“It will indeed,” replied Melkior ambiguously. “Don Fernando has some engaging notions. He has expounded them to you, too …”
“Expounded … yes …” Maestro’s mind had already moved on to something else. “Death disgusts me, Eustachius. I’m imaginative enough, I can picture my own skeleton, and it’s a horrible sight. Take a look, Eustachius—is my bald spot dirty?” he bent his head low: the denuded pate featured a mud-dirtied bruise, “I like cleanliness.”
“Why, they hit you on the head, too!”
“No, no, of my own volition I lay down on my back … in the middle of the road, in lieu of a protest rally, for freedom of movement …”
Maestro was speaking rapidly, in a muddle. He meant to hide from Melkior that he had been thrown out of the café head first. His “protest lie-down” was an ad-lib.
“But you’ve got a bruise on the top of your head?”
“Never mind, it’s not a bruise, it’s my beret leaking blue dye …”
“It’s muddy. You should clean it. The nose, too.”
“The pate I’ll clean, of course. But not the nose!” he declared defiantly.
“The nose is not dirty—it’s bloody, which makes all the difference. Tomorrow I’ll appear, bloody nose and all, at the Corso when the whole crowd is there.”
“But what’s the use of parading it in public?”
“What’s the use? It’ll be a public indictment! I’ll show the culprit up (as nose is my witness), I’ll thrash him, I’ll raze his nose to the ground! Right there, in front of everyone! Perhaps even Městrović will be there!”
Again Melkior felt the burn of the evening’s café tableau: Freddie with Viviana. “Why did Freddie go for you? Was he alone?”
“What do you mean, alone? Everyone was on his side! All the waiters, the cooks … even the cleaning lady in charge of the restrooms. Aah, if he’d been alone, then his nose would have looked like this!”
His nose is now grazing on her fragrances … his imagination tormented Melkior.
“I mean, did Freddie have company?” he was purposely stoking Maestro’s hatred.
“What’s the thrust of this diplomacy, Eustachius?” Maestro gave a sly wink. “Trying to set me up, eh? You know who he was sitting with, heh-heh, and that’s why you’re asking.”
Melkior felt a blush sear his face. Well, it’s a lucky thing the old boy’s so drunk … also, he was relying on the poor light of the oil lamp.
“Don’t go red, Eustachius. Or perhaps white, I can’t see in this light, but it’s just as nice. Out with the soul, that’s what I like.”
Melkior was crestfallen and silent as a sinner. Maestro sank a brandy, then poured an entire bottleful of beer down his throat. Where does he find room for it all, wondered Melkior in passing, but he was not really giving it much thought. Again he felt the disorder inside him. He keenly wanted to get up and leave (he’ll get me all confused), if only to go back to his room, or to walk through town in the rain, to count his steps and his thoughts … to think alone, walled in by the ramparts of his endless solitude. Maestro now appeared to him, in the dim lamplight, to be an unreal man whom he had invented and projected out before him cinema style. Maestro was still talking, but what reached Melkior was only sound in the strange acoustics of a dream; the words themselves he couldn’t follow.
“Have you ever thought about it, Eustachius?”
Melkior said nothing. He watched Maestro’s pale skull move up there, above his own head and, how strange … thoughts are happening “in there,” words emerging, moving through space and ringing in my ears, but my brain is no longer taking them in. He wanted to get up and go, but instead he stretched his legs under the table and, yawning, raised and lowered his elbows like a crowing rooster. Indifferently, I couldn’t care less …
“I’ll brew coffee forthwith, fragile Eustachius. You’ll fall asleep at the table in the end, and we haven’t even got to the subject. I’m purposely beating around the bush. Do you think I give a fig about the burning of witches? Hah … although I was not speaking off the top of my head. Sometimes I think—for such is my life—that I was born conjoined to a twin. They cut us apart, but one of us had to die. It was he who died. And so, you see, he has been pestering me ever since. Dead alongside me, he keeps saying: let’s face it, you’re only half a man. That’s how I feel, Eustachius—I drag behind me a skeleton.”
