Ranko Marinkovic - Cyclops

Melkior yielded. He couldn’t understand what this Mitar fellow wanted.

“Well, there you are, you’re saying nothing. Not that you could say anything — it’s true what I said. Everything can be read from your blood: health and disease and malingering. It’s all written in there as in the Bible, your destiny. That’s why it’s called blood work, and that’s where I’m in charge. What I say goes. And there’s no ‘let me see’ or ‘I wonder if’ with me. I give it to you plain: sedimentation rate, Wassermann reading, erythro and leuko counts, bilirubin, the whole kit and kaboodle. And if I mark it all ‘Negative’ and ‘NTR,’ it’s forward march, direction barracks and not even God Himself can get you off.”

Mitar the Vampire made a telling pause. He then brought his broad, greasy face over Melkior and ran his gaze over him: searching for a likely spot to grab.

“Then again, there’s blood work and there’s blood work …” he cast a cautious glance around the other beds and whispered with a kind of considerate contempt: “Sleeping, the weary heroes … It’s like having your picture taken at a photographer’s: you can ask for it to be warts-and-all or you can have it retouched. Now retouching’s no problem, you just leave that to me.”

“Is this expensive?” whispered Melkior conspiratorially.

Mitar seemed not to have heard the question and went on whispering; this time, in what was more like a private lament:

“Oh, oh, what a greedy bastard I am, from head to toe, God strike me! Look at the size of this!” he boastfully displayed his rotund belly with his trouser belt buckled prudently below it, “that’s my lord and master! The only one I serve — the rest can go to hell. It’s grilled meat, grilled meat makes the world go round, as the poet says — and that’s what’s going to bankrupt me, too. Braised heart, grilled liver, lamb chops, mincemeat steak, not to mention tripes on the fatty side … you’ve no idea how much I like gourmet food, God help me! Funnily enough, I don’t go in much for kebab, not even with sour cream — unless it’s tucked into a grilled bread pocket. I’m a big man for young spitted duck, with fat dripping from the tip of its crispy little bum, he, he,” tittered Mitar licking his lips and purring hoarsely: “Grrr … grr … grill grrates, grrill grrates, that’s what the Gypsies shout who hawk them. Find my taste amusing, don’t you? Your shit’s fat-free, right? A piece of boiled fish, an olive or two, that’s more the way you like it, eh? Oh, and Swiss chard, I bet. I can just see your gut piping ake me back to my home by the sea …”

One of the sleepers grunted before waking. Mitar quickly got going with his instruments.

“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.