Melkior felt onanistic shame at the mention of the name.
“I don’t look between the sheets,” said Maestro in an offended tone, “I know none of those Platonic shadows. Explain, Chicory. To what tongue does the fig respond?”
“This fig is Latin. Figue Romance. Her little mug drips with nectar for lecherous admirers.”
“Ahh, ahh,” Maestro sighed quite indifferent and averted his eyes in vexation. “All that is just ‘Come out to play, it’s a lovely day’ … while what I need is peace and serenity,” he suddenly addressed Melkior, soberly, as if he had said to himself, “All right, enough of this nonsense.
“A cozy little house with flowers all around (so let it be ‘idyllic,’ never you mind it, I want it that way!), a table under the green arbor, a glass of wholesome wine on the table. Inside the little house, the devoted housewife with white arms (that business with the elbow just like in Oblomov, remember?), the smells of cooking wafting from the kitchen, whetting the imagination and the appetite, and me all pure and solemn. There, that’s the dream I had and still have. And still have, that’s the nasty part. And it will be found inside my head when those professors up in Anatomy open it up. The dream that never came true. How on earth can you make a dream come true here and still remain pure and solemn? Where can I lose myself, disappear, when everybody knows me? There I am, walking down the street, daydreaming, polishing a line or two, all I need is to get it down on paper, when somebody or other jumps out at me, ‘Well, hello there, how are you?’ and it all goes down the drain. If only he cared about how I was! Like hell he does! He’s only being a nuisance. … Or perhaps he wants to show that he, too, knows me, Yorick the fool, the highbrow drunkard. All right, I know,” Maestro went on after a swig, “I can’t very well write another Crime and Punishment. Where could I find a Raskolnikov here? Are you Raskolnikov? Is anyone in this lot? Well, all right, I suppose you might do, but this one,” he indicated with his eyes a skinny student at their table, “is he Rodion Romanych Raskolnikov, the redeemer of mankind? The little bastard, they say he robbed his father and set up house with a little tart (a pro) whom he chooses to call Sonya, can you see the presumption of the cur? I would kick him out with the tip of my shoe if I didn’t respect Chicory who brought him here. He needs just such a ministrant at the table, ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam, to pour the wine for him (there, look!) and tuck him into bed. The little deer tick. What can there be inside the head of such a louse — what am I saying? A nit! — but then a nit hasn’t got a head at all. Ideas? Ideas, hell! The nit lives snugly on top of your head, keeping warm, the little bastard, having not the haziest notion about what goes on inside. And finally, why am I cooking and kneading all that stuff in my mind — that is to say, for whom? That’s what halts my hand over the blank page, leaving me with nothing to show for my pains. Nothing. Nothing ever.”
Yes, that was it: nothing. At first Melkior had listened to him with naïve interest, seeing him as a failed genius. But now, after the “nits,” he saw a repulsive brandy lush with a permanently frozen snuffling nose and swollen bluish hands, and regarded him with disbelieving wariness. There could well be a tiny animal with horrible instincts hiding in the flowery idyll like a spider. The lecherous libertine, with a penchant for fat, sweaty women, his entire flesh already poisoned with syphilis, they say. … Melkior moved away from him and lit a cigarette, disinfecting the air around him.
Maestro was sensitive to such behavior: in retribution, he moved his chair closer and whispered into Melkior’s mouth, poisoning him with his breath:
“I could introduce you to that one,” he nodded in her direction with offensive intimacy. “I know her. This business with Freddie is of no consequence, it’s just mutual ornamentation. Their use of each other is a matter of taste: both are in vogue at the moment and are wearing each other like the latest fashion. So if you like …?”
“I wouldn’t want the history of my colleague to repeat itself on my back,” quipped Melkior and felt pleased at his success. “So he really beat him in earnest?”
“Like a madman. Slamming him right and left. The poor critic didn’t even run, no, he just stood there and took it like a martyr. He covered his eyes, for shame I suppose, and never moved an inch. I happened to be standing by the newsroom window and yelled, ‘Run, man, run!’ But he did nothing, he just stood there in a cloud of dust. I tell you, there’s nothing like a dog whip for beating the dust out of clothing!”
“There he goes again: on and on about dogs!” chimed in Ugo from the other end of the table. “If I may ask, is it Zhuchka or Perezvon?”
“I’m not on about dogs, I’m on about dog whips,” replied Maestro with a patient smile. “And you, Par-ara-rampion,” he stammered with anger, “you really should remember that Zhuchka and Perezvon are one and the same person — I mean, dog; it was only that Kolya Krasotkin called Zhuchka Perezvon in a moment of surprise, in a moment of compassionate surprise.”
“You ought to know, gentlemen,” said Ugo to the house at large, “that he is by way of being a specialist in Dostoyevsky’s beasts. If you please, Maestro, what’s the name of the dog in The Insulted and Injured?”
“Azorka. It was Azorka,” Maestro replied nonchalantly.
“Why ‘was’?” asked someone at the table.
“ ‘Was,’ ” Maestro retorted punctiliously, “because Azorka died early on in the novel, Chapter One.”
“See? He knows it all!” exclaimed Ugo in buffoonish rapture, as if he were offering a parrot for sale. “Please, Maestro, what’s the title of that poem by Captain Lebyakin? You’ll see, he knows that, too.”
“I can’t say,” Maestro smiled slyly. The unexpected reply left a palpable impression on his party. Ugo was stumped.
“I can’t say,” Maestro went on after an effective pause, “because Lebyakin has several poems. I’m sure you mean ‘The Cockroach.’”
“But of course, ‘The Cockroach’!” cried Ugo delightedly. “The Cockroach, the cockroach, ha-ha, I told you he knew! How could he not know about the cockroach, he, the Mad Bug—”
“Inspired!” Maestro corrected him.
“Ah yes, inspired, the Inspired Bug! Of course he knew, the cockroach is an animal, is it not? I would also have you know, gentlemen, that he, too, has written a number of poems. They are not about animals, they’re sort of inspired, melancholico-anatomical, ‘snip-snap.’ May we have Snap, Maestro, please? There may be a few disbelievers in our midst, so let them hear it! Here, Don Fernando’s smiling skeptically as if to say, ‘He a poet?’ Why, it’s something right up your alley, Don Fernando, it’s humane and all that. … So, Maestro: Snap, if you please.”
“I am not smiling,” muttered Don Fernando, blushing horribly, because everyone was looking at him as if he were to blame.
Indeed, he was not smiling. He had hardly been listening to Ugo’s silly patter (or at least so it seemed), but nevertheless his expression smiled all the while, and it seemed to be smiling all on its own while he, preoccupied with his thoughts, was unaware of what it was up to.
He had sat there all evening with that derisive smile on, never deigning to say a word; he was watching everything from some distracted, wise height.
Moreover, the self-important smile never left Don Fernando’s face. It was, in a way, central to his physiognomy. Ugo said he put the smile on in the morning, in front of the mirror, and then went out, wearing it all day and taking it off only in bed to put it under his pillow before going to sleep. Who knew what lay hidden behind the mask? Revenge against mankind perhaps … or some small advance on a great future triumph?