To Marry Medusa Page 2

  And so it was that this scrubby, greasy, rottentoothed near-illiterate in the filthy clothes raised his face to the dim light, and responded to the demand-for-audience of the most mamestic, complex, resourceful and potent intellect in all the known universe: “Okay, okay. So whaddaya want?”

  He was not afraid. Incredible as this might seem, it must be realized that he was now a member, a person of the creature; part of it. It no more occurred to him to fear it than a finger might fear a rib. But at the same time his essential Gurlickness was intact—or, as has been pointed out, possibly more so. So he knew that something he could not comprehend wanted to do something through him of which he was incapable, and would unquestionably berate him because it had not been done....

  But this was Gurlick! This kind of thing could hold no fears and no surprises for Gurlick. Bosses, cops, young drunks and barkeeps had done just this to Gurlick all his life! And “Okay, okay! So whaddaya want?” was his invariable response not only to a simple call but also, and infuriatingly, to detailed orders. They had then to repeat their orders, or perhaps they would throw up their hands and walk away, or kick him and walk away. More often than not the demand was disposed of, whatever it was, at this point, and that was worth a kick any time.

  The Medusa would not give up. Gurlick would not listen, and would not listen, and ... had to listen, and took the easiest way out, and subsided to resentful seething—as always, as ever for him. It is doubtful that anyone else on earth could have found himself so quickly at home with the invader. In this very moment of initial contact, he was aware of the old familiar response of anyone to a first encounter with him—a disgusted astonishment, a surge of unbelief, annoyance, and dawning frustration.

  “So whaddaya want?”

  The Medusa told him what it wanted, incredulously, as one explaining the utter and absolute obvious, and drew a blank from Gurlick. There was a moment of disbelief, and then a forceful repetition of the demand.

  And Gurlick still did not understand.

  CHAPTER 4

  I am Guido, seventeen. I ... think; nearly seventeen. There is always doubt about us who crawled out of the bones of Anzio and Cassini as infants, as ... maggots out of the bones when the meat is gone. I never look back, never look back. Today the belly is full, tomorrow it must be filled. Yesterday’s empty belly is nothing to fear, yesterday’s full belly is meaningless today; so never look back, never look back ...

  And I am looking back because of Massoni, what he has done. Massoni who will never catch me, has locked me into his house, never knowing I am here. While he goes to all the places I live, all the places I hide, I come straight here to his own house because he is not so clever as I am and will never dream I am here. Perhaps I shall steal from him and perhaps I shall kill him. Massoni’s house was part of a fortification in the war, so they say, concrete walls and an iron door and little slits for windows on two sides of the single room. But at the back, where the house is buried in the hill, is plywood, and a panel is loose. Behind is space to climb. Above the room is a flat ceiling; above that a slanted roof, so there is a small space that I, Guido, would think of and he, the clever (but not clever enough) Massoni could live with for years and never suspect. I come here. I find the iron door unlocked. I slip in. I find the loose panel, the climbing space, the dark high hole to hide in, the crack to look through at the room of Massoni. There is time. It is I, Guido, he is looking for and will look in many places before he comes back tired.

  And he comes, and he is tired indeed, falling onto his bed with his overcoat on. It is nearly dark and I can see him staring up and I know he is thinking, Where is that Guido? And I know he is also thinking (because he talks this way), If I could understand that Guido I could be there before he breaks the legs of another beggar, smashes the stained glass of another church, sets another fire in another print shop. ... If Massoni says this aloud I shall laugh aloud, because Massoni does not understand Guido and never will; because what Guido does once, Guido will never do again, so that nobody knows where Guido strikes next.

  He sighs, he tightens his lips in the dimness, shakes his head hard. He is thinking. And though he must make a mistake some day, that is not good enough. If one knew, if one could understand why, one could predict, one could be there at the time— before the time, waiting for him.

  He will never understand, never predict, and never, never be there when Guido strikes. Because Massoni cannot understand anything as simple as this: that I am Guido, and I hate because I am Guido, and I break and maim and destroy because I am Guido— because that is reason enough. Massoni is afraid because Massoni is a policeman. His life is studying things as they are, and making them into what they should be. But ... he is not like other policemen. He is a detective policeman, without the bright buttons and the stick. The other policemen catch breakers of laws so they may be punished? Some catch them and punish them too. Massoni likes to say he stops the criminal before there is a crime. Massoni is indeed not like the other police. They understand, as I understand, that a crime without witnesses and without clues is not the affair of the police, and that is why they shrug and try to forget the things Guido does. Massoni does not forget. Worse, Massoni knows which are Guido’s acts and which are not. When the acid was put in the compressor tank at the bus garage and caused the ruin of sixty-one tires, everyone thought it was Guido’s work. Massoni knew it was not; four different people told me what he said. He said it was not the kind of ruin Guido would make. This is why I hide. I never hid before. Eleven times I am arrested and set free, for no clues, no witnesses. I walk in the daytime and I laugh. But now Massoni knows which things I do and which I do not. I do not know how he knows that, so I hide. They are all enemies, every one, but this Massoni, he is my first and greatest enemy. They all want to catch me, after; Massoni wants to stop me, before. All the rest are making me a plague, a legend, capable of anything; Massoni credits me only with what I do, and says—and says—that I did not do this, I could not do that. Massoni makes me small. Massoni follows everywhere, is behind me; he is beginning to be at my side too often; he will be ahead of me waiting soon, if I do not take care ... by himself he will surround me. I am Guido and I do not underestimate real danger. I am Guido, who looks and talks and behaves like any other seventeen (I think) year old, who fills the belly yesterday and today, and possibly tomorrow, any way he can, like all the others ... but who knows there is more in life than the belly; there is the hating to be done and too short a life to do it all if I live to be a hundred and ten; there is ruin to do, breaking hurting silencing most of all silencing ... silencing their honks and scrapes and everlasting singing.

