“Oh, the one Freddie clouted?” she remembered very convincingly. “The poor man, he had blood all over his mouth. That brute packs a punch.” She laughed aloud, throwing back her head on the sofa backboard. “But he was absolutely brilliant, poor Ugo. I had no idea what his name was.”
So much the worse. An unknown with an unknown. Perhaps even … Ugo’s meaning was now clear. An unknown physiognomy steps into our lives, out of nowhere. Our smooth (smooth, eh?) sailing is boarded by a mysterious passenger who instantly steals our entire sense of reality. Sucks our willpower dry, and our secret wanderings begin. Through a terrain of illusions.
Melkior was already feeling helplessly drawn into this woman’s magnetic field. He did not even know her name yet. The damnation — the sense of letting go, the senseless fattening of one’s vanity. The words which issued from the charming mouth to sail through space following the most pedestrian auditory patterns assumed higher significance in our intricately distorted mind. We readily spread underneath them our ridiculous expectations, our hopes, for each word to drop where we chose. To cover, cleanse, comfort, delight, stroke, caress, to bite, cut, to draw blood and inflict pain, for that, too, now and then, is something our vanity needs.
Do I love her? And he glanced at her in step with the question … as if to make a snap check. Don’t speak to me of love! Here, if she were to fall on her back right now in death throes, mouth frothing and body in torment, if I were to see death in her eyes — would I go out of my mind with fear, with despair at the loss? And there surfaced, by way of reply, an entirely cold, cynically grinning wish that this should actually happen, that she should die right here and now, in agony. There’s love for you!
He hated her. He hated her with a motivated, cruel hatred, which was taking its revenge in advance for the future. His future. For there had already sprouted a shoot of pain inside him, he knew it had, and he was watching his tender stalk sway its bitter fruits.
“He’s a poet as well, isn’t he?” she asked, but didn’t wait for an answer. “He recited me some poetry. I don’t remember any of it, but it was very beautiful. I mean, soulful,” she corrected herself, noticing an ironic twitch of Melkior’s lips. “I believe Ugo’s an excellent actor. Better than Freddie anyway.” ATMAN gave Melkior a look: what did I tell you? His face shone with professional triumph.
“Better as an actor, too, did you hear that, Mr. Melkior?” ATMAN’S face dissolved into ambiguity: two conflicting expressions were mingling there like two opposing winds on a water surface; his face was slightly shivering both with hatred and a genteel smile. “So Freddie’s quite without talent, is he?”
“Do you know what he did to him?” she turned to Melkior for help. “It was the opening night of I forget which play and Freddie was having this wonderful scene all to himself, and this Othello here …”
“That’s not true!” the palmist interrupted her, alarmed. “It wasn’t me, it wasn’t me.”
“It was you, yourself!” she outshouted him. “You eat pigeons.”
“What’s this got to do with me eating pigeons? I ask you, Mr. Melkior! She’s crazy, is she not?”
“Crazy, eh? You know what he did? Freddie was just into his big scene, dramatic pause and all, you know how it goes. Everyone was dead silent, you could have heard a feather drop, and at that very moment this man …”
“I told you it wasn’t me. It was his fellow actors who did it, out of spite.”
“And this man, would you believe it, lets loose a pigeon from the box where he is sitting! You must have been there, surely you remember?”
Yes, Melkior did remember the pigeon. Freddie’s soliloquy had indeed fallen flat. The women protected their hairdos, believing the assailant to be a giant bat. The pigeon kept hurtling into the darkness of the box, into the galleries, terrified, miserable, panicking for its columbine life. There was a pigeon hunt on all over the place, nobody took any further interest in the play. The hunting interlude went on for a long time before it occurred to the pigeon to make for the stage and up to the dome where at last it settled down.
“There you are, Mr. Melkior, is she possessed by the devil or is she not? Even the devil himself wouldn’t have …”
“… could have come up such a nasty prank,” she completed his sentence with malicious glee.
“But I tell you it wasn’t me. I would have owned up, now. I might have done it if I’d been able to think of such a thing, but I’m afraid I’m not as clever as you. I’m just not. The pigeon must have flown in on his own through a hole in the roof — they have their nests up there …”
“Oh my pigeon!” she sang derisively. “You did think of it, it came to you as you were going after pigeons up in the attic. He eats pigeons, you know. And how does he kill them? He drowns them. Imagine those darling little heads that look at you so coquettishly, well he pushes them under water till they drown! Oh, Mac, you are a butcher.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, kitten, you eat pigeons — right, Mr. Melkior? You must drown them to keep the blood in the flesh.”
“Do you hear what this cannibal is saying about blood and flesh? Shut up, you horrible man!” and she turned away from him capriciously. “All right, sir, I know you don’t like Fred, you’ve never given him a good review, but I’m sure you would never do such a beastly thing to him. While Mac here … He pretends to be his bosom pal, mind you. Fred was marvelous, if it hadn’t been for the stupid prank with the pigeon he would have got a round of applause on stage, but he loosed the pigeon himself! No, you’re a terrible Jesuit! Don’t believe a word he says, Mr., Mr. Trecić.”
“Better use my first name,” said Melkior, offended, “you seem to have difficulty remembering my last. My name is Melkior.”
“That’s even worse. Did I make a mistake?” she said coyly. “Why do you dislike Fred?”
“Well, you don’t have to love everyone, do you?”
“But Fred isn’t everyone. He’s a prominent artist. A protagonist. What are you smirking for, you sadist, isn’t protagonist the right word?”
“Oh, definitely, kitten, definitely. Exemplar!” and ATMAN gave Melkior a wink.
“You’re an exemplar yourself!” she flared. “An exemplar of a dolt. No, honestly, Mr. Melkior, why don’t you like Fred?”
“Why don’t you like him anymore?” Melkior dared to ask, his face very visibly red.
“That’s different. I know him, I know him very well. You hardly know him at all, so to speak, except on stage … Anyway, how can you speak of actors if you’re not in close contact with them?”
“An astronomer is not in close contact with the stars, but that doesn’t prevent him from speaking of them,” said Melkior. “And Freddie is not such a star that I should not speak of him.”
The retort pleased her hugely. She gave a contented laugh.
“That’s good. Freddie’s not such a star that … Very good indeed. You’re a witty crew, you from Ugo’s crowd. And each of you is called something funny. What do they call you?”
“Eustachius.”
“Why?”
“Who knows. There was a Roman soldier in the army of Emperor Trajan …”
“… the Goat Ears? And what do they call Ugo?”
“Parampion.”
“Why?”
“He chose it himself.”
“Why?” she asked with childlike insistence, but her mind was already elsewhere.
That elsewhere offended Melkior. But he no longer hated her. He thought, Sure, she’s superficial, fickle, and — if it came to that — definitely unfaithful. But he loved the artlessness which seemed to him incapable of being false. She was singing in an angelic choir amid a scent of roses. This is it — I’m in love. And he was in high spirits.