“Imbecile and ass!”
This was interjected by Freddie, who followed it up with a provocative leer. He then leaned toward Viviana’s ear. Melkior watched her at that moment: first she had a surprised face as she listened to Freddie’s whispers, then she burst out laughing. The overripe hollow-eyed actress sitting with them was enjoying the slur.
And all because of the “five, six female fans,” thought Melkior.
In a review during the previous season he had described Freddie as acting like a hairdresser for five or six female fans, and lisping through his lines. If I’d let him have twelve hundred would that have made it right? Ah, five or six was far too few for this head of Hermes.
But Melkior had put the five or six there on purpose, using the measly number to slam him in passing. Which was ridiculous. Freddie was why women drank poison, slit their wrists, leaped from windows, dyed their hair, left their husbands—all for Freddie’s love. For his love?—oh, that would have been too much joy—for a promise over the phone: tonight, Madam, I play for you alone. And indeed he played for her alone, she believed he was playing for her alone and inside her she said “my darling.”
Freddie, the ideal young lover. The physique, the head, the shoulders, the arms, the legs, everything, everything about him was simply marvelous! The way he walked, sat down, crossed his legs, tapped his cigarette on his silver cigarette case, the way he lit it … he definitely oozes charm, they said, already melting in his imaginary embrace.
Freddie’s acting style is certainly worthy of a better-class hairdresser. … Also, he has a coy lisp … he couldn’t even deliver the “imbecile and ass” line properly. … But Melkior was hunting for her gaze, seeking a wise objective state, wishing to rise above his suffering, to be pure, to be pure …
She laughed at Ugo’s quips and her moist eyes immediately pasted his derisive words all over Melkior. Damn the Parampion, can’t he give it a rest?
His rhetorical raptures cut short by Freddie’s taunt, Ugo sliced through his formal speech as if with a sword. He turned to face the actor’s table and clicked his heels military style, his expression solemn and stern:
“I’m sure I needn’t slap you or toss a glove in your face. Accept my formal challenge: at seven o’clock tomorrow morning I shall be expecting you at the upper Maksimir Lake with witnesses at my side. Bring the sword from Henry IV, you episodic nobody. I shall bring a fork upon which I will impale you at five past seven, on the dot.”
The bar echoed to an explosion of guffaws.
The bartender at the bar burst into a titter and dropped a bottle of a costly beverage; he was in for two months’ work without pay.
Melkior sought her: … she was laughing, her shoulders were shaking. Freddie seemed to give her a warning kick under the table, she went serious all of a sudden: why, it’s “us” they’re … oh my, well, it was funny all the same. She was embarrassed, caught out.
After delivering his challenge to duel, Ugo spun on his heel and marched back to his table. They poured him a rewarding glass, which he drained and then burst out laughing himself. Somebody exclaimed in admiration, Now there’s an actor and no mistake!
Perhaps it was the exclamation that revealed the extent of the insult to Freddie. He stood up, his face pale, and adjusted his tie. He was prepared to take Ugo on.
She intervened. Suddenly afraid of something, she tugged at his sleeve, “No, Freddie, can’t you see he’s drunk.” He had in fact been counting on someone tugging his sleeve (he had a new suit on, white shirt, and tie); he bent down and kissed her hand. He gave his chair an unnecessary little jerk and sat down again. He even smiled like a better sort of gentleman who was not having anything to do with lowlifes.
“There, there, everything’s all right again,” she purred, stroking his hand.
“All the same, Fred, you should have knocked him a proper one across the snout,” said the hollow-eyed actress in her dark voice. “Clobber the brutes, that’s the only way.” She was very dissatisfied at the outcome of the incident.
“Come off it!” countered she. “Do you want him to brawl with the gutter?”—and the “gutter” was loosed straight at Melkior.
His ears felt hot, he knew they were crimson as well. He deemed himself innocent in the face of her insult. He got flustered and failed to answer the host of ritual questions put to him by Ugo. Justifying himself in his mind, explaining to her … no, this is nothing but the truth: Freddie is a shallow, talentless fop, his delivery’s off, he lisps and mumbles … spreads his words like butter … in a word: a fool.
