Cleaving the foam like a periscope was a telephone in which crouched the telephonist Lucretia, bellowing above the sound of the engines and the hiss of the sea along the ship’s sides that she had a call for me from Sol Mazzaroth.
14 No Balls
Ring, ring, said the telephone when I got home.
‘Hello,’ I said.
‘Herman Orff?’ said Lucretia, flicking her whip against her boot.
‘Yes.’
‘I have a call for you from Sol Mazzaroth.’
‘Thank you.’
A little advance silence came out of the telephone like ground meat out of a meat-grinder. I wrapped it neatly in white paper and tied it with string.
‘Herman?’ said the voice of Sol Mazzaroth.
‘That’s me.’
Sol’s hands came out of the telephone and rubbed themselves together briskly. I offered them the neatly wrapped silence.
‘Herman,’ said Sol, ‘tomorrow’s the editorial meeting for Vol. One, Number One. Where are we with Orpheus?’
I saw my current account rolling its eyes like a steer in the slaughterhouse. If you had balls you wouldn’t be a steer, I said as I lifted the hammer.
Look who’s talking, said the current account. If you had balls I’d have been dead long ago. Go on, kill me, let’s see you do it.
I put down the hammer. Maybe we can work something out, I said. After all, they’re even doing Shakespeare in comics nowadays. And I’m sure it’s what Shakespeare would’ve wanted, he was a popular writer in his time.
Shakespeare was what he was and you’re what you are, said the current account: you’re a miserable no-talent coward.
One day you’re going to push me too far, I said.
That’ll be the day, it said.
‘Herman?’ said Sol. ‘Are you there?’
‘Sol, I haven’t been able to get started on Orpheus yet.’
‘Herman, what are you telling me? Just the other day you said, — hang on, I’ve got it right here — you said, “GNGGX.” You said, “NNZVNGGGG,” you said, “NNVLL.” And you said you’d have something for me to look at on FNURRN, which is today in case you hadn’t noticed.’
‘Sol, there’s a lot more to this Orpheus thing than you might think.’
‘Please, spare me the song and dance. When can you have something for me?’
‘Can I ring you up tonight?’
‘I’ll ring you. Tell me when.’
‘Late. Round about midnight.’
‘Right, talk to you then.’
What I like about you, said the current account, is that you’re reliable. You can always be relied on to have no balls.
I’m not sure what I’m going to do, I said. I’ve got to think about it.
Right, said the current account. We’ll talk again soon, OK? We’ll have lunch.
I rang up Istvan Fallok. ‘I’ve just come back from The Hague,’ I said. ‘I ran into Luise there.’
‘Luise! What’s she doing?’
‘She’s married, big bearded husband named Lars. They go skiing and they have a forty-foot ketch, it’s called Eurydike. They have a year-old daughter named Ursula. They live in Oslo and Lars installs computer systems. How’s that grab you.’
‘You needed me to know about it, right?’
‘Right.’
‘OK, I know about it. Bye-bye.’
‘Wait. Did you know about Luise and Kraken?’
‘Yes, I knew about that. Bye-bye again.’
I sat there with the telephone in my hand thinking of Melanie. No, I thought, wait a little.
I put on the tape of the Blue Note Thelonious Monk Volume One that begins with ‘Round about Midnight’. Beyond my window the grey wind rattled the brown leaves and two boys ran past kicking a football that thumped and skittered among the parked cars. Sheltered in Monk’s midnight dome, his caves of nice, I typed on to the screen:
THE STORY OF ORPHEUS
Something hit the front door with a sodden smack. I opened it and the head of Orpheus leaped up and fastened its teeth in my arm. Filthy and battered, its features flattened as if it had been rolling through the streets for years, it hummed and buzzed its blind rage.
‘Nice to see you again,’ I said. ‘To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?’
The head continued biting. Blood was running down my arm.
‘Something’s bothering you, isn’t it,’ I said. ‘Is it anything I’ve done?’
The head jerked itself towards the monitor and THE STORY OF ORPHEUS.
‘Is that it?’ I said.
The head nodded.
‘I’ve told you that Sol Mazzaroth wanted something in the Orpheus line,’ I said. ‘I was about to see what I could do with it.’
The head shifted its jaws and got a better bite.
‘You’d rather I didn’t. That’s a bit dog-in-the-manger, isn’t it? You won’t finish your version and you don’t want me to make up my own.’
The head opened its mouth to speak and I caught it as it fell. ‘You keep making me appear,’ it said, ‘and I’m so tired.’
‘You’re tired? What about me? Life wasn’t hard enough so I had to go to The Hague and find Luise with a big bearded husband and a daughter and a forty-foot ketch.’
‘Wide Justice,’ said the head.
‘What do you mean, “Wide Justice”?’
‘That’s what the Greek name Eurydike means.’
‘I can handle Wide Justice; it’s the forty-foot ketch that gets up my nose. I can see the husband all bearded and fearless at the helm, his name is Lars. The boat’s name is Eurydike.’
‘Bastard.’
‘Indeed. I travelled over land and sea to find the Vermeer girl and what did I get for my trouble? Bearded Larses and forty-foot ketches and Gösta Kraken.’
‘Who’s Gösta Kraken?’
‘He’s one of the Luise old boys. He did a film called Codename Orpheus.’
‘Ponce. Who’s the Vermeer girl?’
I told the head about the Vermeer girl.
‘She’s another Eurydice,’ said the head.
‘What else is new?’
‘You can’t go looking for Eurydice.’
‘Look who’s talking.’
‘My perceptions and my understanding change from moment to moment,’ said the head. ‘What I mean is that you don’t find Eurydice by looking for her.’
‘I found the Vermeer girl gone,’ I said. ‘I found a dark wood, I found the Island Tamaraca, I found Medusa. And I found Luise definitively gone. Standing before me and gone for ever.’
‘You found Medusa?’
‘Shimmering and luminous above the pinky dawn water.’
‘I never found Medusa,’ said the head.
‘Were you looking for her?’
‘Every man is, I know that now. Do you know what the idea of her is?’
‘No.’
‘Behind Medusa lie wisdom and the dark womb hidden like a secret cave behind a waterfall. Behind Medusa lies Eurydice unlost.’
‘Let it be, you’re wording it to death.’
‘Perhaps you don’t need me any more,’ said the head, as my arms began to feel leaden. ‘Don’t be offended, please, we still have the story to finish.’
‘I wonder if I can sing now.’
‘Please don’t. When you tried to sing that first morning by the river the silence was awful, I don’t want to hear it again.’
‘Don’t be so delicate. As long as I have any kind of being I have to keep trying.’
‘Surely there’s a time for singing and a time for silence.’
‘My business is singing, not discretion. Be quiet and listen. What time of day is it now?’
‘Afternoon. Hang on, if you’re going to sing I might as well record it this time.’ I put the head on my desk and plugged a microphone into the tape deck.
‘I’ll sing an evening song,’ said the head. Just as the mouth opened an aeroplane passed overhead. The lips and tongue moved but again I heard nothing. I touched the head but wasn’t sure whether I felt any vibration or not. After the plane had gone the mouth continued to move in silence for quite a long time, then it closed. There was a little pause, then the head said, ‘Well?’