“You got your revenge!” exclaimed Melkior aligning himself wholeheartedly with Maestro.
“You bet I did, Eustachius, of course I did! Very soon, too!”
“How did you do it?”
“Through a second vaudeville, one with a dramatic ending and this time directed by me!”
“How did you …”
“The end justified the means. Don’t hold it against me, Eustachius — I used an anonymous letter. Instead of me, it was the avenging husband who hid in the cupboard. Fully clothed, of course. And armed with a toy pistol, just to be able to throw them out into the street naked.”
Melkior was listening with a feeling of personal satisfaction: he was entirely in the “avenger’s” shoes; he didn’t even mind the “anonymous letter.”
“Surely you invented that bit?” He wished to be sure of his satisfaction.
“Do you think, Eustachius, that I could deprive myself of such an occasion to gloat? I was standing right there as Adam and Eve were evicted from the Garden of Eden … and I cackled like an infernal demon, I assure you, I howled to make it sound as malevolent as possible.”
“Did he see you?” Melkior was hankering for the details.
“The spouse? No, he slammed the gate shut as soon as they were out … it was only then that I appeared, hee, heeee …”
“Did the fellow recognize you?”
“Hah, that was the only fly in the ointment. It was not the same fellow, it was someone else again, a subtler type, a master of the racquet … Word has it that he’s now coaching an African ruler in the game.”
“And how did she behave?”
“Innocence incarnate. Covering her instruments with her hands … Oh, it was one of the greatest scandals of the day! You can imagine how I wrote it up for Yesterday in Town: ‘Adam and Eve Hit the Street’! The Old Man commended me. …” Melkior was not enthused by Maestro’s gloating. So this is the story of Viviana … (It was as if this were a source of “fresh relief” and “final liberation”) … unless Maestro’d invented it all? Well, hadn’t I buried her already? Oh yes, I have buried my dead love …
“So he actually kicked her out … naked … into the street?” he asked all the same. Perhaps the old boy did invent it. …
“Precisely. It was as if he’d taken my advice. As a matter of fact, there was a wee suggestion to that effect in the anonymous letter, if my memory serves me well — it has been a good number of years since.”
“She’d have been very young?”
“Very, very, veracious Eustachius. If you want to find an excuse for her in it. …”
“I want nothing!” said Melkior, irritated. “Why would I care?”
“Ah, on the subject of ‘care,’ I’ve been meaning to ask you — how well do you know her?”
Melkior gave him a sullen and distrustful look:
“We spoke once at Adam’s, the chiromantist’s …”
“Well, did they, heh-heh … take you into the partnership?” squinted Maestro maliciously. But this may have been from the cigarette smoke in his eyes, thought Melkior, anxious: the question had been all too clear.
“I’m not with you … What partnership?”
“Don’t listen to me, Eustachius, I’m a nasty fellow,” said Maestro and gave another inexplicable squint. “But verily, verily I say unto thee: beware of the magician Adam. This is my testamentary advice to you: A perfidious bastard is capable of doing what no one else can. Remember, mortal, that dust thou art … he’ll get his neck wrung yet. …”
“Get his neck wrung,” that’s preventive action! Melkior detected Don Fernando’s fingers in this. So he’s exerting his influence all right … but only as fingers, Melkior dismissed.
“And as for the bait,” went on Maestro in a kind of hurry, “I’ve told you: spit thrice. I used to shave three times a day, and you, Eustachius, should spit three times in a row!” he lifted an ATMAN-like index finger, “those are the words of your ruined parent on his deathbed.”
Maestro looked at the folded-up cot with regret.
“It would be meet for me to lie down full length upon it and give you my blessing … but I can’t be bothered to open it out … not merely for the sake of ceremony …”
“I’ll do it …” hastened Melkior only to bite his tongue, “I mean, it would do you good to lie down, it’s late, you’re tired, also you’ve had a lot to drink. …”
“What, and let you escape? Uh-oh, I won’t have it, Eustachius! Your testimony will be my protection against slander.”
“Who would slander you … and why?”
“The Corso humanists … for ‘defeatism.’ I told them, over my shoulder, that I didn’t give a fig for their Future. I don’t give the toenail from my little toe for their hydroelectric power plants. Anyway, I haven’t even got toenails on my little toes — what I have is hooves that have become corns … from walking. There, I don’t give a single pedestrian corn of mine for all the electrical powers of the Great Future. What use are they to us pedestrians? I respect human walking.”
“You said so to Don Fernando?”
“To him … and to the rest of them. I respect perpendicularity, human dignity! A huddled fool in a tin bucket hurtling up and down the street — is he still a man? Staring in front of him, his eyes bulging from their sockets like those of a mad believer; he mustn’t turn around or he’ll be turned not into the biblical pillar of salt but into a pile of iron and shit … and he in such a hurry to reach the FUTURE, heh-heh, my dear Eustachius!”
“So mankind ought to relinquish technological progress?”
“Mankind …” Maestro gave a mournful smile. “Perhaps ‘mankind’ would give it up after all, if anyone were to ask. But who ever asks ‘mankind’ anything, Eustachius? ‘Mankind’ has only hands, the energy of its ten fingers. … Mankind does not know what ‘horsepower’ is … unless it’s the power of a four-legged horse. Now do you, Eustachius, know what ‘horsepower’ is? Well, you don’t! You will look it up in the Petit Larousse Illustré when you get home. In this powerful horselike day and age, Eustachius, it’s a shame not to know what horsepower is. HP. Now do you know, you delegate of mankind, what energy is?”
“The capacity …” Melkior was laughing, the night had taken an amusing turn, he thought, “the capacity to perform an action … something like that …”
“Wrong, Eustachius! Sit down!” cried Maestro tutorially. “The ability of a body—yes, body, you silly lad — to perform an action! You must emphasize the body, with a focus on the substance. The soul doesn’t come into it at all — that comes under theology. Here, my body is getting up and walking,” Maestro took several resolute steps, “and that’s ENERGY: a body being capable of performing an action. Right, but what about that invisible thingy which courses through a wire, has no body and is not the soul of a dead tightrope walker … eh? You think this is … no more than a folk riddle?”
Maestro made a rhetorical pause, watching his “lad” with derisive expectancy.
“Even the religion of the Future, dearest Eustachius,” he went on didactically, since his “lad” had failed to come up with an answer, “has its own incorporeal, invisible deity, present in all things, in Heaven and on Earth. Danger of death! Thou shalt not needlessly touch thy God! — That is the first and supreme commandment. Old God-the-Creator can no longer frighten anybody; he used to frighten people naïvely with fire, which firemen can nowadays put out in no time flat. But The Invisible One coursing madmanlike along wires (Maestro gestured at the window with his thumb over his shoulder), well, just try pointing your hose at Him! — He’ll fry you like a fish. There you are, Eustachius, that’s the distinctive feature of the new theology.” Maestro gave a sigh of relief. He had done a meaningful job: winkled out that “new piece of human folly,” that “mystical entity of inestimable importance for mankind” from science’s mystery. … Using persiflage and extravagant metaphors all the while … because he, as everyone knew, did not care a rap for anything in this world. Or the next … if you wanted to know that, too.