“Shall I give you the money now?” whispered Melkior, watching the short deft thievish fingers on his wretched arm where Mitar was poking around for a spot to puncture with the proboscis of his bloodthirsty device.
“Not here. Meet me in the fancy gents after the morning round.”
“What’s the fancy gents?”
“The better-class bathroom, for you cadet types …” He finally found the vein and thrust the needle in quickly, deft, so skillfully that Melkior hardly felt the prick. He saw the thin pink blood follow the cylinder in the syringe, filling the little glass stomach of Mitar the bloodsucker. My blood, Your Majesty … but he felt himself go pale, the joke had barely begun before it melted away in a strange laxity; sleep seemed to be settling on his lids …
“Hey, look,” Mitar gave him a yank, “there’s a pigeon at the window!”
Melkior awoke with effort and looked gullibly at the window. No pigeon, just a gray day. Dove at the window, he uttered with effort, barely moving his lips, driven by memory’s quaint force as if he’d been obliged to say it, and remained so in a state of apathetic immobility, watching the gray patch of sky above the grim wet roofs. “Taken your fiww of bwood, vampiwe?” Hermaphrodite teased Mitar. “I wouldn’t use yours to fertilize my cabbages,” Mitar replied, but Melkior received it all from a great astral distance and it seemed to him that he was hearing not human voices but the cawing of irritated parrots.
What about the lung X-ray? he thought with mixed feelings of sudden joy and an uneasiness which demanded that he stir from the sweet laxity to which he had fully succumbed. I might see her downstairs … while having my lungs x-rayed. And be alone with her. Alone together — so what? The phrase was so promising and exciting — and yet so meaningless. At least in a certain sense. Alone together meant trying to approach her using excited, inept words — in fact, false words that could rely only on the hands for help. And everything would be fumbling, with both words and hands: the hands impatient and the words deaf, witless, thrown into echoless empty space. She says, “Talk to me,” and what you want at that moment is to seal her mouth with yours, and even if a word or two escapes there is no conversation to it at all. Desire turns you into a stammerer, a quaking imbecile, an epileptic, an impotent lecher, an angry pig, an onanist poet, an abased devotee, a man with no pride. I won’t go and have my lungs x-rayed! Defiantly, Melkior set to thinking about Enka: enter my kingdom, Kior, and he entered with regal triumph, as Kior the Great. Mitar appeared in the doorway.
“I forgot to take your urine sample. Had a piss yet?” He had a glass like a champagne glass in his hand.
“No,” said Melkior, adding to himself: here’s my cup-bearer.
“Come along then, wee-wee for Daddy,” he showed him the glass as bait.
“Yes, Meteor, come along — Mitar’s just had his snack,” spoke up Menjou.
“Is it today your sister’s supposed to drop in? It’s visitors’ day,” said Mitar with such an overpolitely fraternal and innocent face that Melkior was greatly surprised to see an object flying toward the spot where the Vampire’s head had been a moment ago. “A moment ago,” of course, because no sooner had it inquired overpolitely about Menjou’s sister’s visit than it ducked away.
“Leave my sister out of it, you bastard!” bellowed Menjou suddenly. “I’ll tear out his throat with my bare teeth … drink his blood!” he was writhing in his bed, waving his arms about in a curious way, as if torn by horrible pain.
The other three hurried over to pacify him, stroking his face, patting his head, slapping his hips, ostler fashion.
“He’th weally cwuizing foww a bwuizing,” raged Herma, clenching his hands in fists.
“Next time he comes in we give him the blanket treatment … We beat the shit out of him, word of honor!” said the one who had called him Tartuffe the day before in a solemn tone, like someone taking a vow.
“Just let me work him over — his own mother won’t recognize him!” Menjou was simmering down already, the thirst for revenge was fading.
“Unleth thomebody betwayth uth!” Hermaphrodite gave Melkior a suspicious look; he was taking the matter very seriously, as a conspiracy.
“The traitors will get their just desserts!” threatened Menjou.
“He won’t betray us,” said Little Guy confidently. “It’s all about a sister’s honor! You won’t betray us, will you?” Little Guy was applying the power of suggestion on Melkior, ogling him weirdly and circling his open palms over his head: “You will not betray us, you will not, this is about a sister’s honor, you will not betray …” he was hypnotizing him.
Melkior barely heeded the mumbo-jumbo. With laughter bubbling inside him, he kept thinking about Mitar’s glass, which had aroused in his body the urge to urinate. And he felt it as an undeniable imperative, which he was presently to obey. He was going to get up and follow Mitar’s glass like a sleepwalker, like a hypnotized fool. Conditioned reflexes, as defined by Pavlov. Thank you for doing me the honor, my dear Little Guy, but I was already in a trance, he thought, getting up. This, I expect, is how poets follow their inspiration. That glass is now my Laura. And Melkior’s mournful face cracked a smile.
“He’th waughing at uth,” said Hermaphrodite.
“Are you off to snitch to Mitar?” Menjou leapt out of bed, menacingly.
“I’m off to fill his glass.”
“You’re OK!” he heard behind him their assessment and their laughter in reward of his loyalty.
Oh Lord, my cup shall be full! Knowing you, it will overflow, replied the Lord.
And indeed it overflowed, just as the Lord said. For great was the need in him and he rushed into the better-class bathroom and snatched the cup from Mitar’s hand, greedily, like a drunkard, and like an utterly lust-crazed lecher he sought his uncaring member in fumbling haste, so that it slipped away at the first try, listlessly, as though this was not its job (well it isn’t either, the conniver knew that all right) but on the second try brought he out, in the manner of a vainglorious man, all his fortune plainly to be seen and then the terrible rain was upon the glass for forty days and forty nights …
“Hey! Stop it, will you!” cried Mitar in fright. Say Enough! to the raging torrent, stop the mighty wave rolling in from the high seas! …
“Look what you’ve done — there’s piss running all over the place,” Mitar tittered brightly: he liked abundance. “Pour out a bit over there, damn you …”
Ha, Maestro, remembered Melkior, what an outpouring! I would have overshot the rooftops, extinguished the Lilliput royal palace fire like Gulliver! He felt pride at some kind of virility, though it was in fact a feeling of quite pedestrian relief which he was interpreting with arrogance.
“Did you bring the money?” asked Mitar with a full cup in his raised arm, as if proposing a toast to him.
“Yes. Here you are,” Melkior was doing everything with delight, in a hurry, full of cheer, which made Mitar watch him with curiosity and feel sorry for not having asked for a higher price. The stupid nut would have coughed it up easy.
“By the way, what did that character say? Is he going to report me?” asked Mitar.
“Why would he? What did you do to him?”
“Well, it’s this business with his sister, see. They’re very touchy because she’s rather … free with it …” Mitar had lowered his voice and his head, so it wouldn’t stick out. “And he really walked into that one. Mind you, it’s very, very tricky, his old man’s a general in the Guards. Lots of clout. He only has to lift a finger and it’s curtains for yours truly, Mitar the lab tech.”