Is he going to report me?” asked Mitar.
“Why would he? What did you do to him?”
“Well, it’s this business with his sister, see. They’re very touchy because she’s rather … free with it …” Mitar had lowered his voice and his head, so it wouldn’t stick out. “And he really walked into that one. Mind you, it’s very, very tricky, his old man’s a general in the Guards. Lots of clout. He only has to lift a finger and it’s curtains for yours truly, Mitar the lab tech.”
“What about the others?”
“Upper crust lads, all of them. That fat hairless bugger, th-th-th-the one, he pocketed an important paper, top secret and all that, from his old man (the pater familias is on the Council of State) and gave it to a spying bitch in exchange for a bit of the other. Luckily enough, the counterespionage blokes caught him at it, sent the bitch to the slammer and himself to his Daddy. Daddy thought it best to have him do his National Service, ‘He’ll come to his senses in the army,’ like, and here he is, coming to his senses. Little Guy’s the son of a lady-in-waiting—or ex-lady-in-waiting, that is … They called her the Guards’ Pompadour. She never said no to anyone from private to major; upward from there, it all depended on how influential you were. They say the lad’s father is a hot-shot crazy general … well, you saw it—he’s some kind of mad psychologist himself. But the fourth, ‘The Parisian,’ he’s got the most clout. His old man’s … well, nobody even knows what he is; lives abroad; imports weapons, they say. The boy only came back to do his student stint in the service—he’ll be going back to Daddy afterward as his assistant, to help with the war effort if things come to a head. Everyone doing their bit, as they say. They’ve all got their suitcases packed, my old friend, and their passports ready in hand. That’s why they call it the Diplomatic Room.”
“You seem to know everything,” said Melkior diffidently. “So how did I end up there?”
“How?” Mitar raised his head as if about to crow forth some weighty truth, but changed his mind: “You can thank God and the Major …”
“But I don’t even know the Major!”
“Well, that’s it, just because you don’t. When you get to know the Colonel, you’ll get to know the Major too. The Colonel’s Head of Department, a soldier and a patriot.”
“Meaning the Major isn’t a patriot?”
“Course he is, who says he isn’t? You’re asking an awful lot of questions,” and Mitar gave him a suspicious look. “I’ve told you too much as it is.”
“Well, why did you? Perhaps I, too, am a …”
“You?” scoffed Mitar. “I’ve had a look at your papers, my man. Do you think I’d be talking to you like this if I hadn’t?” Mitar slapped the white coat pocket into which he had dropped Melkior’s money. “You’re exactly the kind the Major has a soft spot for. That’s why he put you in here with this lot. He’ll never be a success—he’s not the army type.”
“Why not?”
“Where will it get him, standing up for you?” cried Mitar angrily. “He’d kick all four of them out of here and back to the barracks if he had his way, he’d only keep you in. You think that’s the way to build a career?”
“Why doesn’t he resign his commission, then?”
“In the old army his father was in command of the entire Medical Corps, a general, he was in the retreat across Albania in World War I. Old King Petar’s personal physician. Old school. That’s how the doc brought up his son,” Mitar gave a pitying smile. “The Medical Corps, sure, fairness and justice, the whole bit. … It’ll all go to hell one day, see if it …” but Mitar suddenly cut it short: he realized he was still holding the glass aloft in a “formal toast” and laughed. “A nice place we’ve chosen for a … And me holding your champagne here … Right—take care now; off to bed. There’s the morning rounds coming up in a minute. You’ll have the honor of meeting the Colonel. He’s going to have your hide, of course, because you’re ‘the Major’s boy,’ get it? You just grin and bear it, and look at him with respect and fear, as if you’ve just shit in your bed, get it?”
“Will the nurse be there, too?” Melkior couldn’t help himself.
“You mean Acika? Fancy her, eh? Well, you might as well forget about that, you’ll find no joy there.”
“I’m not expecting any. Just asking.”
“I’m not blaming you—she’s quite the looker, she is.”
“Yes, she sure is pretty,” sighed Melkior. “Has she got someone?”
“Search me. She’s nice to everyone, you can’t tell whether she’s really like that or just playing a silly game. An odd sort of girl. Right, see you.”
