“I’m to stay.” The four looked enviously at the hospital wear under his greatcoat. Melkior showed the sergeant his credentials.
“Oh no — you’ll have me in tears!” the sergeant leered at him in rage. “How am I to manage without you?” Then, after closer scrutiny of the papers: “Right! Get out of my sight, I don’t want to see you ever again!”
Amen, thought Melkior, but out loud he said: “Yes, sir, Sergeant, sir. Understood, Sergeant.”
“You’ll never understand in a million years!” Melkior heard the sergeants’ valedictory blessing behind him.
Now then. Here it is, white all around and a tinge of illness … more or less. She’s no Goldilocks, she’s got black curly hair peeking from under the starched white cap, and we call her sister, devoutly, to repress carnality in the quiet, white temples of health. Only the priests take an occasional sip of the wine. “We’ll be seeing quite a bit of each other from now on,” but when? He was already yearning for the promised meeting. Melkior had got warm in his bed (the man rescued from drowning was coming back to life), the skinny little creature was drinking imagination in deep draughts, beginning to stir in a lively way under the covers in the luxury of greedy solitude. He had let the body devour a whole “hi-cal rations” lunch, a bracing and nutritious meal, and was now afraid of the creature’s glee. It was going to get used to the comforts of pampered hospital life, give itself over to stupid, blind fattening, make itself into a succulent tidbit for Polyphemus the cannibal.
The castaways are asleep. A regulation siesta after a good lunch. All for the sake of fattening, you’ve got to be nursed back to health! Light snoring with the postprandial mute on (full volume being presumably reserved for night). They have had no news of the agent. Days are passing in conjecture. The chief engineer believes the hosts put him into a hospital of theirs: he was a sick man after all, they couldn’t very well … Everyone understands what it was that “they couldn’t very well” do and thought: aw, why couldn’t they, cannibals, what can you expect? But there would have been some sort of sign (a tuft of Orestes’ hair, Odysseus’s scar, recognition according to Aristotle) of the agent having been … He had a golden chain around his neck with a cross and a four-leaf clover on it (double insurance) — surely the cross and the clover had not left him in the lurch at the crucial moment? This hope is voiced with lackluster sarcasm by the first mate as in his corner he apathetically chews some “narcotic” leaves the doctor has found for him. The seaman is not there in the cabana. He has built himself a Tarzanian tree house in the branches of a giant baobab and is now living up there, squabbling with the monkeys. He is able, at long last, to snore to his heart’s content! The animals understand the kindred sound of Nature and pay him joyous respect, the parrots laughing in chorus, the songbirds lilting dithyrambs to Slumber.
Slumber has settled on his brow with its soft, heavy bottom: rock-a-bye, baby, burbling about all manner of promises. Lulling him with sweet picturesque stories: the white nurse, the poet’s niece … then I say to her, then she says to me, and then I say, and then she says: for God’s sake, not here, someone will see us! And on we walk, behind the dense-crowned dark tamarisk leaning over the sandy beach. I lead her by the hand, she’s not resisting. Only her dainty little hand trembles like a bare birdling in my manly hand: where are you taking me? To show you how clear the sea is over here, you can see every pebble on the bottom. — How can you see them in the dark? — Phosphorescence. The glimmering plankton, a flock of tiny stars, you’ll see, it’s a wonderful sight … I stammer putting my arm around her waist, her supple waist, while up there the ample breasts breathe heavily, now rejecting me, now inviting me. My lips seek hers … and find an ear. All right, so an ear. I’ll take the ear. But what are lips doing on an ear? The ear is firm, complex, and hollow. To kiss the hollow? But then a polyp, a moist cave-dweller, creeps out of the mouth and fills the entire shell with damp caresses. And I say ugh! (because the ear tastes a little bitter), but now she clings to me and says ah and oh and what are you doing darling? But the imagination will not set anything else in motion. Our heads set a tamarisk branch above us swaying, out sweeps a buzzing swarm of mosquitoes and makes an auditory halo around our heads—zzzzz— using the last letter of the alphabet.
Slumber is droning a sleepy song … choosing, however, the wrong image, one with angry insects in it. Melkior felt wakefulness on his goose-bump skin. His eyes reject the dream. Another sleepless one is the doctor. He is trying to think of something to do. He is thinking of playing a prank on them by persuading the old seaman to disappear for a few days, to keep hidden, then he will tell the others: there, I did as you said but off he went and sailed away without us. Didn’t I tell you so? But he gives up the tasteless joke, his colleague the Major talks him out of it. The doctor has changed since meeting the Major through Melkior. He has become “a different man.” Melkior is using all his demagogic skill to put the red-haired Asclepian to shame before the humane and sagacious army phthysiologist. But the conversion is not proceeding smoothly — Red has arguments of his own. In your place the Major would be trying to snatch these unfortunate people from the jaws of the cannibals, while you’re relishing their mortal pain. He would at least try to ease their horrible death … It’s not true that you can do nothing — you didn’t even bother to think whether you could. All right, they’re haughty and stupid, as you say, but is that alone reason enough to condemn them to such a horrible and repulsive death?
Granted, any death is horrible and repulsive (particularly one that is imminent), but this kind, you must admit, holds a horror all its own. To be cooked and eaten — good God! — We’re all “cooked” in a way, smiles the doctor, and eaten, too, for that matter. All kinds of crooks cook us in the cauldrons of hellish plots, poison us with their contempt, drive us to madness and loathing, and when they’ve goaded us they push into our hands all manner of contraptions so that we can kill each other. Why? To feast on our flesh? Rubbish. They are disgusted by our carcasses. We are meat to hyenas, worms, carrion eaters, fish, beings unworthy of such delicacies. While over here, these “unfortunate people” will be eaten by people, by our hosts who take the bitter joke of Mother Nature a little too seriously. What particular horror is there in it? They’ll kill us without hatred, at an evening of cultural manifestations and a popular celebration, and they’ll be eating us with gusto as rare game coming from a curious world they cannot even imagine. It’s an honor of sorts, after all, to be eaten by people rather than worms. — And if you, too, were destined to experience the honor (please note the verb experience), would you speak with equal cynicism? — Not in so many words, but I would be forced to think so. — And you would attempt nothing to be spared the “honor”?—What could I do? Mortify my body like these people and yourself? Mortify the flesh? Deprive them of a morsel? Well, my skin would be left in any case! They’d make a drum of it! Or should I set about converting them in the name of our God: Don’t eat me — I’m your brother? (Why, they take particular pleasure in eating missionaries.) Should I pull off a miracle? Stage a putsch overnight, abrogate all laws (go on, living animal, feed on air and stones!), forbid cats to eat mice? Invoke disorder, confusion, and chaos? Of all the known gods, not a single one has managed to abrogate Nature. None of them tried — it never even occurred to them. Each of them is wise in his own way, knowing that Nature is somewhat more powerful than he, that he is unable to change even the destiny of a drop of water. That’s why the gods hold on to Nature rather than going on about helping poor man. One man actually tried it and they chained him to a rock and let birds peck out his liver. They preferred to confirm the laws. If a volcano is to destroy a town, they’re for the destruction; if people are to slaughter each other, they’re for the slaughter. They even claim all that to be Their Will. They’re always on the side of what men (out of ignorance) call Destiny. They approved of a son killing his father and marrying his own mother, of his mother giving birth to his sons and brothers, daughters and sisters. One of them even left his own son high and dry and let men crucify him so that The Law might be fulfilled. It must follow then that gods also approve of men eating men in compliance with the laws of hunger. Take this up with them, then, and leave me alone.