“Looking around, Mr. Melkior? You’ve spent many the evening here chatting with Kurt. Fond memories.”
“I used to drop by, in passing, to have a bite to eat …”
“Well, even if it were not in passing, what could have been wrong with that? It’s not as if I were reproaching you or anything. You might, for that matter, have become Kurt’s drinking buddy and gone on binges here—well, that would be nobody’s business, am I right?”
“I was not Kurt’s ‘drinking buddy’!” replied Melkior sharply.
“Well, what I’m saying is that, even if you did, what business is it of anybody else’s? You presumably had your own personal reasons, and Kurt had his—(a bit less personal, muttered ATMAN with a smile)—well, each of you had your reasons, so what? It was to mutual advantage, that’s your own business.”
“There you go again with your innuendoes!” Melkior was angry; he sensed ATMAN trying to embroil him in “something.” “What benefit could I have gained by eating the occasional sausage here?”
“Well … that of having eaten the sausage,” laughed ATMAN. “Did you think I meant something else? Kurt’s mother was a good cook, Styrian. Else was an agreeable hostess, Kurt a helpful lad … yes, it was a cozy corner in every way. The garrison sergeants found a really warm spot in here, a home away from home, almost in the bosom of the family. Isn’t this borne out by their very absence now? The warm spot has been undone. The war, the war, Mr. Melkior, cheese home-made, cow’s milk.”
ATMAN spewed out the word “war” with malicious glee. Melkior watched him with disgust and fear as the man leered brightly in his face.
“So where’s Kurt?” he asked purposely, to mask his fear. “What’s he up to these days?”
“I really couldn’t tell you where he might be … But if you need him for … anything, I’d be glad to …” ATMAN was ready to be of service.
“No, what could I possibly need him for?” Why am I getting caught up in this, snapped Melkior to himself. “Merely asking …”
“Merely asking …” smiled ATMAN. “Perhaps he’s still here and up to things … and perhaps his Fiihrer has summoned him … They’re not like us with our medical boards and weighing machines and starvation cunning—they’re burning with the desire to die for that swastika’d spider of theirs …”
“And you knew Kurt was … up to things?” Melkior asked suddenly and was alarmed at his own audacity, why the hell am I getting caught up in this?
“Are you telling me you didn’t?” grinned ATMAN threateningly. “You really should have done something about it, Mr. Melkior, I thought about that all the time. You are a serious and almost responsible man, you house people clandestinely … (Has ATMAN reported it? Where’s the Stranger now? flashed through Melkior’s mind.) If only you’d told your Don Fernando … to put him on that list of his,” joked ATMAN, his small eyes having a malicious good time. “I obviously couldn’t have, they wouldn’t have believed a palmist, it’s a dodgy occupation … They could’ve thought I myself was one of … right? Don Fernando put me on his list, did he not? … But you, a man of confidence, an honest John, as they say … but you didn’t—you were all wrapped up in your civilian purity, to the point of hermitage, and purportedly ‘all for mankind, for social justice.’ My dear Mr. Melkior! If you’d only left it at that—but no, you got …”
“Mr. Adam, your provocations …” shuddered Melkior, and instantly he found himself tongue-tied.
“Provocations nothing! In for a penny, in for a pound, Mr. Melkior,” ATMAN gathered momentum like someone deciding to act, “you yourself got … well, yes, you did, to some extent … got yourself in deep with Kurt …”
It was as if ATMAN had meant to keep the last words to himself but oh dear, they had escaped him, what was done could not be undone. He smilingly watched pallor spreading over Melkior’s face, followed by a flush, by pallor again … he was amused by the color changes. And Melkior knew what was happening on his face … Oh you scoundrel, you blackguard, you rogue! But what was the use? He couldn’t silence ATMAN’S craft by such pitiful cursing into his own ear. But neither did he propose to reward him by a “show” of anger, so he gave a laugh meant to speak more eloquently than words.
“All the same, I would …” began ATMAN and stopped as if he had changed his mind.
“You would what?” laughed Melkior while feeling a kind of cold horror welling within him. “You got in deep with Kurt”; he felt the wetness of the words on his skin. But now it was ATMAN’S turn to speak.
