Melkior sat down on a chair. Perhaps the dismembered body of a woman? A victim of sadistic lust. … Has anyone seen Viviana? He looked around the room as if with an eye to discovering clues … bloodstains, a hair or two, a torn shred of an undergarment … He surprised himself with the thought — God, what rubbish! — and looked back at Maestro, confused, with a pang of guilt.
“… perhaps since birth, even,” Maestro had been saying while Melkior was not listening. “And why am I one of the prize exhibits in this museum? You think I’m not authentic … oh, oh, oh, I merit preservation in alcohol — mind, body, and all! They call it compote up at the clinic. If you didn’t know, how will you ever be able to eat canned fruit again, when the plums, cherries, peach slices will … ah, merde! Medical science has befouled all of life. Reposing in alcohol is my destiny, even if only in pieces: some details of me are bound to get into the … alcohol compote. Damn it all, I should now heave a sigh of longing as befits a true-blue tippler!”
Melkior felt uneasy: set out in his imagination as if on shelves were a row of jars with severed ears, tongues, penises. … He gave a shudder. He wished he could get away.
“You’re chilly, Eustachius. I’ll stoke the stove straight away, get you warm in no time at all.”
In one corner of the room stood a folded iron cot with a rolled straw mattress in it. Maestro pulled a whole sheaf of straw from it, fed it into the stove, arranged some cordwood on top and lit it all. The fire set up a mournful mumble under the iron burner, came to life in its grave, thought Melkior.
“Do you always pull straw from your …” he nearly said grave “… from your bed?”
“Indeed I do. Stupid, isn’t it? And you spotted it right off. I steal from myself, dear Eustachius, like an imbecile out of Molière, only to end up sleeping on what used to be straw, on nothing but the little souls of the burnt straw. Once I even dreamed the burning souls. There were tens of thousands of them. You can well imagine how many I’ve burned, tantamount to some Spanish Inquisitor. There were all these little burning candles going around and around my bed, singing in piping female voices requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine, et lux perpetua … the ‘lux perpetua’ coming from the straw! What a ridiculous business. I woke up in cold sweat.”
He was priming the oil stove while he spoke. First he warmed it using denatured alcohol, then he pumped air in. The stove suddenly hissed, having gone out, releasing puffs of gaseous petroleum. The room filled at once with a heavy, stuffy smell.
Melkior coughed. He was breathing with difficulty, choking. He remembered Nettle’s stable and feared he might faint.
“Might we open …” he mouthed in what was nearly his last gasp.
“Why should we, Eustachius the Welcome?” wondered Maestro carrying a lit match across the room. The match went out halfway across. He went back and struck a fresh one, which also went out en route; meanwhile the primus stove was eagerly hissing as it released petroleum stench.
“It’s been airing all day, I’ve only just closed the window,” said Maestro carrying yet another match across the room. It, too, went out, of course. But he was not at all miffed — he went back to strike another one … Melkior followed the insecure little flame with anxiety. …
“Why don’t you strike a match there by the Primus instead of carrying it over?” he said in near-irritation.
“Ah, seeing to that, too, are you?” Maestro resented interference in his habits. “The matches are duds. Incidentally, it’s not really much of an invention: carrying a flame on top of a toothpick! Kitchen Prometheanship!” The “Prometheanship” was what he snuffed the fresh match with: he had blasted out the word with such seething scorn and the tiny flame passed away like a premature baby.
“Everything smells of petroleum in here. …” grumbled Melkior.
“Everything?” asked Maestro with curious irony. “Ahh, Eustachius the Sensitive, you’re acting like a royal personage visiting a poor subject. Hold your royal nose for an instant … there, it’s lit!”
“And your cursed nose is ripe for a splash. Have you got a mirror?”
“So that’s what it is! You’re afraid of me … bloody as I am? What a physiognomy, eh? No, I’ve gone without a mirror for two decades, give or take. Since … the days of the Charleston. Why do I need one? To study the reflection of my beauty?”
“Why should I be afraid of you?” and yet an icy snake slithered up Melkior’s back, why was he out looking for me tonight?
“Just saying,” laughed Maestro and the swollen red nose made his smile mournful, clownish. “Children are afraid of ugly faces. I’m fond of you, Eustachius the Artless, and … perhaps for that very reason … am giving you a wee bit of a scare, boo. …”
Maestro grimaced with his hideous face and bloody swollen nose at Melkior, like someone trying to scare a child. Melkior cringed with disgust and looked away.
“Oh, don’t be angry, it’s only my little joke,” Maestro abruptly went serious. “It’s beside the point anyway. I didn’t invite you up here to show you the silly faces I can make. I say … that electric chair thingy in America — is it true the electricity kills the man instantly, or … does he remain alive for some time after all — perhaps a minute or even two?”
“I don’t know,” replied Melkior giving him a surprised look. “What’s that to you now?”
“I read about someone having been brought back to life, no less than seven minutes after the jolt. As soon as they got him off the chair the doctor opened his chest and massaged his heart. He lived for a long time in Mexico afterward. His lawyer had it all arranged, bought ‘the body.’ So it appears all is not lost after the jolt, you can go on living … provided someone turns their hand to it, right, Eustachius?”
“Could be … I don’t know,” replied Melkior, bored, “I haven’t read about it …”
“Well, I have. And I won’t have anyone saying Tesla knows all about electricity! He knows how to make calculations and build motors, but it takes dying, dying from it, Eustachius, to understand the filth!”
Maestro was speaking in the middle of the room with prophetic awe, his arms raised evangelistically.
“Well, you won’t be put in the electric chair,” Melkior tossed off sarcastically, “here we hang people.”
“Even that is more dignified … being strangled by your own weight! I could also understand being drowned like a pup, but being force-fed with electricity …”
“Who on earth is force-feeding you, man? What’s the matter with you?” laughed Melkior nervously. No, honestly, what the hell was the matter with him tonight?
“You’re right, man, nobody is force-feeding me,” said Maestro thoughtfully and went back to the oil stove. “Do you like your cocoa strong, Eustachius the Kind?”
“I don’t like it at all,” replied Melkior, boorish.
“Well, I’m making you some as promised, Eustachius the Unkind. Now why are you going all principled on me all of a sudden?”
“All right, I’ll have some,” Melkior relented. In point of fact he felt he could do with a hot drink; indeed the aroma of cocoa had aroused his appetite, too.
Maestro went about serving his guest with joy:
“Here you are, my dear Eustachius. I’ve got some biscuits in the box as well. It’s all hermetically sealed, don’t feel squeamish. No insect could penetrate in there. Not even the positively most cunning among them — the bedbug, as suffering mankind knows all too well. But I’m free of them, they suddenly disappeared, oh, something like three years ago. Too frightened to go on living with me. … Or is it that I was too much for them?”