The aroma of the coffee brought Melkior back to the real presence of things. He heard the oil stove hissing; he heard something about a skeleton, too. Who knows if Dom Kuzma is still among us? Ask Ugo, his mother might know … Well, what’s it to me even if he is … ? Hey, let him live … until Polyphemus the beast grabs ahold of the whole Earth …
“That goes for all of us nowadays … everyone’s dragging some sort of skeleton around,” said Melkior.
“Easy for you, youthful Eustachius, to speak in metaphors. But my dead man is no poetic image. Oh …” Maestro was about to exclaim, but suddenly changed his mind and beckoned Melkior to get up, “follow me, faithful Eustachius. Dante called Virgil ‘Maestro,’ too.”
He led Melkior to a small balcony “which looked out (Melkior was composing a description and chuckling at the way the balcony was ‘looking out’) over the empty outlying fields sunk into the dense wet night.” The freshness of the moist air caressed his cheeks; he inhaled deeply the smell of wet soil. From away in the darkness came the barking of dogs, and from somewhere near by, a strange buzzing sound, as if a mechanism were finely grinding the silence.
“Can you hear that, quiet Eustachius?” whispered Maestro in a kind of fear. His voice was trembling, but that could be merely due to his being drunk and chilled, thought Melkior. “Can you hear the zzeee … zzeee … zzeee … the villain’s sinister meditation! You’d say it was the night, speaking with the many voices of Nature … crickets, cicadas … but that’s not what it is, Eustachius, listen carefully. I listen to it night after night … It’s praying to the devil, its master … or, if there is no devil, it is praying to the stupid Power that shakes it—that’s why it’s buzzing so. Like a sinner set to trembling by God acting in him …”
Maestro was shaking all over with a kind of horror; the shakes broke his voice every now and then.
“Whatever are you talking about?” The terror moved over to Melkior. “Can’t you see its claws and tendrils? Look over there, in the distance.” Maestro was pointing a shaking hand into the dark. “Over there, over there, can’t you see the stripes scoring the sky, that’s its trail. It leads to the … country from whose bourn no traveler returns, as the Prince of Denmark once said.”
Only then did Melkior see it: quite near and level with Maestro’s balcony, perhaps only three or four meters away, was a transmission line. The black cords of thick, powerful cables boldly sliced the darkness. And the buzzing sound was coming from the pylon jutting up nearby, as tall as the building. Lightning must strike there often, thought Melkior.
“So what is there for you to be afraid of?” he said to Maestro as he would to a child, “it’s an electrical cable.”
“A po-wer ca-ble,” emphasized Maestro, “ ‘high voltage, danger of death.’ Down at the bottom of the pylon there’s a skull and crossbones as well, a courteous warning: don’t play with this. Then again, it could serve as an enticement. Imagine a shepherd, for instance. … Could it be that you’re cold, tender Eustachius? (he himself was trembling like a leaf), let’s go back in, Eustachius, let’s go back in. So the shepherd is up on a mountain, a sodomite, a dolt, living among the lightning bolts, and out of boredom he shimmies up the pylon to grab that porcelain cup, possibly to bring it as a vandal’s trophy back to his village. Or just to spite the warning, displaying some preposterous form of heroism, think I’m scared of you?—and there he is up top, a fried imbecile, his abandoned sheep bleating down below. A folk fool.”
“Why ‘folk’?” protested Melkior without enthusiasm, “a fool, an individual fool.”
“Oh no, dear Eustach
ius, a folk fool. An individual fool is Fred die for one … and let’s say Ugo, too. Or … let’s not say Ugo, he’s more of a nut case, a concept which has some charm to it. But folk stupidity is thick. It’s as if it were a general duty to be a standard folk fool to a certain ethnic degree; it’s of a piece with folk costumes and songs and dances. Folklore and ‘patrimonial treasure.’ Just take a close look at those dull, cruel, ugly (particularly ugly!) ‘folksy’ snouts. They’re all of a pattern: mouth mindlessly half-open as if they were forever listening to Latin Mass; and eyes small, cunning, ready for cheating and theft. Find me a single ‘folk belle’ if you can. Yes, you’ll only find one in the cow’s-milk cheese ad! No, no, country folk are ugly, cynical, and dirty.”
Melkior looked around the room with an ironic smile, then fixed his stare on Maestro in stubborn derision. Maestro looked over himself, confused, but his rhetorical certainty soon returned.
