Ranko Marinkovic - Cyclops

“What have you gone all quiet for?” called Enka in a conciliatory voice.

“What are you thinking about?”

“Abélard. A castrated man in the Middle Ages.”

“Did he do it out of piety?”

“No, they did it to him. The Church. For being in love with young Héloïse.”

“Would you go through that for me? Like hell you would!” She was actually seriously offended at the conclusion.

“I don’t love you,” he said, blowing away a strand of her hair that was tickling his nose.

“No?”

“No.”

She shooed his hand from her breast and got up irresolutely. She put her housecoat back on and went wordlessly to the bathroom.

That was how their encounters usually ended, to his satisfaction. He actually stage-managed such endings, closing the door behind him with no wish ever to return. And walking downstairs happy to be leaving. As if he were redeeming himself for some piece of perfidy.

He felt the wish to flee. To profit from her absence and go.

He dressed hastily. Prowling about on tiptoe, he tried to walk soundlessly, burglar style. But the parquet creaked. Suddenly she opened the door and gave him a frightened stare, as if about to shout for help. He stopped in his tracks, taken aback. He bent down like someone looking for something he’d mislaid.

“What is it you lost — your honor?” she collected her wits. Rage poured from her eyes.

“Yes. But I expect it must be somewhere in your marital bed,” he leered cynically. “Never mind, I’ll take yours. It’ll come in handy — I’m seeing some scoundrels later on today.”

“Kior!” she screamed and flew at him, but her arms threw themselves around his neck instead of pelting him. “Kio, why will you insult me?” She was being cuddly Enka again.

“It’s not my fault that all the facts around you are insulting.”

“All right. Fine. What would you have me do then? Do you want me to ring him up now, ‘Darling, Melkior Tresić is my lover’? Is that what you want?”

He produced a contemptuous smile.

“I may be, well … a whore, as you like to say, but I would never wish to hurt that man. That’s my morality. Now laugh all you want.”

He was not laughing. All of a sudden he said, so dejected that he wondered at the overtone himself: “It hurts me that you should be like that.”

He was lying. He liked her being like that, her, Enka’s, being like that. But he was thinking about the other one, about Viviana … and the thought hurt him. Ugo looking up her skirt while she, the Samaritan, bent over him … She knew he was looking … Oh Lord, must they all be like that?

And the Lord inside him replied cruelly: Every single one!

His face contorted at the Lord’s truth.

Enka started to make a commiserating gesture to him but gave up. She had remembered her own case.

“Yes, well, that’s the way I am. There’s nothing to be done,” and she shrugged.

Do they all shrug like that? Every single one, repeated the Lord inside him. He turned to leave. Enka blocked his way with a sheepish smile.

“Shall we listen to Bolero? It has been a long time.”

She was being small, humble. Ravel’s Bolero had worked in the past …

“No,” he said resolutely. “It’s past twelve. I’ve got to stop by the office …”

“When are you coming next?”

“Probably never.”

He caught a glimpse of fear flitting through her eyes. There, that was what he had wanted: to run a snap check. She never learns anything from experience. How many times did I tell her “never” only to come back again, and every time there was that flicker in her eyes! Yes, true, but I really believed I wasn’t coming back anymore. Could it be that she’s tuned in to that very thought on some wavelength of hers? This time, too, I think this “never” to be the last. Perhaps it really is? He now wished with all his heart it would be.

“Kio, please, can’t you stay for just a little while?” She was begging.

“What for?” She was quiet. “Come on — what for?”

“Now you’re shouting at me.” A sob constricted her throat. “Is it something I did?”

“No.”

“Why are you angry then?”

“I’m not angry.”

“Listen, Kio. Please wait, just a moment longer, please, and then you can go … if you like. I don’t know what it was I did. But … listen, please, if I ever hurt you in any way, please forgive me. I promise I’ll never do it again, Kio.”

“Never do what again?” he asked with supercilious scorn.

“Give you cause to be angry with me.”

“Why, you’re the cause yourself, all of you … ha-ha-ha …” His laugh was bitter and desperate.

Enka laughed, too. She thought, It’s better that he laughs.

“Take me, Kio, take me as I am. Don’t you think we could have lovely times together, after all?”

“Lovely indeed … Wonderful!” he leered all of a sudden. “Your husband has it lovely, too!”

“Yes he has!” she stepped out with proud disdain.

“He doesn’t know his happiness.”

“He knows it perfectly well! And he appreciates it. Whereas you …” She began to sob and tears ran down her cheeks. She felt innocent and righteous. There she was, torn between the two men in her life … the victim of her own generosity.

“You’ll regret all this, Kior, you’ll be sorry one day, mark my words …”

She wept bitterly and sincerely. And again Melkior invoked the spirits of the occult world, the mediums of tricks and deceptions, the grand masters of murky enigmas, to explain this strange creature here. So when everything’s said and done, I’m evil? I am Satan, a tormentor, sucking this poor woman’s life’s blood!

She was standing in the middle of the room, her face buried in her hands, weeping. A symbol of woe.

The phone rang.

In full self-control, she wiped her tears, even patted her hair (the instinct of the coquette, said Melkior to himself), without failing to signal him to stand still.

She lifted the receiver.

“Yes, darlingest,” she said into the phone sweetly, smilingly. Another face, a new creature. The metamorphosis of the jellyfish in a summer’s shallow. Multiplying by parthenogenesis, becoming countless, endless. Ubiquitous. Eternal.

Indestructible and omnipotent. Look, she can do anything! Oh God, You who assembled her, disassemble, dismember, dismantle her, display to me your Swiss precision handiwork in this priceless mechanism which works without a hitch! Or turn it back into Adam’s rib! Oh Zeus, give back to Mother Earth the bones that Pyrrha threw over her stupid head! Give us mute stones along our life’s paths to hurt our feet, but save our dignity now that, after the all-consuming destruction, you permitted Deucalion to become a man!

“You’re tired, sweets, you can barely speak.” She was melting with sincere worry. She was no longer aware of Melkior standing there beside her. “Oh what a shame, what a shame, I don’t know what to think. Died how? On the table? Heart? You don’t say! But why should you? You did your best, I’m sure. I trust you, my love. Come to me, sweets, come to me now. And hurry.” And she sent him two kisses before hanging up.

“A man died on him, under his scalpel, he’s in a terrible state.” She was speaking sorrowfully, coming up to Melkior, and again tears welled in her eyes. She lifted her arms to embrace him: “Poor man.”

He brushed her arms off, rudely, spun on his heel and slammed the door shut behind him. He could hear the scream of “Kior!” and the sound of despondent weeping. There was nothing that could make him turn back now.

Whence the sudden hope of running into Viviana? It was past twelve, her going-to-café time. Presumably she would not be going out that day if she had had a tiff with Freddie the previous night. What would he do if he ran into her? Would he say hello? Funny how he instantly forgot everything that had happened back up there with Enka. Not a trace! So what should I do, fret about it? Poor surgeon, his patient died. Poor bloody patient! What about Coco? … poor him, too, in a different way. Oh Lord, he loves her for all that! Yes he does, replied the Lord glumly, with a twinge of guilt.