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

is it not? I would also have you know, gentlemen, that he, too, has written a number of poems. They are not about animals, they’re sort of inspired, melancholico-anatomical, ‘snip-snap.’ May we have
Snap
, Maestro, please? There may be a few disbelievers in our midst, so let them hear it! Here, Don Fernando’s smiling skeptically as if to say, ‘He a poet?’ Why, it’s something right up your alley, Don Fernando, it’s humane and all that. … So, Maestro:
Snap
, if you please.”
    “I am not smiling,” muttered Don Fernando, blushing horribly, because everyone was looking at him as if he were to blame.
    Indeed, he was not smiling. He had hardly been listening to Ugo’s silly patter (or at least so it seemed), but nevertheless his expression smiled all the while, and it seemed to be smiling all on its own while he, preoccupied with his thoughts, was unaware of what it was up to.
    He had sat there all evening with that derisive smile on, never deigning to say a word; he was watching everything from some distracted, wise height.
    Moreover, the self-important smile never left Don Fernando’s face. It was, in a way, central to his physiognomy. Ugo said he put the smile on in the morning, in front of the mirror, and then went out, wearing it all day and taking it off only in bed to put it under his pillow before going to sleep. Who knew what lay hidden behind the mask? Revenge against mankind perhaps … or some small advance on a great future triumph?
    Don Fernando wrote in the same way, wearing his inscrutable smile. A critic had written that he flogged his characters with nettles and tickled them to insanity. There truly was a sadistic side to his writing: he invented people to torture them. But the torture was by no means cruel or painful. On the contrary, the characters laughed and rejoiced, but they laughed like madmen and were bathed in the cold sweat of dismay, as if the author were flogging them into merriment.
    “No, I’m really not smiling,” said Don Fernando almost angrily, feeling the reproachful glances of the entire company on his person. “What have you gone silent for? Please proceed, Maestro.”
    “Oh no, no way,” grumbled Maestro in a hurt voice, “I can’t do this in front of Europe. The scornful face of the most exquisite taste is standing over my piggish talent and smirking. The talent may be piggish, but the pride is not,
Monsieur le GoÛt!”
He gave Don Fernando a sharp, almost menacing look.
    “No, Maestro,” interceded Melkior, in a placating tone, “he really is not smiling. It’s just his face.”
    Don Fernando lashed Melkior with a quick scornful glance, but, as if afraid of being caught out, he immediately diluted it with the saintly mercy that he had gushed tonight from his bright eyes all over the Give’nTake.
    The Give’nTake did not very often have the honor of being caressed by Don Fernando’s eyes. It was a house of drink-sodden madcap living, of devil-may-care and mindless time-wasting, whereas he was a serious and responsible man. He worked, he wrote, he thought. No, by no means did he belong here, and it was a mystery why he came at all. It was where the Parampions performed their lunatic “shows,” while he, sensible and sober like a gracious Sun, would spare a ray of attention to throw some light on the silly muddle, and then put its lights out again and, in full blackout, sail away into unreachability.
    Don Fernando was simply impregnable. How hard had Ugo tried to disarm the man and subject him to the power of his “eloquence,” to topple him from the throne of indifferent and silent derision, to bring him into line and make him one of “the boys”! Don Fernando would immediately surrender, lay down his arms, put his hands up, even insist that there was nothing special about him, nothing unusual, he was an ordinary man, perhaps even … well, an inferior man; all the same he remained alien and aloof which was after all what he wanted to be and seemed