Skunk fashion, bedbug fashion, he had wrapped the stench around him and was now challenging all and sundry, derisively, like the Asclepian on the cannibal island: Come on, you delicate noses, approach if you can this impregnable circle of revulsion, this armor of safety, this halo of holy stink! He felt the stench on his person like a life belt before a storm, like the inebriation with a folly which made him light, transparent, invisible. If only I were no more! If only I were the smelly air hiding my existence so reliably!
“How did they get you?” the dreamer asked again, still looking at the wall above Melkior. “Were you making petals?”
“What petals?” asked Melkior politely.
“I don’t know. It was something … I don’t remember what.” He lapsed into thoughtful silence, then heaved a sigh and cried out bitterly: “On Ombrellion, the barren mountain, he spake! I’m a melancholic, they say, the Tartars. What about you — are you mad?”
“No. I’m a complete idiot,” replied Melkior gravely.
“What’s that mean? Do you fight people?”
“No, I’m peaceful. I stink.”
“They wanted to cut me in half over there. I was in the Artillery infirmary, where the hack-hack guns are, understand? Hack-hack, with a hyphen, you know, to hack one in two … one-two, left-right, one-two, three, four … I can count up to a billion. That’s the count of the hairs you have on one half of your head, multiplied by two. Down with the King and Queen!” this last he added in a whisper, watching the beanpole fearfully who was doing his march past.
“Which queen?” asked Melkior.
“The King’s wife.”
“He hasn’t got one.”
“Down with his sister then.”
“He doesn’t have a sister either.”
“Well, there has to be some female at court — so down with her then. You know,” he slunk up to Melkior and whispered confidentially, pointing at the beanpole, “you can’t say things like that in his presence — he’s the Lord Chamberlain,” he added with sly irony.
“At which court?”
“This one … the Royal Saccharinic Court,” the Melancholic gave a cunning smile. “He’s privy to court secrets. But he confers only with the top-rankers. Watch.” The Lord Chamberlain was having a pleasant chat with the King, riding in the royal carriage (the King was sitting on his pillow), but the only intelligible words in the entire conversation were “Your Majesty,” uttered with enormous respect; the rest was a highly confidential whisper. The Lord Chamberlain, with a sweet smile on his face, was waving to the people, pointing meanwhile, for the King’s benefit, at various prominent persons in the cheering crowd. The carriage came to a sudden halt in one place, the Lord Chamberlain’s index pointing resolutely at the Melancholic.
“It wasn’t me, Your Saccharinic Sweet Majesty!” said the latter in fright, “It was he (pointing at the Short Chesty) who ate your bread and cabbage.” But the Lord Chamberlain’s index finger never left him. Moreover, the Lord Chamberlain hooted hoo! at which the Short Chesty yelled bloodthirstily:
“I am Rover, the eldest of five, let me at him, I’ll skin him alive!” and snarled at Melkior showing small close-set teeth.
“Don’t do that, Rover — I’ll give you a two-rupee piece,” the Melancholic held out a small white button with two holes, “and I’ll let you have a four-rupee one tomorrow.”
“Get it sewn on your own tomorrow! Gimme now!”
“I haven’t got one now, Rover, I’m expecting one from my brother tomorrow. What you can have now is a bit of my fingernail.”
“Gimme.”
Rover quickly sawed off the Melancholic’s thumbnail with his small sharp teeth and displayed it to the Lord Chamberlain. The latter nodded with satisfaction, dismissed Rover, and drove the horses on.
“You have to act like that with them,” explained the Melancholic to Melkior, apparently in some embarrassment.
“Listen,” said Melkior hopefully, “you can square with me: you aren’t actually …”
“Mad?” the Melancholic smiled sadly. “Well, no, not in the way they are. Different category. They think … the Lord Chamberlain thinks (Rover doesn’t know a thing) two and two make five; I know they make four (see?) but it’s too much of a bother to think.”
“What’s there to think about?”
“Oh, quite a bit — you must get them to come together. Here, take two from one side and two from the other,” he held up two fingers on each hand. “Now then, which two will join the other two? Why should one pair do the approaching while the other stands idle? They’re equal, right? Ma-the-matically equal, so why should either pair approach the other? Well, they may be equal in terms of mathematics but not in terms of character. One set is perhaps too proud, or believes themselves to be a better sort, a higher class, and they prefer to keep themselves to themselves, and you have to waste your time arguing with them! And all for a four. But what can you do when they don’t want four? See what trouble it is? You might say: they can meet each other halfway, come to an agreement … All very well, if they want to, but they seldom do. … You’d have to waste so much time waiting.” He looked into Melkior’s eyes with curiosity. “You’re probably wondering at this, thinking I’m talking about people. No, I’m really talking about pure numbers, I majored in math at the university.” Melkior was silent, looking at the floor to avoid embarrassing the other with his gaze. “Try playing roulette or buying a lottery ticket and you’ll see numbers for what they are — all whimsy and deceit.”
“All right, but how do they make five?”
“The madmen?” smiled the Melancholic in commiseration. “They take twice two fingers of the same hand, and since they’re all connected with each other they bring the fifth — the little finger — along … so as not to leave him alone. Hence the misconception.”
“You majored in math — but what do you do in life?”
“I’m a traveler. I pick hawthorn berries.”
“And count them?”
“How did you know?”
“Something tells me …”
“Something tells you my foot. You must’ve read it in the papers. They wrote about me.”
“So how do you ‘get them to come together’ when you count?”
“In my pocket. I have a hard time of it. Up to a billion. Want me to count your head hairs? I’ve counted his,” he gestured at Rover. “Know how I do it? I divide his head in sectors … I had a pencil, but the Tartars took it … and then I work by sectors, easy as pie. Only I didn’t finish — he wouldn’t sit still.”
“How will you do me if you haven’t got a pencil?”
“There’s another method — plucking. Only ten hairs a day. But you’ll have to wait until it has grown back in. What is it they say — don’t let grass grow under your …” All of a sudden, as if he had remembered something, he caught Melkior by the elbow and whispered in confidence: “See those windows across the way? Take a good look: three stories, five windows each. Tonight I’ll show you something I’m quite keen on. Now hush, pretend you don’t know me.” He went off “craftily” and, walking up to his bed, suddenly raised his arms high above his head, crying out: “On Ombrellion, the barren mountain, spake he!” then lay down and closed his eyes.
Time had begun to peck at him. The day was now endlessly long, the third day among the insane. The Melancholic had taken him briefly back to the world of living words, then thrown him back into silent solitude again. Aroused by the sound of a human voice, his hearing now found the deaf silence more difficult to bear than during the previous two days. The Melancholic had left him with the fifteen windows across the way and a promise for tonight … But tonight was a long way off. Outside and up high, the day was still shining in the sky among tattered clouds, and above him (to make things worse) floated the sun in a glory of autumn blue. He hated the sun in the square of the sky and the clouds and the light and everything that made up the day. He was yearning for words, words to the hungry ear! Any words, any kind of words, just as long as it was the sound of a human voice!