Ranko Marinkovic - Cyclops

That is a catharsis. There are even handclaps. With a “shh” and a finger to his lips ATMAN cuts the ovations short and bows to the audience on all three sides with an almost painful grin. “Please don’t.” Whereupon begins the ascension, for he is ascending to the attic like God to Heaven. And he disappears in the darkness. He leaves behind upturned heads like in a Renaissance painting.

Melkior, too, turns his head atticward. Like a hen catching a drop of water. He swallows with impatience. He listens. Something appears to have got between the cogs of the snoring: it had now become irregular, like an engine winding down. And it stops with a powerful exhalation. And something like an oath is thrown in. Melkior hears angry whispers: the incautious, sleepy raising of a voice being hushed by another, threatening one. Everyone takes it for the sound of Hypnosis, for the voice of a mysterious force lulling the snorer’s senses. Now they all await the descent.

The way he’d said, “I’m going to hypnotize him!” No, really, what is going on up there? Four feet on the staircase, Melkior remembers, four feet when ATMAN was climbing to my door! An advertising stunt of the palmist’s, Melkior decides. It is only curiosity that keeps him out there.

The lights in the stairwell suddenly go out. Fear of darkness grips everyone. Body pressing against body, protection. Something curving, female, half-dressed, cuddles against Melkior. In response he gives it a protective embrace. The curved thing surrenders limply, caressingly. His hands greedily explore the relief of the hemispheres, entering gorges, running down gorges; the mouth enters the jungle of hair, discovering the tiny shell of an ear, “Darling, darling, let’s retire” says the mouth of its own accord, inaudibly.

Tens of panicky fingers grope for the switch on the wall. They interweave like languages unintelligible to each other. “It must be hereabouts. Move away, everyone,” commands the judge, his voice on the wrong wavelength, quavering. “Matches!” There are none to be found. The switch is not to be found either. “Now where in the dickens …?”

“Darling,” whispers Melkior’s lips in the jungle, and the curvy warm says to the palms of his hands, “yours, yours.” Everything is there in his arms, given as gift, as if in a dream. “Darling,” whisper the lips to the tiny ear, “my room is right here.” Suddenly the sleek slim fish comes to life, gives a frightened start, slides out of his arms and dives into the dark. Damn it, I could have … The curse of that masculine “now.” That canine “right here and right now” lust. I could have arranged it with her. Now I don’t even know who she was. They go for contrivance, for secrecy. Ugo has made a date with her. Or was ATMAN lying? What’s going on up there now? Can’t hear a thing.

Finally someone stumbles upon the switch. The light snaps on. Which one was it? He searches not by exclusion but the other way around: by choice, following his wishes. “Buttons,” Mr. Adam had said. Well, which button? The judge has two girls: the “foolish virgins.” Then there is the young wife from the second floor. He selects the young wife from the second floor. She is standing a little way off, next to her husband. Skier, the athletic type, broad-shouldered. Melkior feels inferior. He looks at her. Nothing. Another look, a long one, accomplice-like, with an invisible wink. Nothing. Sheer innocence. Her response is an absolutely conjugal, good-neighborly smile. No, not her. The “foolish virgins” then? But they are not even turning around. They are looking up, in the direction of the attic. Everyone is looking in the direction of the attic. “Coming down now,” somebody whispers piously.

“Coming down now.” The sentence reverberates inside Melkior in strange acoustics, refracted through a sound prism, with multiple echoes. ATMAN is bringing up the rear like a controlling power. Something is radiating from his eyes.

Everyone sees it. In front of him walks the hypnotized medium, his arms dutifully outstretched, like those of a blind man. His eyes are open but unseeing. He is controlled by the power residing in ATMAN.

Why, it’s Four Eyes, the lush! The palmist has arranged it all. Four feet on the staircase: that’s what had been coming up. A con job.

General disappointment on the stairs. They had expected a man-eating giant tamed by hypnosis. What they get is a rumpled runt, unshaven, dirty. It is amusing all the same. A hypnotized man. Arms outstretched, red, cold-bitten, trembling uncertain, tired, freshly awoken, shaken awake.

The ape’s acting well, thought Melkior. This can’t be their first show.

On reaching the last step ATMAN halts. But he does not loosen the hold his almighty gaze has on the unconscious subject. Four Eyes’s glazed eyes look for someone among those present. Melkior goes numb with fear: he has been found out! The two outstretched dirty hands are coming closer. The brute is indeed a good actor. Before he can collect his wits, the subject falls into his arms sobbing, “Mon ami, Mon ami.” At last, at long last, he has found the long-lost one!

“So that’s what the ‘Let him sleep’ was for?” said the judge. He now sees everything clearly. “You knew.”

“I did not!” Melkior barely manages to scream from the grimy embrace. Four Eyes has his smelly shoulder against Melkior’s mouth, sobbing “Mon ami, mon ami” into his ear.

“Ah-ha, ‘Mon ami ’! And yet he says he didn’t know!” the judge laughs sourly. “This is a hoax, all right, gentlemen. Let’s go back to sleep. Good night. As for you, Mr. Tresić, kindly save this kind of buffoonery for your drinking binges and let us get some sleep. Some of us are early risers.”

And the judge leaves. He pulls behind him his wife and his virgins, who are reluctant to go: they are held back by curiosity. How is it going to end? “Tell me, my friend: who is the sleep-murderer?” Four Eyes asks of Melkior soberly, worriedly even, having dropped his embrace. A blast of brandy shoots out of his mouth.

Melkior steps aside in disgust. He is shaking with rage.

“Mr. Adam, if you don’t lead your ape away instantly, I will thrash him!”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” ATMAN speaks up with dignity, “do you see an ape here? Pull yourself together, Mr. Melkior, if you please. We have all been roused in the middle of the night. We are all finding things a bit out of the ordinary.”

The audience is on ATMAN’S side. But Melkior is not aware of his own failure.

“This is the second time this drunkard has insulted me today. I don’t even know him.”

“Perhaps, Mr. Melkior, in a previous life?” ATMAN is being kind like a psychiatrist with a madman patient. “Never mind, eventually you will remember …” Then to the audience, “Under hypnosis, ladies and gentlemen, the soul acquires what is known as metempsychic memory. Here you have a typical example. You have just seen a hypnotized subject find the man he was searching for. In a previous life, as I said, they may well have grazed on the same meadow or, apologies to the ladies present, chased the same bitch. And now, having been reincarnated …”

“Will you stop the drivel, you ass? You read about that in the paperback you borrowed from me the other day!”

Even Melkior himself now sees he is losing. If only the judge had stayed behind: he might have been able to grasp a point or two. But these people just stare with fascination at ATMAN, the man in the know.

“There you are, gentlemen, ‘in the paperback.’ Paperbacks are just about at our level. Whereas they read about things in thick volumes. The secrets of the occult, Mr. Melkior, are to be found not in paperbacks but in here,” and the palmist tapped his forehead. “If you wish, I can lead you, too, as a medium, up and down these steps, for all your libraries. In the paperback, indeed!”