Ranko Marinkovic - Cyclops

“Quite so.” Shorty was still worriedly absent and far off in his thoughts.

Ugo would have stepped in by now, thought Melkior on his apathetic way out. What little food he had thrown to his beast had sunk him into a kind of limp stupor; he no longer had the stamina to look for his guest and had left everything to fate.

Fate will have her way with the castaways. You don’t know what to do with them. And you no longer wish to be involved. They bore you. They will nevertheless try to talk the old seaman into …

“If only he had the sense to escape!” pronounces the captain.

“Why should he bother?” smiles the first mate. “They’re not going to eat him, he’s fine — eating, sleeping, and idling away the hours. Anyway, where would he run?”

“Where? What a silly question!” says the captain angrily. “Seawards, of course, to reach the mainland. There’s bound to be a passing ship — he could hail our … Come on, man, don’t tell me you wouldn’t like to be rescued!”

“Aah,” says the first mate, waving an indifferent hand and sinking back into his morose thoughts.

“I for one am very keen on getting rescued,” joins in the doctor, “but I still can’t see why the old fellow should risk anything for our sake. Even supposing no risk were involved, why should he lift a finger? What did we ever do for him? You in particular, Captain. Even if the rescue ship were to sail by, he would simply deny any knowledge of us. And he would be right.”

“That sort of idea could spring only from that sort of mind!”

“There are other ideas in this sort of mind, Captain. Listen, supposing the old boy rescued us — what could he expect in our civilized world?”

“Our eternal gratitude!” cries the chief engineer. “Here, I pledge …”

“… to find him a place in a home for the elderly?”

“… that we shall all chip in to provide a decent lifetime pension for him.”

“Ahh,” the doctor dismisses this with a contemptuous wave, “that’s all conjecture as far as he’s concerned, that pension of yours. He’s got a better one right here. To top it all off, he filled his pipe today with some pungent dried leaves; says they’re finer than tobacco. …”

“While you still haven’t found the leaves you promised me,” whispers the first mate in the doctor’s ear in a trembling, spent voice seething with reproach. The doctor casts an angry look at the whinger and makes no reply.

“All the same, why do you keep rejecting stubbornly, indeed maliciously, the captain’s idea that the old man might try to get out to sea?” asks the chief engineer piteously. “I should think the suggestion ought to be coming from you. He listens to what you say.”

“Sure I will,” agrees the doctor suddenly. But everyone immediately suspects there is something behind it.

The night appeared to descend all at once, with no dusk. The sun went down behind the dome of the First City Bank, cast a final handful of red around the city’s uppermost windowpanes, and instantly wrapped itself up in the black fur coat of a thick cloud rising out of the west.

Melkior looked at the cloud as if at a kind of promise: a change would come from there. Rain, he said in an inspired way like a slightly mad poet fond of precipitation and wet pavements. Melkior disliked wet pavements; he liked the sun overhead and short noonday shadows beneath. But the fickle autumn sun promised a false warmth concealing the icy truth approaching ever faster and ever more inexorably. What’s the idea of the sun hammering into my head the beauties of golden autumn and feeding my eyes with flashes of false promise? Lulling me to sleep with a hope of happy dawns and days replete with small pleasures and nights of endearing fantasies! Let the clouds gather, let the rain fall, let it be night at once! Melkior protested loudly (inside), shouting against the sun. He shook himself dry like a wet dog, cleansing himself of his illusions.

MAAR suddenly flashed on above his head. The mighty MAAR was pushing back the night, showering the sparks of its promises on all sides. Tungsram, Singer, Bayer, Bata, Flit … began their cunning game: they had stretched their spun-light spider’s web high above the city and were snaring the eager attention of the onlookers. They sifted out the grains of gold from the huge mass of useless silt … and there shone Tungsram, Radion warbled (washes by itself), and Remington the Emperor grew. While down below, in the doorway, the blind veteran of the glorious battles described above mumbled his endless prayer: shoelaces, black, yellow … the colors for which he had lost his eyesight.

London in Flames! We’ll Fight Alone, Says Churchill! London Burning! Latest edition! bellowed the news vendor to outshout MAAR’s mighty acoustics.

“That’s what they’re calling us up for,” Melkior heard a voice at his side. “As if we were firemen.”

The man was alone. He was watching MAAR’s magic tricks sadly, as though bidding farewell to something. An orderly city dweller with modest habits. Judging by his appearance, he needed neither the Singer nor the Remington, but he enjoyed watching the luxury of pretty things in the “free cinema,” the guileless play of light, during his evening stroll. This, too, was going to be taken from him by … them over there.

We’ll Fight, Says Churchill!

“So fight,” muttered the man cholerically. “You cooked this up yourselves … years ago, at Versailles. Now you can eat it — piping hot!” said he with a gloating laugh.

Melkior felt like slapping the man’s face. Instead he stepped very convincingly with all his (admittedly modest) weight on one of the “implacable” fellow’s big toes. And said “Oh, so sorry” to him with an expression of the most sincere regret. Don Fernando’s prescription for “murderers in trams,” he thought, and this fellow does have an evil look in his eyes.

“Sorry, hell!” screamed Mr. Trodden Underfoot. “Go back to tending your goats if you haven’t learned how to walk in a city!”

“Goats?” The insult shot through Melkior’s body with lightning speed. He turned to face the city dweller in confused indecision and, trembling all over, repeated, “Goats?”

“Yes, goats!” said the city dweller definitively, ready to take him on.

A circle of curiosity seekers instantly formed around. “What’s this about?” one of them asked his neighbor. The man gave an indifferent shrug. “Any fighting yet?” asked Curious. “Not yet,” replied Indifferent. “What did the fellow say to him?”—this from Curious. “Nothing much. Goats or something.” “Meaning what? Something political?” “Could be.”

Melkior was unhappy … and afraid. What the hell had he got involved for? Everyone around was against him, they knew he’d done it on purpose. … He had a feeling of miserable solitude … and thought of Ugo. How he would have worked wonders in a trice, won over the lot of them, how everyone would take a shine to him. Ugo, Ugo, he cried wistfully, like the captive Croesus of the moralizing legend.

“Leave it to me. Gangway!” he suddenly heard a voice from heaven, the angelic voice of Ugo. “I said gangway!” and there he was within the circle, stern and purposeful. Eyebrows gathered in an awesome frown, he drilled Mr. Trodden Underfoot with a tracer-bullet look.

“So you’re the one, eh? … Well, well …” nodding victoriously.

“I didn’t do anything …”

“… worthwhile! Not that you ever did.” Ugo appeared to mean business.

“… but don’t tread on me!” the city dweller was offering resistance in retreat.

“Oh, you’d prefer us kissing you on the lips? Judas!”

The last word had the effect of a spreading stench: the circle began breaking up, crumbling, dissipating. Everyone was trying to sink back as soon as possible into the innocent mass of people charmed by MAAR’s capers, to camouflage themselves with carefree civic loyalty.