Mitar was watching. And shaking his head in offended amazement: what’s the matter with the madman, it’s as if he doesn’t care …
Yes, why is it, in fact, that I don’t care? The first mate no longer chews narcotic leaves: he has devoted all his time to the study of winds; he watches the clouds float and the stars fall (useful for hunting and agriculture) and composes verse which he presumably gets from heaven. And no one any longer despises the body or curses “the voracious animal.” It has now become “human pride” (in its token garb of what used to be called the fig leaf), it has been reaffirmed as the source of the most glorious pleasures known to man. The native girls are able, through woman’s intuition (congenital in the queen bee and Messalina alike), to assess properly certain skills peculiar to these unusual males. And the redheaded Asclepian, to cut a long story short, gets married! He concludes a political marriage with the chieftain’s youngest daughter. He thus enters the ruling dynasty, first as an adviser and the ruler’s son-in-law; later on, when the chieftain retires to devote all his time to his monkey tail collection, the doctor assumes full power. He proclaims himself king, subsequently to change his title to Emperor, of the state he called Asclepia in honor of his protector. While he does assign his former friends from the Menelaus to ministerial posts, they still have to pay full imperial homage to him and address him as Your Imperial Majesty or, on informal occasions, simply Sire. But Emperor Asclepius the First rules with a benevolent hand, all under the helpful influence of “our Major” who brings the story to a happy, if somewhat abrupt, end.
But Melkior was not made happy by the ending. Indeed, he watched Mitar with a tinge of hatred for bringing him his ticket like that, in his pocket. The happy ending in the pocket of a white coat.
“What’s the matter — isn’t that what you wanted?” Mitar was offended by his silence. Not to mention the look in his eyes …
“Of course it is … thank you so much …” but it came out unconvincing.
“Thank your sainted aunts! Think I would’ve bothered if I hadn’t promised my brother? Well, you can …”
“Numbskull asked you to …?” Ah, Mitar is expecting his fee, as the deal stood.
“That’s right, call him names! And him pleading for you like a brother. Hadn’t been for him, you’d still be rotting at the funny farm. He went to see the Major about you.”
“The way I heard it, it was she who … asked the Major …” lied Melkior, wishing to be able to believe it.
“Acika?” laughed Mitar. “Oh sure, she was falling all over herself to help you. Never ate a bite, never drank a drop, never slept a wink … She went away ages ago! I think she left the same day you were transferred over there.”
All may be well, say some characters in Shakespeare when they have lost all hope, thinks Melkior. Of course she left!!! They’d been treating me so inhumanely … What could the poor girl do?
“What did the poor girl do?” he listens to the echo of his romantic imagination. “Where’s she now?”
“On the rolling main. Sailing. Honeymooning.” Mitar was grinning maliciously.
“What? She got married?”
“To a seaman, ship’s officer, whatever the word is. Merchant marines. Longtime romance, she’d been waiting for him faithfully. Nobody knew anything about it, except perhaps the Major …” said Mitar with an insidious smile.
“How come you know it all?” Melkior felt betrayed, what’s all this now, out of the blue?
“She writes to the Major, sends postcards, Naples, Alexandria, and that island down there — not Sumatra, it’s … you know … the Greek one, statues with no arms … Well, whatever it is, I don’t give a … Anyway, that’s where she is.”
To the first mate, the castaway from the Menelaus … He doesn’t chew narcotic leaves anymore. Another happy ending. Oh why didn’t I let the cannibals cook the happy flesh in their cauldron?
In an instant he shrugged off the “hypocritical head cold,” Atchoo! (he mocked her in passing), as if he had never met her, and Viviana lit up again with a distant life-saving glow. The lighthouse beacon after a shipwreck. He was fond of “shipwrecking” thoughts at the moment. … Down there, around Calypso’s Ogygia, there must remain some of the vicious Aeolian winds which Poseidon had set in motion against Odysseus for blinding his one-eyed son, Polyphemus. …
He surprised himself with his malicious, vengeful hope and felt ashamed of his Love which had now turned its monstrous face to him. There’s love for you: be mine or …
“Right, here’s your century!” he threw the hundred-dinar note to Mitar with a kind of scorn.
“Taking it out on me, eh?” Mitar refused the money, leaving it on Melkior’s night table: “Here, I want you to keep it. Have good food and drink, celebrate your return and good health to you! Put some meat on those bones.”
“When do you think they might discharge me from here?”
“Tomorrow morning. Then you go back to the barracks, hand in your gear, and you’re as free as a bird.”
Melkior nearly chirped. He felt tremendous joy at the idea of going home. He abruptly felt freedom in his legs, in his arms, and an irrepressible instinct of motion propelled him from his bed. “Let’s go” he said to Mitar and, hastily donning his greatcoat, all but ran out of the room.
“Wait up, what’s the hurry?” Mitar couldn’t catch up, he was lugging that great belly out in front of him, see?
“Let’s knock back a couple downstairs in the canteen. I’ve got my ticket in my pocket. We’re saying our farewells, Mitar.”
“We are, but not like this, not on the run,” gasped Mitar. “Also, I’m on duty, listen, I’m telling you …”
But there was no stopping Melkior. “Shot to shot — two shots,” he shouted to the canteen-keeper from the door. She gave Mitar a questioning glance, and he signaled her with his eyes to get pouring. Pouring The Good Stuff, of course.
“You know what I regret? No, I really really regret it … No, you don’t believe me, but I do regret it …”
“What the hell’s there to regret? Here y’are, down the hatch!”
That was after the fifth round of “shot to shot — two shots.” They were clinking their glasses, stuck to the bar like two wobbling jellyfish. Their hands were bypassing each other in the air, everything hovered around them in a state of levitation.
“No, listen, Mithridates … Be Mithridates, being just Mitar is too minor for you. You can call me Eustachius, I don’t mind … Mithridatey, my old matey, see how it rhymes … matey, there’s something I wanted … no, wait, what was it I wanted now?”
“Never mind. Wait, oh God, I’m on duty! If the Major calls …”
“That’s it, right, that’s what I regret: I didn’t kiss the Major, I kissed the other one … ha, ha … And it was the Major I’d meant to kiss!”
“To make a fool out of him? Well, you’re a nasty …”
“No, Mithridates, I’m not,” whispered Melkior hanging his head in contrition, the entire world suddenly starting to spin in his field of vision.