“Leave me out of this!” interrupted Melkior angrily: had he not himself thought about …
“All right, not you—the … others, the fu-tu-ristic lot,” conceded Maestro, in a placating tone, “picture the Future as a Final Ceremony, a Grand Parade: everyone will be there, sporting their decorations … and afterward—nothing, just a dream. Everything will stop in incantation, in apotheosis—something like Gundulić’s dream, painted on the stage curtain at the Zagreb Opera House, a tableau vivant, for eternity. Ha-ha, most kind Eustachius, the picture of Judgment Day is every bit as naïve, but at least there’s some dynamic and fear in it, something earnest … Oh why didn’t I have the acquaintance of all men!” sighed Maestro with pathos.
“What use would that be now?” laughed Melkior. “So you could leave them a memory of you?”
“All I wish to leave them now is my undamaged skeleton, Eustachius,” said Maestro gloomily and, it seemed, with reproach, “as stipulated in my contract with the Institute … So that students may study me and become doctors, eventually to become skeletons themselves. There’s equality and fraternity for you, Eustachius!”
Maestro’s head then dropped with fatigue and drink, first to his shoulder, but finding no support there it slid powerlessly forward and thumped against the bare wooden tabletop. The sound was dull and probably painful, but he seemed to feel nothing anymore.
He’ll drop off now, hoped Melkior. He watched the dried mud on Maestro’s bare pate: “the grimy bald spot.” They threw him about and beat him before her very eyes. Freddie thrashed him and she, in all probability, enjoyed it. Viviana.
Melkior pronounced the name with mournful scorn and this concluded all he had to think, completed all he had to say. Over and done with. Shot dead. He ordered the volley himself. Fire! He repeated the punishment with a listless and miserable despair.
He was tired. How long the nights still are in March … His eyes closed of their own accord, they had nothing to see anymore, they longed for sleep. But the head is not abed … he repeated mechanically inside, yet the words remained meaningless, in-dif-fer-ent.
He noticed that, too. Maestro is not moving: dead or alive?—everything is now in-dif-fer-ent, as if this were a dream. And the words were an echo from a fast forward, agitated image sequence on the borderline between fancy and dream … a park with a dead man in white floating in a pool … a jet of water spouting between his legs … a silent screening, no splashing to be heard. (The rain had stopped.)
Dogs barking: night agitated; train squalling: faraway places sobbing; a young, vernal wind sighing outside Maestro’s balcony. … Melkior was explaining everything to his numbed senses.
Zee-zee-zee … piped up outside the house in its nocturnal, homely hum, like the Dickensian cricket, It, the Powerline.
“Can you hear that, Eustachius,” spoke Maestro all of a sudden, sullenly, without lifting his head, “can you hear the siren song? Plug my ears … with wax, Eustachius.”
“Go back to sleep, Maestro,” Melkior reassured him, “it’s the breeze, soon it will be day.”
“The proper phrase is a new day, Eustachius … for the sake of ex-pec-tancy and mi-ni-mum optimism …”
He stood up and stretched, in a seemingly sober way.
He wasn’t asleep, concluded Melkior, he was only resting his thoughts on the knotty tabletop. Embossed on his forehead was a starlike imprint of a knot in the wood: there, he’s one of the marked … a star on his forehead, a sparkle in his eye … thought Melkior by way of the poet’s line.
Maestro opened the balcony door, fragrant fresh air burst into the close, smelly room.
“Can you smell the breath of spring, Eustachius?” he asked with concealed irony. “That’s why I feel the torrents of spring inside me. I’m not partial to Turgenev, are you? I’m off to point my hose, Eustachius,” he said going out onto the balcony, “perhaps I’ll touch Eternity with my arc. Adieu, adieu! Eustachius, remember me …”
“Remember thee! Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat in this distracted globe,” recited Melkior with pathos. He noticed his voice had gone hoarse. It’s the waking and the smoking, I’m going to take it easy all day tomorrow … and sleep, sleep … This “tomorrow” struck him as exquisitely lovely and he smiled.