“First of all, I wouldn’t laugh,” he said with genuine severity, “and secondly … listen to the important way I’m saying secondly, practically as if I’d invented the sewing machine …”
“All right, you did not invent the sewing machine. What would you do secondly?”
“Nothing,” laughed ATMAN. “Or, if anything, perhaps just say we’d be well advised to … how shall I put it? pay a wee bit closer attention (wee, that’s pure baby talk, wee-wee). Uncertain is our destiny in what the politicians call this part of the world.”
“So what do you think we ought to do for our destiny? Pay attention to what?”
“A wee-wee bit of attention,” ATMAN was amusing himself, “A wee-wee bit of attention to the fact that we all have our own destiny, wee-wee. You may have got away with it for the time being, but Destiny has other wonderful surprises up her sleeve.”
“And you are insured against these surprises?”
“No, I’m not. How could I be? Where’s the insurance? Do you know?” ATMAN held his face close to Melkior’s. Melkior could smell his unpleasant breath.
Melkior sat back and said derisively: “You’re asking me? You who have such a cozy relationship with Destiny?”
“Have a cozy relationship? Heh, I’d be delighted, if she were pretty.”
“Well, being an expert, you presumably picked the prettiest one for yourself.”
“Now you’re poking fun at my occupation, too, Mr. Melkior,” said ATMAN with a kind of sadness. “But you did do something for your destiny … by fasting, like a saint … and with the assistance of this … Kurt fellow,” he was monitoring the impact of his words, squinting derisively at Melkior.
Melkior was now unable to laugh anymore: “What assistance of Kurt’s? With what did Kurt assist me?”
“The pounding of your patriotic heart, ha-ha … What is it you dip the cigarettes in—do you remember, Mr. Melkior? it wasn’t so very long ago.”
“You spoke about that to Kurt?”
“It was I who told him that, not his Vater, heh-heh …”
“But I didn’t. I didn’t even ask Kurt about it—he came up with it. … Why did you go through him?”
“I wanted to lend you a hand. You wouldn’t have taken it from me, you don’t trust me.”
“And I trust Kurt, is that it?”
“Well … I rather imagine you do. You do indeed—more, at any rate, than you trust me. He’s on the side with the upper hand. Perhaps Kurt could help you still, I mean in ‘crucial’ things—after all, he’s got a kind and noble heart.”
“Well, speak to him, then,” Melkior told him angrily. “Perhaps you could help him.”
“How might I be of help to him, Mr. Melkior?” ATMAN feigned shocked surprise. “On the contrary, he might welcome some of your military ex-per-tise … oops, how did ‘tease’ pop up like that?”
“Now look here! …” but Melkior managed to restrain himself, why the hell should I shout? Who does this rascal take me for … or is he just winding me up? “May I impart some of that expertise to you instead?”
“Why, whatever could I possibly use it for, Mr. Melkior?” ATMAN went on wondering, “I’m not a warring party.”
“No, but there is a secret, everyone is frightened of it,” whispered Melkior in the strictest of confidence. “I learned about it while I was out there … Alligators, a new weapon, they keep one in each town. …”
“Oh, that’s just an animal, an aquatic anim
al, a crocodile,” laughed ATMAN, but with a watchful eye on Melkior.
“An animal, true enough. But what about Hannibal’s elephants? And a crocodile is more awesome than even an elephant; it hides in the tall grass and then suddenly: snap! The fear and terror of any infantry. They were brought in from the Ganges and the Nile.”
“And you’ve seen those crocodiles?” ATMAN was going along with the joke.
“No, but I’ve heard them. They howl worse than any beast. They’re kept well hidden—top secret.”
“You don’t say …” said ATMAN rather vaguely, while keeping a close eye on Melkior: is he pulling my leg or is there really something in … “And you think that in case of war …”
“They’d make mincemeat of all those armored columns or whatever the things are called! They sweep tanks away with their tails like this,” he flicked a matchbox with his little finger, sending it flying far away from the table.
