“What for?” She was quiet. “Come on — what for?”
“Now you’re shouting at me.” A sob constricted her throat. “Is it something I did?”
“No.”
“Why are you angry then?”
“I’m not angry.”
“Listen, Kio. Please wait, just a moment longer, please, and then you can go … if you like. I don’t know what it was I did. But … listen, please, if I ever hurt you in any way, please forgive me. I promise I’ll never do it again, Kio.”
“Never do what again?” he asked with supercilious scorn.
“Give you cause to be angry with me.”
“Why, you’re the cause yourself, all of you … ha-ha-ha …” His laugh was bitter and desperate.
Enka laughed, too. She thought, It’s better that he laughs.
“Take me, Kio, take me as I am. Don’t you think we could have lovely times together, after all?”
“Lovely indeed … Wonderful!” he leered all of a sudden. “Your husband has it lovely, too!”
“Yes he has!” she stepped out with proud disdain.
“He doesn’t know his happiness.”
“He knows it perfectly well! And he appreciates it. Whereas you …” She began to sob and tears ran down her cheeks. She felt innocent and righteous. There she was, torn between the two men in her life … the victim of her own generosity.
“You’ll regret all this, Kior, you’ll be sorry one day, mark my words …”
She wept bitterly and sincerely. And again Melkior invoked the spirits of the occult world, the mediums of tricks and deceptions, the grand masters of murky enigmas, to explain this strange creature here. So when everything’s said and done, I’m evil? I am Satan, a tormentor, sucking this poor woman’s life’s blood!
She was standing in the middle of the room, her face buried in her hands, weeping. A symbol of woe.
The phone rang.
In full self-control, she wiped her tears, even patted her hair (the instinct of the coquette, said Melkior to himself), without failing to signal him to stand still.
She lifted the receiver.
“Yes, darlingest,” she said into the phone sweetly, smilingly. Another face, a new creature. The metamorphosis of the jellyfish in a summer’s shallow. Multiplying by parthenogenesis, becoming countless, endless. Ubiquitous. Eternal.
Indestructible and omnipotent. Look, she can do anything! Oh God, You who assembled her, disassemble, dismember, dismantle her, display to me your Swiss precision handiwork in this priceless mechanism which works without a hitch! Or turn it back into Adam’s rib! Oh Zeus, give back to Mother Earth the bones that Pyrrha threw over her stupid head! Give us mute stones along our life’s paths to hurt our feet, but save our dignity now that, after the all-consuming destruction, you permitted Deucalion to become a man!
“You’re tired, sweets, you can barely speak.” She was melting with sincere worry. She was no longer aware of Melkior standing there beside her. “Oh what a shame, what a shame, I don’t know what to think. Died how? On the table? Heart? You don’t say! But why should you? You did your best, I’m sure. I trust you, my love. Come to me, sweets, come to me now. And hurry.” And she sent him two kisses before hanging up.
“A man died on him, under his scalpel, he’s in a terrible state.” She was speaking sorrowfully, coming up to Melkior, and again tears welled in her eyes. She lifted her arms to embrace him: “Poor man.”
He brushed her arms off, rudely, spun on his heel and slammed the door shut behind him. He could hear the scream of “Kior!” and the sound of despondent weeping. There was nothing that could make him turn back now.
Whence the sudden hope of running into Viviana? It was past twelve, her going-to-café time. Presumably she would not be going out that day if she had had a tiff with Freddie the previous night. What would he do if he ran into her? Would he say hello? Funny how he instantly forgot everything that had happened back up there with Enka. Not a trace! So what should I do, fret about it? Poor surgeon, his patient died. Poor bloody patient! What about Coco? … poor him, too, in a different way. Oh Lord, he loves her for all that! Yes he does, replied the Lord glumly, with a twinge of guilt.
And the day a fine autumn one, without a wisp of a cloud. And the noonday sun still high. Everywhere it was warm, pleasant. He felt light. He felt like running. The shops had been open until just a little earlier, the scents from perfumeries were still wafting down the streets … No, that was the scent of the woman in the close-fitting mouse-gray two-piece suit. Quelle souris, mon Dieu! Those legs, those legs, bearing a body well worth bearing. Left-right, one-two … Colonel Pechárek will shertainly have shigned the shummonsh by now, bud. Dwaftees, one-two …
The day turned dark for Melkior. He became aware of his body with near loathing.
You’ll get me consigned to that accursed shambles, he told it with hostility. You and the likes of you. Rifle slingers for Shoulder Arms, hand on trigger, a head to put an army cap on. As for the legs, it’ll be left-right, the sole purpose of the legs; direction: the tree over there, forward march! On the double!
A moment before he had felt like running through the bright day, just like that, with no tree in front of him, light, transparent. Now he felt a solid heaviness in him as the dreadful presence of his body. Here it is. You’ll get me thrown into the cauldron, to the cannibal warriors, where History is being stewed. Everyone will get their portion on the plate, for the sake of national pride. As for the neutrals … they will get smoke in the eyes for punishment. They have no pride, therefore they shall have no portion of history. What is History? It is: Aristotle, tutor to Alexander the Great … Seneca, tutor to Emperor Nero … Shakespeare, the Elizabethan writer … It is not Aristotle the Great, but Alexander; it is not Seneca the Stoic wasting his time in vain with a criminal; it is not Elizabeth, Queen of England in the Age of Shakespeare; that’s History. Tell me, dwaftee, asks Pechárek, with whom did Napoleon converse in Germany? With what famous man? — I don’t know. I do know that Goethe spoke with Napoleon, but I fear you may mean someone different. I know Beethoven removed his dedication of the Eroica … But that’s not History. History is: the Great, the Small, the Tall, the Short, the Meek, the Fat, the Fair, the Good, the Wise, the Beloved, the Just, the Brave, the Pious, the Posthumous, the Quarrelsome, the Bald, the Stuttering, the Lame, the Hunchbacked, the Stern, the Fearsome, the Terrible, the Red-Bearded, the Landless, the Lion-Hearted, the Father of the People, Born in Porphyry (Porphyrogenitos), the Magnificent … Drunks, murderers, poisoners, cutthroats, arsonists, libertines, madmen … History, the Teacher of Life. A spinster with glasses on her pointy nose, hysterical, unfulfilled, cane-wielding: we never can guess what she wants, we are always guilty of something or other, kneeling in the corner for punishment, face to the wall, freezing, trembling, we pray to the God above the lectern (above the young King): give us rest, let us live, free us from the fear and death our dear teacher visits upon us only too often! We don’t want History, we want Life, oh Lord! But what’s the use of our prayers to You? She has taken good care of You, too! She drove nails through Your hands and legs, nailed You to two crossed planks, elevated You to the level of historical scandal and entered You into her ledger under the adjective Crucified. Oh Lord, is there any protection from that madwoman? And the Lord said to Melkior in a low, shy voice, None.
Feeling the pressure of his rising waters, Melkior suddenly found himself at the entrance to the underworld on Governor Square. Ladies descend to the right, gents descend to the left. What chivalry! This makes me a gent. Well, it says so up overhead in green tiles, it says GENTS. And the gents go downstairs to the left …