And the homeless Lar and Penate join forces and resolve to seek other, better towns. And they find fresh, indestructible towns and take up honorable employment therein, working as caretakers, directors of old peoples’ homes, and doormen in three-star hotels, for the uniforms are very nearly like those of admirals.
The pillow under him was all slimy, from envy. Is she Ugo’s? Why flee from the bitter thought? Ugo’s she is, (his own) Viviana. Ugo’s. I have been preserving the thought in order to say it at this precise moment, inside. To exist is to keep shaking off the sadness. In there, in the bowels, it wells from a secret source, to spread all over the body, bitterly. Sad skin, sad eyes, nose hanging down, dejected. To batten up the source? — Here, I am no more. Would I were no more! Would I were the shimmering air which makes her lips … Poem for Viviana. Poem One … which makes her lips smile so prettily. Why am I not a demon spreading darkness around her (an adjective here) room? — Wait: her what room? Lustful. Her lustful room. But keep this out of the poem for the moment. — At night I keep a tremulous vigil over her and the dawn finds me between the curtains with the song of her dreams and sighs. — Song of dreams, no less … with sighs to boot. But let the poem sing the cold pane trembling with her breath at night. … Right. If I were no more, I would be with you everywhere forevermore — a perfect pair, my heart in yours and yours (of course) in mine. Your arms have no notion that, moving, they’ve set me in motion …
As if he did not have enough troubles, the damned fool had turned to poetry. Unrequited love. There is something rotten at the root of poetry. Even flowers grow from manure. Soul fertilized by Viviana, the best-known natural fertilizer in town. Nitrogen and phosphorus. The exact formula known to Maestro. Ask Justus von Liebig if you want the secret revealed. The mysterious generative force, the spiritual impregnation, the poetic florescence: Ugo, ATMAN, Maestro, myself, Freddie as a possibility — the Pleiad of passionate Vivianic poets. Plus God knows how many besides, onanistically fainthearted, anonymous, hidden in their gloomy rooms and behind their desperate beards, whimsical troubadours, inspired nocturnal rodents who by day collect the bliss of her movements and ruminate by night filled with her, a random, passing figure, oh girl from my neighborhood whom I saw as she … un éclair … puis la nuit! — Fugitive beauté … ne te verrai-je plus que dans l’éternité? Eternities germinating from her phosphates and sulphates and nitrates.
Troooo-toot-toot, trooo-toot-toot, toorootoo, toorootoo, tooroo-too … The bugle in the barracks opposite playing taps. Eight o’clock. Head tucked under wing, the soldiers, like hens, and off toooSLEEP! Without a care in the world. Watching over you are the sentries, the Orderly Officer, the picquets, and your uncle the Minister of Defense, and your father the King and your Mother Country.
The bugle summoned Melkior to rise, to be alert to his fear of the morrow. He rose with a nervous yawn. The word morrow in the mouth, well shaped for a yawn. Another yawn, a deaf-and-dumb’s mute song. Standing in the middle of the room, idle. What now? The worm of solitude started drilling, insupportably. And the stomach gave a sorrowful whine, like a dog locked out.
The little old white man was sitting with the giant. The sergeants were there, too, At Ease, with Else at her corner of the table. At a third table: a party of veterinary students, large specimens all, using the heavy gestures of the Heavy Drinker variety. Make no mistake, those boys are having one hell of a carouse. Kurt was dissolving them, drunkenly tamed as they were, with his nihilism. This was in progress.
“Got a girlfriend then, Kurt?”
“What’s the use?” said Kurt with a hopeless shrug.
“Well, I’ve got one, and I do know what use a girl is.”
The future physicians to domestic and tamed animals were chortling, seeing the matter from a medical standpoint. They had vivid imaginations. Kurt sat in solemn silence, his face gilded with very refined contempt.
“If you’d ever had your hand up inside a mare …?”
The vets had taken the initiative, Kurt was lost in their laughter.
“But …” he tried to say, but nothing was heard.
