Ranko Marinkovic - Cyclops

This is a stain of some sort of poison spreading inside me. It’s a stain … I wasn’t wary enough to take care, to take care. It’s Enka’s lust that has overflowed over, over … what? He was climbing the stairs to his room to the accompaniment of such faux musings. Everything was unclean, everything insincere! Including the autumn with its faux sky, faux heat, with its greenery tired and withered like the face of old age done up with cosmetics. There were supposed to be rains, sad, autumnal, and yellow leaves in the parks and the sound of wind in the trees, the days gray and gloomy, the nights long and wet and monotonous. Verlaine. Les sanglots longs des violons de l’automne … A surrender to sorrows, a relaxation, ease. Instead, this is all tense expectation outside the operating theater. Inside, the mystery of the to-be-or-not-to-be alternatives is under way. It’s no longer a question, my good prince, it’s a matter of waiting. The only question is: When? When will the blood-stained surgeon slice into my navel and reconnect me to Mother Earth who exerts this gravitational pull on me out of love? But I take away her force. I foster my antigravity using ascetic, saintly, angelical means. Wings will sprout out of my anti-Earth and I will take off for the disinterested, neutral, suprapatriotic, suprahuman skies. I shall hitch myself to a cloud and swing above you, Mère-Folle , I, your crazy son, Melkior Tresić the spider.

“Ah! Hail-fellow-well-met!” ATMAN surprised him on the stairs. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

“What can I do for you, Mr. Adam?” Melkior spoke like someone ambushed by a loan shark.

“She’s here,” whispered Mr. Adam straight into his ear, so that the vowels tickled him deep inside his Eustachian tube.

“She’s in here, in my room,” whispered ATMAN confidentially, as if making preparations for a murder.

“Yes? What have I got to do with …?” But these were not words turned over in the mind in advance, it was just the tongue knitting a small mask for the palmist’s benefit.

“I promised to invite you when she came by, did I not? Well, she has come. Unexpectedly. I’ve already been upstairs looking for you, in your room.”

The palmist spoke with elation, as one speaks of an extraordinarily joyous event. He had the air of a man exalted and aquiver. Nervously interlacing his long white fingers, he was making small bows to Melkior like a shop assistant enjoining a window-shopper to step in and have a closer look at the merchandise.

“Won’t you come in, Mr. Melkior? We have been waiting for you.”

“But why? She’s your guest, isn’t she?” In fact, he was afraid. Trembling at the very thought that he did wish to go in and was actually going to go in at any moment now. Oedipus facing the Sphinx! But he knew the answer to the riddle, “What animal walks on four feet … on two feet … on three feet …”

“I don’t think we ought to put this off any longer.” ATMAN was already nudging him toward the door. “Whatever will she think we’re doing out here?”

The room was spacious. ATMAN had divided it, using a plush double curtain, into a dark anteroom-cum-waiting-room and a studio, which doubled as his bedroom. Melkior stepped into the dark and put out his arms like a blind man. ATMAN was still guiding him by the arm — or rather holding him captive.

“Would you believe he’s afraid of you?” he called through the curtain to her over there in the well-lit part of the room. She shrieked a little laugh, which meant nothing, or merely, “How amusing.”

The palmist pushed the curtain aside and ushered Melkior into the room. She had clearly taken up a pose for the encounter: she was sitting crossways on the sofa, her legs out in front of her, a thick volume on her knees. Melkior recognized it as a book of his — a translation of Alfred Adler’s Individual Psychology; ATMAN used its size to impress his customers.

“Here he is,” the palmist said as he set Melkior before her like a wooden dummy. “Introduce yourselves.”

In reply to his Tresić she mumbled out some name or other and immediately said with genuine modesty:

“I should be afraid of you — you’re a critic.”

“You have nothing to be afraid of,” Melkior replied with conviction.

“That’s right, is it not? Nothing!” ATMAN jumped with delight. “And let me tell you he’s not just being flattering!”

The corners of her lips curled upward with pleasure. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful … the words were dripping sweetly inside Melkior like honey being poured out golden-transparent, slowly, long, lazily. She had spread her skirt peacocklike about herself on the sofa so that her waist in the high-necked tight pullover showed itself slim, narrow, and the breasts, large, round, jutted out proudly, self-confident. The hair light brown, slick, drawn into a chignon, two thin laughter lines — that’s what makes her look older. But the eyes, the mouth, the chin … no, I’ll never be kissing them, concluded Melkior and this gave him a sense of inner peace, a resigned satisfaction.

“This is your book, isn’t it?” She raised her pretty, bright eyes toward him. “And you’ve read all of it?”

“Yes,” said Melkior with a shade of embarrassment.

“What about you, MacAdam? Have you read all of it, too?” she asked scornfully of ATMAN.

“Of course I have. That is, I haven’t finished it yet. But I am in the middle of reading it …”

“But what do you need it for? Those old hags of yours? Mr. Trešèec is a teacher … You are a teacher, aren’t you?”

“Bachelor’s degree in philosophy,” answered Melkior, aware that his ears had gone red, and added for good measure, “And my name is Tresić.”

“Yes, well, Professor Tresić. I heard it the first time. Sorry.” She blushed slightly, which Melkior took as small change for his fiery ears and felt good.

“I don’t understand a word of this. I tried to read it. What’s com-pen-sa-tion?”

“There you are— exemplar. What did I tell you?” ATMAN gave a happy jump and snapped his fingers with satisfaction.

“You shut up, I wasn’t asking you!” she snapped. The palmist hung his head in shame, ingratiatingly, like a child who has intruded on a grownup conversation. But he was smiling with a corner of his eye, slyly.

What kind of relationship did they have then? Melkior was saddened by her authoritative intimacy with the palmist. Why was she free to use such a tone? But he noticed immediately, with doubled sadness, the way ATMAN took pride in showing Melkior her behavior. As if it was his right not to be offended by it, to take it as something familiar, domestic. He even grinned at Melkior—“This is the kind of terms we’re on, get it?”

He felt dreadfully lonely in their company. He thought it best to leave while he still stood a minimal chance of having got it all wrong. But he found it hard to relinquish her presence. Better to risk a horrible revelation than interrupt this happy moment … Rubbish! they’re acting out a charade for my benefit. This is a trap! He realized it in a flash. ATMAN had set up this ambush: they had been lying in wait with that book on her knees. With com-pen-sa-tion.

“Do sit down, please, Mr. Melkior,” the palmist got suddenly fussy and flashed him a servile grin. “You’ve frightened him, kitten. Won’t you sit down here, on the sofa? You won’t mind him sitting next to you, will you? But why do you hesitate, Mr. Melkior? Don’t be afraid, she’s only arrogant with me. Am I right, kitten — he’s not to be afraid of you? There, the kettle’s boiling.”

“You’re talking nonsense, Mac. You’re making me look the monster,” she said flirtatiously. “Please sit down, Mr. Tresić, I should be truly glad to learn something from you. All these characters ever do is talk nonsense.”