“Sure, I get the point—who am I to talk about tact and cleanliness? Everything about me is dirty, inside and out,” admitted Maestro contritely, even with a touch of embarrassment. “I’m immersed in filth, pure Eustachius, in every way. … But at least I don’t stink with the timeless stench of humanity, not with horse shit and animal rut the way barracks and schools stink … with that eternal soaked-in-pissedness. … My stench is the vile smell of an indomitable individual who doesn’t give a hoot for the rules of hygiene; my stench possibly contains poetic inspiration, the poetry of bohemianism, an aroma of freedom. Do you think a nicer … forgive me, but this is a necessary question … a nicer smell came from—all right, I’m not saying Baudelaire, but Verlaine, for instance? He would have stunk just as badly as I do and Louis XIV if they hadn’t kept splashing him with scents. Incidentally, my dear Eustachius,” sighed Maestro, melancholic, sluicing his throat with brandy, “there was a time when I used to shave as often as three times a day! I, too, used to yearn for things tender, pure, white … things like dainty arms around my neck, whispers of ‘darling’—‘dearest.’ And the rest of love’s liturgy …”
He was standing miserably in the middle of the room as if on trial. His eyes were cloudy, wet … with brandy or possibly tears, Melkior could not tell. But all this can just as well be a dreadful drunken bug’s labyrinth of cynicism into which he intends to draw me, only to laugh in my face if I start to believe him.
“So why didn’t you fall in love … back then when you used to shave three times a day?” added Melkior derisively “to be on the safe side”—he did not believe him.
“I … did love, Eustachius, I did love!” Maestro waved his arms weirdly, his head thrown tragically back in the manner of the grand pathetic school of acting (thought Melkior). “And what was it I loved? The rosebush, the twigs, the thorns! My sighs, my kisses ended up spiked on thorns, while others plucked the flower!” Maestro was all but howling by the end.
Damn this—it’s genuine! thought Melkior in fright, feeling another kind of horror. The stench business had had him disgusted, but at least it had been at the level of Maestro’s superior-in-its-own-way cynicism, which Melkior sometimes admired for its insolent originality, but this “laying the soul bare” turned his stomach in a completely different way. He disliked intimate confession; this one was all the more odious coming from a man with a bloodied nose who had often declared himself old enough to be Melkior’s father. There was something sad and dirty at the same time in Maestro’s avowal which made Melkior ashamed, and the shame made him avert his eyes to avoid looking at the wretch standing before him … as if he’d been declaring a homosexual love for me … ptui, damn it all!
Maestro wasn’t looking at him, either. Head turned away, swollen livid hands pressed against his chest, he was overcome by a spasm of despair, here, judge me … Stupid, stupid, stupid! raged Melkior.
“You despise me now, Eustachius,” spoke up Maestro timidly, in the voice of a spurned lover. “Well, I never really expected you to fall on my neck and join me in tears. Although, ahem …” he abruptly pulled free of the spasm and went on in his “old” derisive tone, “that would be like a scene from a French vaudeville. …”
“What would be like some scene from a French vaudeville?” asked Melkior, his eyes still away.
“Well—the two of us weeping in each other’s arms,” (Melkior shuddered at the thought) “and our beloved serviced—or for all we know being serviced—by a third, hollow Frederick! Ha-ha-ha …”
All of a sudden Maestro broke into dreadfully mocking and unbridled laughter, thumping Melkior on the shoulder —“fraternally.”
Melkior startled at the touch, at the laughter, but Maestro’s words appeared not to have reached his mind yet. He was staring at Maestro in dull amazement.
“Yes indeed, Eustachius—which is why I’ve chosen you for this ceremony.”
“What accursed ceremony?” Melkior was angry. He had a flash of “revelation”: he was setting me up all along! Priming his “despair” as a trap, to have me fly into his embrace with “avowals.”
“It’s not ‘accursed,’” Maestro went serious again, “it’s a sad ceremony, perhaps even a last tribute to a man … or a former man.”
What’s this piece of buffoonery for the benefit of? Doesn’t sound like a joke … but then he’s a past master of hoaxes … Melkior was being cautious. He waited in silence.