“Think I’m cracked or something, do you?” shouts an offended sergeant. “Why shouldn’t she marry me? Tell ’em yourself, Else, I want them to hear it loud and clear.”
“What are you so riled up about it?” Else had her white arms crossed over her chest as if hiding something. “You are a strange one.”
“There, did you hear that, you garrison dolts? Just you wait and see. I’m going to have her dressed in white from head to toe, like a real lady-in-waiting. Cheers, Else, here’s to looking at you!”
“Sheemsh to me dey’re weak, bud,” slurs the little old white man.
“No,” bellows the giant.
“No? What about the bombingzh den? Dere’zh bombingzh every day. Dey say London’sh gone for good.”
“Rubbish.”
“Rubbish? But have Dey got anyting like the Bizhmarck? Dey shay it’sh sho shtrong it hazh no match but God Himshelf. Dere’zh no gun in the world can shink it.”
“Can, too.”
“Can? I shaw the Viribush Unitish, you know, bud, back in nineteen-fifteen, in the Bay of Kotor. A dreadful shight it wazh, too. And the Bizhmarck’sh even shtronger. It’sh dreadful.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No. The English have the George V.”
“Fifth? Izh it shtrong enough?”
“Yes.”
“Azh shtrong azh the Bizhmarck?”
“Stronger.”
“Twishe azh shtrong?”
“Three times.”
“Timezh?”
“Yes.” The giant made a gesture with his fist, which he then dropped on the table, forcefully, making the glasses jangle.
Melkior settled at the table next to the door, modestly, though he could well have entered the Cozy Corner with a regular’s swagger. His entry saved Kurt from the veterinary crowd.
“Ah, Herr Professor! Good evening.” Kurt’s hand sought Melkior’s of its own volition and kept it cordially pressed. “What’s your pleasure, Herr Professor?” Melkior asked for a bit of broiled veal or something lean like that.
“Ach, Herr Professor, I’m very much afraid, you know … we’re a bit short of meat today,” spoke Kurt, so unhappy, adjusting the tablecloth. “Meat-free day today, Herr Professor. Armies eat meat,” he was saying with emotion.
“War is a big gourmand, eating only the best. Meat …”
Preferably man, said Melkior to himself, loudly enough for Kurt to overhear some of it.
“Preferably canned? No, preferably fresh, heh, heh,” joked Kurt sweetly. “I’ll go and ask Mother if she has something for you.”
He presently came back with glad tidings, conspiratorially, a tasty piece of veal, just for you, we can do you a Wiener schnitzel, all right? All right, Kurt, all right. Excellent. Kurt nodded “all right” to Mother and immediately sat back down at Melkior’s table, until Mother got the schnitzel ready.
Could be I’m anemic, I’ve got pale gums. Hence, conceivably, all the defeatism. Liver’s good for the blood, they say. Got to have some blood to shed for King and country. Got to fight, boy, got to shed blood! Yes, Your Majesty, that is why I order liver from Kurt, for that very reason: to have the blood to shed. I mean, I would be a poor subject of yours, Your Majesty, would I not, if I were bloodless. What else would there be to shed? Tears? Shut up, you lily-livered ass! Old women shed tears, heroes shed blood. I know. You are right. Blood is the Constitutional essence, the quintessence of my subject-hood, the apotheosis of royalty. So, do you think I could, er … siphon half a pint off into a bottle for Your Majesty, and then be left off the hook? Because, truth to tell, I haven’t got all that much … No way! No cheating! Save that for the bedbugs and the barracks fleas! What do you think I am — a louse? My humble apologies, Your Majesty. I only thought, why not set an amount, that is to say … well, yes, an amount, a quota to be met by each of us. Because, the way things are, one never knows how much will be required. And Your Majesty knows full well what the Royal tax people are like, not to mention the generals, the corruption, the friends in high places, the Old Boys’ Network. … It’s only that I should like to see the whole business better regulated, that’s all. Also (save your presence), there are other liquids in our subjectful bodies. Why insist so much on blood? Couldn’t we shed something else as well? Our Maestro, for instance, has switched to beer precisely because …