Maestro had already “pointed his hose” powerfully, there was the splashing sound of a waterfall …
A boyish game, the little Brussels piss-kid playing with his wee fountain in the park. Melkior was smiling as he listened to the noise of the cozy little cascade. A-ahh, mannequin-pisse … he said yawning. But before he could close his mouth he noticed his hearing turn around with an earnest interest in the sound outside … he saw a glittering arc rearing defiantly, shooting across the night, bound for somewhere far away: it aimed to sprinkle its badmouthed, symbolic water over the whole of the Future and all it concealed … to reach Eternity with its defiance.
From outside the house there came again the ingratiating, warm stridor zreee … zreee … as though wishing to offer the warmth of the home fires and the comfort of sleep.
Melkior was suddenly illumined by horrifying clarity! As if the walls of some other, common, everyday consciousness had broken down inside him, as in the flash of a spark, he instantly intuited Maestro’s “brand new,” “original,” “medicinally pure” death. He did not have time to scream, to rush out on the balcony … Maestro had already reached Eternity with his “arc.” He heard the altered, thick, and somehow surprised voice, as if the man was angrily trying to clear his throat for a new speech with “honorable Eustachius.” But all it came to was a labored mumble, a death rattle, and then a soft and seemingly cautious thud which seemed to mean, “There, that’s all.”
Massage the heart, massage the heart … Everyone is saying it. They are gathered around the sleeping and seemingly deceased one who has apparently forfeited his retirement benefits. … He is draped across the balcony’s wrought-iron railing, with flowers strewn over him, as if decked out for a celebration. … He is being funny: eyes closed, he is twitching like a dead body on a clattering cart, as though shaken by electric shocks. Electric fever persisting, thought Melkior. Numbskull is giving him artificial respiration: that’s the thing to do, he says raising and lowering Maestro’s arms, pump the air, he’s nothing but a pump now, a diver must have air … Ugo is laughing: a pump! By my father, the lecherous Parampion Kalisto, this is the only thing that will help him! and sprinkling brandy over him from a watering can. Look, his ear is moving … “On Ombrellion, the barren mountain, spake he!” cries out the Melancholic from inside the room. Who speaks? asks Melkior. He who is bent double out there … and who shall be resurrected before the cock crows thrice … for we know why the cock crows, he adds to Melkior in a whisper, with a confidential wink. “No you don’t! No more on tab!” The shout comes from Thénardier, who is wrestling with Ugo for the watering can. “Who’s going to pay me for what he guzzled alive? Let the Earth … devil take him! … let the Earth soak it all!” “On Ombrellion … Give him belfry bats and a spinning top, he’s got to be brought back to life!” shouts the Melancholic stamping his foot in a quarrelsome way. “And when we hear the Alligator tonight (he whispers to Melkior) I’ll show you the winks. There are nine of them. Shh, it’s a Scale Six secret. Now walk on, pretend you don’t know me.”
Chicory is weeping: Master! … He’s the only one who loved him, thinks Melkior and reproaches himself for being cold-hearted.
“Take this—now you’ll see for yourself how hollow you are!” Freddie has suddenly sprung up from nowhere and is leering over The One Bent Double Across The Railing, “and I’m a sugar cane, ha-ha.” And he flings at his eye the thorny stem of a rose. “Fred, sugar—my sweet,” exclaims Viviana.
A great multitude has gathered around him, the small balcony is chock-full. The room, too, is filled to bursting, and so are all the corridors, the staircase, all the way down to the main door. Outside the house the crowd shouts: Hang the whore on the wall! Spit on h
er! (This is a reference to the Gioconda; she is there above him, the smile never leaving her face.)
Freddie is saying to Viviana: “Don’t be afraid, they can’t hurt you—I am here.”
“All the same, Fred, what if they put me in a frame and spit on me?” trembles Viviana.
“They won’t—I’m here!” This time it is ATMAN speaking. In the housecoat, with the white muffler, with the spider. She snuggles up to him, “Oh, Mac!” He pushes her back gently: “Wait, I’ve got to massage his heart.” He points his long, bony fingers at the doubled-up Maestro and starts incanting mumbo jumbo, “So, father? Barefoot, was she … So, father?”
“You’re not going to revive him, are you, Mac?” she asks in great fear.
“Re-viiive?” drawls ATMAN looking Melkior derisively in the eyes. His own eyes come quite close together, flow into one (like two drops of water) to form a large, hard, bulging eye, blue as a plum.