He felt pleasure at the victorious gesture. With my little finger! And the words sounded warrior-like to him. He embraced the madness which made another assault before a bewildered ATMAN. “Yes, Mr. Adam, I could tell you about plenty of other very strange things I saw out there,” so let the scoundrel snitch to whoever he reports back to—Kurt or his lame Scarpia.
“Very interesting indeed,” ATMAN was saying, baffled: he now was truly at a loss. “It looks like you’ve delved quite deeply into these military matters.”
“I didn’t plumb the depth, but when it comes to signals in lights (this is how Gogol’s Zhevakin II speaks, thought Melkior in passing) it’s not just switching the lights on and off—you’ve also got to be careful which windows are lit, by number and floor, this last is particularly important. It’s a special code, you see, and you can read all the signals to be sent about the alligator if you can crack the code.”
“And you cracked this code?” asked ATMAN in a bored way, even with an unconcealed and impertinent yawn. But he liked repeating the phrase cracked the code.
“I studied it … with the aid of an expert.” Melkior could not hide his smile: he had remembered the Melancholic. “I can’t help laughing when I remember how we decoded it all wrong once. We got something really funny, swears and vulgar words. I expect the counterespionage boys were having a laugh, joshing with the enemy spies. Then again, perhaps they’d merely encoded the signals under a new system and we decoded them using the previous one. Most amusing it was.”
ATMAN was yawning a great deal by now. His eyes were wandering in boredom, his gaze going hazy. He’ll drop off any moment now, thought Melkior with pleasure. I’ve fixed ATMAN the Great with his own weapon!
“But I’m being a bore, Mr. Adam. Apologies.”
“Not at all, it’s most engaging,” but nevertheless he glanced at his watch and gestured, “Bill, please.”
“All the same I have bored you this evening, you’ve got to admit it,” Melkior was not going to give up, I’ll finish him off, if only for tonight.
“Oh, no, Mr. Melkior, whatever makes you say that? It’s just that I’m rather tired, I’ve had a very long day to-hoo-hooo … day,” finished ATMAN, with a long and seemingly strenuous yawn.
“Doing horoscopes?” Melkior was not letting go.
“No—two maniacal females. Brought by that woman of mine, the one ‘off the rope’ as you like to put it. So, Mr. Melkior,” ATMAN suddenly asked in a very serious tone, “do you really believe in these … alligators?”
“What’s there to believe?” said Melkior “sanely,” as madmen are apt to speak. “I don’t believe in death rays, but alligators are aquatic animals, you said so yourself.”
“How strange.” ATMAN looked at him in a “certain way.” “I thought you were joking,” he added in a low murmur and with a kind of morose disappointment.
Outside, Melkior offered him his hand, “Good night.”
“You’re not going home?” asked ATMAN with what was nearly pleasure.
“I feel like a walk. I’ve been cooped up for so many days now …”
“Only four, Mr. Melkior. Don’t tell me you’re off to the Give’n-Take—your crowd hardly ever goes there anymore. Thénardier’s trying to get rid of them in stages—he won’t let them drink on a tab, someone told him the police are keeping an eye on them. Have a nice time. After all, heh-heh, I spoke to her in the rosiest of terms … Help Destiny, Mr. Melkior, and she will reward you a hundredfold,” laughed ATMAN out loud. “Knock, and the door shall be opened unto you, ha-ha-ha … Good night, you lucky man!”
Lucky man? He was left alone, lost in the cold dirty fog. There was nowhere to go, the fog had coated all the streets with a smelly cold barren wasteland. He decided to give ATMAN a good head start and then go back to his warm nest himself.
Or should I knock after all? It was not yet nine o’clock. Destiny was really imploring him to do his part. He responded with an adventurer’s grin. The phone booth on the corner offered itself to him like a harlot, like an old reliable whore mistress: hey, boy, here’s Ambulance Service, make the last digit 4 instead of 3, make the last digit 4, 4, 4 … What the hell, Melkior waved a hand, Destiny calls in person! ATMAN said so. Let’s go and knock at the door! Let this be the ruination of you and of me … he sang defiantly inside.
That selfsame defiance drove him up the seventy-two steps, and Coco’s honorable nameplate gave a gleam of shame, oh Lord! But Melkior did not look at the honorable face of the spouse and master of the house—he sent his masculine signal (Alligator’s here! and he laughed cruelly): long-short-long.
