“We’ll skip all that, those orifices and what-not, and get straight to the point,” Ugo told him.
“The anatomy consists of nine systems. I’ll just do the bones and a few extremities then.”
“Item, in the end, my weary bones
i. e., my skeleton with its creaks and groans.
Let me mention feet (replete with corns),
my mended heart, my trembling arms,
All, all, I give for the march of science!
Fee-fi-fo-fum, formaldehyde, here I come.
The venue of my final rendezvous
Is the Institute of Anatomy, adieu!
Put your money down
Snip me — I’m a snap.
Snap-a-snip
Snip-a-snap.”
“What did I tell you!” Ugo exclaimed delightedly. “Snip-snap!” and he rolled his eyes contritely in holy awe of Maestro’s poetry.
The entire Give’nTake rang with boisterous applause and laughter. Maestro did not let himself get carried away with the intoxication of success: he modestly took from his pocket a shard of a mirror and winked his eye at that same eye in the mirror (the eye was in fact all he could see in the small piece of glass): we know … what we know.
Melkior swept the premises in search of an alliance with a lonely soul suffering as much as he was. He was disgusted with Maestro’s anatomy. But all the souls were noisily rejoicing at the muck that Maestro had tonight purposely dredged out for some cynical reason of his own. Her soul was not rejoicing! Freddie and the hollow-eyed actress were participating with gusto, but she, Viviana, had shyly dropped her gaze and, see, she was mashing a piece of tinfoil with her foot with irritation. Melkior watched for so much as a single look of hers to donate his distaste to a joint treasury of spiritual beauty … he had pursed his mouth in a grimace of disgust so as to greet her straight right with kindred openness for a tacit, honorable accord … But she sensed his curious readiness, raised her eyes from the bit of tinfoil and appeared to spit with her look at his stupid offer. He immediately sacked the grimace of disgust (the distracted secretary who had copy-typed his physiognomy wrong, causing a fatal misunderstanding!) and slapped on a Giventakian smile, a hedonistic, mischievous grin, for Ugo had already pounced upon him:
“Look, good-looking people, the white soul suffers!” he cried pointing at Melkior who had all but sank under the table. He sat huddled as if shielding himself under fire, and kept muttering miserably, “No, no, I’m not, no … I’m having a fine time, I am laughing” … and he tried to laugh but felt his face disobeying and his ears burning, burning … Everybody watching, everybody laughing … She, too. Oh God, she too! — He saw no more.
And Ugo was inconsiderately jubilant.
“Don’t believe him, he’s suffering!” he shouted and pointed his finger, sending him to a hell of excommunication. “The white dove is suffering alongside the Great Vulture that tears out poetry’s entrails! The dove’s just about to swoon, somebody get a stretcher!”
He was possessed by a delirium of rambunctiousness, by that mad vein of inspiration of his that knew no courtesy and no bounds. His long black hair was parted in the middle and tumbled down either side of his face, he had his hands raised in a Rasputinian orgiastic frenzy: invoking the descent of some maniacal powers to this smoke-infused spree.
“Maestro, you Olympian Vulture, you’ve hacked long enough at the liver of Eustachius chained to the Giventakian Rock. Can we now have, as a balm, that dolorous-lyrical Give Me a Heart for Parade?”
“No way!” Maestro replied self-importantly, indeed with anger.
“Next on the program is Nobility.”
All the Parampions gave delighted cries of “Nobility, Nobility!” Ugo alone disapproved of the choice:
“Oh no! Not your ancestors. That’s his zoological genealogy, you see,” Ugo explained to the Give’nTake at large. “But enough of personal family trees …”
“It’s not personal!” Maestro rasped, offended. “It’s a treatise on the origin of species of nobility, based on Darwin’s theory and broken down by the branches of the tree of life. When Yorick put his skull in the gravedigger’s hands and when the man passed the skull on to Hamlet in turn, what did Hamlet say of Alexander the Great, eh? You don’t know? Sit down, you dolt, you’ll fail the course! You are as witless as the Prussian clay that filled the brilliant skull of Immanuel Kant! Back to your seat!”
“But Maestro …” pleaded Ugo.
“I do not want to know!”
“Please, sir, I’ll be prepared next time, sir,” Ugo lowered his eyes in shame.
“Report to me when you are.”
The skinny student, Chicory’s ministrant, had taken the matter seriously and was grabbing the chance to distinguish himself:
“I know,” he said, his eyes shining in triumph.
“What is it you know, my young friend?”
“What Hamlet said about Alexander.”
“Oh, really? Read about it in Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, did you? You shouted Open Sesame and the gate of entire human knowledge opened before you? Or is it that you have moved beyond human knowledge? Is it that you possess centipedal knowledge as well? Think I’m being insulting? That the centipede is mindless? And I say unto you, verily, verily I say unto you, that nobody knows how the centipede walks using a hundred legs all at once. Not even Lunacharsky could do that. Whereas the centipede does, you see. If it didn’t, it wouldn’t be able to walk at all. Or do you think yourself cleverer than Lunacharsky?”
Chicory Hasdrubalson pled mercy for his ministrant. But Maestro was fully sozzled and denied the plea for pardon.
“You think mec-ha-nisms and objects are the answer? Elec-tricities, high voltage … Well, did Montezuma have mechanisms? The hell he did, and yet he made chocolate! Licking your chops are you now? Loving Montezuma like Saint Nick now? For his chocolate? But what’s the point of me telling you about ancient civilizations, you dense … I don’t know what. You can tell your father you’re a completely failed product.”
“I forbid you to insult me!” flared the student and stood up … but could not think of a reason for standing and sat down again.
“There you are, Chicory, he forbids. Therefore we shall never insult him again. Never ever shall we insult him again!”
“Damn right you won’t!” said the student in a voice collapsing with anger. “I’ll never sit with you again!”
“And you say this to me who has loved you like a father?” cried Maestro nearly in tears. “You ungrateful brat!”
Melkior liked the show of Maestro’s noble nature, he nudged the student in a plea to relent, to make up. … Maestro didn’t mean it like that, he’s a good man at heart. … In the end the student flashed a conciliatory smile; he thought he had got his satisfaction. All the same he would not look at Maestro; he kept glancing at his mentor Hasdrubalson, seeking advice or possibly refuge.
“Well, what are you waiting for, mediate, Chicory the Inexorable!” cried Ugo from the other end of the table. “Can’t you see your help is expected?”
Chicory blinked undecidedly, his cheeks twitching in nervousness, while all the others smiled slyly into their hands.
“Well, Maestro is no Turkish potentate,” said Chicory, “you can always speak to him directly.”
“As far as I’m concerned …” said the student like a young lover in a Renaissance comedy, in the reconciliation scene.