“Wait! … What’s this? …” shivered the Colonel, frightened, taken aback, stroking the kissed cheek, wiping off the weird shame.
“What is the meaning of this, Major?” he addressed the Major sternly, but he was looking at all of them, shooting anyone who would dare laugh now. But it was all right, no one was laughing, they were all gaping in amazement. “Major, I asked you what this means!”
“I don’t know, Colonel,” replied the Major indifferently.
“‘I don’t know’ and that’s that? Well, I’m not having it!”
“Perhaps the boy was trying to say he loves you …” the Major tried to explain, an invisible grin twinkling in a corner of his mouth.
“Permission to speak, sir?” spoke up Tartuffe.
“Go ahead.”
“We think he’s not sane, sir. Yesterday he kissed the sister …”
“Sister? Whose sister?”
“Ours, sir … the nurse.”
“It was when he was dreaming, Colonel,” she blushed all over.
“In his dream? What were you doing in his dream?”
“I leaned over to see if he was asleep and he suddenly raised his arms …”
“… and thmack! wight on the mouth,” Hermaphrodite completed the sentence with gusto.
“Shut up, you bastard!” snapped the Colonel at him. “Sorry you didn’t do it, is that it?”
“That’th wight, thuh,” guffawed Herma, “I’m not thaying I’m not thowwy …”
“Stop clowning,” spoke up Menjou, “this is serious business. Sir, we think the man’s really crazy …”
“Crazy? He’s an idiot!”
“… and we would not like him to remain here with us,” finished Menjou.
“With you? Get this man transferred to Neurology straight away!” commanded the Colonel, striding out at the head of the procession.
That’s right: not a madman — an idiot! Confirmed from the top! Melkior was glad to have been reduced to an impersonal this man. And so to Neurology … But what is it exactly? Presumably a madhouse, which might turn out to be interesting … meeting Napoleon and Martin Luther. I’ve already had the honor of being introduced to Caesar … er, from afar. Kissing the Major wasn’t required for the idiocy degree; after all, this gesture was far more chivalric, magnanimous in a way: you’re urged to spit into a face (we’re not children), but you plant a kiss on it instead. You could smell the odor of the dentures. At night, the yellow false teeth submerged in the glass snarl at the Colonel from the night table, and he lies in his bed with his goatee, small, meek, sans stars, sans gold on shoulders, powerless and toothless like a newborn — can’t even say zzz. His poor wife is forgetful due to menopause, possibly also squeamish and fearful and superstitious for her special reason, so she hasn’t changed the crocodile’s water for three days, and it consequently has a spit-in-my-face smell. And he, a high-ranking Medical Corps officer, Head of the Pulmonary Department and generally a prominent man, a soldier who knows Menjou’s father the Guards general and all the other fathers, goes fishing with his index finger in the water glass in the morning, already buttoned up to his chin and with his boots on. Fishing for the yellow false teeth using his index-finger hook. The falsies somersault wriggle evade capture flip over, will not leave the comfort of their murky water for the smacking slimy mouth in which to masticate a freshly baked cheese pastry. And when they are angry enough in their water they nip the Colonel’s stern index finger. In the end the Colonel nabbed them after all and slid them into his mouth with an irritated movement of his hand, disgusted, as if being made to eat a cold frog. But one day the yellow teeth will bite his index finger off and there will be one soldier fewer — a finger on the trigger is what makes a soldier, he said so himself, and he stood by what he said, stood firm as a rock, we’re not children, damn it all.
“Pity, weally,” said Hermaphrodite, “it’th going to be dead bowwing in here with him gone.”
“You thick bastard, you think it’s funny, a nutcase sassing the Colonel?” Menjou was getting riled.
“He wathn’t thathing him, he only kithed him, hoo-hoo-hoo … Nithe.”
“What, you think he kissed him because he loved him?” Tartuffe joined in.
“It would be ‘nithe’ for you to shut your trap, you moron!”
“Mowwon, eh? Then you’wwe a cwetin!” flared Herma. “The Old Man wath hathling him, wight, and he kithed him, foww that? Would you have had the gutth? I know I wouldn’t … tho I thay to him ‘bwavo! bwavo!”’
His anger provoked laughter. (Melkior laughed, too, inside.)
“The Old Man was ‘hathling’ him, eh? Bwavo!” Everybody laughed.
“I thaid ‘hathling,’ not ‘hathling,’ you thilly thap! You’wwe the nutcathe, not him! It’th you they ought to put undeww obther-wathon …”
“Stop it, don’t get all riled up,” spoke up Little Guy in the low voice of a repentant. “I made all this happen.”
“Made what happen?”
“Him kissing the …”
“You mean it was another one of your suggestions?”
“Yes,” admitted Little Guy like an incorrigible sinner.
“Oh, go and … eat your mother’th cheethe pathtry!” said Hermaphrodite, his patience cracking at last, and there would probably have been a fight if Mitar had not at that moment entered the room followed by a huge, muscular young man in white who displayed awe-inspiring biceps under his rolled-up sleeves.
“Which one?” asked the young man.
“This one,” Mitar indicated Melkior. “Come on then, get your gear. You’re off to Neurology.”
~ ~ ~
“So they got you then, eh?” he was asked by one of the three on the third day after he was moved into a vast white room with barred windows. Even now the person who asked was not looking at Melkior. He was looking at the wall behind Melkior’s bed. Floating in his eyes was a dim look with which he dreamily stared at the bare walls, even at the empty space of the room, as if he had prepared himself for a patient and tedious existence for the rest of his days.
The other two had not yet spoken. The short chesty one went up to the window from time to time and snarled irately through the bars, and the endlessly long and lean type, in contrast to him, lived in exalted calm and dignity. His food was eaten by the short chesty one while he himself solemnly marched up and down the room, clearly performing an important function.
There were only four beds in the room (the fourth having been brought in for Melkior), one in each corner, bolted firmly to the floor, and nothing else, no other objects: bare white walls and emptiness. The acoustics of bare empty space, horrible, hopeless.
Melkior had spent two days on his bed as if he were on a raft, in absolute peace, alone with himself. The bed with ancient blankets, with no sheets, filthy, uncared for, with the condensed smells of the bodies which had been releasing their fumes there before him. But the stench had by now acquired his familiarity and warmth. He had adopted the despised and abandoned smells of the other people and drawn them with fraternal cordiality around his shoulders, like a beggar does a chanced-upon overcoat.