It was as if she were reading his mind: she bore down on him with all her beauty. He felt a mighty fear in his body. … While everyone was calm around him, everyone protected by indifferent laughter. … And there: his hand resting on the table was not lying still, it was trembling, frightened …
“Are you scared of him?” asked Maestro in a whisper, one eye squinting in the smoke from the sodden butt in the corner of his mouth, giving him a derisive air.
“Scared of whom?”
“That Freddie character.”
“What makes you think I’m scared?”
“You keep glancing his way. Move the hand off the table, it’s trembling very convincingly. That might encourage him,” said Maestro paternally. “And be careful. In nineteen twenty an actor whupped our drama critic. Thrashed him in broad daylight, in front of the Theater Café with a dog whip. I saw it with my own eyes.”
“Why did he whip him? Did he get a bad review?” Melkior felt his voice quaver.
“Rumor had it that … well, it may have had something to do with a review, the man wrote that the actor spoke with a squeak or something, I don’t know, it has been ages since I last went to the theater. He might well have spoken with a squeak for all I know. But it wasn’t over the squeak, it was over a blonde.”
“A blonde?” smiled Melkior, and there was an agitated twinkle in his eyes.
“Oh yes, a plump one, with all-around curvaceous qualities. I knew her personally. Pulp novels were the total extent of her interest in the written word. She sat around in bars like this one here. … Her stock reply to compliments was ‘You don’t say’ and whatever she talked about invariably contained the attribute ‘awfully.’ So much for charm and coquetry.”
Maestro spat out the butt, took a sip of the local brandy, and lit a fresh cigarette, which he immediately maneuvered with his tongue to the corner of his mouth to keep his speech unimpeded.
“But it seems that both artists were smitten with her curves, wherefore the performing artist trounced the pen-wielding artist. Mind your step.”
“Why? It’s not as if I …” Melkior felt the need to hide.
“I’m not saying that you …” and Maestro raised his eyebrows in the direction of her. “No, that would be a foolishness unworthy of you, great Eustachius. After all, you are different. … Come on, no blushing, I’m old enough to be your father. Ahh,” sighed Maestro with profound sadness, “I have seen Fijan act! That’s why I don’t go to the theater any more. When the late Fijan walked down the street, it was as if King Lear himself was passing by. While nowadays, as you can see for yourself, it’s Freddie! And as for the thrashing, I told you the story for comparative reasons, to draw the distinction between God and a milliner. Fijan was God! Or at least a demigod … a magnificent presence at any rate. People stepped aside out of respect, they made room for him on the street to clear the way for his greatness. And when he shouted, with dead Cordelia in his arms, ‘Howl, howl, howl, howl!’ our very souls shook. Only a jackass could respond to Freddie’s braying, out of brotherly solidarity. I really don’t know what he baits his hook with to catch those eels. Because his sinker has indeed sunk. The man’s impotent. That’s a known fact.”
Within Melkior there shone up a feeling brimming with embarrassment and hope. But it’s all Maestro’s hair-brained malarkey … and everything went dark again.
“I used to have artistic ambitions myself in my younger days,
” stated Maestro all of a sudden.
“Thespian?”
“Literary. Poetic. But that was at a time when we drank wine, pagan style, and sang ‘sunny dithyrambs.’ We were all of us phallic instrumentalists, the crazed brethren of Eros. And Zeus was a wonderful god. There was never a poem without something ‘gasping’ in it, the better-class girls were nymphs and our ladies of the night, hetaerae. Vineyards, autumn, the leather flask and Pan. We drank the blazing sun. Bearded satyrs to a man, lustful centaurs, Bacchus’s drunken little apes. Anacreon, little Arinoë, the Argonauts … all from Volume One of the encyclopaedia, under ‘A’ …” He sneered bitterly and poured brandy down his gullet. “And now it’s brandy,” he said, giving a shudder of some brand of disgust. “The alembic. Chemistry. We guzzle formulas. C-H-O-H, Paracelsus’s hell brews. Brandy is a whorish drink, the seducing tart, the vamp with a hoarse alto voice and blue shadows under her eyes, luscious like our Zara—am I right, Chicory Hasdrubalson?”
