Ranko Marinkovic - Cyclops

Melkior jumped off the tram before it stopped. He was not far from home and hurried along, the sooner to shut himself up in his room … unless the Stranger is back, he thought morosely … to think about everything in solitude, in the peace and quiet of a horizontal stretch on his back, reading from the white ceiling the invisible letters spelling his idiotic fate.

Approaching the Cozy Corner, he saw Kurt waving to him from afar. As he came closer, Kurt told him in confidence he was going to have a roast heart for him tonight, do come, Herr Professor, and we’ll have a nice long chat, it’s always a pleasure talking to you. He said yes to Kurt. Courteously. He had no intention of going there. Those cigarettes soaked in the acetic acid, Father’s recipe, had him upset again. Isn’t that some kind of … And the stupid-oaf sergeants coming for the sake of Else the purest of virgins … He felt a patriotic rage mounting. Offering me a heart for tonight. A pig’s heart. The derisive servility. The symbolic heart. Roasted. With cigarettes in vinegar. All for the heart. My aching heart is torn apart. I don’t give a fart, he added to himself and laughed on realizing that he had done so unconsciously, for the sake of the rhyme, having simply been led on by the baa-ing inspiration. Baaa … he bleated angrily at the whole world.

All I need now is to find that fellow upstairs, he muttered walking up to his room.

“Oh no, he’s out,” said ATMAN, who was standing there in front of him in his black housecoat and white scarf and bowing. “He went out, oh, about two hours ago.”

“Who’s out?” What’s this — can he read thoughts? Melkior was amazed, he was not aware he had been thinking aloud.

“Why, your friend and dear guest!” exclaimed ATMAN. “A very nice chap, too.”

“How do you know?”

“That you have a guest?”

“That he’s nice!” shouted Melkior impatiently.

“Oh, you can always tell. We exchanged greetings. Quite cordially, too. Right here, on this very spot.”

“What do you mean, ‘cordially,’ when you don’t even know the man?” Melkior was upset. How on earth could he have forgotten about the magician when he spoke to Pupo?

“Does that matter? I wished him a good morning, he returned the greeting in a civil way. What of it?”

“You went out on purpose to see who was coming down?”

“No, quite accidentally — that is to say pour faire pipi , which of course is hardly accidental. There, see how low we’ve let our conversation drop, Mr. Melkior!” ATMAN reproached him.

“You’re as curious as an old biddy, Mr. Adam,” snarled Melkior.

“Curiosity is the beginning of wisdom, said … well, you know who said it. You know so much — I know nothing. Hence the curiosity. You must allow me that much, if only in view of my occupation.”

“Allow you to poke your nose into other people’s affairs?”

“What affairs, Mr. Melkior? I say good morning to your friend and suddenly I’m poking my nose into things! Whatever’s the matter with you?”

“I wish you wouldn’t concern yourself with the people who come to visit me!” But even as he spoke he realized he was talking drivel in anger and that the whole business was getting out of hand. What now? ATMAN was standing innocently in front of him. I may have led him on myself, acting so silly … Damned Mandrake! Now I’m going to have to mend things. There was nothing for it, he’d have to mend the damage. ATMAN felt it and offered his earnest help.

“Mr. Melkior, you seem to mean … No, you’re wrong. Discretion is part of our professional code. Doctors and us … Incidentally, I can tell you doctors are even less circumspect. My dear sir, I could write novels — novels you wouldn’t believe … But do come in, won’t you, we can have a cup of coffee if you have the time. No point in discussing this kind of topic out here on the landing.”

Melkior gave a fairly agreeable nod and followed him. Topic? What kind of thing are we discussing? Did he say that just to have the word heard from his lips? Or did he really have a “topic” in mind? Melkior sat down worriedly and it took him some moments to notice he was sitting in the same place he’d sat the day before — next to her. He stroked the spot next to him, inadvertently. ATMAN seemed to notice that, too.

“She was so sorry yesterday when you left. Me, too, as a matter of fact. You, too, I’m sure. Why did you get up so abruptly? I’d laid it on a bit too thick, had I? Well, you realized it was all for her benefit — I mean, you did give me a soccerlike signal or two under the table. A bit rough, if I may say so, even painful, heh,” ATMAN gave an unpleasant smile with his wide-set teeth.

“You had mixed me rather too liberally into that marmalade of yours,” Melkior smiled, too.

“Ah, marmalade, that’s a good one,” laughed ATMAN in his turn for the sake of the friendly, “manly” atmosphere. “Every now and then I smear some over that pretty mug of hers — let her have a lick. When she’s licked it clean she comes back again.”

“She won’t be coming back,” said Melkior with a wistful sadness.

“She told you so this morning?”

“Whom were you spying on: me or her?”

“Neither. I knew you’d be looking for her after yesterday.”

“Mf, I wasn’t looking for her. I ran into her accidentally.”

“Well, there you are — you are allowed to run into people ‘accidentally’ yet you won’t grant me the right to do the same. That’s fine, don’t get angry, I believe you, I do. Never mind, she will be back … when she’s finished with the marmalade, heh-heh … They all come back, it’s a law of nature. It’s what my trade is founded upon. It’s more reliable than any doctor’s office. The time will come when people will pick up pills at their chemists’ on their own … but women will keep on coming to our poky rooms and offering us their palms to read and turning their coffee cups over on the saucers, anxious about what we’ll say, trembling at our words. They will come back, if only to scoff and say we were ‘all wrong,’ to parade their contempt, their superiority. Which is, by the way, what they are always doing, especially the intellectuals among them, they put up a fight, heh-heh … Then they go away calm and meek like cats newly impregnated, full of joy and hope. Happy about their future happiness. And that’s how it is, over and over again. The confessionals will vanish from the churches, but women will keep coming to us for confession, that I guarantee. Novels? What novels! Leo Tolstoy himself couldn’t imagine what manner of things they prattle to us about. The secrets of marital and extramarital beds. Especially extramarital. Such salacious details! Maestro offered me a fifty-fifty deal — I’d supply the material, he’d write it up — and I would never have to work again. A chronicle of scandals —there’s nobody wouldn’t go for it, right? Plus Maestro’s filthy stuff as dressing on top … An all-time winner, I tell you! But I didn’t accept, oh no,” ATMAN shook his head decisively, as if he had only just decided definitely to reject Maestro’s idea. “And you tell me I poke my nose into things. They push the stuff under my nose themselves, of their own free will, so what am I to do? Sniff I must, and sniff I do … enjoying it in my own quiet way, I admit. But it’s all in total confidence, all between myself and God.”

“You think He concerns Himself with such things?” Melkior threw him a derisive look.

“He must, seeing that He made them to be that way. Sowed those charms all over, stuffed them with hormone glands and whatnot — that’s why they’re like that, spongy.”

Melkior was laughing. Maestro had clearly had his fingers in this in a big way.