Polyphemus! Melkior goes numb with fear.
“Uh-ah, no, no,” laughed ATMAN with his wide-set teeth. “Not Polyphemus! The embryo of glory in alcohol, right? While taking the animal to be weighed every now and then: a bone and a skin. … The drum gets the skin, right? And what does the Motherland get–a fig? Ah, no, no, you’ll make a dinner for the Croco-dile! Alligatorrr!” he summons the monster.
“Didn’t I tell you it was still over there?” whispers the Melancholic, almost breathless. “Wink to wink—nine.”
In reply to ATMAN’S call, the endless Length of the Great Worm begins to undulate. Lightning flashes and thunder booms from every movement. …
“It will be the ruination …” howls Melkior, but with a singsong lilt as if there were gaiety in it.
“And I pissed on it, Eustachius, ha-ha,” says Maestro bent over double (with laughter) over the railing. “That night, remember reaching eternity?—well, it was that very night that I … ha-ha-ha, lightning strike me dead!”
“But what am I to do, Maestro? It’s my turn now, he’s coming, infuriated, horrible …”
“… and pissed on! Retreat into the Vatican Library for six years … in noble penury, in rags worn with dignity.” After some thinking: “Have yourself castrated! You’ll be Saint Eustachius the Eunuch, what more can you ask? Ooh, ooh, ooh …” Maestro is having a marvelous time.
At that point, issuing from afar as if it were the echo speaking, comes Don Fernando’s drawling voice beseeching: “Do not drink the water … capture whoever poisoned the reservoir … do not drink the water.”
Downstairs among the crowd a panic spreads, cries, commotion, they rush off straight away to nab the poisoners. “It’s their agents poisoning us.” And I’ve just had two full glasses, thinks Melkior with a desperate man’s pleasure; he is feeling bravery in his stomach, like a small boy who has swallowed a button.
Then there is another voice, sober, accommodating, from quite nearby, from the adjoining room: “Citizens, this is not an exercise. Our country is under attack. We are at …”
Melkior pronounced the word himself, inside, his eyes still closed, and repeated it.
“Good morning,” he said without relinquishing his dream. He wished to retreat into the labyrinths of false sounds, the echoes of amicable distances; to let the sleeper go on toying with words; to grant waking the benefit of another morning from the other world … but the voice from the adjoining room was tenaciously repeating its lesson, practicing a difficult language: Citizens, this is not an exercise. What you are hearing is our guns. Our country is under attack. We are at war.
Our guns! heard Melkior with emotion. He sees hardened warriors, our men, intrepid, smiling self-confidently … O-ri-en-ted … by moss, “Listen up, look at him …” disarray in the image of the stable: Caesar’s croup … Nettle; barking at the lightbulb … piss off, I don’t want to see you again, ever …
Early this morning our capital city was … something like a thunderclap covered the voice from the adjoining room. The announcer cleared his throat, composed. “He’s overcome with emotion at the roar of our guns!” Melkior was trying to retrieve the emotion, but the very words disbelieved their own sentence, scoffed at its sweetness.
“That’s anti-aircraft,” could be heard from the street.
They are shooting at Kurt. Melkior sees him up there, high in the sky, “Duty calls, Herr Professor,” keeping an eye on his Cozy Corner around the corner … Well, well! muses the delighted Kurt.
“Call this shooting? The man must be blind!”
“It’s the height, man, the aeroplane’s way too high up. Reconnaissance, he’s not carrying bombs.”
“Of course, he’s carrying bonbons for the little children. What did I tell you—there he is, dropping chocolates, they’ve got chocolate to spare.”
“He’s dropping leaflets, leaflets!” shouted the judge from the window, educating the imbeciles in the street. Why be rude—it might make them go back for real bombs.
“Parcheesi,” said Melkior.
Do not drink the water, the announcer came on again. There is reason to suspect that the water has been poisoned by enemy agents. Do not use water until we have broadcast the laboratory report …
“Utterly ridiculous propaganda!” the lawyer was saying angrily on the landing. “Why, they’ll be here by tomorrow … what do you think they’ll do … poison themselves? Preposterous. Danica, get me a glass of water!”
“Oh, please, Dad, don’t …”
“Get me a glass of water, you ninny! Take a big one from the kitchen!”