“Sorry, Maestro?” and a wan young man with a nervous face, slicked-down blonde hair, and red eyes with puffy lids started with a spasm of laughter.
“Zara, our love, I said, isn’t she luscious?” Maestro closed his eyes in admiration.
“Ahh, Maestro, you are so cruel!” Chicory cried out in mock exasperation and burst into laughter, his face twitching nervously.
“Perhaps,” Maestro parried, “but such a cinematographic love does bring a new sacrament to our biography. Chicory met her personally, last year, when she was here on a visit. Well, it turned out she was no monstrance, he was disappointed. Fat and stupid, with a pimp or something in tow, heh-heh. … Ergo, we’re sunk, Chicory Hasdrubalson!”
“Sunk well and truly, my great Master. But Eustachius recommends Viviana, the delectable little fig.”
Melkior felt onanistic shame at the mention of the name.
“I don’t look between the sheets,” said Maestro in an offended tone, “I know none of those Platonic shadows. Explain, Chicory. To what tongue does the fig respond?”
“This fig is Latin. Figue Romance. Her little mug drips with nectar for lecherous admirers.”
“Ahh, ahh,” Maestro sighed quite indifferent and averted his eyes in vexation. “All that is just ‘Come out to play, it’s a lovely day’ … while what I need is peace and serenity,” he suddenly addressed Melkior, soberly, as if he had said to himself, “All right, enough of this nonsense.
“A cozy little house with flowers all around (so let it be ‘idyllic,’ never you mind it, I want it that way!), a table under the green arbor, a glass of wholesome wine on the table. Inside the little house, the devoted housewife with white arms (that business with the elbow just like in Oblomov, remember?), the smells of cooking wafting from the kitchen, whetting the imagination and the appetite, and me all pure and solemn. There, that’s the dream I had and still have. And still have, that’s the nasty part. And it will be found inside my head when those professors up in Anatomy open it up. The dream that never came true. How on earth can you make a dream come true here and still remain pure and solemn? Where can I lose myself, disappear, when everybody knows me? There I am, walking down the street, daydreaming, polishing a line or two, all I need is to get it down on paper, when somebody or other jumps out at me, ‘Well, hello there, how are you?’ and it all goes down the drain. If only he cared about how I was! Like hell he does! He’s only being a nuisance. … Or perhaps he wants to show that he, too, knows me, Yorick the fool, the highbrow drunkard. All right, I know,” Maestro went on after a swig, “I can’t very well write another Crime and Punishment. Where could I find a Raskolnikov here? Are you Raskolnikov? Is anyone in this lot? Well, all right, I suppose you might do, but this one,” he indicated with his eyes a skinny student at their table, “is he Rodion Romanych Raskolnikov, the redeemer of mankind? The little bastard, they say he robbed his father and set up house with a little tart (a pro) whom he chooses to call Sonya, can you see the presumption of the cur? I would kick him out with the tip of my shoe if I didn’t respect Chicory who brought him here. He needs just such a ministrant at the table, ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam, to pour the wine for him (there, look!) and tuck him into bed. The little deer tick. What can there be inside the head of such a louse—what am I saying? A nit!—but then a nit hasn’t got a head at all. Ideas? Ideas, hell! The nit lives snugly on top of your head, keeping warm, the little bastard, having not the haziest notion about what goes on inside. And finally, why am I cooking and kneading all that stuff in my mind—that is to say, for whom? That’s what halts my hand over the blank page, leaving me with nothing to show for my pains. Nothing. Nothing ever.”
Yes, that was it: nothing. At first Melkior had listened to him with naïve interest, seeing him as a failed genius. But now, after the “nits,” he saw a repulsive brandy lush with a permanently frozen snuffling nose and swollen bluish hands, and regarded him with disbelieving wariness. There could well be a tiny animal with horrible instincts hiding in the flowery idyll like a spider. The lecherous libertine, with a penchant for fat, sweaty women, his entire flesh already poisoned with syphilis, they say. … Melkior moved away from him and lit a cigarette, disinfecting the air around him.
