Ranko Marinkovic - Cyclops

“God, he’s laughing again!” rages the captain. “Can’t you get it through your thick skull, idiot, that those blacks are going to boil you and devour you just as the devils boil and devour sinners in Hell? That it may well happen tomorrow? And you are chuckling away instead of giving it a thought!”

“What’s the use of my thinking, sir? I know I’m a great sinner, so if these devils over here eat me up, at least those devils down there won’t. Shame about the head cook though. He was a good man. He would’ve gone to heaven if these fellows here hadn’t eaten him. No, honestly — it was bloody unfair, eating such a man. Such a nice man. Many’s the time — I’ll say it now — many’s the time he let me have leftovers from the officers’ mess. Have a nibble, old-timer, tasty stuff. Very tasty indeed, sir, very tasty indeed, thank you very much, sir, for being so kind. Not to mention where he was quite the joker, sir, our Mr. Head Cook! One day I was standing at …”

“Look at him — wants to tell anecdotes to pass the time,” mutters the captain.

The old seaman sees that nobody is listening, turns over on his side, and falls contentedly asleep in an instant.

The next day a feeble hope is timidly born inside the castaways that things might take a proverbial turn for the better. No cannibal lunch is in the offing. What was the cook’s stake the day before is now covered with smoking green branches — to repel poisonous insects, thinks the Asclepian, a wise measure. If only the cook remembered to make a religious speech in front of the cauldron, he would be proclaimed a saint, or at least a martyr in a hundred years’ time; his name would be mentioned in all the cathedrals in Christendom. As it turns out, all that is left behind him are the swollen bellies from the Menelaus earnestly cursing him for having so painstakingly fattened them with death. No preparations for anything like a feast are under way in the village. The natives dawdle idly around the huts, stepping out of the way of naked women who slap them jokingly on their shiny black behinds. Mothers suckle their young with dull indifference, some of them catering to two at a time, one at each breast. The bigger children enviously watch the feeding of the tiny sucklings and divert milk drops with a finger from the greedy little mugs, licking their sticky sweetened fingers with gusto. A monkey whom a boy has singed with a flaming twig screams piteously in the forest. Presently his entire tribe joins him in a screeching show of solidarity, protesting in an angry chorus. Then the whole forest puts up a horrible howl. The offended monkey folk. The cannibals scoff at the impotent simian rage, hurling provocative counterhowls back. At this the monkeys’ screeching turns into a kind of general weeping in recognition of their impotence and defeat. And once again peace reigns in the jungle.

Several natives armed with blowpipes take the castaways out of the hut and into the forest. The four naked swells from the Menelaus , using their hands as fig leaves, go through the village past the naked women with their eyes downcast in a gentlemanly manner, dying of shame. Only the first mate holds his uncaring favorite in the pedagogical embrace of his long white fingers as if teaching it elementary skills. A poor pupil, certain to flunk the easiest of tests. But that is not the point: it is just that the first mate is defying the elements. He is making humor of his misery, i.e., of the best raw material of all. But the product remains limited to personal use only as nobody else partakes of it or indeed notices it at all. Not that he minds: he keeps holding his rudder for his own account, grinning squeamishly.

Alongside the naked men walk the two clothed (inedible) oldsters. The old seaman displayed a most brachiate curiosity, casting quick glances at the sky and his surroundings, the trees, the huts, the men, women, and children, harkening to the birdsong, the roar of the wild beasts, the sound of the wind in the treetops, and suddenly says with satisfaction, “By gum, this place don’t look half bad.” The doctor walks slightly apart from the group, as he has walked all his life. But with a difference! This time it is he who stands out, fully dressed, dandified even, aware of his terrible superiority, which he patiently flaunts to the shitty Nakeds. To that herd of stupid cattle which is shyly covering their genitals with the sorry dignity of former human convention. Stuff and nonsense! As if they’ve discovered a milder version of this damned mess! As if their sadly pendulous noses are going to shock anyone! Cause a revolt of public decency? Impinge on the moral sensitivity of those ladies walking about naked themselves who pay no attention whatsoever to the presence here of this naked, exciting masculinity?

But as soon as they set foot in the forest the first mate lets drop his wrinkled saint and starts furiously examining the flora, biting into fruits, nibbling leaves, branches, roots. Then, half out of his mind, he suddenly swings around to the doctor.

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“Show me the tree of knowledge!”

“Ah,” the doctor remembers, “yes, you’re after your alkaloids. I hope we’ll be able to find something for you. Piper Bette leaves, for instance. Only I don’t know what the trunk looks like. But I do know the Areca Catechu palm. I’ve seen it before. Its nuts contain a high percentage of alkaloids as well. The thing’s quite tall though, and betel nuts grow at the top, you’ll have to climb.”

“Trying to scare me?” laughs the first mate. “Climbing is a seaman’s skill I still haven’t forgotten.”

“I daresay. Only will these people allow you to climb that high?”

“Well, where could I possibly flee to? The sky?”

“Don’t ask me — ask them. However,” the redheaded Asclepian adds slyly, “I happen to know a man whom they would allow to climb.”

“You?” said the first mate, looking him up and down with derision. “You would climb?”

“I wouldn’t know how. I’ve never been good at the simian skills. But they wouldn’t stop the old salt.”

“You mean they’re not going to … to cook him?” says the first mate with envy. “They’ll spare you, too,” he adds with some hesitation. “I don’t resent it, believe me. That is to say, I don’t care. Will you just look at our crew scarfing down bananas?”

“Yes, I am looking. Carbohydrates and albumens. They’ll be pummeling their bellies mea culpa tonight.”

Indeed, the captain, the chief engineer, and the agent are greedily busy peeling bananas. Four-petaled peels fly about them like spent shells. Hunger has pushed aside all their awed nocturnal thoughts; they are feeding mindlessly, almost idiotically, no longer giving any thought to the death that looms so near — worse, so horrible. But all of a sudden, after a young cannibal throws down before them a fresh lot of bananas, coconuts, pineapples, mangoes, sugarcane marrow, and stickily sweet pink Indian figs, the captain seems to have had a brainstorm. He smacks his convex and surely intelligent brow hard:

“You know what, gentlemen? They’ve taken us out to pasture!” “Ah, the penny’s dropped at last!” mutters the doctor with a pitying smirk.

“They’re fattening us!” the first-threatened agent nearly sobs out in horror.

“That’s right, gentlemen,” the chief engineer states ashamedly, “fattening us like pigs.”

Now there ensues a painful awakening in the caring embrace of Mother Nature. The babies immediately release the generous breast. They feel the swellings in their bellies, they feel a dreadful animal slithering and squelching over the mishmash of sweet fruits inside. As if they had been eating live salamanders, rats, crocodiles, their innards rebel at the prospect of sudden catastrophe. Each hugs a tree trunk in an all-out effort to throw up and out their sneakingly greedy and disgusting death.