“Well, what of it? He likes Beethoven!”
“He likes German music in general.” Maestro followed his broad hint with a grin.
“And the music guy didn’t praise Beethoven enough?”
“Oh, he did, he did. But the Old Man yelled at him, ‘What about the chronicler’s duty?’ ‘We’re a political paper’—or rather a ‘paper with a political profile,’ these were his exact words. And it was a gala production, get it? Personalities. He was supposed to mention the personalities in attendance.”
“Which of course he failed to do?”
“Yes. The hell with them! Let’s go have a snort of rotgut.”
“What’s a critic got to do with personalities? That’s something for you, for your City Desk.”
“Yes, for my Dustbin Desk. We get the rubbish, you get the cream. But it looks like things are changing — now everyone is getting rubbish. The great equalizer. Don’t let it get to you. Sooner or later we’ll all end on the rubbish heap. Such is the march of history. Let’s go have a snort. On me … ‘on the eve of historic times,’ as the boss put it in today’s editorial. Here you are—‘On The Eve Of Historic Times’ …”
“No, I’ve got to go upstairs!” and he started off with Quixote-like I’ll-show-’em steps, but Maestro held him back using both hands and muttering incomprehensibly.
“Beg pardon?”
“Did you know that last night Freddie gave Ugo a beating after all? After you left. Lucky thing you did — it was meant for you.”
“What was meant for me?” said Melkior absentmindedly, looking up at the editorial office windows.
“What? Come back down to Earth and I’ll tell you what: Freddie’s … got welts. Ugo plastered a few across his physiognomy. Here and there. Gave him a bloody nose. She wiped his blood off with her own little hand and her own little handkerchief. Tenderly. Which cost Ugo a kick, up his Krakatoa, I think.”
“Krakatoa?” Melkior was laughing.
“Yes, right up the crater, for the air pressure caused him to mumble ‘Umm,’ rather umbrageously.”
“And Viviana wiped away his blood?” Melkior was enjoying himself maliciously, avenged by Freddie’s foot.
“Viviana who?”
“Er … The beauty.”
“Her name is not Viviana, it’s …”
“That’s what I call her,” Melkior hastened to interrupt Maestro. He did not want to first hear her name from this drunk.
“Viviana — sure — crouches like a Samaritan by his head, and he, the aching wounded gentle knight, grunts and peeps up her skirt, ha-ha. … God, what shapes! I envied him his wounds.”
“What did Freddie do? Keep out of it?” Melkior was attempting to cover up his loser’s misery by making a show of curiosity. ATMAN was right — Ugo’s next.
“Keep out, hell! He called her back, tried to drag her away, ‘Leave the ape, let’s go.’ ‘You’re an ape. Get lost!’ And he actually went off with that Lady Macbeth. While She stayed with us — with Ugo, to be precise — and we proceeded to put on The Grand Show. The Fall of the Bastille, no less! We almost tore Thénardier’s ear off in revolutionary ardor. Ugo was great. What am I saying? Magnificent! She kept kissing his lip where it was swollen from Freddie’s blow, and every time she did he put his hand down her dress. Once he even brought the matter out into the open. God, what a Pompeian scene!”
“Was she drunk?” Melkior was seeking an excuse for her. He remembered Enka. I’ll call her.
“Drunk, infatuated, the lot. She asked him to take her home. He spent the night.”
“He did not!” the joyful truth flew out of Melkior, chirping like a bird.
“Are you sure?”
“Positive. And another thing, I think very little of it is true. Ugo slept at home last night. I saw him.”
