The shop window had attracted her attention. But he thought she had spotted him and went immobile like an insect faking death. He got interested in something or other down there in the corner, he even bent down to take a closer look. The eccentric; God knows what he’d discovered. She had flown up to the window like a butterfly, indeed she collided with the glass in her greed of watching; he heard a slight tap, that must have been her forehead. He felt his playacting falling flat and was out of his role again. There were his hands — not in his pockets — and the nose, and the moronic face. And he made an attempt to flee the stage. The movement near her broke off a morsel of precious attention (a male was standing there, after all) and she discovered him like a frightened cricket in the grass. He surrendered. Mercy.
“Well? What do you fancy?” she asked suddenly.
“Her,” he said pointing at the mannequin. He was being “bizarre.” “She looks like you.”
“The mannequin? I don’t know whether I ought to take offense.” As indeed she didn’t. She was smiling irresolutely, fifty-fifty, just in case.
“She’s awfully well built.” He had his hands in his pockets again by now, and that was how he delivered his line: hands-in-pockets style. He was pleased to be carrying it off.
“Yes, that’s all you men care for — the body.”
The body disturbed his diaphragm, queasily. Maestro had sold his body to the clinic, yes, but the word she had chosen hurt Melkior much more intimately, more sadly, like grief over the loss of a kind of innocence.
“You’re frowning? Would you say it wasn’t true?”
“What?” He was losing the thread. Chance’s festivity had been disturbed.
“That men …”
“… have generally had their way with her? No doubt.”
She gave him a surprised and hurt look. “Who are you talking about?”
“Her,” and he nodded in the direction of the mannequin. “I’ve seen her naked at night, being pawed by men. Lustfully, with no tenderness at all. I think they’re all harlots, those shop window dolls.”
She was laughing. But seeing that he was not, she got serious and anxious. “How strange.” And she touched him with her hand like someone touching a sleepwalker to wake him.
He had come to feel at home playing the madman and was loathe to abandon the role so soon. He felt confident and superior in psychological games where she could not follow him while he could say just about anything in lunatic allegories.
“Those shop windows are nothing but small-time brothels. The girls stripping naked at night, receiving customers, mainly shop assistants who behave like impoverished princes of dethroned dynasties. All but dancing with them.”
She gave a short, insecure laugh.
“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about, Mr. Tresić. Have you by any chance been celebrating something today?”
“Drinking? No.” He was feeling a kind of wretched happiness; fearing that it was going to leave him, he quickly went on in Ugo’s manner: “ ‘No, my lady, no, I’m sober indeed, of intoxication. I have no need when in such a fetching patch of sky, made golden by the sun on high, I behold …’ and so on. We could have a drink somewhere though. But not at the Theater, if you please. Maestro and Freddie are in there, unless one or the other isn’t dead by now.”
“They can both be for all I care,” she said coldly and maliciously. “I’m afraid I can’t have that drink. I’ve been making a round of the shops all morning, looking for some fabrics for my aunt. Why don’t you come along to keep me company — if you have nothing more worthwhile to do, that is.”
“More worthwhile — well …” he made a sweeping movement with his hand as if to indicate something far away. “But I truly have nothing more pleasant to do,” he said with unrestrained delight. “I’ll follow you anywhere, even to … Cythera, which doesn’t exist, Viviana.”
“Funny you should say that. I had almost forgotten about my name. I like what you call me very much.”
“So do I. But Viviana doesn’t exist either. I invented her.”
“I thought I was Viviana?”
“You are and you aren’t. You are to me. Or not. What you really are I don’t want to know. Nonny nonny no — I don’t want to know.”
“Singing?” She was laughing. His elation flattered her.
“That was the Duke of Mantua’s aria. Does my singing bother you?”
“Not at all. Do go on.”
“Unfortunately that was the end of the aria.”
“You’re such an amusing fellow. That time at MacAdam’s I thought you were a horrible pessimist.”
So much for “exemplar,” thought Melkior in passing.
“Indeed I am something of the kind on working days. But today’s a holiday. Incidentally, why do you call my friend MacAdam?”
“That’s what that stinking, rotten …”
“Maestro?”
“Yes. That’s what Maestro calls him. There’s a language, he says, where it’s the word for asphalt. Stupid as asphalt, he meant.”
“And you hate him terribly?”
“Mac?”
“No, Maestro.”
She halted in front of a shop window. Offended. To avoid replying. But Melkior, too, seemed to have vaporized beside her: she was totally absorbed in observation, taking no further notice of his presence.
He felt miserable and superfluous. He followed her faithfully and dejectedly. She went into shops with the self-important dignity of a grand customer. Rifling, plucking, touching, pinching … Pushing away mountains of fabric. He could see the assistants’ sweaty armpits: lifting their arms, taking down bolts of cloth from the shelves, stars from the sky, here you are, Miss, rolling out the bolts with easy sweeping gestures, intoning the usual textile lauds. She turning away with the fetching disgust of an overpampered taste, spotting this, that, the other, it can’t be, you had it only yesterday, here, let me see that one up there, no, not that, darn! hands up, armpit sweat, armpit smell, oh for fresh air! Give it a miss, Miss! The mess on the counter tops, the multicolored massacre of merchandise. You don’t seem to have anything I need. The grand exit. Dignified. Taste above all.
Melkior felt the shame of shared guilt for torture inflicted. But he went on following her docilely like an Ivan, a servant, a martyr. She gave him only an occasional smile to show that she now acknowledged his presence. The insult of it he felt only later, when considering the small kindness thrown his way. But the kindness began recurring at ever shorter intervals as an apology, as tidbits to a lapdog, as a reward for fidelity. And he followed her with gratitude, aquiver with the pleasure of her nearness. A wealth of curves moving within reach. The up-down-up-down of the two exquisite hemispheres of most holy flesh (kiss left, kiss right), the rustle of tightly stretched stockings, of full legs passionately fondling each other in the skirt’s semidarkness, joined to the Mound of Venus, to the Delphian gorge at the foot of Parnassus. Oh Pythian mystery, Oh weird sister, will I ever be the thane of Viviana? Nay, you shall be more, king, you shall be king! screamed the astounded Fool as if seeing the blood of one murdered in his sleep. He hankered for grapes, for the eating of grapes: the crisp globules popping open between the teeth (the cranky worm? it’s in the apple), the juice flowing down the throat, the sun’s sweet juice that has not matured to the vertigo of fermentation and become wine-the-lad, the alcohol brave. Ugo drinks the must, acidy-sweet, at the Give’nTake, at doctor’s orders, he has a spot on his liver. From alcohol. For he’s a jolly good fellow. October’s gentle breath …