Dream of Fair to Middling Women (13 page)

“I'm unwell” he said “but you'll be glad to hear I have found a table.”

“Where?”

“That fat bastard” he said “of an indoor playboy asks us to sit at his table, and I am tired and I want a drink and you want to stay here, so…”

He started off down the stairs.

“Who?” cried the Madonna. “What are you talking about. Who asks us…?”

“How do I know?” he groaned. “Will you come on. That fat dentist of a chess-player…”

“Stop!” said the Madonna. “Come back. I'm going to the Barberina.”

He came back a step.

“We can't get out” he objected most violently to the idea of going to the Barberina. She turned her long back on him and disappeared into the vestibule. At the door he came up with her.

“What's the good” he said “where's the sense in talking about going to the Barberina when we can't get OUT?” But she opened the door with her own frail hand and he had no choice but to follow her out.

Sitting in the bar of the Barberina she exposed the combination.

“He'll be here in a minute” she said “so we better go. Drink out and come on.”

“Didn't himself say he'd come out after the fireworks” he said, knowing that in an hour or so he would want to talk “and bring Mammy?”

“Give me a cigarette” she said.

He suggested that he might light it for her. She looked at him in astonishment. He held up the cigarette before her. He felt like playing with her a little.

“Will I?” he said.

“Give me the one you're smoking” she said at last “and light a new one for yourself.”

He leaned forward across the table and she pulled the half-smoked cigarette away from his lips. Such a pop it made coming away!

“Now” she said “light your own.”

But he fell back into his corner without doing anything of the kind. He proposed to sulk now because she would not make a game of it.

“What about your boy-friend?” he said. “It isn't the beer that gives you the head next morning, but all the smoking you do with it.”

“What?”

“I say it isn't the beer…”

“No, before that.”

“Oh, your boy-friend…”

“What boy-friend?”

How the hell did he know what boy-friend!

“Maybe I was thinking” he said vaguely “of the one beyond in the Keller.”

“How do you mean, maybe you were thinking?”

“I don't know.”

“Do you know anything?” she groaned. “That's not a boy-friend, that's the glider-champion.”

“How, the glider-champion?”

“He did the longest fly in a Flieger.”

“Not a boy-friend?”

“No.”

“What is a boy-friend?”

“I don't know. Do you?”

“No. Do you?”

“No.”

“Am I a boy-friend?”

“Are you my boy-friend?”

“Yes.”

She thought over this.

“No” she said “you are not.”

“Who am I?” he said.

She thought again over this.

“You are my man” she said.

“But not with two enns” he said.

“What?”

“I say I'm not your man with two enns.”

She frowned terribly.

“What?” she cried.

“I mean not your M-A-N-N.”

“Don't annoy me” she moaned “don't bother me. Drink out and come on.”

“Come on where?”

“Anywhere. That brute will be here if you don't.”

“But I thought you wanted to dance.”

“No” she said sharply “what's the good of wanting to dance when there's nobody to dance with.”

“Can't you dance with me?”

She stood up in that case and pulled down her dress behind. Poor girl, it was always rutsching up on her, the poop of her behind was so kolossal.

He rose up painfully.

“I can't dance” he grumbled.

She stood looking at him across the table.

“Du lieber Gott!” she whispered.

Now he was frightened and furious.

“I'm sorry Smerry” he whined, with all kinds of angry
waftures, “I can't dance. I'd like to be able to dance, but I can't. I don't know how to dance. I get tired. I don't know how to do it.”

She sat down.

“Take a seat” she said.

To hell with you anyhow, he thought.

“What” she enquired in a low voice “did you come from Paris for?”

“To look at your face” he said, very short and sure of himself.

“But you don't look at it.”

“I do look at it.”

“But you
don't,
Bel, you know you don't.”

“You don't see me” he said.

“You used to say you only wanted to look at my eyes, to look
into
my eyes.”

He let that pass.

“Bel!” she implored.

He hardened his little heart.

“He doesn't want” she whinged “to look into my eyes any more!”

