This emboldened Four Eyes. The cyclist had failed to shake his reputation. … Impertinently he stepped out in front of Melkior:
“Hey, not so fast, young man! What about my money? Someone’s got to answer for it!”
“You go ahead,” and the cyclist gave Melkior a protective nod. He then let his left hand take charge of the bicycle, putting his right on his hip and facing Four Eyes:
“All right, I’ll answer for it!”
“H-how do you mean … you’ll answer for it?” stammered Four Eyes, his courage evaporating. “I’m only asking that my money be searched for, no offense meant. … We’re only human, aren’t we? No need to get all hot and … But it’s got to be fair!”
Melkior then made a gesture of utterly stupid magnanimity: he took out his wallet with several hundred-dinar notes stacked in it and offered one to Four Eyes.
“Here you are. I’m sure the others will want to give you something, too, but please leave me alone.”
Four Eyes extended a greedy hand for the money, but the cyclist pushed it aside, scarcely bothering to choose the kindest way of doing so.
“Why?” wondered Four Eyes. “You can see the gentleman is willing to give it to me. Is that how to be?” he said with mild reproach and made another try to take hold of the note.
Angered by his manner, the cyclist slapped his outstretched hand and compounded the act by making a fist and pushing it up under his nose.
“Go on, have a sniff,” he said generously, as if offering him an orange, but the other turned his head aside with a grimace of irritation and disgust.
“Queasy, eh? But other people’s money smells nice, is that it?”
“What other people’s? I was robbed …” But this sounded like retreat.
Four Eyes was indeed backing down, defending himself with a muffled mutter of what sounded like curses. Once outside the circle, he heaved a soul-deep sigh of “Oh, the honest man’s burden!” and went away at his habitual businesslike clip.
The audience, too, began to disperse, disappointed.
“Rogues, all of them, I’m telling you, one as bad as the other. It’s anyone’s guess whether he was robbed or not.”
That was the ear-stroking citizen, disgruntled at the matter having been left unsettled.
“He’d have hardly spoken like that if he hadn’t been, would he?”
“Oh come on, it’s only thieves nowadays who shout ‘Stop thief.’”
Only Melkior and the cyclist remained. The blind man was there, too, but he was pottering about his machine, covering it with its oilcloth cover (for the night), and was so intent on it as to be actually absent.
Melkior felt the uneasy accident of his position and said “There” and, a little later, “Thank you” and, in his confusion, buttoned his raincoat up wrong.
“Yes, well,” said the cyclist, ill at ease himself, but then he remembered Four Eyes: “The thieving scoundrel! The shoes old Owl says he wants to buy his boy … when the rotten lush hasn’t got a cat to call his own.”
“Owl?” Melkior voiced his surprise. “But isn’t his name …?”
“Nah! Everybody calls him Owl. God knows what his real name might be. He does the rounds of the bars at night, rolling the drunks, and sleeps in attics by day. The other day he nearly set our bookkeeper’s house on fire. He was playing with matches, some old papers caught fire … the firemen had a job getting him out of the smoke.”
The cyclist was silent for a moment, then shyly asked:
“That other fellow … is he a friend of yours?”
“Yes. Don’t mind his behavior, he was a bit …”
“Mind?” said the cyclist genially. “I like his kind. He made fun of us all and went away singing. He can’t be a bad man.” He then asked in a confidential tone:
“Do you by any chance have any connections with the newspapers?”
“Yes I do. I write for one.”
“Well, uh … what’s the word about us getting into the war?”
“I don’t write anything political … but they say we might …” Melkior shuddered as if they were invoking the devil.
“Well, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if Hitler bit off more than he can chew here in the Balkans! Mark my words!” said the cyclist with fervid conviction. “We may meet again somewhere. You’re an honest man,” he added with a cheery laugh, then mounted his bicycle and, tossing Melkior a “Bye now!” sped off down the street.
What’s this? The words were thought soundlessly and had a blind man’s meaning of: Where am I? All of a sudden everything seemed strange: the streets, the trams, the houses, the people … even the human faces themselves. He had been transported here in his sleep, he had woken up on the corner by the weighing machine. … He felt ashamed, naked as he was, he feared they might be watching him, those passersby and those women up there leaning out of windows and laughing in such a …
“You didn’t pay for the weighing!” The blind man’s rude voice brought him back to familiar relationships. He paid the fee. The small task reminded him of his other duties. In his pocket he still had a ticket for a film with von Stroheim and Viviane Romance, but instead of going to see it he had followed Dom Kuzma down the path of childhood memories. … And ended up by the weighing machine … weight control … Ta-ta-taaa, ta-ta-taaa, ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-taaa … the bugler from the barracks was announcing the sad taps of army life. He started down the dark alley of the 35th Regiment, and the sad go-to-sleep tune robbed him of any desire to go up to his rooms across from the barracks.
He was treading on autumn leaves. The leaves rustled with a withered voice … and I remembered my sweet dreams; happy days, where are you now? the song inside him complemented the rustling of leaves underfoot. He was supposed to do a review of the film that night in time for the next day’s issue. Beautiful Viviane Romance played debauched vamps. He was overcome with sadness every time he saw a film of hers. And his heart fluttered inside him for Viviana, the woman he had so dubbed for the sake of purging his love, sad and hopeless …
The autumnal melancholy. The aimless streets, the web of tangled dreams. A warm south wind caressing his features with a harlot’s breath; he ran his hand over his face, revulsed.
On the corner glowed the letters of the Give’nTake, blinking on and off, winking to the passerby, “Come on in, have a drink, have a laugh.” Melkior, too, understood their wink. He had passed the place twice already, the blue Give’nTake winking to him from above: “Come on in, don’t sulk, Viviana’s here.”
Viviana, here? That was why he was not going in. How many times lately had he responded to the hint by defying the malicious destiny beckoning to him. “Come on in, come on in, she’s here.” He had resisted, letting time heal … or however it was that the saying went. But tonight it had extended its magical finger, tracing Viviana’s name in the dust …
Behind the steamy glass panels there was an orgy of laughter and, surely enough, Ugo’s voice.
“They are having a good time of it,” he said like a miser watching others squander their fortunes, and decided to move on. But suddenly he spun around and in he went. The bell above the door (fitted to chime after the fleeing drunkard) dutifully announced Melkior’s entrance.
~ ~ ~
Another drunken night, smoke and antics, he thought with a touch of malice. Where’s it all going to end? But Maestro was already wheezing in a cloud of smoke—“Ah, at last, here comes Eustachius the Sagacious!”—and Ugo was rushing up to meet him and showering kisses on both cheeks, one of them planted on the eyebrow “for the pure mind.” The entire bar had to hear that Eustachius had returned from his splendid isolation. Using sweeping oratorical gestures and most scrupulously chosen words — with a special bow to the cash-register girl, “Madam!”—all according to Giventakian ritual, Ugo delivered an éloge in honor of his friend.