Ranko Marinkovic - Cyclops

“Skipper! The sirens, the sirens!” shouts the helmsman all of a sudden.

“Wax! Stuff the ears! Lash yourselves to the mast!”

A siren was already screaming over the city. Melkior leaped out of bed. Is this it? Or is it just an exercise? People were walking calmly down the street. The sentry was gazing at the passing women with a lustful gaze. No, this is not it, not yet. An exercise. Let’s phone Enka.

He was possessed by urgency, like someone completing a task against the clock. He rushed downstairs acknowledging no one to avoid being stopped for the ridiculous questions about his health, the war, politics. Many dreams, gentlemen, many dreams lately. Erotic ones. We haven’t the time.

Dial Ambulance Service, but make the last digit 4 instead of 3. That was how Enka had instructed him to call her. Busy signal. The coin dropped down. Again. He was dialing with furious intensity. He used to dial numbers on Enka’s breast, for a joke, after love-making, as they relaxed, naked, next to each other.

“Hullooo?” Her crooning voice over the telephone had always excited him.

“Hullo, Ambulance Service?” in a shaky voice, as if this really was an urgent matter. Grave emergency.

“Wrong number,” she answered in a convincingly cold, even bored voice. And, without replacing the receiver, she said over there, to him , “That was the fourth ape this morning.” And there was laughter, somehow insulting, over there, between them.

Even though this was not the first time, he felt like a stranger, an outsider. Ape! She allotted him the same treatment as the three who had dialed the wrong number that morning, as the people who were a nuisance. She did it on purpose, for him to hear. She knew his voice, oh yes, she knew! Why did she choose today to let him overhear that he was that morning’s fourth annoying ape who didn’t know how to dial a number properly? Something like a trace of jealousy surfaced … No, not jealousy! He was fending off the feeling. She had slammed the door before his outstretched beggarly hand. Beggar? No: burglar! He was giving himself cynical airs. I’m plainly not up to the harlot’s clever tricks. After two years he still had not learned to adapt his sensitivity to her complicated conjugal situations which she breezed through using her innate low cunning. No amount of experience had protected him from being easily stung. She would laugh at his naïveté, later on, advance sensible reasons, bring him around. But she was not taking the smallest of risks. Moreover, she acquired security, she fortified her marital fidelity at the expense of his pride, his honor, his courtesy as her lover. With her cynicism she was far above his sensitivity, laughing her superior, her wanton laugh, being dreadfully distant, opaque, elusive, disgusting. How many times had he gone to her intending to have it out? To smack her right in her lying mouth, to yank out her tongue, to leave her, forever. And then he had again kissed the mouth, held the satanic little tongue between his teeth and felt its morbid softness as the truest truth in the world.

Someone grabbed him by the neck and spun him around. He saw Maestro’s unshaven face. They were standing in front of the newspaper building. “If you were going upstairs, don’t.” Maestro’s words were consecrated by matutinal brandy breath.

“I’ve got a review to …”

“Later. After it’s blown over. There’s one hell of a kerfuffle going on up there. The Old Man’s tearing jumbo-sized strips off the music guy.”

“What for?”

“I should hardly think it’s over Beethoven. They’re raging about technology and politics and what not … ‘Who cares about the music!’ I didn’t quite get it. Anyway, you know well enough what kind of a fix we’re in.”

“I don’t understand. Why should he shout at the …”

“He’s not shouting out of conviction. He’s shouting to be heard by the boss behind the upholstered door. You can barely be heard behind that door. You’ve really got to raise your voice. After all, it’s that kind of job and that kind of salary. It pays to shout, even against your convictions.”

“But what’s the reason? Why? Do you know?” Maestro’s obfuscations were irritating him.

“The reason is Beethoven, of all people.”

“So?”

“So … there was a gala production of Fidelio last night and the music guy reviewed it.”

“Well, what of it? He likes Beethoven!”

“He likes German music in general.” Maestro followed his broad hint with a grin.

“And the music guy didn’t praise Beethoven enough?”

“Oh, he did, he did. But the Old Man yelled at him, ‘What about the chronicler’s duty?’ ‘We’re a political paper’—or rather a ‘paper with a political profile,’ these were his exact words. And it was a gala production, get it? Personalities. He was supposed to mention the personalities in attendance.”

“Which of course he failed to do?”

“Yes. The hell with them! Let’s go have a snort of rotgut.”

“What’s a critic got to do with personalities? That’s something for you, for your City Desk.”

“Yes, for my Dustbin Desk. We get the rubbish, you get the cream. But it looks like things are changing — now everyone is getting rubbish. The great equalizer. Don’t let it get to you. Sooner or later we’ll all end on the rubbish heap. Such is the march of history. Let’s go have a snort. On me … ‘on the eve of historic times,’ as the boss put it in today’s editorial. Here you are—‘On The Eve Of Historic Times’ …”

“No, I’ve got to go upstairs!” and he started off with Quixote-like I’ll-show-’em steps, but Maestro held him back using both hands and muttering incomprehensibly.

“Beg pardon?”

“Did you know that last night Freddie gave Ugo a beating after all? After you left. Lucky thing you did — it was meant for you.”

“What was meant for me?” said Melkior absentmindedly, looking up at the editorial office windows.

“What? Come back down to Earth and I’ll tell you what: Freddie’s … got welts. Ugo plastered a few across his physiognomy. Here and there. Gave him a bloody nose. She wiped his blood off with her own little hand and her own little handkerchief. Tenderly. Which cost Ugo a kick, up his Krakatoa, I think.”

“Krakatoa?” Melkior was laughing.

“Yes, right up the crater, for the air pressure caused him to mumble ‘Umm,’ rather umbrageously.”

“And Viviana wiped away his blood?” Melkior was enjoying himself maliciously, avenged by Freddie’s foot.

“Viviana who?”

“Er … The beauty.”

“Her name is not Viviana, it’s …”

“That’s what I call her,” Melkior hastened to interrupt Maestro. He did not want to first hear her name from this drunk.

“Viviana — sure — crouches like a Samaritan by his head, and he, the aching wounded gentle knight, grunts and peeps up her skirt, ha-ha. … God, what shapes! I envied him his wounds.”

“What did Freddie do? Keep out of it?” Melkior was attempting to cover up his loser’s misery by making a show of curiosity. ATMAN was right — Ugo’s next.

“Keep out, hell! He called her back, tried to drag her away, ‘Leave the ape, let’s go.’ ‘You’re an ape. Get lost!’ And he actually went off with that Lady Macbeth. While She stayed with us — with Ugo, to be precise — and we proceeded to put on The Grand Show. The Fall of the Bastille, no less! We almost tore Thénardier’s ear off in revolutionary ardor. Ugo was great. What am I saying? Magnificent! She kept kissing his lip where it was swollen from Freddie’s blow, and every time she did he put his hand down her dress. Once he even brought the matter out into the open. God, what a Pompeian scene!”