“And you would challenge him to a fencing duel?” grinned Melkior.
“So I would, Eustachius! Whooosh! and off with his ear!” Maestro swung his saber at Freddie and took keen delight at the sight of Freddie’s severed ear flying off. “And then a cat that was following us (cats can sense this sort of thing), that was on the lookout for scraps of flesh …” giving his fancy free rein, relishing his revenge. “Or what do you say I lop off his nose? The effect’s even greater! and then the cat …”
He’ll have read this in Edmond About, thought Melkior, a Croatian translation of A Notary’s Nose was published not long ago. …
“A noseless Lothario, ha-ha,” rejoiced Maestro. “Cat got his nose!”
They had reached the unpaved, muddy, dark reaches of the city outskirts.
Dogs started barking at them from small fenced front gardens.
“You’d better take the lead now, Maestro,” said Melkior, “I can’t see a thing, nor do I know the way …”
“This way, just follow me along these fences,” Maestro directed him with assurance. “Only mind the barking guardians of private property, they’re very eager. If you so much as touch the fence they’ll think you want to steal a head of cabbage from their garden and they might trim your fingers for you. ‘Hands off!’ is what this barking means,” prattled on Maestro tottering on ahead of Melkior. “And when an old muzzle starts snarling on the left, we’re to turn right; he is the lighthouse in this nocturnal cruise. When he dies I don’t know how I’ll manage to find my way when in a state of illumination.”
“They’ll put up electric lights,” chuckled Melkior.
“Electric lights … that’s not my way,” Maestro halted warningly. “If your electric lights was meant to provoke me, Eustachius, I can tell you it went wide of the mark.” Although he was leading the way, Maestro was speaking very seriously. “I don’t care much for people thinking my convictions backward and laughable. I’m capable of laughing better than any of you Parampionists, thank you very much.”
“You took offense all the same, didn’t you?”
“Well … not exactly. You can take offense if you’re … disappointed, if you’d expected something else or … but that’s beside the point. … That is to say, if you’re promoting your ideas, seeking followers … and I don’t give a tinker’s for the whole ballgame, cherished Eustachius. I’m not being ironic at all when I say cherished, because …” Maestro seemed to hesitate for a moment before deciding to keep something to himself. “Careful now, there’s a ditch here with a lot of mud in it, they’re laying an idea of sewage-pipe order, ha-ha, you’ll have to jump across it. Hop!” Maestro swung his arms and jumped across, “right, from now on it’s all safe going, down along the fences.” He was silent for a moment, struggling with the mud in which his feet were sinking. “I’ve got you into a nice mess, haven’t I, Eustachius — quite literally so.”
“Isn’t there some other way?”
“Yes there is — a roundabout road. Electric lights and all — but I wanted to show you my way, my dark way. Perhaps it will help you understand me better. Here he is, snarling — now turn right, Eustachius, after me.” Indeed a dog did heave a geriatric wheeze, as if too feeble to bark. “Did you hear that memento along my way? Dies irae. He’s got nothing against me, he only gives voice to guide me. The lighthouse keeper. And up there, look up, Eustachius. … Ah, the umbrella! Fold the umbrella, look up … those black lines, those staves, empty of notes, across the sky, That’s It — the Powerline. You, of course, find my hate of those copper wires ridiculous?”
“I’m already used to your bizarre views. …”
“But I’m not after anything bizarre, kindhearted Eustachius — I genuinely hate the thing,” said Maestro very quietly, indeed with a kind of modesty.
For some time they trudged squelching on across the slippery mud. Maestro had trouble pulling his feet from the clay dough. Melkior had to help his unstable guide several times. A kind of mud Inferno, thought Melkior, with Virgil somewhat tipsy and crazed. He has changed — he is not mad for the sake of madness but with a sincere and true madness. Perhaps the spirochaetae are adding to it by completing their arduous work. Gnawing asunder the last of the filaments for the proper connections, as in a telephone exchange … wrong number, this is a private residence, yes, yes, the last digit’s four, four … I still have Enka’s key … Put it in a small oblong box (toothpaste?) and send it by registered mail. … But leave that for tomorrow, leave it for tomorrow … without a word, thank you for everything, I think we are now quits. Even if she writes another letter, if her words bring those waves of goose bumps down the thighs and desire starts snailing up the spine … it should all be shaken off—apage! apage! — like Saint Anthony, the anchorite of Thebes. Very good, sir, but what if she appears in person? Shall we do apage! Like … the anchorite saint, chop off a finger on the block like Father Sergius … (the film with Mozhukhin, what rot!), shall we refrain, following the doctrine of the aged Count Leo …
“So, Eustachius,” spoke up Maestro, “this is where we leave the fences. We strike out diagonally across this little field, down the path, toward that black silhouette — There Is My Home,” he finished in a tuneless version of the Czech national anthem.
Over the herd of low hovels that had dug themselves into the ground up to their knees in modesty and impoverished shame there loomed self-assuredly but quite unconvincingly a dark five- or six-story monster …
“What’s that thing doing here?” said Melkior in surprise.
“It used to be a storage facility for the bastards of the city’s bon vivants,” replied Maestro, the Inferno guide. “This is where unwed mothers used to wait for the fruits of their sinful loves to be born. Here bawled the unacknowledged counts, barons, dukes, in the arms of their mothers, crazy virgins. Of course, everything in noble penury, in rags worn with dignity. At this point, few of the old-timers are on speaking terms with each other, they’re like Russian émigrés — it’s beneath them to speak to just anyone. Now and then they jump from the top stories; they’re the real thing, the ones who don’t go for suicide notes and shit like that. But there are also the snobs — jumping from the second floor, feet first of course, into the grass. Breaking bones, getting their heads smashed … They leave their ‘life stories’ behind with detailed ‘pedigrees’—eager for a headline, of course …”
“And you write them up …”
“Yes, I do them that small favor — they take some risk after all … Some of them actually succeed.”
“Why, it’s … How can you live here?” Melkior was horrified, “… it’s a suicide house!”
“No, why? It’s a kindergarten!” laughed Maestro with malevolent glee. “You say what you like, it has a certain charm all its own. The charm of the waltz. The upper-story types don’t do it all that often, and the lower-story types … heh-heh … There’s this ‘Baron Sigismund.’ Si-gis-mund is not to blaaame for setting girrrls hearts aflaaame …” all of a sudden Maestro launched into a hoarse rendition of a number from the operetta The White Horse Inn, but presently grew serious again “… who has jumped grassward twice. The first time it was trouble with the ladies. He wears a pencil moustache and a monocle, all our fifty-year-old virgins (we’ve got a lot of those) are crazy about him; there was nothing for him to do but jump. The second time he jumped because of the fourth partition of Poland, the autumn before last. A nobleman and a knight! Knows all of Sienkiewicz by heart — but doesn’t know a word of Polish. Kobieta and herbata — the two Polish words I know — mean woman and tea, respectively … I also know the word bardzo … it doesn’t mean quickly the way brzo means in Croatian. … I forget what it means. Szesdziesiat piec means sixty-five. … Sigismund doesn’t even know what szesdziesiat piec means, but that doesn’t keep him from attempting suicide over Poland, Pan Podbipieta strike him. But what was I going to … oh yes, I was going to say this is a true ‘home of the gentry,’ indeed a house of knights.”