“I spit on your historical person, you ape!” and Freddie indeed spat into Ugo’s eyes.
“That will be totted up to the same account,” said Ugo, wiping his face without haste or perturbation. “Your bill is growing fast, Twenty-seventh Citizen in Coriolanus. My only regret is that you will not be able to remember how I collected all my debts, because you will no longer be there. The very thought brings tears to my eyes. Oh Destiny, be thou not cruel to this thimbleful of unsalted brains, there is so much he could not help. Now then,” he addressed his party, carelessly turning away from Freddie, “over with the nasty digressions and back to the agenda. All right, Maestro, what is it that two shot glasses of the hard stuff say?”
Freddie was left in the middle of the Give’nTake, surrounded by laughter, alone and abandoned. Ugo’s great triumph, which Ugo would not even acknowledge!
The overripe hollow-eyed actress shook Freddie’s hand, congratulated him for spitting. She kissed him under the nose (long had she yearned to!), leaving behind the victorious imprint of her lips.
Viviana never looked at him. He had sat back at the table, offered her his hand to stroke (as usual), but she fell to rummaging in her handbag, without noticing the hand. That hand was no longer in her good graces, Freddie’s Vivianic empire was dwindling.
Oh how favorable things were for the Parampion, the damned jabberer!
Melkior was not missing a trick. I’m monitoring your movements, you fickle cat! He was almost prepared to root for Freddie. And inside he was lamenting, “I’m done for, oh God I’m done for!” and his heart was clenching hopelessly, his eyes wandering in search of a sanctuary. To hide his misery that was weeping in his gaze, sobbing in his naked eyes. How free everybody was, how confident in their gestures, in their stride! While I dare not so much as walk toward that door with the man’s shoe drawn on it … although it has been a whole hour since I first felt … er, yes. The shoe! As if there were a cobbler inside! A misleading sign! The Cobblers’ Union ought to protest. Permit us that association of ideas, the sanitary technicians plead. What refinement in Thénardier, the vile condor! With a mere shoe he lifts his establishment to considerable renown, to the level of international urinary language. The Micturition Code. Now, there’s a European for you!
Melkior was ill at ease with their daring throughout. To have dashed wine in Ugo’s face! And with what a regal gesture! To have kissed her like that! He proceeded to examine his bitter yearning in detail; the fantasies struck him as terribly forward and he blushed.
“So, Maestro,” the invincible Ugo spoke up with a chairmanlike efficiency, “I think this is just the moment for Snap. Europe has left through a door that could hardly be called a triumphal arch, and spitting in people’s faces, since civilization forbids spitting on the floor, makes perfect sense. And it’s forceful in a virile way. Virile in particular. It’s not easy getting cast for a spitting role, that sort of thing is reserved for the big players. Roscius himself, in Rome, used to spit in key scenes. But let us leave those sputalitious matters to the spitters, what comes out of their mouths is spittle, not words. Goodbye, snot-dribblers, and hoard your precious ammunition like those besieged in a fortress, your mouths will go dry with excitement. My apologies, Maestro, for keeping you waiting until I finished delivering the war message to those on the other bank, over there where culture leaves off. I was speaking like Caesar to Vercingetorix. So, if you please, what is it that two shot glasses of the hard stuff say? Then again … perhaps they whisper, do they whisper?”
“No they do not,” Maestro growled angrily, “they damned well bellow! But I will be moderate in playing my marche funèbre, — moderato, as they put it in the scores. Parampion, the question!” he said sternly, like a champion demanding his gong.
“What is it that two shot glasses of the hard stuff say?” Ugo asked ceremonially.
“Two shot glasses of the hard stuff say Snap,” Maestro pronounced solemnly.
He then spat out his cigarette butt, cleared his throat thoroughly and sluiced it with a sip of brandy (which was equally part of the ritual), and, closing his eyes, began to recite, craning his neck awkwardly: Anatomy, Or My Person on Sale:
“Put your money down
Snip me — I’m a snap.”
“That’s the introduction, gentlemen,” Ugo chimed in, “and a refrain of sorts …” But everyone shushed him and Maestro went on:
“For sale, cheap and mortgage-free:
every little piece of me.
First, my skin — no warts, no rash—
easy for the scalpel’s slash.
Item, one nose, large, purple like a plum
(which comes of too much brandy, wine, and rum),
a first-class sniffer of plots and shady deals …
Put your money down
Snip me — I’m a snap.
Item, an organ, ill-bred and misled,
planted by Nature in my head,
a little horror, devil, razor, snake—
my filthy tongue, which truly takes the cake
for foul, dirty, slanderous talk …
Put your money down
Snip me — I’m a snap.
(Here, innkeeper, pour and bring
shot to shot — shot glasses twain
and we will knock ’em back and sing
and thereupon we’ll drink again!)”
“Bring shot glasses twain, shot to shot,” whispered Ugo to Thénardier.
“Right,” said Maestro when the drinks arrived, “the two shots go on to say as follows:
Item, one brain-casing bursting at the seams,
holding a brain with many-colored dreams
of Her, blue-clad Madonna (devils all around her)
while I, her suitor, am told I’m a bounder
who’s not to hound her and is left to founder …
Hence those scabs from reality on the brain,
those scars and pimples, welts, and stabs of pain,
hence the worms, bugs, slugs crawling in slimy bliss
all over the filthy picture of the selfsame lovely miss …
Put your money down
Snip me — I’m a snap.
What else have I to give, butchering MDs?”
“Nothing,” Ugo broke in. “We’re going to skip the various delicacies. Because he”—this to the audience—“will now be dissecting each organ in turn, and you can well imagine what’s in store for you there.”
“There are various salients,” said Maestro in prose, “or hemispheres, also crevasses and canyons, ridges, openings and orifices all for functions large and small …”