Maestro was sensitive to such behavior: in retribution, he moved his chair closer and whispered into Melkior’s mouth, poisoning him with his breath:
“I could introduce you to that one,” he nodded in her direction with offensive intimacy. “I know her. This business with Freddie is of no consequence, it’s just mutual ornamentation. Their use of each other is a matter of taste: both are in vogue at the moment and are wearing each other like the latest fashion. So if you like …?”
“I wouldn’t want the history of my colleague to repeat itself on my back,” quipped Melkior and felt pleased at his success. “So he really beat him in earnest?”
“Like a madman. Slamming him right and left. The poor critic didn’t even run, no, he just stood there and took it like a martyr. He covered his eyes, for shame I suppose, and never moved an inch. I happened to be standing by the newsroom window and yelled, ‘Run, man, run!’ But he did nothing, he just stood there in a cloud of dust. I tell you, there’s nothing like a dog whip for beating the dust out of clothing!”
“There he goes again: on and on about dogs!” chimed in Ugo from the other end of the table. “If I may ask, is it Zhuchka or Perezvon?”
“I’m not on about dogs, I’m on about dog whips,” replied Maestro with a patient smile. “And you, Par-ara-rampion,” he stammered with anger, “you really should remember that Zhuchka and Perezvon are one and the same person—I mean, dog; it was only that Kolya Krasotkin called Zhuchka Perezvon in a moment of surprise, in a moment of compassionate surprise.”
“You ought to know, gentlemen,” said Ugo to the house at large, “that he is by way of being a specialist in Dostoyevsky’s beasts. If you please, Maestro, what’s the name of the dog in The Insulted and Injured?”
“Azorka. It was Azorka,” Maestro replied nonchalantly.
“Why ‘was’?” asked someone at the table.
“ ‘Was,’ ” Maestro retorted punctiliously, “because Azorka died early on in the novel, Chapter One.”
“See? He knows it all!” exclaimed Ugo in buffoonish rapture, as if he were offering a parrot for sale. “Please, Maestro, what’s the title of that poem by Captain Lebyakin? You’ll see, he knows that, too.”
“I can’t say,” Maestro smiled slyly. The unexpected reply left a palpable impression on his party. Ugo was stumped.
“I can’t say,” Maestro went on after an effective pause, “because Lebyakin has several poems. I’m sure you mean ‘The Cockroach.’”
“But of course, ‘The Cockroach’!” cried Ugo delightedly. “The Cockroach, the cockroach, ha-ha, I told you he knew! How could he not know about the cockroach, he, the Mad Bug—”
“Inspired!” Maestro corrected him.
“Ah yes, inspired, the Inspired Bug! Of course he knew, the cockroach is
an animal, is it not? I would also have you know, gentlemen, that he, too, has written a number of poems. They are not about animals, they’re sort of inspired, melancholico-anatomical, ‘snip-snap.’ May we have Snap, Maestro, please? There may be a few disbelievers in our midst, so let them hear it! Here, Don Fernando’s smiling skeptically as if to say, ‘He a poet?’ Why, it’s something right up your alley, Don Fernando, it’s humane and all that. … So, Maestro: Snap, if you please.”
“I am not smiling,” muttered Don Fernando, blushing horribly, because everyone was looking at him as if he were to blame.
Indeed, he was not smiling. He had hardly been listening to Ugo’s silly patter (or at least so it seemed), but nevertheless his expression smiled all the while, and it seemed to be smiling all on its own while he, preoccupied with his thoughts, was unaware of what it was up to.
He had sat there all evening with that derisive smile on, never deigning to say a word; he was watching everything from some distracted, wise height.
Moreover, the self-important smile never left Don Fernando’s face. It was, in a way, central to his physiognomy. Ugo said he put the smile on in the morning, in front of the mirror, and then went out, wearing it all day and taking it off only in bed to put it under his pillow before going to sleep. Who knew what lay hidden behind the mask? Revenge against mankind perhaps … or some small advance on a great future triumph?
Don Fernando wrote in the same way, wearing his inscrutable smile. A critic had written that he flogged his characters with nettles and tickled them to insanity. There truly was a sadistic side to his writing: he invented people to torture them. But the torture was by no means cruel or painful. On the contrary, the characters laughed and rejoiced, but they laughed like madmen and were bathed in the cold sweat of dismay, as if the author were flogging them into merriment.