  Massoni, lying on his bed in his overcoat, sighs and rolls over and sits up. From there he can reach the litde kerosene stove to light it. When the flame is blue, he sighs, yawns, lifts the kettle to shake it and put it back on the fire. He gets up slowly, walks as if his shoes are too heavy, opens the cabinet, lifts out a—

  No! Oh ... no!

  —lifts out a portable phonograph, sets it on the table, strokes it like a cat, opens it, takes out crank, fits it in, winds it up. Goes to cabinet again, takes a record, looks, another, another, finds one and brings it to the machine—

  Not now, not now, Massoni, or you will die in a slow way Guido will plan for you.

  —puts it on, puts the needle down, and again it begins, oh why, why, why is everyone in this accursed country forever making music, hearing music, walking from one music to another and humming music while they walk? Why can Massoni not make a pot of coffee without this? It is the one thing I, Guido, cannot bear ... and I must bear it now ... and I cannot ... Ah, look at the fool, swinging his hand, nodding his head, he who was too tired to move not ninety seconds ago; it is as if he drew some substitute for sleep from it, and I do believe all these fools can do it, with their dancing half the night and singing the rest ... Why, why must they have music? Why must Massoni make it now, when I am trapped up here hiding and cannot stop it and cannot stand it..
.

  Oh look, look at him now, what is he taking from under the bed ... surely not a ... Oh it is, it is, it’s a violin, it’s that horror of shingles and catgut and the hair of horses’ tails, and he, and he ...

  I will not listen, I will wrap my arms around my head, I ... He goes now, sawing at the thing, and the caterwauling starts and I can’t keep him out of my head! ...

  He plays a lot of notes, this policeman. A lot of notes. He plays with the record, note for note with the swift fall of notes from the machine.

  I look at last. His feet are apart, his chin couched on the ebony rest, his eyes half asleep, face quiet, left fingers running like an insect. His whole body ... not sways ... turns a little, turns back, turned by the music. His right hand with the bow is very ... wide, and free. His whole body is ... free in a way, like ... flying ... But this I cannot stand! I will—

  He has stopped.

  The record is finished. He turns it over, sets down the violin on the table, winds the crank, puts on the needle again. I hold my breath, I will roar, I will scream if... But he is looking at the kettle, he is at the cabinet, he is fetching a cookpot, a big can with a cover. Opens. Empty. He is sighing. He goes to phonograph (stop it, stop it), he stops it—only to start it over again at the beginning. He takes the big can, he—

  He goes out.

  Locking the door.

  I am alone with this shriek of music, the violin staring up at me from its two long twisted slits.

  I can run away now. Can I ...?

  He has locked the door. Iron door in concrete wall.

  And he has left his overcoat. He has left the record playing. He has left the fire in the little stove, the water about to boil on it.

  He will be right back then. No time for me to pick that lock and go. I must stay here hidden and near that gabble of music and look down at that violin, and wait, oh my God, and wait.

  This country has music through its blood and bones like a disease, and a man cannot draw in a breath of air that isn’t a-thrum with it. You can break the legs of a singing beggar and stop his music, you can bum the printing presses and the stacks of finished paper bearing the fly-specks and chicken-tracks by which men read the music, and still it does not stop; you can throw a brick through the shining window of a shrine and the choir practicing inside will stop, but even as you slip away in the dark you hear a woman singing to a brat, and around the corner some brainless fumbler is tinkling a mandolin....

  Ah, God curse that screeching record! What madness could possess what gibbering lunatic to set down such a series of squeaks and stutters? I do not know. (I will not know.) Once he did it, it should have killed him, that mish-mash of noises, but they are all mad, the Frenchmen, all lunatics to begin with, and can be excused for calling it a good Italian name. Massoni, Massoni, come back and quiet this bellowing box of yours or I shall surely come down in spite of all safety and good sense and smash it along with that grinning fiddle! To be caught, to be caught at last ... it might be worth it, for a moment’s peace and a breath of air undrenched by the Rondo Capriccioso.

