“My dear Maestro,” cried Melkior magnanimously, “nothing could be farther from my mind …”
“Good, because I’m not addressing what is far from your mind,” went on Maestro with kind composure, “I’m addressing your mind itself, the very center and core of your reason, capable of full understanding. Too late did I get wise to her perfidious little game, that is to say only after I’d given my hopes and fantasies free rein: well, why not? Women had been known, in certain exceptional cases, suddenly to appreciate spiritual qualities as well, perhaps for originality’s sake, or simply out of defiance … I was imagining with sweeping breadth.”
“Well, perhaps she did appreciate you?” said Melkior timidly.
“Eustachius, if you’re not making fun of me and looking only to console yourself, then I suggest you turn around and spit three times, as though a black cat had just crossed your path. Appreciate me? Ho, ho, ho …” ho-ho’d Maestro out of his poisoned gorge. “She appreciated athletes proficient in various disciplines. As I found out when it was too late. Legs, shoulders, biceps. … Even good coxswains — good in the literal sense, I mean. As to how highly I was being appreciated … or, since we’re using business terms, depreciated … well, listen and I’ll tell you. I was alone with her in their flat, on a Saturday evening, her husband had left for somewhere out in the sticks to cover a Sunday match, that was why I’d chosen that particular day. ‘Chosen’ for what? Well, I couldn’t answer that one even today and yet I still say ‘chosen.’ I had been alone with her before, late into the night, sipping a drink or two, chatting away, entertaining her, and everything had been so, well, normal. … But that evening some demon got hold of me: I kept feeling I had to make a move, I have no idea which way. Do something? Say something? — I don’t know, but it had me hobbled, I couldn’t move, I kept shoving my hands into my pockets, in shame, in fear, spouting drivel, lamely, being boring. Looking all the time, unblinkingly, at her knees, well-rounded, full (you’ve seen those knees!) and watching out for the moments when she crossed her legs, to slip my gaze into that holy semi-darkness … She noticed this and got going with her rotten game. She’d worked it all out while I was sitting there across from her, you’ll see.” Maestro took a sip of brandy and cleared his throat; the butt in the corner of his mouth had gone out long before and was dangling from his lip like a slimy grub. “Interesting, eh, Eustachius … (Melkior had his attention stretched from ear to ear) and instructive for the coming generations of men. She might have been in a bit of a fix herself, as you will see later, well, she could always have sent me off, asked me to leave, said she was tired … but no, she decided to play a little game. And so she did. Her legs began crossing and recrossing a bit too often as if competing, offering themselves, showing off; and meanwhile her skirt was getting shorter and shorter — she never once tugged it down over her knees as women will do in that kind of leg game when they’re being decent … I mean sincere … about seducing a man, but I was a stranger to that kind of thinking at the time — and on her face there was a nervously twinkling smile ‘brimming with desire for me.’ Well, how else was I to see it? I pounced wildly on her knees and started kissing them like a man demented; I wanted to make up for everything at once, for all the yearning, the waiting … I was going on mindlessly, grunting as I rootled in her lap like a ravenous piglet, and she was laughing quaintly, even stroking my head and scratching me exactly the way you scratch a piglet, in among the hairs … there was a lot of hair on my head in those days. … Suddenly, as if she’d made up her mind, she whispered soulfully in my ear ‘Wait, we’d better get undressed,’ and she glanced at her watch as she rose … I remembered that bit only later. She went to the bathroom to get undressed. I waited for her, naked, in the sitting-room, trembling … you can well imagine! There, I’m telling you all, Eustachius the Privileged, all, down to the very last mortifying detail, because that’s where her whorish triumph was — in those very details! She took a long time coming back, I could hear the sound of water in the bathroom, and I was trembling … I thought: why must they wash and groom so much for it … but with another part of my mind I was exulting in her wish for purity … of the first touch, my dearest, my great love. … That was what I was tremblingly muttering, straining my hearing for every sound in the house, frightened like a thief. … Suddenly I thought I heard someone inserting a key into the door from the outside! And true to form she came back running, flushed, ‘it’s him,’ she whispered in despair. She took me by the hand and led me to the bedroom and pushed me inside a cupboard full of men’s clothes; came back again, threw my clothes in there, too, then locked me in and took the key out of the lock. And now, Eustachius, begins the cruel vaudeville …”
Maestro paused. He spat the butt to the floor and lit a fresh cigarette, which he immediately moved with his tongue to a corner of his mouth to keep it from impeding his speech.
“And the most miserable thing, honorable Eustachius, is that I’m sitting there in the wardrobe among the rags, choking from the smell of mothballs — and terrified I’ll give myself away … fearing for her sake! Word of honor, I didn’t give a thought to myself (fine, I’ll get through this … or choke to death, it doesn’t matter really) — it’s because of her that I’ve become all darkness and silence. Here they come, into the bedroom … I never move an eyebrow, I don’t breathe! But what’s this? It’s not his voice, the colleague’s, the husband’s! Then again, perhaps it’s only the acoustics of the wardrobe … anyway, there wasn’t much time for checking: they were at it before long. That’s how it was, Eustachius … me listening inside to the entire … entire charade … until the last gasp. I don’t remember what kind of sound I made, but it must have been some vengeful cry, because he jumped out of bed right away and began looking for me in the room. I then thumped an elbow against the wood, ‘here I am.’”
“What?” Melkior was flabbergasted, “weren’t you afraid?” He remembered his own “retreat” from Enka’s. … “He could have killed you there and then.”
“He could have indeed … but the desire for revenge was stronger, Eustachius. After all, a naked man in the wardrobe (and I’ll have you know I was a man in those days), locked in from the outside, and the key out of the lock! — what better evidence of a woman’s harlotry do you want? He started shouting (like the Moor demanding the handkerchief) ‘The key! The key! The key, you God-damned whore!’ and she kept giggling wildly in the bed for all she was worth — it was all a lark, you see. Try to picture the scene, Eustachius! At last, when he was utterly beside himself and lurched to strangle her, break open the cupboard door, she gave him the key. He pulled me out by the ear like a schoolboy. … But what happened? It wasn’t him, the husband — it was someone else, a huge fellow, an athletic superman! The revenge had misfired! Never mind me being pulled out by the ear, never mind me being naked (asthenic, intellectual build, with a bit of paunch in the bargain), never mind her laughing (and why shouldn’t she: just imagine it — two naked fools!) … the revenge, the revenge had fallen flat! God, why did I ever bellow inside that cupboard? In the end, after he’d taken a better look at me, he joined in the laughter himself. He crawled into bed next to her and the pair of them, covered, proceeded to jeer at my naked self. … In that case, I thought, miserable and bare-assed as I was, retrieving my clothes from the cupboard, in that case, the whore’s ball will come to an end one day. And I did put an end to it.”