“What the hell is it, then, if not a symbol?”
“A lute,” I said.
He waved his hand dismissively: take a hike.
We walked on in silence for some time. We were still such good friends that the silence didn’t bother us. The hollow clatter of our footsteps hardly made us flush with embarrassment.
“Take a look at this, Igor,” I said, pointing at a large yellow poster.
Or was it he who pointed at the big yellow poster and said: “Take a look at this, Lute-meister. .”?
At any rate, the poster was there, yellow, damp with fresh glue and rain, looking like some enormous rose petal. On it was written, in beautiful black letters:
“Let’s go, Capricorn,” I said.
Or he said: “Off we go, guitar-meister.”
At any rate, we headed in that direction. .
At the door they asked to see our passes. Igor pulled out a thousand-dinar note and slipped it into the man’s hand. The guy took a look at us and then gave us two pornographic postcards; the program was printed on the back of them, along with the words “No Admittance Under Sixteen Years of Age.”
“No matter,” I said. “I would make a point of attending out of professional curiosity, even if I were under sixteen. .”
Billy the Goat laughed. “That’s a good way to put it,” he said.
“Flowers grow on the dung-heap,” I said sagely.
“What do you mean by that? What kind of flowers?”
“Nothing, nothing. I was just thinking out loud. Besides. .”
“Why do you always stumble to a stop before you finish your thought?” he said. “What kind of flowers are at issue here?”
“The ones that are sprouting from me. With their roots in my heart and their blossoms in the sunlight. With their pollen in my eye. . Those are the ones.”
?!
After some sort of incident — I don’t remember what — Eurydice either couldn’t or didn’t want to come see me in the attic anymore. Maybe it was after that note she’d left me while I’d been licking my plate clean in some pub. I don’t know. I no longer even know if that attic ever existed or if I just conjured it up. And I also don’t know if Eurydice ever climbed up into that attic through that narrow, dirty stairwell, where the cockroaches rustle about when the light catches them by surprise. Then, with a light crack, they squish under your feet like berries. A little greasy spot remains; it spreads out and becomes darker the farther it gets from the epicenter of the eruption. I don’t know — I don’t believe — that she ever climbed those filthy steps. But then where did that slip of paper come from, which I found at some point under the bell jar next to the rocking chair? Maybe she passed the note to the cleaning lady downstairs in the hall, and then she put it under the bell jar so the rats wouldn’t shred it like lettuce. Who knows if I ever really read this note? Or whether she, Eurydice, really wrote it with her own hand. But I can’t believe that I planted this note here myself. For God’s sake, how would I have been able to imitate her handwriting so skillfully. .? It truly was odd handwriting. And worthy of further comment. At first glance it resembled Sanskrit. To tell the truth, I’ve never actually seen Sanskrit, but in any case I think that Eurydice’s handwriting has its roots in some secret dream. In places her writing was utterly illegible. All the consonants looked like a single letter, which looked like all of them together, so that you could never determine precisely which was intended. Each and every vowel was also written identically, with the one difference that you could at least produce its sound: that eternal letter — a multitude of circular, oval, large-eyed and bewitched letters rolled around between those indeterminate, exotic consonants. Come to think of it, everything she wrote looked like it contained only one and the same imperishable letter, so that her words, once written, scrolled past like a vague tolling of bells. But I never had sufficient time then to ponder all this. I was always completely preoccupied with deciphering her notes, which I found unexpectedly here and there, most frequently right in the attic upon returning from my travels. These really weren’t missives in the true sense of the word. On a slip of paper ripped from a memo pad she would string together a necklace of sighs, with pretty much every other little square containing either an O, or a kiss, or a tear, or an eye. It all depends on who’s reading them, and how. And of course on what the word denotes outside of its pictorial meaning. Such a letter-kiss, a letter-poem, had ten, or a hundred, variants and interpretations, and I believe that my fate was sealed by one such misunderstanding. I would remind you of that well known, historic misunderstanding which resulted in the godhead being represented with horns instead of a halo; thus Moses became a garden-variety cuckold, ridiculed in secret by everyone in the neighborhood — beginning, of course, with the cleaning lady. And the fact that one venerates him in public, or even prays to him — that is, I believe, the result of hypocrisy. But one should not forget to observe a moment of pathetic reverence: even a cuckolded godhead does inspire respect, after all.
“You’ve really gotten carried away, Cuckold,” said Igor, peering over my shoulder. “I’d bet my life that you no longer know what you’re talking about.”
“I do know,” I said, offended. “About the horns! And next time don’t stick your nose into my papers.”
“What horns are you talking about?” he said. “About yours? That’s obviously the reason you started hiding your papers from me.”
“About your horns,” I said, in the calmest possible voice.
He grew a bit more serious, and then exploded in laughter. “Maybe you’re just a big jerk, banjo-meister. A joker is what you are.”
“I was talking about horns,” I said again. “About yours. . and about mine. I wouldn’t joke about such things. You know that quite well.”
He stopped laughing. All at once he grew as pale as. . well, simply pale, like. .
“It’s not that. .”
“Uh-huh,” I said, nodding my head. “Forgive me for having to tell you this. . You know. . this is unpleasant for me, but since you already. .”
“Just go on,” he said quietly, clenching his teeth. “I can take it.”
“Marija. .”
“I know. She was making out with someone in the lobby of the building.”
“No.”
“Something more serious? She didn’t. .?”
“No,” I said impatiently, “but it’s simply that. .”
“Maybe it’s simple for you!” he cried out and slammed the binoculars to the ground.
“That’s a shame,” I said. “And to think that tonight they’ll be celebrating the ‘golden wedding anniversary’ in the constellation of Orion.”
“I don’t care,” he said, with his head thrust into the palms of his hands. “Finish telling me what this is all about or I will kill you.”
“Take a look at this,” I said, handing him the postcard that I’d gotten at the Grand Festival of Coiffures, Flowers, and Pop Tunes. “I have no choice but to show you this. . It wouldn’t be fair.”
He grabbed the Marija-postcard out of my hand and held it closer to the light.
“So what?” he said. “That’s Marija. What are you trying to say? This particular number is called ‘Unforgettable Pussy.’ She strips to the tune of the Persian March for a whole fifteen minutes. .”
“And you knew about this?”
“Of course,” he said. “I got her this gig. . Is that all you had to tell me about Marija? Just that?”
“Isn’t that enough for you, you old goat? Isn’t that enough?!”
He doubled over with laughter, blushing, and his tears flowed down like. . His tears were gushing out because of the laughter. When he had calmed down a bit, he pulled out his wallet, which was made of donkey leather and adorned with initials of mother-of-pearl, and he silently handed me another postcard. Then he went back to rolling around in the straw, convulsing with laughter.