Ranko Marinkovic - Cyclops

“Is that me, Mac, is that me?” she bleated ingratiatingly, full of hope.

“I said Viviana.”

“Who is that? It’s nobody!”

“Your mother’s daughter …”

“We’ve figured that one out already. It’s nobody. You can’t say that! Who is she?” she whispered to Melkior. He shrugged: search me.

“There, you made it all up.”

“I did not,” said ATMAN in an earthly voice and squinted at Melkior. “He did.”

“Who?”

“Melkior … made it up, Melkior …”

“Mr. Adam …” but he could think of nothing to say next, like someone caught out lying. He felt the need to wash his hands, which were sweaty. “Mr. Adam,” he repeated senselessly and stopped dead, not being wound up. The mainspring had snapped, he felt it all of a sudden when she looked at him with her large eyes: You?

He crossed his legs in order to place a sharp kick with the tip of his shoe just below Mr. Adam’s knee. Accidentally, with many apologies, sincere as all get-out.

“Ahh!” groaned Mr. Adam and turned on his small close-set eyes, training them on Melkior with the big threat of an all-encircling octopus, the dreadful lord of the deep. But he sent his tentacles twisting upward, into an after-sleep stretch, into sensible awakening. “What? Was I asleep?”

“No, your father’s son was!” she said angrily. All was lost for her.

“But not my brother?” he took it up delightedly. “So it was I who slept, after all.”

The penny dropped.

“Why, it’s me! It’s me!” she clapped her hands and embraced ATMAN the Great.

“What about you?” ATMAN wondered very convincingly. Melkior recrossed his legs and gave him another shoe-to-shin warning. Mildly this time, with a you-cheeky-beggar smile.

“Viviana! I am Viviana!” she cried out her destiny-making discovery.

“Who told you so? Did you tell her?”

Melkior blew through his nose and turned his head away.

“You said so yourself, you crazy Mac! Don’t you remember? Viviana? I like it. Did you think of it, Mac?”

“No, it was Mr. Melkior.”

She looked at him like a hen, inclining her head toward each shoulder in turn, with each eye — each of two delights — in turn. He went pale. A lump formed instantly beneath his diaphragm, he felt his tea in his gullet, sweet-tasting.

“A pretty name. Thank you so much,” she said to Melkior, touching her face to his shoulder in fetching gratitude. ATMAN gave him a deserving look. “And you, Mac, you are truly a pig! You and your eagles! I’m not as stupid as you think. What does that make me, a … The parrots, too! No, honestly, you are a pig, MacAdam!”

She was angry, a justifiable and dainty anger, at Mr. Adam’s peculiar insinuation. She was but an unhappy woman in search of love (pure and true) for her youth and, well, beauty, such as it was … and look at him going on about round-the-clock shifts … it was clear what he meant by the eagles. No, honestly, what was Mr. Melkior to think of her? And Mr. Melkior was already thinking, Yes, it’s all clear now, she’s a … Two big-beaked eagles, around the clock, around the clock … And parrots to boot, ridiculous, yacking birds.

By now this had turned into a passion for discovery, for augmenting the sorrow. Which was why Melkior had stayed, waiting.

But she got up, sweeping her bric-a-brac into her handbag. The session had yielded some prospects after all: there was still the castle, also him in the distance. As for the adversity, well, you had to expect some, haven’t you? She was used to them all right.

“Would you be a dear and walk me part of the way, Mr. Melkior?” The idea was to crush Mr. Adam. One, she had no further use for him that day; and two, he had been behaving maliciously. She was teaching him a lesson.

“All right, Mic,” he jumped up cracking his knuckles, “would you like me to tell you the whole truth?” There was a momentary flicker in his close-set eyes, something like a wish for tremendous revenge. But a smile broke over his features and showed large spaced-out teeth — Chinese, thought Melkior.

This brought her back to the sofa with a bump. Her eyes were fixed on the cloud above her. She was expecting a stroke of lightning. But the cloud acquired a golden rim as the sun and the skies smiled.

“You interrupted me,” he said sweetly, his mouth full of foaming kindness. “Somebody gave me a … a nudge under the table and I woke up too early. I haven’t finished, Mic.”

He had instantly cut short her wedding feast in the far-off glass castle. Horrified, she watched the Demiurge’s skittish teeth with which he was about to slash the throat of the promised happiness. She was imploring No with all her body, No, Mac, have mercy. She saw breakdown, loss, finito. Oh how hard it was to find this damned Happiness!

“Because I still have a few things to tell you about what I saw …”

“No, Mac, please! Don’t spoil it for me … don’t spoil …” She burst into sobs before ATMAN the Terrible, looking at him eagerly, tearfully, with those very eyes he had intended to display for Melkior’s benefit. Indeed he signaled Melkior to have a look.

The poor girl. Melkior was about to give her a protecting hug but her eyes sent him back to the position of the defeated. Her eyes! How right was ATMAN-Nero, the poet of those tears. He marveled at ATMAN’S cruelty.

“How about a read from your palm? … So I can tell you how it all will turn out in the end?” He reached for her hand. She hid both behind her back. “Come on, it’s not so bad.” He was smiling up there, ATMAN the savage god, all-powerful. Flickering in his hands was a wretched little longing for Happiness.

Melkior stood. She gave him an imploring look; she was about to stop him, but the words died on her lips. ATMAN paid him no heed-he was alone with her, he had simply excluded Melkior. He’d invited me in to take part in the maneuvers, Melkior concluded, and muttered some sort of goodbye as a brief prayer to ward off a spell. Out on the stairs, taking two steps at a time, he fled, wounded, to his room.

You’ll get them tomorrow, your betel leaves, the redheaded devil promises the first mate, the Nirvana angel. Tomorrow, opium paradise. He will be content with betel limbo, anything to avoid being cut to pieces with the crystal-sharp geometry of certainty wielded by the night’s logic. He who has walked all the way down the Master’s Eightfold Path is now offered a betel leaf by the redheaded Asclepian scoundrel to cover his shameful fear of oblivion. Oh Purna, why don’t I have your spiritual strength in this wilderness? You, too, are leaving for wild parts inhabited by what might be cannibals, like this savage archipelago of mine. The Master warned you:

Purna, those are a fierce people, cruel, hasty in anger, wild, violent. If they hurl evil and abusive words in your face, if they oppose you in anger, what will you think?

If they hurl evil and abusive words in my face, I shall think, Those must be good people, for they hurl bad words at me but do not strike me or throw stones at me.

But if they strike you and throw stones at you, what will you think then?

I shall think, Those must be good people, lovable people, for they are not thrashing me with rods or swords.

But if they thrash you with a rod and a sword?

Those are good people, I shall think, lovable people, who thrash me with a rod and a sword but do not take my life.

But what if they do take your life?

Those are good people, I shall think, lovable people, who with so little pain rid me of a body full of filth.

Good, Purna, said Master Gautama, then you can go to those barbarians. Go, Purna, and, being liberated, liberate them; in being comforted, comfort them. When you reach Nirvana, help others reach it, too.