“What a harlot you are!” he told her with awe. He, too, was laughing. Everyone was laughing.
“And you’re a stupid little burglar. What did you expect me to tell him? That you were here?”
“You could have let it ring.”
“Oh, shut up. You’re so stupid. He would have rushed over in a taxi to see if anything had happened to me.”
“Poor Coco.”
“He’s happy because he knows nothing. He’s wonderful. So clever.”
“You love him?”
“Very much. In a different way.”
“And you have a good time with him?”
“Marvelous. In a different way. You wouldn’t understand.”
“Indeed I would not. Perfidious creatures. We love you, trust you …”
“Why shouldn’t you trust me? Come to me, my skinny one …”
Not tonight. He would have probably slapped her cheeks. He would ring her tomorrow. The petite, perfidious, laughing Enka.
~ ~ ~
“The tormentor” was jangling eagerly. But its clangor burst into the sleeper’s slumber like a bully and a heedless drunk. What a mess! Sleep sprang into action, slamming windows and doors, putting out lights, letting night flood in and restore peace. Telling a story about sailing the seas on a big white ship. “The tormentor” is now clanging deep down in the bowels of the ship, signaling the engine men to change speed: go slow, go quiet …
Smooth sailing. Stars. Lighthouses winking in the distance: hello, skipper, old chum. He, up there on the bridge, in the dark, smiling: hello, boys, you old night owls. His cigarette pushed to a corner of his mouth, to keep the smoke away. Sea wolf. To the helmsman: fifteen to starboard. Fifteen to starboard, echoes the helmsman as though chanting a litany: pray for me. He harkens to everything. Leading the ship as a general leads an army. She, Viviana, wrapped in a plaid blanket, peers at the compass and trembles like the night. He offers her his hand, she does not take it. He grabs her hand, she pulls it away timidly and tucks it under the plaid. He pushes the cigarette over to the other corner of the mouth with his tongue, squinches the other eye, and says to the helmsman: steady on. To her: let’s go. She (docilely): Where? He (resolutely): To die. She (worriedly): What about the ship? — It’s sailing on. — And the passengers? — They’re asleep. — What about the lighthouses? — Ahoy! — She: I can’t do it. — Why not? — I’ll show you something. Opening the plaid: look. And shows him a tiny penis and tiny, dovelike testicles. He slaps her lightly using only his fingertips, painless, symbolic. She: Does that mean you love me? — Yes. Pointing his cigarette at her miniatures: is this for fidelity? — Yes. — Penelope! — How dare you? — You aren’t familiar with the word? — No, I am not. It must be insulting. — It is not insulting. He’s no Ulysses. He’s a drunk. — It’s insulting anyway. — Helmsman, stuff the ears with wax. Lash me to the mast. One-eighty to port. — One-eighty to port. — Back to Polyphemus. — Back to Polyphemus. — Let the Cyclops, one-eyed beast, eat us all. — Let the Cyclops, one-eyed beast, eat us all. — There is no Ithaca. — There is no Ithaca. — Penelope has a penis. — Penelope has a penis. — Let’s toss her to the sharks …
“Skipper! The sirens, the sirens!” shouts the helmsman all of a sudden.
“Wax! Stuff the ears! Lash yourselves to the mast!”
A siren was already screaming over the city. Melkior leaped out of bed. Is this it? Or is it just an exercise? People were walking calmly down the street. The sentry was gazing at the passing women with a lustful gaze. No, this is not it, not yet. An exercise. Let’s phone Enka.
He was possessed by urgency, like someone completing a task against the clock. He rushed downstairs acknowledging no one to avoid being stopped for the ridiculous questions about his health, the war, politics. Many dreams, gentlemen, many dreams lately. Erotic ones. We haven’t the time.
Dial Ambulance Service, but make the last digit 4 instead of 3. That was how Enka had instructed him to call her. Busy signal. The coin dropped down. Again. He was dialing with furious intensity. He used to dial numbers on Enka’s breast, for a joke, after love-making, as they relaxed, naked, next to each other.
“Hullooo?” Her crooning voice over the telephone had always excited him.
“Hullo, Ambulance Service?” in a shaky voice, as if this really was an urgent matter. Grave emergency.
“Wrong number,” she answered in a convincingly cold, even bored voice. And, without replacing the receiver, she said over there, to him, “That was the fourth ape this morning.” And there was laughter, somehow insulting, over there, between them.
Even though this was not the first time, he felt like a stranger, an outsider. Ape! She allotted him the same treatment as the three who had dialed the wrong number that morning, as the people who were a nuisance. She did it on purpose, for him to hear. She knew his voice, oh yes, she knew! Why did she choose today to let him overhear that he was that morning’s fourth annoying ape who didn’t know how to dial a number properly? Something like a trace of jealousy surfaced … No, not jealousy! He was fending off the feeling. She had slammed the door before his outstretched beggarly hand. Beggar? No: burglar! He was giving himself cynical airs. I’m plainly not up to the harlot’s clever tricks. After two years he still had not learned to adapt his sensitivity to her complicated conjugal situations which she breezed through using her innate low cunning. No amount of experience had protected him from being easily stung. She would laugh at his naïveté, later on, advance sensible reasons, bring him around. But she was not taking the smallest of risks. Moreover, she acquired security, she fortified her marital fidelity at the expense of his pride, his honor, his courtesy as her lover. With her cynicism she was far above his sensitivity, laughing her superior, her wanton laugh, being dreadfully distant, opaque, elusive, disgusting. How many times had he gone to her intending to have it out? To smack her right in her lying mouth, to yank out her tongue, to leave her, forever. And then he had again kissed the mouth, held the satanic little tongue between his teeth and felt its morbid softness as the truest truth in the world.
Someone grabbed him by the neck and spun him around. He saw Maestro’s unshaven face. They were standing in front of the newspaper building. “If you were going upstairs, don’t.” Maestro’s words were consecrated by matutinal brandy breath.
“I’ve got a review to …”
“Later. After it’s blown over. There’s one hell of a kerfuffle going on up there. The Old Man’s tearing jumbo-sized strips off the music guy.”
“What for?”
“I should hardly think it’s over Beethoven. They’re raging about technology and politics and what not … ‘Who cares about the music!’ I didn’t quite get it. Anyway, you know well enough what kind of a fix we’re in.”
“I don’t understand. Why should he shout at the …”
“He’s not shouting out of conviction. He’s shouting to be heard by the boss behind the upholstered door. You can barely be heard behind that door. You’ve really got to raise your voice. After all, it’s that kind of job and that kind of salary. It pays to shout, even against your convictions.”
“But what’s the reason? Why? Do you know?” Maestro’s obfuscations were irritating him.
“The reason is Beethoven, of all people.”
“So?”
“So … there was a gala production of Fidelio last night and the music guy reviewed it.”