“Yes, well, whether you saw him or not, don’t be jealous, my dear Eustachius. Your turn will come. Mine won’t. Fate has made me the gift of The Great Solitude. A large cloak in which I don’t even have a flea for company. The hermit. Leone Eremita. The purist. Vox clamantis. Leopold by name, called Poldy. Even Polda, by the closer among my drunkard friends. And thus we arrive at the stable of the mammal Thénardier. Let us take a seat, Eustachius old son. Mammal Thénardier, two shots, shot to shot. As for the rest, let’s leave it to technology. To the various telegraph wires and high voltage. Known under the important name of cables. Especially electrical cables!” Maestro gave a derisive laugh. “What do you think, Eustachius, is there a telegraph line between the Vatican and the Kremlin? A secret line. Underground. Collusions, eh? If I could manage to dig it out somewhere, what a message I’d have, for them both! From the Carpathians.”
“Why the Carpathians, of all places?” But Melkior was thinking of Enka, defiantly, I’ll ring her just to spite the bitch …
“The word is historical. Also, the Carpathians are halfway between. I looked them up on the map. But it was the word itself that took my fancy to begin with. ‘This is Leone Eremita, speaking from the Carpathians with the following message for the Vatican and the Kremlin,’ eh? Then I would snap the wire in half and tie a cat to each end and let them yowl in the bastards’ ears! Animal Thénar-dier, two shots, shot to shot.” Then he whispered to Melkior, confidentially, like someone revealing a secret, “This Thénardier fellow is a new species of mammal, they don’t study him in school, but they will. By the way, look how we stretched his left ear for him last night. You can tell the difference at a glance. Did you measure it, Thénardier? It’s as red as a ship’s portside light. For nighttime navigation.”
“Well, you got one across the snout, too.” Thénardier parried with a nervous grimace.
“The Batrachomyomachy. God, how we croaked!”
The sodden, slimy cigarette in his mouth had gone out. He sucked at it in vain. No go.
“Thénardier! Match!”
“At your service, dreaded Pharaoh!” and he lit Maestro’s cigarette with a chamberlain’s submissive gesture. A ritual.
“After ‘Pharaoh’ say, ‘life — health — power,’ you beast! It’s what people said to pharaohs, ‘onkhu — uza — sonbu.’ That’s ancient Egyptian,” he explained to Melkior. “And now begone!” Maestro dismissed Thénardier with a pharaonic gesture.
“Ancient Egyptian! Not surprised, Eustachius? Think I faked it?”
“No, I really wonder how …”
“I used to study it,” Maestro announced boastfully and poured some brandy down his gullet. Opening the gap-toothed mouth, cooling the heated gorge. “They had social poetry, too. The ancient Egyptians, long before the Kharkov school! ‘I saw a smith toiling with hammer at his forge by the fire; his fingers like a crocodile’s, filthy as fish from the Nile.’ Then there’s the one about the cobbler: ‘The cobbler, a wretched fellow, is in truly poor condition, — if he didn’t gnaw his leather he would die of malnutrition.’ I am quoting from memory, in rough translation. And the machinists today, they think they invented everything. The cult of the machine! The pre-posterousness of it! The petrol-fumed inspiration! Their Pegasus a Ford, their Muse, Miss Sonja Henie, the most ridiculous nose in the world! What poetry was ever conceived in an automobile or on-board an aeroplane, that’s what I’d like to know! The mollycoddling of one’s behind! Where were the power shovel and the bulldozer when Cheops was erecting his pyramid, when Pericles was building the Acropolis? When Socrates was making fools of people all over Athens? Tell me, am I overstating it?”
“Not at all. Only—”
“All right, say it: Progress! Well, Progress is welcome to pass me by. I’m staying put! Let it rush, let it fly! I, a common biped, walk on my two legs, pleased to feel the Earth beneath my feet, happy to be treading on it, treading on it, treading on it!” and he fell to pounding the floor with his feet, enraged, even hateful, “the damned old bitch that birthed me only to swallow me up again! Using my material to make a pig, a hedgehog, or simply a head of lettuce to be eaten by an overweight woman on a diet. It’s enough to drive you mad! While they fly, they flutter, they are in such a rush. To reach where? Whereto, engineers, locksmiths, mechanics, drivers?”