“Because I want to look at your face?” he sneered, furious. “I'm a classicist” he said “didn't you know?”

“You couldn't love me or you wouldn't go on like that!”

“Go on like what?” he cried, striking the table.

“The way you always go on” raising the note to a pule “indifferent to everything, saying you don't know and you don't care, lying about all day in that verdammte old Wohnung, reading your old book and fooling around with Daddy. And he's supposed” she concluded hopelessly “to be in love with me!”

To hell with you anyhow, he thought.

“He wants to look at my face” she mimicked, forcing a
little cackle, “he came all the way from Paris” she cackled “third class to look at his darling Smerry's face!” She leaned across the table, closed her eyes and reared up the little angry face gone Judas-colour for inspection. “Now” she jeered “have a good look at it.”

“You don't understand me” he said earnestly “it must be surreptitious.”

“What's that?” she said, opening her eyes, “something to eat?”

“When I say” he explained “that I want to look at your face, what I mean is that I want to steal a look at it.
Steal
a look at it.”

“Are you drunk?” she said, restored to good humour by his seriousness.

“Leider!” he said.

“So he came all the way from Paris, third class, to steal a look at my face.”

“Put it that way” he said “if you like.”

“I'm not putting anything. That's what you said.”

He thought it might be a good idea if they dropped it.

“You started it” she said.

The tiff had been so public that a hard case becalmed in a distant corner of the bar waved a big promiscuous hand at the Madonna, and the Ungeküßte Eva gratified the discomfited Belacqua with a slow hitch on her upper-lip. The Ungeküßte Eva was the barmaid. She had lost her looks, the virtuous girl, supposititiously, in Dickens's striking adverb, through her passion for Steinhägers and late hours. Steinhägers in abundance she cadged from the soft unhappy class of client, and she knew our young hero for an easy mark. Thus it was that now she bared her teeth in token of her desire. Belacqua snuggled up to his corner and helped himself to one of the series at the Madonna, who
had reorganised her pallor and was exhibiting herself. Belacqua let a great sigh hoping to come back into the tableau. Far up the bar the vigilant Eva elevated her private bottle.

“Darf' ich” she piped.

Belacqua blushed.

“You've got off” mentioned the Madonna, over her shoulder, “with the barmaid.”

Eva raised towards them the fruit of her derring-do.

The Pyrotechnist swaggered in. Belacqua was delighted.

“Have a drink” he gushed “do have a drink. On me” he added, this kind invitation not having been accepted with the speed he would have wished.

“Where's Mammy?” said the Madonna, in a very vicious tone of voice.

The Pyrotechnist stood at the threshold of the alcove, appraising the situation.

“Where's Mammy?” repeated the Madonna.

He caressed an unshaven Gioconda smile.

“This is the town of miracles” he said at last. “The Grauler drove me down in his superb machine.”

“May I offer you a drink?” said Belacqua.

“It's what I have always said” groaned the Mandarin, very worried and resentful all of a sudden. “Can you imagine this” turning round to be dumbfounded “in Drogheda?” turning back with a flame in his pale blue eye.

“A feast of Cana” said Belacqua.

“But this” sobbed the Mandarin, following up his vision, “is the Drogheda of Germany. Not even the Drogheda, the Ballyboghill of Germany!”

“Daddy!” The Madonna was choking. Daddy pulled down his waistcoat.

“I am still wearing your excellent braces” he confided to Belacqua. “Is there a ruby left in the bottle?”

Just about as much as a “by your leave” interrupted Thibaud in the Sala Bianca. The glider-champion paused for permission, he was insolently erect at the Madonna's side.

“Please” said Belacqua, blushing again.

The Mandarin took the seat. Watching them dance out of the bar was the first ague of the new year. She danced all wrong, throwing herself about. She pranced, she waggled her seat of honour. A fessade, a chiappata, a verberation on the breech. He squeezed his palms together under the table. Oh a most superlative bastinado à la mode…!

“What does Horace say?” he said. “A defective…”

“Carpe diem” said the Mandarin.

