Free Cyclops (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) by Ranko Marinkovic Page A

into bed. The little deer tick. What can there be inside the head of such a louse—what am I saying? A nit!—but then a nit hasn’t got a head at all. Ideas? Ideas, hell! The nit lives snugly on top of your head, keeping warm, the little bastard, having not the haziest notion about what goes on inside. And finally, why am I cooking and kneading all that stuff in my mind—that is to say, for whom? That’s what halts my hand over the blank page, leaving me with nothing to show for my pains. Nothing. Nothing ever.”
    Yes, that was it: nothing. At first Melkior had listened to him with naïve interest, seeing him as a failed genius. But now, after the “nits,” he saw a repulsive brandy lush with a permanently frozen snuffling nose and swollen bluish hands, and regarded him with disbelieving wariness. There could well be a tiny animal with horrible instincts hiding in the flowery idyll like a spider. The lecherous libertine, with a penchant for fat, sweaty women, his entire flesh already poisoned with syphilis, they say. … Melkior moved away from him and lit a cigarette, disinfecting the air around him.
    Maestro was sensitive to such behavior: in retribution, he moved his chair closer and whispered into Melkior’s mouth, poisoning him with his breath:
    “I could introduce you to that one,” he nodded in
her
direction with offensive intimacy. “I know her. This business with Freddie is of no consequence, it’s just mutual ornamentation. Their use of each other is a matter of taste: both are in vogue at the moment and are wearing each other like the latest fashion. So if you like …?”
    “I wouldn’t want the history of my colleague to repeat itself on my back,” quipped Melkior and felt pleased at his success. “So he really beat him in earnest?”
    “Like a madman. Slamming him right and left. The poor critic didn’t even run, no, he just stood there and took it like a martyr. He covered his eyes, for shame I suppose, and never moved an inch. I happened to be standing by the newsroom window and yelled, ‘Run, man, run!’ But he did nothing, he just stood there in a cloud of dust. I tell you, there’s nothing like a dog whip for beating the dust out of clothing!”
    “There he goes again: on and on about dogs!” chimed in Ugo from the other end of the table. “If I may ask, is it Zhuchka or Perezvon?”
    “I’m not on about dogs, I’m on about dog whips,” replied Maestro with a patient smile. “And you, Par-ara-rampion,” he stammered with anger, “you really should remember that Zhuchka and Perezvon are one and the same person—I mean, dog; it was only that Kolya Krasotkin called Zhuchka Perezvon in a moment of surprise, in a moment of compassionate surprise.”
    “You ought to know, gentlemen,” said Ugo to the house at large, “that he is by way of being a specialist in Dostoyevsky’s beasts. If you please, Maestro, what’s the name of the dog in
The Insulted and Injured?”
    “Azorka. It was Azorka,” Maestro replied nonchalantly.
    “Why ‘was’?” asked someone at the table.
    “ ‘Was,’ ” Maestro retorted punctiliously, “because Azorka died early on in the novel, Chapter One.”
    “See? He knows it all!” exclaimed Ugo in buffoonish rapture, as if he were offering a parrot for sale. “Please, Maestro, what’s the title of that poem by Captain Lebyakin? You’ll see, he knows that, too.”
    “I can’t say,” Maestro smiled slyly. The unexpected reply left a palpable impression on his party. Ugo was stumped.
    “I can’t say,” Maestro went on after an effective pause, “because Lebyakin has several poems. I’m sure you mean ‘The Cockroach.’”
    “But of course, ‘The Cockroach’!” cried Ugo delightedly. “The Cockroach, the cockroach, ha-ha, I told you he knew! How could he not know about the cockroach, he, the Mad Bug—”
    “Inspired!” Maestro corrected him.
    “Ah yes, inspired, the Inspired Bug! Of course he knew, the cockroach is an animal,