“Remember thee! Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat in this distracted globe,” recited Melkior with pathos. He noticed his voice had gone hoarse. It’s the waking and the smoking, I’m going to take it easy all day tomorrow … and sleep, sleep … This “tomorrow” struck him as exquisitely lovely and he smiled.
Maestro had already “pointed his hose” powerfully, there was the splashing sound of a waterfall …
A boyish game, the little Brussels piss-kid playing with his wee fountain in the park. Melkior was smiling as he listened to the noise of the cozy little cascade. A-ahh, mannequin-pisse … he said yawning. But before he could close his mouth he noticed his hearing turn around with an earnest interest in the sound outside … he saw a glittering arc rearing defiantly, shooting across the night, bound for somewhere far away: it aimed to sprinkle its badmouthed, symbolic water over the whole of the Future and all it concealed … to reach Eternity with its defiance.
From outside the house there came again the ingratiating, warm stridor zreee … zreee … as though wishing to offer the warmth of the home fires and the comfort of sleep.
Melkior was suddenly illumined by horrifying clarity! As if the walls of some other, common, everyday consciousness had broken down inside him, as in the flash of a spark, he instantly intuited Maestro’s “brand new,” “original,” “medicinally pure” death. He did not have time to scream, to rush out on the balcony … Maestro had already reached Eternity with his “arc.” He heard the altered, thick, and somehow surprised voice, as if the man was angrily trying to clear his throat for a new speech with “honorable Eustachius.” But all it came to was a labored mumble, a death rattle, and then a soft and seemingly cautious thud which seemed to mean, “There, that’s all.”
~ ~ ~
Massage the heart, massage the heart … Everyone is saying it. They are gathered around the sleeping and seemingly deceased one who has apparently forfeited his retirement benefits. … He is draped across the balcony’s wrought-iron railing, with flowers strewn over him, as if decked out for a celebration. … He is being funny: eyes closed, he is twitching like a dead body on a clattering cart, as though shaken by electric shocks. Electric fever persisting, thought Melkior. Numbskull is giving him artificial respiration: that’s the thing to do, he says raising and lowering Maestro’s arms, pump the air, he’s nothing but a pump now, a diver must have air … Ugo is laughing: a pump! By my father, the lecherous Parampion Kalisto, this is the only thing that will help him! and sprinkling brandy over him from a watering can. Look, his ear is moving … “On Ombrellion, the barren mountain, spake he!” cries out the Melancholic from inside the room. Who speaks? asks Melkior. He who is bent double out there … and who shall be resurrected before the cock crows thrice … for we know why the cock crows, he adds to Melkior in a whisper, with a confidential wink. “No you don’t! No more on tab!” The shout comes from Thénardier, who is wrestling with Ugo for the watering can. “Who’s going to pay me for what he guzzled alive? Let the Earth … devil take him! … let the Earth soak it all!” “On Ombrellion … Give him belfry bats and a spinning top, he’s got to be brought back to life!” shouts the Melancholic stamping his foot in a quarrelsome way. “And when we hear the Alligator tonight (he whispers to Melkior) I’ll show you the winks. There are nine of them. Shh, it’s a Scale Six secret. Now walk on, pretend you don’t know me.”
Chicory is weeping: Master! … He’s the only one who loved him, thinks Melkior and reproaches himself for being cold-hearted.
“Take this — now you’ll see for yourself how hollow you are!” Freddie has suddenly sprung up from nowhere and is leering over The One Bent Double Across The Railing, “and I’m a sugar cane, ha-ha.” And he flings at his eye the thorny stem of a rose. “Fred, sugar — my sweet,” exclaims Viviana.
A great multitude has gathered around him, the small balcony is chock-full. The room, too, is filled to bursting, and so are all the corridors, the staircase, all the way down to the main door. Outside the house the crowd shouts: Hang the whore on the wall! Spit on her! (This is a reference to the Gioconda; she is there above him, the smile never leaving her face.)
Freddie is saying to Viviana: “Don’t be afraid, they can’t hurt you — I am here.”
“All the same, Fred, what if they put me in a frame and spit on me?” trembles Viviana.
“They won’t — I’m here!” This time it is ATMAN speaking. In the housecoat, with the white muffler, with the spider. She snuggles up to him, “Oh, Mac!” He pushes her back gently: “Wait, I’ve got to massage his heart.” He points his long, bony fingers at the doubled-up Maestro and starts incanting mumbo jumbo, “So, father? Barefoot, was she … So, father?”
“You’re not going to revive him, are you, Mac?” she asks in great fear.
“Re-viiive?” drawls ATMAN looking Melkior derisively in the eyes. His own eyes come quite close together, flow into one (like two drops of water) to form a large, hard, bulging eye, blue as a plum.
Polyphemus! Melkior goes numb with fear.
“Uh-ah, no, no,” laughed ATMAN with his wide-set teeth. “Not Polyphemus! The embryo of glory in alcohol, right? While taking the animal to be weighed every now and then: a bone and a skin. … The drum gets the skin, right? And what does the Motherland get — a fig? Ah, no, no, you’ll make a dinner for the Croco-dile! Alligatorrr!” he summons the monster.
“Didn’t I tell you it was still over there?” whispers the Melancholic, almost breathless. “Wink to wink — nine.”
In reply to ATMAN’S call, the endless Length of the Great Worm begins to undulate. Lightning flashes and thunder booms from every movement. …
“It will be the ruination …” howls Melkior, but with a singsong lilt as if there were gaiety in it.
“And I pissed on it, Eustachius, ha-ha,” says Maestro bent over double (with laughter) over the railing. “That night, remember reaching eternity? — well, it was that very night that I … ha-ha-ha, lightning strike me dead!”
“But what am I to do, Maestro? It’s my turn now, he’s coming, infuriated, horrible …”
“… and pissed on! Retreat into the Vatican Library for six years … in noble penury, in rags worn with dignity.” After some thinking: “Have yourself castrated! You’ll be Saint Eustachius the Eunuch, what more can you ask? Ooh, ooh, ooh …” Maestro is having a marvelous time.
At that point, issuing from afar as if it were the echo speaking, comes Don Fernando’s drawling voice beseeching: “Do not drink the water … capture whoever poisoned the reservoir … do not drink the water.”
Downstairs among the crowd a panic spreads, cries, commotion, they rush off straight away to nab the poisoners. “It’s their agents poisoning us.” And I’ve just had two full glasses, thinks Melkior with a desperate man’s pleasure; he is feeling bravery in his stomach, like a small boy who has swallowed a button.
Then there is another voice, sober, accommodating, from quite nearby, from the adjoining room: “Citizens, this is not an exercise. Our country is under attack. We are at …”