An odd sort of girl, you say, Melkior kept repeating in his bed, covered up to his chin. But he was saying it mechanically, there was no thought behind it at all. His body was hobbled by a tinge of apprehension. Slight tremors had started from his chin downward to his belly and legs, and suddenly developed into uncontrollable feverish shivering. Look, my teeth are chatter-tattering, he attempted a joke, but it only produced nervous spasmodic yawns along with deaf-and-mute mumbles.
“Did you say something, Meteor?” asked Menjou benevolently.
“Nuhhing,” he managed to articulate in his wide-open mouth. But the brief contact with the “outside world” greatly relieved his internal tension: the shivering suddenly stopped, his body felt much more secure in the favorable climate of the bed.
The door opened soundlessly, with due respect. A white procession filed into the room solemnly and mutely, as if in a dream ceremony. It was headed by a shortish, lean old man, his goatee white and sternly pointed, his gaze penetrating and sharp, “I’m reading you like a cover page, boy.” Under his white coat moved his thin bowed legs (in high boots), the metal claws on the heels jangling, dandy-style, the fashion of a Royal ball. A white polar bird waddling across ice on black feet was how the man looked to Melkior. That of course was the Colonel: a soldier and a patriot.
Behind him walked the Major at a slight distance, thereby emphasizing his subordinate position in the solemn march past. He said, “Good morning, boys,” at which the tip of the Colonel’s commandant-like beard shot upward in surprise. She was next to the Major, sick lists in hand, with an open fountain pen poised above them. She was wholly dedicated to respect for the exalted proceedings and moved eagerly in the solemn march. There were also several youngish, carefully shaven faces attending the pontifical function with clerical patience as unimportant personages. Bringing up the rear was Mitar, but he remained just inside the door like a poor relation at a funeral; he was well aware of his station.
The Colonel proceeded to do the rounds of “his” quartet, stopping at the foot of each bed in turn and inquiring after their good health.
“Well, how’s it going, lad?” he said to Menjou with paternal irony. “Your father’s asking after you—what shall I tell him?”
“It’s getting boring in here, sir,” Menjou replied coyly. “I wish I could go back to the Academy—I’ll fall behind with my studies like this.”
“Health first, my boy!” the Colonel raised his goatee resolutely. “What’s the rush? You’ll catch up with them soon enough. How do you rank in your class?”
“First, sir,” snapped Menjou and clicked his teeth, his heels coming together by themselves in bed.
“First?” said the Colonel in feigned marvel. “What’re you complaining for, then? Not to worry, it’ll be a snap for you to catch up. I’ll say hello to your father for you,” he tossed off before moving to the next bed.
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“If you please, sir,” and Menjou gave a brisk nod by way of saluting.
“What about you, diplomat?” he asked Tartuffe. “Any news from your father? Did he get safely over to England?”
“Safely indeed, sir … at the last moment,” added Tartuffe with a confidential smile. “The Germans had already taken Bordeaux …”
“You don’t say? So he made it after all, did he? Good man. Good man indeed. Where’s he now—in London?”
“London and Glasgow, sir, traveling on business. He wrote and told me bombs were dropping like ripe pears in autumn, sir.”
“There, you see, he’s not bored,” he threw the remark at Menjou. “And what are we to do with you, lover boy?” he shook his head reproachfully at Hermaphrodite, the entire suite laughing ingratiatingly at his joke (except the Major: he was still serious). “Do you find this place tedious, too?”
“Yeth indeed, thuh,” replied Herma with conviction, “it’th bowwing aww wight. Ethpethially in the evening … nothing to do, we jutht thit awound twiddwing our thumth. …”
“Twiddling your thumbs, eh? … Now, Nurse …”
“Sir?” She was putting Herself totally at his disposal.
“… why are they all bored here?” Everyone burst out laughing. She blushed. The Major was frowning. “I mean to say, why don’t you get this Don Juan here some lady friend or other before he dies of boredom?”
Hermaphrodite guffawed merrily. He even exclaimed “Nithe.”
“Shut up, you bloody Judas!” thundered the Colonel at him, his goatee quivering with a suppressed smile. “To disgrace such a father! If I were him, I’d …”
“… cathtwate me!” cracked Herma, with a see-if-I-care tone.
“Teach me, would you?” snapped the Colonel in a fit of pique, but he would clearly have preferred to laugh; he was going to tell Herma’s father all about it … “Yes, that’s it exactly, I’d geld you like a boar, give you something to remember me by.”
“Thank you, thuh!” Herma snapped resolutely.