“My laughter has misdirected your thoughts, Eustachius, which is a pity.” Maestro sat down heavily on a chair and dropped his head between his palms. (“The Great Confession posture,” thought Melkior with alarm.) “You will now find it hard to believe what I have to say, and there’s a great deal to be said.” Maestro filled his glass with brandy. Melkior also filled his (Might make it easier to listen to him). “That’s the spirit,” smiled Maestro. “Your good health, then. Only I’ll have to cut the brandy with beer, for I wouldn’t want you, sober Eustachius, to take this for drunken prattle … and also because I have … other reasons,” he added with a kind of worried hesitation. “She was married at the time to a colleague of mine, he used to work for our paper as sports editor. A young, cheerful, shallow journalist; spent more of his time at stadiums, swimming pools, playing fields, than at the office. The cult of the body. That’s how he found her, body and all—at some playing field or other, or was it at a swimming meet, breaststroke or backstroke, it now makes no difference which, but it would have been a … backstroke kind of thing, and married her … rather, he took the precious body home and put it in his bed. Like a sporting health deity, mens sana in corpore sano, that was a frequent tag in his athletic articles. But don’t think I hated him, honorable Eustachius … I only envied him, for reasons which are presumably still clear to you. He seemed to have a great deal of respect—you might even say liking—for me. He was forever inviting me, dragging me home for coffees, lunches, dinners, being a pest … in the beginning! But later on she joined in, and I came to look forward to visiting with them: a ‘home away from home’ (I’d become something of a household pet), not to mention the wonderful hostess, you’d think every object would like to caress her as she went by … (Melkior failed to stifle a sigh) … anyway, I got to dropping in uninvited, at all times of day, just to see her. She would receive me with childish delight, laugh at my every word, even when nothing I’d said was funny: she thought it was ‘witty’ and wished to show she had got the ‘point.’ Only later on did it dawn on me that I’d been playing the role of prattling entertainer … I was good at it then, I was inspired, made happy by her laughter, by the enjoyment of the superb body, I was seeing ‘soul’ there, would you believe it? I didn’t drink much in those days, just enough to get my tongue loosened and my fancy prancing, but even that was very genteel, always strictly within the bounds of bourgeois good manners. I tell you, I used to shave and bathe, change my shirts … I didn’t look like this at all.”
Maestro rubbed his forehead in a spasmodic gesture of despair, finished his drink and dropped his head between his hands again. He then gave a cruel and dry laugh: “Love
…” he scoffed. “No one speaks to us with such feather-brained fickleness as love: it makes of us Apollos one moment and losers the next. In her company there, it seemed to me she was finding me ‘interesting’ (of course, I use that cautious term now that it’s all ‘water under the bridge’), and when she saw me out with a ‘do come again’ I felt dismissed as a servant who had done his day’s work. But I was grateful to her even for that: my love found in that invitation some ‘slyly concealed promise.’”
“Well, did you tell her eventually?” said Melkior, unable to contain himself.
His voice woke Maestro: he raised his head, looking at Melkior with a strange hatred—look who’s here!—as if he had only then remembered Melkior’s presence. He then laughed with scoffing viciousness:
“Did I tell her what, Eustachius …?” Melkior heard the implicit attribute “the Blockhead,” too. And said nothing.
“Tell her, indeed …” went on Maestro maliciously. “I didn’t have to, did I? She saw it herself … and proceeded to have fun.”
“At your expense?”
“No, at the expense of the City Savings Bank!” snapped back Maestro in irritation. “Don’t mock me, Eustachius. I may be floating in formaldehyde tomorrow,” he went on gloomily, his voice breaking with agitation. Melkior’s heart constricted. I mustn’t leave him alone tonight, even if it means sitting up until … “So please restrain, if you can, your pleasure at my disgrace. I’m sinking to lizard level under your very eyes, and all you can think of is cracking jokes!”
“My dear Maestro,” cried Melkior magnanimously, “nothing could be farther from my mind …”
“Good, because I’m not addressing what is far from your mind,” went on Maestro with kind composure, “I’m addressing your mind itself, the very center and core of your reason, capable of full understanding. Too late did I get wise to her perfidious little game, that is to say only after I’d given my hopes and fantasies free rein: well, why not? Women had been known, in certain exceptional cases, suddenly to appreciate spiritual qualities as well, perhaps for originality’s sake, or simply out of defiance … I was imagining with sweeping breadth.”