“Did something get in your eye?” she asked with concern.
“No. Something just occurred to me,” he replied hastily retracting his hand.
“Yes, I’ve noticed that,” she said sarcastically, “some people lay a hand over their eyes when they’re thinking. Does it help you to think more clearly?”
“Yes it does … I’m sorry, Viviana, I must be off,” he said in a sudden rush.
“Just like that? All of a sudden?”
“That’s right, all of a sudden, there’s something I forgot to do. Goodbye.”
“You are a curious one. … All right then, au revoir.”
She held out her hand with a touch of regret. But he didn’t notice, he didn’t even notice the hand, he was already turning to go.
“Won’t you even give me your hand?”
“Oh, right, sorry …” He felt her small soft hand in his and wavered for a moment. But then a strange fury swept through him and he said Goodbye in a near shout and made for the first corner in a genuine hurry.
For the corner, for the corner, run for cover! She had her gaze trained on his trembling back. He walked at a weirdly uneven pace, ridiculous, shameful, like a petty thief with a stolen book under his arm. He was treading across a miry and accursed world, alone and desperate. His body felt to him like a frightened piglet, a seal, a turtle, cumbersome and sluggish, something which could only roll, stumble, and crawl. Something which never got where it was going, as if in a dream. The treacherous body jeering at its own misery. Would I were no more! Would I were the infectious air … I would suffocate the … preventively … But he was around the corner by then and the madness subsided instantly. Moreover, there surfaced Don Fernando’s preventively as a good sign of mordant humor. Yet he was still striding fast, like someone hurrying to reach an impatient destination. …
“Hey, what’s the rush, fair knight? Has it already started?”
The grinning fillings and the thick, lust-swollen lips. Melkior barely stopped himself from spitting into it all. How many times had he felt the symbolic impulse in his mouth as the resolution of his strange relationship with Ugo! Missed the opportunity again! An encounter of this particular kind was the last thing he needed. Ugo was blocking his way, his arms open for a vehement embrace.
“I want you to know I’m happy, dear friend!” he cried out loud, trying all the while to hug his friend and shower kisses on him, but Melkior had his arms out and kept retreating. “So exquisitely happy that it’s almost beyond your esteemed-accursed (read: wild) imagination. October brought a harvest surpassing all expectations. I have picked the fruits — I’m still sticky all over with the sweet dreams.”
“Only with the dreams?” smiled Melkior in a provocative way. He wanted to know, to know, be it even …
“Oh, with reality as well — and how!” exclaimed Ugo delightedly. “The dreams came later on, as a brief recapitulation. I belong to the genus of ruminants in that respect.”
“Meaning what, specifically?” Oh, he knew only too well what it meant, but he wanted to hear it — hear it! Unless this creep is …
“Meaning? You want me to … go into the details?” baring his fillings in a grin, drool pooling between his lip and his lower teeth. “Now, that would be a bit of … No, really, you must admit, we can’t violate a lady’s privacy, now can we?” and he burst into terrible, provocative, teasing laughter.
The night’s dark rings around her eyes had now acquired a very authentic explanation. Oh well, there was nothing for it, might as well get to the bottom …
“Which is to say you …?”
“Yes, I did.” Ugo was looking “innocently” into his eyes, but his snout was filled full of laughter.
“You’re lying, Parampion,” Melkior spat out the words with a pained smile, “I was with her until a minute ago.”
“Buying the precious fabrics for her aunt? I was supposed to go with her, only I overslept. Heh-heh, does it fit?”
That’s right. It fits, damn it! Of course, it fit in with her plans, too.
“And where did you …” Melkior made an easy-to-imagine gesture.
“First in a quiet little café, to quote a pop song from our puberty, if you still remember it. It’s actually a great place for ‘undercover’ people (I mean couples with a skeleton in the cupboard) with well-coached, discreet personnel. Then at her place.”
“Her place?”
“Yes. Is that beyond the imagination? But I made with the poetry while still at the café. Restless is the autumn air … while the hands, of course, went about their business … poetically. First the hair, for the sake of the rhyme, and then over the rest of the poetry. But the hardest of all, you know, was the passage across those zones … you’d explained it to me, scientifically, the erogenous zones. They are indeed — you were right on that point — highly sensitive points in women. Not to mention that it wasn’t quite the thing to do, getting sexually aroused in public. We’re not in a cage at the zoo, perbacco, the monkeys, remember? I told you about that time when I was nudging la fiancée toward the potential liberator … Oh, mon Dieu, I’m a right bastard, aren’t I? But once we got to her flat everything went smoothly, no resistance at all, over all the zones, heh-heh … But your eyes are flashing, Eustachius the Envious! Well, it wasn’t so hard to predict, eh?”
He may indeed have noticed a glint in Melkior’s eyes — he started fussing over him to give comfort in a flash of generosity.
“She likes you, too, you know. Thing is, you think too much in the late Plato’s terms. Which is not her cup of tea. Frankly, she doesn’t understand that sort of pragmatics. The problem of the transition to the horizontal was invented by male insecurity. We have built poetry upon it. They like being brought down. Their worn-out ‘no’ is a form of the verb ‘keep going.’ You don’t have to be Caesar to cross that dried-up Rubicon — if indeed anything had ever run there except crocodile tears. There, I’ve expounded things at your intellectual level. You’ve got to admit. I’ve even used oratorical metaphors. Applause.”
“Nevertheless you weren’t at her place last night,” said Melkior with mulish obstinacy. “That I won’t believe.”
He really did not believe it. He could not bring himself to believe it. She’s no Enka …
“You don’t? Well, have a gander at this, Eustachius,” he took out a small latchkey from his pocket, “I can usher you immediately into that heaven, ecco la chiave del paradiso. ‘L’Amor che muove il sole e l’altre stelle,’” he declaimed, his face gazing skyward, with a gesture of high pathos. “Do you believe me now, my poor Eustachius? I really can’t see why you persist in being so hard on yourself in so determined a way, sipping from the palm of your hand, as it were, all the while surrounded by goblets and chalices brimful with pleasures. Oh you Dio-genius, you ascetic-onanist, you slimy omnia mea mecum porto oyster, you quaint plaster saint above the portal of History’s brothel, you martyr to martyromania, you self-elected weeper over the fate of Mankind … which, incidentally, includes my worthless self! Spit on me and everything else (for you do seem about to spit), make a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn around your vertical axis and give those mischievous hormones free rein. Life is no dream. Life is the unity of all the piggish ways known as Man. I don’t believe you still agree with the tramp Satin that man has a proud ring to it. Don’t tell me your soul admires the self-denial of the carrier pigeon or the loyalty of the dog. You are proud your-self — what do you care for loyalty and self-denial? Liberate your pigs, let them root through the pleasures, let them grunt with delight. There you have it. Call me an idiot if you like.”