“No. He says:
a defective bottom, aflat nose and a long foot
… The human bottom” he proceeded “is extremely deserving of esteem, conferring as it does the faculty of assiduity. The great Lawgiver urged his pupils to cultivate an iron head and a leaden posterior. The Greeks, I need hardly tell you, entertained a high notion of its beauty; and the celebrated poet Rousseau worships in the temple of Venus Callipyge. The Romans bestowed upon the part the epithet of ‘fair', and many have thought it susceptible, not only of being beautiful, but even of being endowed with dignity and splendour. Thus Monsieur Pavillon, academician, bel esprit and nephew of a bishop, in his noble
Métamorphose du Cul d'Iris en Astre.
Oh Caterina” he cried in a transport “oh little Caterina of Cordona, how couldst thou unmask those charms to a lower discipline” he closed his eyes “and of chains and hooks!”

“Who is the lady?” enquired the Mandarin.

“I have no idea” said Belacqua “a rival of Saint-Bridget the Rose.”

“I have never heard her called that before.”

“She was never called that before” exclaimed Belacqua “she was never called that before! Saint-Bridget the Rose without the white goat! Blissful Saint-Bridget the Rose without the white goat and the bunch of keys and the besom!”

“Write a poem to her” said the Mandarin, sourly.

“Oh I will” cried Belacqua “a long poem to the tormented bottom of Caterina. I would have been an Adamite” he vociferated, ignoring the return of his mourning bride, “I would have died for Juniperus the Gymnosophist! Juniperus the Gymnosophist! I will write a long long poem on Caterina and Juniperus the Gymnosophist, how he dreamed her a naughty vestal in the dark gauze or Medusa in a Carmelite Ecce Homo or a barren queen bleeding, bleeding like a banner, bleeding in a Lupercal, and he filled his hands with rods…”

“Move up in the bed” said the Madonna.

“This is a kip” growled the Mandarin “come where the booze is cheaper.”

“Or at the altar, a Spartan queenboy…”

“Go on” said the Madonna “who's keeping you?”

“Oh there's nobody
keeping
me” said the Mandarin, very suave, “as far as I know. I do not think there is anybody
keeping
me. Not what you could really call
keeping.
But I thought perhaps our friend here might care to join me possibly in the darker draught.”

“A bottle” sighed the Juniperite “a bottle of the dark Export.”

“Pree-cisely” said the Mandarin “the darker draught, the dark Export, call it what you will.”

“Leave him alone” snarled the Madonna “go and drink your own dirty old beer.”

The Mandarin beamed and struck a nervous posture.

“My dear” he chuckled, out of the midst of his contortion, “that is just the very thing, you have put your finger on just the very thing, that I was proposing to do. That is” he added “unless somebody would prefer I did not.”

“But wouldn't you like to stay here” said Belacqua “just a little bit longer and have another dance with the glider and then follow us on?”

“No” wailed the Madonna. They were all against her.

“Go on Smerry” urged the Mandarin “don't be such a goat. We're only going round the corner to Meisters.”

The recordman saved what was developing into a nasty situation. Heavenly God, but he was indeed the right height, when you saw them glued together like that for the take-off. Belacqua closed his eyes.

Her face appeared over his shoulder.

“Schwein” she said.

They had a fleeting consommation on their way out. Belacqua invited Eva to have a Steinhäger.

“If you don't mind” said Eva “I think I'll have a little Goldwasser.”

“It's all the same to me” said Belacqua, with a blush, “what you have.”

The Mandarin devoured his braised celery. “This is not eating” he said “this is an aesthetic experience.”

Belacqua was very red in the face.

“It confuses the issue” he said.

“Hast Du eine Aaaaaahnung!” cried the Mandarin.

Belacqua dropped his cigarette on the table-cloth. He was getting very close to where he wanted to be. Soon he would start to talk.

“Weib” he said, and stopped unexpectedly.

The Mandarin looked up with his fork in the air.

“God bless 'em” he said piously “we can't get on without 'em.”