  I bite my tongue until I grunt from the pain.

  I do not know what they call it, that music; cannot, will not know!

  Someone laughs.

  I open my throat, to be silent, breathing like this, breathing like running up a kilometer of steps ... the door moves. It is Massoni. I will kill him very soon now. It may be that for one man to dry up the music in this country is like drying up the River Po with a spoon, but oh, this one drop of music, this Massoni, surely I will scoop him up and scatter him on the bank; for if I hate (and I do), and if I hate the gurgling men call music (and I do), and if I hate policemen (and before God I do that) then in all the world I hate this maestro-detective most of all, aside and apart and above all other things. Now I know I have been a child, with my breaking here, wrecking there. Guido will be Guido after this killing, so now— But the door swings open and I see Massoni is not alone, and I sink down again quiet, and watch.

  He is bringing a child, an eight-year-old boy with a dirty pale face and eyes shiny-black as that damned record. They both stop as the door swings shut and listen to it, both their silly mouths agape as if they each tried to make another ear of it to hear better. And now Massoni puts down the covered can and snatches up the violin; now again he makes the chatter and yammer of notes fly up at me, along with the violin on the record, and the boy watches, slowly moving his hands together until they hold each other, slowly making his eyes round. Massoni’s face sleeps while the one hand swoops, the other crawls, then for a moment he looks down at the boy and winks at him and smiles a little and lets the face doze off again, playing notes the way a hose throws water-drops.

  Then like slipping into warmth out of the snow, like the sudden taste of new bread to the starving, a silence fells over the room and I slump, weak and wet with sweat.

  The boy whispers, “Ah-h-h, Signor Massoni, ah-h-h ...”

  Massoni puts down the violin and touches it with his fingertips, as if it were the hair of a beloved instead of a twisted box with a long handle on it, says, “But Vicente, it’s easy you know.”

  “Easy for you, Signor ...”

  Massoni laughs. He gets covered can, opens. Puts ground coffee into cookpot, pours in boiling water, sets kettle aside, puts cookpot on stove, lowers flame, stirs with long spoon, talks.

  I lie limp, wet in the dark, smelling the coffee, watching them.

  Massoni says, smiling, “Yes if you like, easy for me, impossible for you. But it will be easy for you, Vicente. You have two lessons now—tonight, three, and already what you do is easy for you. When you have been playing for as many years as I have, you will not play as well as I; you will play better; you will not be good, you will be great.”

  “No, Signor, I could never—”

  Massoni laughs and sweeps away the black bubbles on his coffee with his spoon. He lifts it off the burner and turns out the flame, and sets the pot on the table to settle. Says, “I tell you, small one, I know what is good and what is great and what is hopeless. I know better than anybody. I am a policeman, glad of what I do, and not a good violinist gating out my heart wanting greatness, because I know what greatness is. Take up the violin, Vicente. Go on, take it.”

  The boy takes the violin from the table and sets the ebony under his cheek and chin. He is afraid of it and he is past speech, and on him the violin looks the size of a ‘cello.

  “There,” Massoni says, “there before you play a note, it is to be seen. Your feet placed so, to balance you when your music tilts the world. Your chest frill like the beginning of a great voice which will be heard all over the earth. Throat, chin, belonging to the violin and it grown to you.... Put up the bow, Vicente, but don’t play yet. Ah ... there is what the violinist calls the Auer arm, and you in your eighth year, your third lesson! Now put the violin down again, boy, and sit, and we will talk while I have my coffee. I nave embarrassed you.”

  I, Guido, watch from above with the bitter black wonder of the coffee smell pressing deep in the bridge of my nose, watch the child put down the violin exquisitely, like some delicate thing sleeping lightly. He sits before Massoni, who has poured a little coffee and much milk for him in a large cup, and is ladling in sugar like an American.

  Massoni drinks his black and looks through the steam at the boy, says, “Vincente, such a gift as yours is a natural thing and you must never feel you are different because of it ... there are those who will try to make it so; pity them if you like, but do not listen to them. A man with talent eats, sweats, and cares for his children like any other. And if talent is a natural thing, remember that water is also, and fire, and wind; therefore flood and holocaust and hurricane are as natural as talent, and can consume and destroy you.... You do not understand me, Vicente? Then ... I shall tell you a story....

  “There was a boy who had talent such as yours, or greater ... oh, almost certainly greater. But he had no kind mother and father like yours, Vicente, no home,
no sisters and brother. He was one of the wild ones who used to roam the hills after the war like dogs. Where he was born I cannot tell you, nor how he lived at all; perhaps some of the girls cared for him when he was a small baby. He was a year and a half old when he turned up at one of the UNRRA centers, starved, ragged, filthy.

  “But you know what that baby could do, at a year and a half? He could whistle. Yes, he could. He would lie in his bundle of blankets and whistle, and people would stop and come and cluster around him.