“Doctor, perhaps you really shouldn’t …” came the landlady’s anxious voice.
“Shouldn’t nothing,” the lawyer was shouting angrily. “I’ll show you who’s poisoning the population! They poison the water? As if they had nothing better to do … Ptui, this is mineral water! You want me to crack your skull? I said, pour me a glass of water!”
“I was so scared, Daddy …”
Not to fear, daughter, said Melkior to her, your Daddy knows their plans did not include poisoning … Kurt and ATMAN and Dad and Auntie … Viviana … they all knew. Perhaps Don Fernando was right after all …
“There—has anything happened to me?” The lawyer had performed an ad hoc analysis on the landing and achieved the desired effect. The tenants were looking at him with respect as a man knowledgeable about this new thing that was happening …
God knows what else things will come to … They were retreating to their nests; their locks went click … to be on the safe side.
“Poisoned the water, indeed,” the lawyer was yelling after them, “well, just let me see if there’s anyone else to say they did!”
Melkior felt like shouting: yes, there is—I do! But he nevertheless tucked his head under the blanket and fell to gnawing his already well-gnawed bone: O body of mine … In the intimate darkness, erotically, cannibalistically, he sensed the odor of his body. This is presumably what cannibals and women feel when close up to a man … does that mean I wish to eat, and make love to, myself? The bones (he happened to have a kneecap in hand), gnaw the bones, copulate with the shadow.
The self-abusing autophage. The thrilling presence of one’s own body. And (like that night on the train’s hard bench) he fell to exploring his strange structure. So: an undamaged skeleton … ay, thou poor ghost, is still lying here with me. It knows the lever and scale laws and walk, jump, run, get up, lie down, sit down; knows what “we could fall” means when on a sheet of ice, knows what means a polite bow or a kick (with the right foot, or indeed the left, as you wish), what means the hand moving easily across paper, leaving in its wake black, bent, intertwined, broken threads of tortured thoughts. All those pipes, valves, bladders, pumps, membranes, filaments, communications networks; mechanics, optics, acoustics: the world broken down into tones and colors, odors, tastes, into rough and smooth, hard and soft, warm and cold, sweet and bitter. All those laboratories, cabinets, institutes, precision instruments for a fine reading of life’s safety. … In here, lying with me, is this perfect
world: wisely ticking its little time in its little darkness … and outside there’s a war on. And that lethal insect has already been released from Essen, homing in on this perfection …
The door opened noisily and somebody burst into the room.
“Ha-ha, will you look at him?” Ugo bared his black fillings. “Worlds colliding outside, and he’s caught up in self-abuse! Hey,” he yanked the blanket off Melkior, “we’re under attack! Sir, there’s a war raging out there!”
“How did you get in?” wondered Melkior pulling the blanket back up to his chin. “Wasn’t the door locked?”
“You failed to take the first precaution for safety in time of war. First you lock the door and only then do you pull the blanket up over your head. This is what the mentally retarded bird known as the ostrich does.”
What the devil brought him here now?
“I’m not in a mood for joking. Leave me alone, let me sleep.”
“Perchance to dream? What about the war then—nothing, a mere joke? Why, this is against mankind!”
Everything’s a joke to him, damn his … Melkior was irritated by the eccentric, irresponsible “Parampionic style” at a time like this …
“Will you for God’s sake leave me in peace!” he finally shouted.
“Wouldn’t that be nice! I, too, would have preferred ‘in peace’ … along with Immanuel Kant, but they won’t let me. Did you hear me: we have been attacked.”
“I know, so what? Shall I set up dominoes for them?”
“Well, that’s not a bad idea in fact … as the first line of defense. You match three to three, five to five, laying them in different directions to confuse things, set up traps … bravo! Tell me, did you see that in a dream?”
Melkior did not answer. Lying on his stomach he was looking over the edge of the bed at his slippers on the floor. Old, faithful, scuffed. There they are, waiting, motionless ever since the night before, patient, indifferent to anything that is not me. They have no idea they have experienced war. And when I descend from the bed they will piously kiss the soles of both my feet and come with me, rustling prayers for the warmth of my feet, for my comfort, for the happiness of my solitude. How I have worn them! O good my Slippers, never before have I noticed your dedicated and quiet life down there on the floor. …