Ranko Marinkovic - Cyclops

“And you … believe in God?” he asked just for the fun of it.

“Of course I do,” replied ATMAN eagerly. “That’s the foundation of my belief in Fate. How else would I be able to go on with my work at all?”

“So your faith is ‘businesslike,’ then, is it?”

“It’s practical! I must believe. I need Fate as a kind of down payment. All is risk. On the other hand, you’ve got to put something down in advance. Everyone, of course, invests according to ability; I invest stupidity for lack of wisdom.”

“Well … that’s not much of a risk, is it?” Melkior took up ATMAN’S malicious game. “Win-win.”

“You mean that losing stupidity is a win? Because stupidity is not merely a lack of cleverness — intellectual poverty, as it were — it’s worse than that, it’s something like an endless deficit. … But that’s only how things look to you wise men. To us, it’s everything, all we’ve got; what do we have left once we lose it?”

“Malice,” blurted out Melkior, losing his patience.

“Oh no, that’s out of bounds for us. Wise men may be malicious, geniuses may even be criminals, but we …”

“You people may be small-time crooks, schemers, writers of anonymous letters, libelers, seducers …”

“Oh yes, oh yes,” ATMAN took this up with eager pleasure, sporting the smile of a good-natured loser, “it’s all according to one’s ability. This is easy-peasy to you intellectual moguls! Your capital is inexhaustible. You break off a piece of your intellect, a biggish one if need be, and plunk it down as your stake. You couldn’t care less if you lose — the capital is undiminished, while your greatness only grows. Meaning, you become tragic characters. Heroes, victims, exiles, sufferers, generally accepted martyrs, and so on … up to and including sainthood. Streets are named after you, towns, factories, even stars and celestial bodies. That’s in case of so-called personal failure while you’re alive … But what if your undertaking succeeds, eh? … That is to say, what if the sneaking up- and downstairs and clandestine accommodation in other people’s rooms and nocturnal meetings in attics should give birth to a great historical act …”

“Then what?” asked Melkior with impatient sharpness.

“Then that’s a good thing, is it not?” ATMAN bared his teeth in a strange grimace of derision. “Yes, but a good thing how? Because your wise man himself begins to believe in something which is no longer the mind, heh, heh …”

“What is it, then?” Melkior was suddenly worried. ATMAN’S words were buzzing quite unmistakably around his thoughts, the ones that were now flashing on and off in panic, like an alarm light.

“What?” said ATMAN with an enigmatic Chinese smile. “Sometimes it’s an overly powerful organ in the body of the wise man. A good stomach, for instance, complete with ample appetite, a good nose for gauging situations, or a special virility. He’s renounced it all for the moment, hermitlike, all for the sake of the mind, but what happens when the machinery starts running, in peacetime, in comfort, eh?”

Melkior stood up at the eh , as if at a signal for the last train home. But where am I to find him now? He pushed his hands into his pockets in deep thought. You’ve got to make arrangements in advance when dealing with them. If only I could find Pupo … but where?

“You’re not leaving, are you?” ATMAN looked at him in sham consternation. “And I invited you for coffee only to forget it! I’ll have it ready in no time. Look, there’s the coffee machine, takes only a minute to do the job. I brought it back from Germany.”

“You’ve been to Germany?” and Melkior gave an incautious start.

“Austria, actually,” replied ATMAN nonchalantly. “But it makes no difference after the Anschluss. Yes, funny, that — no more Austria. Vienna with swastikas. Ridiculous.”

“Please don’t bother, Mr. Adam, I really must be going.” The reasons for leaving had grown very serious. But where am I to find them now? Under no circumstances is he to spend the night upstairs … under no circumstances …

“And what do you propose to do up there? Pace the room and think about things, that’s what. What’s the point of it all, Mr. Melkior? And why are you looking at me that way, like a sick man staring at a thermometer?” Adam’s two curiously close-set eyes had come even closer, almost becoming a single, small and fearsome, threateningly squinting eye in the middle of his forehead.

Polyphemus the one-eyed Cyclops … thought Melkior: in a momentary fading of consciousness he had seen in front of him a symbolic hideous specter, and he rubbed his eyes to regain his senses.

“That’s the way, Mr. Melkior, do it more often,” ATMAN was seeing him to the door with a jeer. But he added right away, solicitously: “You’ve lost too much weight, my dear fellow, far too much. You’re starting to see spots before your eyes.”

Yes, it could well be down to hunger. His knees trembled as he went up the stairs, his head lolling as though he were drunk. I’m not doing it for myself, word of honor, I’m doing it for … he assured someone as he entered his room, finding nobody there. But what if ATMAN …? No, it’s impossible! — Then again … I’ve been left in charge of a small child, and I’ve just learned something about would-be kidnappers. And the child’s gone for a walk, alone, without its nanny, who knows where it might be now? But tonight, when everyone’s asleep, here they’ll be! … like with the Lindbergh infant. This is no time for joking, he reproached himself. The kidnapper’s name was Hauptmann …

Mechanically, he wrote “Don’t come here” on a piece of paper. He crumpled it up instinctively and gave a demented laugh realizing, as he did so, the absurdity of what he’d written. He burned the scrap in his ashtray and blew its black soul away out the window. He felt mild relief at the piece of conspiratorial pedantry, as if it had settled something by itself. But of course nothing was settled and he didn’t know what to do. Tell the police a kidnap was brewing? — another joke smuggled its way in and he gave himself an angry blow to the head: you imbecile! If only they’d left a telephone number, just in case! But perhaps even that is forbidden, let alone leaving messages, of course. Nothing in writing! They actually swallow messages, he should have swallowed his Don’t come here.

He locked his room and skipped downstairs into the street. On the pavement in front of the house lay in suspicious solitude a black crumple of burnt paper. He calculated his steps and trod on it with his entire foot without looking back. With any luck there’ll be a benevolent wind to scatter the black ashes behind me. And he went off in the direction of uncertainty.

Now to look for that four-leaf clover. To go bleating after his brother the sacrificial ram in the field: run, brother, run, the gods are thirsty!

By the time the veterinary experts arrive from the native village the agent is grazing peacefully, like all the rest of the cattle. Nevertheless down his throat they force several slimy balls made of herbs they have chewed and then kneaded between their fingers, spitting on them copiously. For all that they make the agent gag, he does his best to obey his well-intentioned tormentors: he downs the green pellets, with effort, like a hen. They are treating him. And his spirits immediately rise: if they’re treating me it’s surely because … and he smiles at them with agreeable gratitude.

“What is that stuff they forced down his gullet?” the captain asks of the doctor in a paterfamilial tone.

“Vegetal purgatives, I’d say. The gentleman is in for a good and thorough bowel flush. But this doesn’t seem to be the end of the procedure. They’ll go on to exorcise the evil spirits from his belly.”