“By a hand …?”
“… well known for its cracking finger joints …”
“ATMAN!” Melkior shook with rage. Now it was all becoming clear to him.
“You said yourself you called the magician by that name.”
“But why did Maestro think it was the actor who struck him?”
“Yes, well, he wasn’t far from wrong. He’d been shouting at her and him and the entire clientele that they were blackguards, spies, traitors, fifth columnists … he knew the litany by heart. Given that there was a lady present, Freddie only offered him a couple of slaps in the face and pushed him into the dark behind the cloakroom, into the magician’s hands. Thus did Fredegarius the actor shine in yet another supporting role.”
“Now, those … slogans — that assignment, rather — it was Don Fernando’s doing, wasn’t it? Pre-ventive action …” added Melkior and gave a malicious smile.
“I beg your pardon?” affected Ugo, while bursting with suppressed laughter. “With your permission, Eustachius, I will refrain from making any declarations or comments. I offer only my observations. I may add, for what it’s worth, that the Central European thinker just referred to by you was monitoring the diversion from the phone box faking a telephone conversation. Unless he was really reporting the development of the operations to some headquarters or other. … This of course I add with great reservation.”
“But how did he drive him into it?” mused Melkior aloud. “What did he lure him with?”
“Despair, Eustachius,” replied Ugo somberly, “medicinally pure despair. And with shot after shot. He’d been feeling … you know how … to begin with, and when he saw her with Frederick the Hollow in the bargain … well, you don’t need me telling you — you followed the squashed bug’s last twitches yourself. That’s why he selected that very day: two birds, one stone, adieu!”
“He was looking for you afterward, sent me in to scout the Give’nTake …”
“For the big farewell scene. He was a theater lover. A pathos-ridden individual.”
Melkior was now hating the tone of glib irony. They were discussing a man, after all, a mutual acquaintance, the “Mad Bug,” the noble Maestro! He wished to raise the memory to the level of his present state of mind. Maestro had started the cycle. “Now it’s your turn.” Melkior shuddered.
“Anyway, who knows what’s written in the stars about us?” said Ugo looking “tragically” out the window. “Did you ever ask your star-gazer to read your destiny for you? Who knows … well, you’ve seen his eyes.”
She doesn’t need dead men, remembered Melkior, and he said nothing.
“Come on, get up,” said Ugo with sudden impatience and tried to pull the blanket off of Melkior again. “You’re behaving like a sickly dauphin being told in bed there’s a war on.”
“You go on ahead, I’ll catch up,” Melkior defended himself with all his might. “I’ll look for you at the Give’nTake,” he promised without meaning it, just to get Ugo to leave.
“At the Give’nTake? Where do you live, my child?” said Ugo in theatrical consternation. “You don’t know that Thénardier the monster has issued a reward for my insolvent head? Apart from that, there has appeared at the Give’nTake an ad for Bayer aspirin to replace the jovial tippler with the snifter of Courvoisier.”
Melkior laughed absentmindedly.
“Don’t laugh — I’m in no mood for joking in these critical times!” Ugo wished somebody would believe in his “earnestness” if only once … “Aren’t these dangerous symptoms? Weird metamorphoses are going on there, everything’s already stinking of the most glaring Fascism.”
“I’ll look for you somewhere else, then,” said Melkior.
“Perhaps at the Theater Café. … Because there’s no room for us at the Corso; the headquarters of The Concerned is in permanent session there, and we are just … well, magpies …”
“At the Theater Café, then …” The leech! fumed Melkior, latching onto every word you say.
“Why ‘then’?” (There he goes again.) “Planning to stand me up?”
“All right, strike the ‘then’ and see you later, damn you!” flared Melkior in the end.
“Well, is it see me later or damn me?” Ugo bared his black fillings above him. “Come to think of it, you’re right: damn me if I know if anyone can hope to see anyone else later, in times such as these …” He made a skeptical grimace and went out, launching into a vehement whistled rendition of the Radetzky March on the stairs.
These streets were already lying down in submission. Waiting patiently for the tramp of army boots. “They’ve already occupied Varaždin,” he heard in passing a snatch of conversation between the windows.
The gray, cold, colorless April Sunday was blinking, ill-tempered, at the betrayed city. Down the arbored avenue the bare trees were too anxious to bud; they were returning the sap to the wretched Earth beneath: no, thank you, I really can’t accept … (Poor mother, why did you ever give birth to us?) They did not wish the sun to warm them: please don’t bother; they were returning their green to the sunlight. We don’t want to make a triumphal arch over their heads, do we? Let’s hibernate a bit longer, they were saying to the spring.
Patriotic trees! spoke Melkior with comic pathos walking under the bare black boughs which were shivering in the cold. Each beech, oak, and elm that none can o’erwhelm! he recited under the bare boughs, seeking strength in words, with a sour smile playing around his lips. … And brushwood and brambles … all the brackens across the land … Melkior felt comically moved by the piece of nonsense and gave a mournful laugh. He nevertheless raised his head in honor of the sumptuous plane tree in front of the University building: “Your Imperial Majesty,” he said to it and thought of Empress Maria Theresa. Sparrows were chasing each other all over it in what looked like raucous merriment. A prominent old professor of theoretical physics was coming down the stairs; he, too, noticed the sparrows’ festivity. Melkior saluted him, lifting his hat. “Having a time of it,” he said to him. “Yes — at just the right moment, too,” replied the professor, raising his soft black hat “Good morning.”
From a side street came the newspaper hawker’s nasal chant; he was selling his Morning News with mechanical apathy.
“Oh look, ‘Situation Improving,’” laughed a man gesturing with his chin at a banner-type headline on page one of his paper, “‘Certain signs suggest …’ ha-ha!”
Melkior responded with a vague smile — who knows what he meant? And when he turned around for another look at the man (what a funny … sweeping walk), he bumped into a soldier who was in great hurry. The soldier took hold of his shoulders and held him at an arm’s length:
“Watch out: eyes to the fore!” The man was smirking. Melkior stared at the familiar face, his mouth agape, but it was a bit odd … dressed like this …
Pupo, in a private’s boots and rough cloth but with the epaulettes of a reserve lieutenant. He smelled of military storerooms: mothballs, leather, urine … Of course, he had to tack on the political lesson, noted Melkior morosely. But he instantly felt a surge of joy at the encounter: there, a fighting man, in boots … no glasses …
“You’re a soldier?” he said in confused, senseless amazement.
“Well, what would you want me to be … a seducer?” retorted Pupo haughtily, with self-importance. “We’re all soldiers now. So will you be, too … if you want to live!”
“Live?” repeated Melkior mechanically. Which pigeonhole did he pull that cliché out of? Somewhere it must’ve been decided to … “What’s the use — they’ll be here by tomorrow.”