“Verily, verily, I say unto thee,” and in three steps he reached the sofa on which Melkior was lying. “What you’re doing to yourself God Himself cannot understand. Been lying long like this? Woolgathering, I gather?”
“Yes, well, I’ve been doing a bit of thinking,” replied Melkior stretching himself as if freshly awake.
“Thinking? Well, I, too, despise the body, Eustachius the Most Kind. ‘But God hath tempered the body together, having given more abundant honor to that member which lacked.’ Saint Paul. I’ve been feeling spiritual all over today. We had a clergyman to lunch, a certain Dom Kuzma. My mother has the habit of picking up such characters in churches and bringing them home. And he’s all spirit, hardly any body left at all.”
“With, er, big ears?” Melkior propped himself on an elbow in keen interest.
“Rather like an ex-elephant. You know him?”
“Ahh, poor Dom Kuzma.” Melkior could see him on the invalid’s machine, miserable, quarrelsome, haggling for each gram of flesh. “We sucked a lot of blood out of him in our boyhood. He was our catechism instructor. But then he had a lot of blood in those days — fierce blood, too.”
“You should see him now! Dies irae. One of those who come before God’s wrathful countenance. Mother kept going out to the kitchen so as not to cry in front of him. Even Kalisto’s worm-eaten heart gave a lurch. He vowed, deep inside, to stop seeing Deaf Daisy for a week. But he’ll go to her tomorrow, naturally. He hasn’t got the least shred of bodily shame, that fundamental paternal virtue.”
“Of such a son,” added Melkior.
“Why do you believe me so incapable of spiritual elevation? The unholy spirit that proceeds from the father …”
“… proceeds also from the son. Filioque. The theologico-sexual problem of every family. That is what the East split from the West over. It preferred to rely on the father, the more experienced of the two. The sexual spirit is the accidental progenitor of the son, the punished libertine paying dearly for his tiny short-lived happiness. The son is his damnation. His conscious sex incarnate, always underfoot when the desire is upon him. A waking ear in carnal nights, a suspicious eye preying on his lust with unjust and cruel disgust. Woe to the parent, having to be ashamed of his own virility because his male descendant has castrated him in his fantasy.”
“My view of the issue is more on the financial side. Kalisto’s virility is a strain on the family budget.”
“Ah, you would like him to have that little item subsidize your virility instead? Because your virility is entitled to financial aid arising from his shameful renouncement? Entitled to your father’s sacrifice? But why? What’s your honorable Johnson done to deserve more joy than his? Perhaps your father’s panicking at the thought of his last twitches? No joy, no poetry, just a poignant overhaul?”
“Don’t, don’t. You’ll have me weeping in a minute!” Ugo made a comically tearful face. “I’ll dream about Kalisto in flagrante with Deaf Daisy and cheer him on to beat the band.”
“And so you should, were you more of an independent male specimen and less of Daddy’s stupid spermatozoon who’d happened upon the notion of the immaculate conception.”
“You are hell-bent, aren’t you, on depriving me of my little revenue stream. If this transpires, I’m done for. Without sin I cannot peddle indulgences. Mind you, Kalisto is a good-sized sinner as sinners go, and I can tell you he gets off cheap with me. Let him just try his luck in church — they’d give him something to remember. He’d get his sinful knees good and callused like a dromedary’s. Not to mention the repentance, the vows, the useful Never Again decisions … Whereas I allow ongoing sinning — for a modest consideration, of course. And yet you tell me I have no understanding? I’m kindhearted, I really am. And how does he treat his legitimate ‘spermatozoon’? Makes him sell old hats, that’s how! I have to go off to a date like a consumptive romanticist, with poems in my pockets — I’m too broke to take a girl to a Café. I owe money to waiters all over town. Thénardier will sport my guts for suspenders. With all the damp in the parks, I’ll catch my death one of these days. But God sees my misery — He’s sent us a warm autumn. Ahh!” sighed Ugo in dead earnest. “And I’ve got this rhyme business to worry about! You can’t get to first base with blank verse. They look right through you like cows and carry on with their own train of thought: two yards of fabric will do for a close-fitting dress, but you need more for a pleated skirt. Plus a matching striped silk blouse (black and yellow), yes, that would do nicely. … No, rhymes are an absolute must. The only thing they understand; June-moon. The old tune. It gets their attention. They swoon. My goodness, the way those words go with each other, isn’t this marvelous?” he imitated a marveling dumb blonde.
Melkior was chuckling on the sofa. “Well then, my dear Parampion, all you have to do is write rhyming verse.”
“Aah, don’t laugh at the pragmatic poet, Eustachius the All-Wise. Why not help me instead, you’re a ready hand at making those treats which our birds peck at so readily. Listen to this:
The old hope has died the death
Restless is the autumn air
October …
and here I need something to happen in her hair, but I haven’t got anything to rhyme with the death in the first line. October’s gentle … breath/Ruffles your hair. But it doesn’t quite click, don’t you agree, Eustachius the Gentle?”
“Yes, you’ve upset the meter in the last two lines,” said Melkior. “They need to be heptasyllabic like the first two. Perhaps you’d better put And October’s gentle breath/Permeates your golden hair.”
Ugo gave him a delighted kiss. “God, what talent! The way you come right out with it, off the cuff!”
U-go and chew bricks, simpleton. Then it came to him in a flash: it’s for Viviana! He’s got a date with her tonight after all! And October’s gentle breath permeates your golden hair. She’ll ask him to write it down in her album, permeates your golden hair. What’s per-mee-ate, pet? I bet it’s something risqué. Just like you! “You could have thought of something finer for her,” he said, with a mouth on which the smile had dried.
“What, isn’t it all right now?” Ugo was anxious. “Well, you are cruel! Telling me to put gentle breath! You conned me, Eustachius, didn’t you? Of course you did, it’s so pedestrian: death/breath. Vacuous. Just like you.”
“Don’t worry, she’ll love it. Ah-ha, she’ll say, I’ve made poetry! If she’s heard of Laura, you’re Petrarch.”
“Wait a minute, Eustachius the Suspicious!” gaped Ugo in mock surprise, showing his large fillings, “who do you think I’m writing this for? You who keep boasting, ‘I know him — I’m a judge of character.’ Oh no, you don’t know me at all. Today’s my fiancée’s birthday and I can’t afford a gift — I’m broke. I’m giving her a poem instead — a sonnet, if you wish to humiliate me to the fullest!”
“The old hope has died the death is your fiancée, and the gentle breath is in Viviana’s hair,” said Melkior, and he got up restlessly.
“Oh what a libidologist you are, Eustachius the Unerring!”
“Is this an admission then?”
“Yes.” Ugo dropped his eyes like a young sinning girl. “But … but it’s all innocent, pure, like being at First Communion. On an ideal plane. That’s the whole point. Poor fiancée.”