Yes, that is what the red-haired Asclepian (with unpleasant subcutaneous gland exudations, we must never forget this condition of his) says, but not even he quite means it. What he does mean is beyond Melkior’s invention. The Major has embroiled himself in the story. What is he to do with the poor Asclepian who, through the Major, is now turning into a Nice Man? As recently as yesterday he was about to play a cruel prank, and now he is trying to think of something to do for his lot from the Menelaus, who are waiting to be eaten. Possibly out of mercy (if Don Fernando would allow) there is germinating in him a curious ambition to change these people’s destiny. But how? That is what Melkior cannot work out.
What is he to do? he asks his imagination in creative despair. In passing he addresses the poor agent’s destiny. But the very next day the old seaman tells him that Mr. Agent has become a big wheel. He had been given a palm-leaf skirt and a parrot-feather cap, become the High Medicine Man’s chief assistant and a personage close to the Chief himself. — And what about the gold chain? Has he been allowed to keep the chain with the cross and the clover leaf? — But this does not allay the doctor’s envy. The merchant fool making such a career! Mercury’s porter assuming the place of a child of Asclepius! Well, one thing was clear: something decisive and important must be done immediately! But what, but what?
From the corridor came the holy rustle of a stiff dress and hurrying little footsteps on rubber heels. Melkior’s body trembled in fright. He whispered, “She’s coming,” and set about selecting a welcoming face. He felt repeating on his face the selfsame unprepared surprise with which he had encountered Viviana, and closed his eyes like a child, seeking shelter in mimicked sleep. But when he felt her entry he opened his lashes just wide enough to check, will her gaze search for me?
Darling! Even as she was saying good evening her eyes sought his bed. He closed his eyes happily like a blissful little dog being stroked. Darling! He was choking with a thick feeling of happiness.
“The new man … is he asleep?” he heard above him the careful whisper by his cot, in the muddled daze of his childhood fevers, the voice of his young mother. But the happy spasm suddenly receded in an unexpected and mournful recuperation. The cold indifference of the familiar, in-house term “the new man” humiliated him like a number on a prison jacket. That’s the extent of my presence here, as the new man, the striped anonymity of one of those. And Melkior did not open his eyes. He went into a false sleep, with the breath of a weary sleeper, from disappointment and spiteful misery. He felt her vertical proximity touch him with cold aloofness. She was moving, rustling like paper, in the magnetic field of his great amorous yearning, with the insensitivity of a foreign, indifferent body. She is not sensing the presence in me (under this army-issue blanket) of a wonderful world made for her beauty. My heart is tired and I no longer have a body with which to kiss you. I give you, beloved, the clouds floating over my dead eyes. And Melkior pictured himself dying (in revenge) under the gray blanket loyally trimmed with the royal colors. Inside, in the death of his eyes, he saw a strange life of liberated colors, a wondrous hovering of multicolored fancy over the black expanses of his dejected solitude. He felt the need to crawl inside his quaint kaleidoscope, to hide and vanish before the fear of further yearnings.
“All right then, we’d better let him sleep,” came her voice from that other, former space where life was dangerous and bitter. And he wished to return from the labyrinth of his forlorn absence following that voice, to wake up among things in the grayness of the rainy afternoon under the tender protection of her benevolence. But he heard no benevolence in the casual plural, which meant only the resolution of a dilemma — should she or should she not wake him in the line of duty. So much the better if he’s asleep, that had meant, no need to bother with him, then.
“But he’s not asleep at all, Sister … atchoo!” sneezed the one who had called him Tartuffe; the others responded with a salvo of sneezes.
It’s some kind of salute, that volley, thought Melkior, and he was afraid it might conceal a form of mockery.
“Gesundheit!” she replied with a peal of laughter, apparently honored by it. “The epidemic’s still on, is it then?” and she took five thermometers from a breast pocket, one for each to tuck into his armpit.
But the fifth remained in her hand. “This one’s still asleep.”
“Like hell he is!” spoke up Menjou. “Stop playing the fool, Tartuffe. Reveal the secret of your bodily temperature.”
Why couldn’t I be asleep? protested Melkior in his fake sleep. This is a bit too much, doubting a man’s sleep.
She leaned over the bed studying his face.
“He really is asleep,” she whispered (he felt her breath on his eyelids).
“Leave him alone — he’s tired, poor boy.”
“Tartuffe,” said the little fellow in the bed next to his in a harsh whisper, “there’s an angel hovering over your head. Reach out, embrace the angel, Tartuffe.”
Everybody laughed in an ugly, teasing way. She, too, was smiling, bent over his face. Through his barely open lashes Melkior could see the sun between the black curtains: the beauty of her breasts under the white shield, and the white neck and the smiling eyes. Her breath caressed his face, he felt the fragrance of her nearness, and the Little Mephistopheles whispered on, “Reach out, Tartuffe, embrace the angel …” and his arms really reached out on their own (he knew full well he did not mean to do it), embraced the pretty niece, and forcefully drew her angelic head down to his lips.
Her scream shot the two predatorial limbs through, they released the victim and dropped back lifeless onto the royal colors of the army blanket.
Melkior started from an insane dream (and he really felt like a man waking up), propped himself on his elbows, and peered around in surprise — he was understanding nothing. “No, it wasn’t an acte gratuit, I was dreaming, ahh, I was dreaming … Not an acte gratuit.” Stammering it forth like an explanation to his awakened consciousness.
She had her face covered with her hands and was still shaking all over.
Moustache à la Adolphe Menjou was already there at her side, trying to peel her palms from her face: “But what did he do to you, Nurse, what did he do to you?”
“Nothing, nothing,” she replied from inside the palms, fighting back tears. “He didn’t do anything to me. He was dreaming … God, it gave me such a fright!”
“Thtuff and nonthenth! He wathn’t dweaming at all!” lisped a fat, toothy hermaphroditic individual from the bed by the door. “He wath going to kith her, that wath hith dweam.”
“Listen you, whatsyourname,” Moustache a la Adolphe Menjou said threateningly to Melkior, “what were you trying to do to the nurse?”