Presently there was a sound of movement inside (female? male? which?) and then someone said “oh-oh-ohhh …” as if a hen had been disturbed. And Melkior said “co-co-cohhh” behind the door out of some silly need to tell the nameplate, See, there is a hen inside.
The small brass window set in the door opened; he heard her ragged, excited breathing inside. She’s alone, concluded Melkior, relieved.
“Who is it? Th-that co-code …” he heard her quavering whisper from the dark rectangle. He trembled all over with the nearness of her, he felt the noise of his blood in his veins.
“It’s not Coco, it’s me,” he said with as much co-cocky derision as he could muster.
“Kior!” she exclaimed madly. “Kior’s back! He’s back, he’s back. …” she spoke to herself cuddling, confidential, out of her mind with unexpected happiness. She kept turning the key in the lock, right, left, nervously, she barely managed to unlock the door.
“Where are you, where are you, you naughty boy, ahh …” petite and all aquiver, she clung to him in a tight embrace, “Kior, ah, Kior!”
She had an emerald-green velvet housecoat on, closely fitting the body Melkior knew so well … and underneath it—“Here, nothing, I’ve just taken a bath, Kio, I had an intimation, I knew, ah Kio, I was waiting for you.”
“How did you know? Did Adam tell you?” he asked suspiciously.
“Adam who? There you go again with your … Ah, you crazy man!” she got the point of the joke. “Yes, Adam, I’m waiting for you like Eve, see,” she unbuttoned the housecoat, showed herself naked to him; she had not understood which Adam he meant.
He hugged her eagerly under the housecoat and vigorously fell to kissing her neck and breasts, belly, hips, leaving the matter of Adam aside for the moment.
“In here, Kio, come here,” she pulled him into the room with the wide double bed. “I’m all alone, Kio, I’ve been alone for a long, long time, you all abandoned me, you bad, cruel men,” her tears began to flow, she was feeling sorry for herself. “No, he’s not bad, you’re bad, you never wrote a word to me all this time. Ahh, Kio, how I’ve been waiting for you!” She heaved a deep sigh flinging herself onto the bed with panicky speed, as if fearing the elusion of the reward for all the suffering she had borne.
“I’ve had a tough time of it, Enkie, I’ll tell you all about it,” said Melkior throwing his clothes onto chairs, the floor, every which way, he, too, was in a hurry. “I wrote to no one, I?
??ve been through … all kinds of things …”
“Ssh, don’t talk,” she whispered from the bed, all but pleading with him, “I want us to be happy tonight, to forget everything. Turn off the ceiling light, turn off all the lights. We’ll be watching each other and talking later, now I want to see nothing, to hear nothing. I just want to feel you in the dark, all of you, all of my darling. … Come, Kio. Ah, I can’t see you, where are you? Ah, Kio, Kio …” and she laughed madly in his tempestuous embrace.
They were sharing (of course) a cigarette and lying there in silence. She had her head propped on his lean upper arm and was surrendering with indulgence like a small boat in a sheltered cove; he had one of her small breasts cupped in his splayed fingers, regally, like a monarch’s orb. He felt on his chest the pleasing presence of the heavy cut-glass ashtray, rising and falling on the waves of his breath. He was remembering the dream he’d had on his first night in the barracks. Had it been this one, Enka, or … he could no longer remember. “That’s right, call me a liar!”—“I said briar … and anyway, you’re not a liar—you’re a fool, and that’s not a dream.”
“How could you go and spill everything like that?”
“I didn’t spill anything. He already knew all about it. He’s not a chiromantist for nothing.”
“Chee-rro-man-tist,” he enunciated mockingly.
“He got everything right—as if the devil himself was in him.” She snuggled up to him, keeping under his mighty wing, poor, small, helpless, alone. …
“And you believe he can soothsay?”
“I told you—he already knew all about it; I told him nothing, it was he who did the talking …”
“… and you did the confirming,” he said angrily. “Did you mention that you love your husband?” asked Melkior with concealed irony.
“But of course …”