“Gastronomic pleasures,” continued M’sieur Pierre. “See the best varieties of fruit hanging from tree branches; see the butcher and his helpers dragging a pig, squealing as if it were being slaughtered; see, on a pretty plate, a substantial chunk of white lard; see the table wine and cherry brandy; see the fish—I don’t know about the rest of you, but I am a great fancier of bream.”
“I approve,” Rodrig Ivanovich said resonantly.
“This splendid feast must be forsaken. Many other things must be forsaken as well: festive music, favorite knick-knacks, such as a camera or a pipe; friendly talks; the bliss of relieving oneself, which some hold to be on a par with the pleasure of love; sleep after dinner; smoking … What else? Favorite knick-knacks … Yes, we already had that” (again the crib notes appeared) “pleasure … I’ve said that too. Well, various other trifles …”
“May I add something,” the director asked ingratiatingly, but M’sieur Pierre shook his head:
“No, that’s quite enough. I think I have unfolded before the mental eye of my dear colleague such vistas of sensual realms …”
“I only wanted to say something on the subject of edibles,” the director remarked in a low voice. “I think certain details could be mentioned here. For instance, en fait de potage … All right, all right, I shan’t say a word,” he concluded in alarm as he met the gaze of M’sieur Pierre.
“Well,” M’sieur Pierre addressed Cincinnatus, “what will you say to all this?”
“What am I supposed to say?” said Cincinnatus. “Dreary, obtrusive nonsense.”
“He’s incorrigible,” exclaimed Rodrig Ivanovich.
“It’s just a pose on his part,” said M’sieur Pierre with an ominous porcelain smile. “Believe me, he has feeling enough for the full beauty of the phenomena I have described.”
“… But fails to understand certain things,” Rodrig Ivanovich interjected smoothly. “He does not understand that if he were now honestly to admit the error of his ways, honestly admit that he is fond of the same things as you and I—for example, turtle soup for the first course—they say it’s sensationally good—that is, I only want to observe that if he were honestly to admit and repent—yes, repent—that is my point—then he could have some remote—I do not want to say hope, but nevertheless …”
“I left out the part about gymnastics,” muttered M’sieur Pierre checking his little scroll. “What a pity!”
“No, no, you spoke very well, very well,” sighed Rodrig Ivanovich. “Couldn’t be better. You roused in me certain desires that had lain dormant for decades. Will you stay a while? Or are you coming with me?”
“With you. He’s a regular sourpuss today. Doesn’t even look at you. You offer him kingdoms, and he sulks. And I ask so little—one word, a nod. Well, nothing to be done. Let’s away, Rodrigo.”
Soon after their departure the light went out and Cincinnatus transferred himself to his cot in darkness (how nasty to find somebody else’s ashes, but no other place to lie down) and, liberating his melancholy in a crackling of cartileges and vertebrae, he stretched, and drew in a breath, and held it a quarter of a minute and more. Maybe it was just stonemasons. Making repairs. An aural deception: perhaps it is all going on far, far away (he exhaled). He lay on his back, wriggling his toes, which protruded from beneath the blanket and turning his face now toward impossible salvation, now toward inevitable execution. The light flashed on again.
Scratching at the red-haired chest under his shirt, Rodion arrived to fetch the stool. Seeing the object he sought, he promptly sat down on it and with a loud grunt, kneaded his lowered face with his enormous palm, and apparently got ready to have a nap.
“He still has not arrived?” asked Cincinnatus.
Rodion immediately got up and left with the stool.
Click. Black.
Perhaps because a certain integral period of time—a fortnight—had elapsed since the trial, perhaps because the nearing of the friendly sounds promised him a change of fortune, Cincinnatus spent this night in a mental review of the hours he had passed in the fortress. Involuntarily yielding to the temptation of logical development, involuntarily (be careful, Cincinnatus!) forging into a chain all the things that were quite harmless as long as they remained unlinked, he inspired the meaningless with meaning, and the lifeless with life. With the stone darkness for background he now permitted the spotlighted figures of all his usual visitors to appear—it was the very first time that his imagination was so condescending toward them. There was the tiresome little co-prisoner, with his shiny face, resembling the wax apple which Cincinnati’s waggish brother-in-law had brought the other day; there was the fidgety, lean lawyer, disengaging his shirt cuffs from the sleeves of his frock coat; there was the somber librarian, and, in smooth black toupee, corpulent Rodrig Ivanovich, and Emmie, and Marthels entire family, and Rodion, and others, vague guards and soldiers—and by evoking them—not believing in them, perhaps, but still evoking them—Cincinnatus allowed them the right to exist, supported them, nourished them with himself. Added to all this was the possibility that, at any moment, the exciting knocks might resume, a possibility that had the effect of an intoxicating anticipation of music—so that Cincinnatus was in a strange, tremulous, dangerous state—and the distant clock struck with a kind of mounting exultation—and now, emerging from the darkness, the lighted figures joined hands and formed a ring—and, slightly swaying to one side, lurching, lagging, they began a circling movement, which at first was stiff and dragging, but then gradually became more even, free and rapid, and now they were whirling in earnest, and the monstrous shadow of their shoulders and heads passed and repassed ever more quickly across the stone vaults, and the inevitable joker who, when whirling in a reel, kicks his legs high, to amuse his more prim companions, cast on the walls the huge black zigzags of his hideous prance.
Chapter Fifteen
The morning passed quietly, but at about five in the afternoon there started a noise of shattering force: whoever it was he worked furiously and clattered shamelessly; actually however, he had not come much nearer since yesterday.
Suddenly an extraordinary thing happened: some inner obstruction collapsed, and now the noises sounded with such vivid intensity (having in an instant made the transition from background to foreground, right up to the footlights) that their proximity was obvious: they were right there, directly behind the wall, which was melting like ice, and would break through it any instant now.
And then the prisoner decided that it was time to act. With terrible haste, trembling, but still trying to keep control over himself, he got out and put on the rubber shoes, the linen trousers and the jacket he had been wearing when arrested; he found a handkerchief, two handkerchiefs, three handkerchiefs (a fleeting vision of sheets tied together); just in case, he put in his pocket a chance piece of string with a wooden handle for carrying packages still attached (it wouldn’t go in completely—the end remained hanging out); he rushed to the bed, intending to fluff up the pillow and cover it with the blanket in such a way as to create the semblance of a sleeping man; he did not do this, but lunged instead to the table with the intention of taking along what he had written; but here also he changed direction at the halfway point, for the triumphant, mad, pounding noises were confusing his thoughts … He was standing straight as an arrow, his hands at his seams, when, in perfect fulfillment of his dreams, the yellow wall cracked about a yard above the floor in a lightninglike pattern, immediately bulged from the pressure within, and suddenly burst open with a great crash.
Out of the black hole, in a cloud of debris, pick in hand, all dusted with white, twisting and threshing like a fat fish among the dust, and rippling with laughter, climbed M’sieur Pierre, and right behind him, but in crab fashion, fat backside first, revealing a tear from which a tuft of white cotton protruded, coatless, and also covered with all kinds of rubble, also splitting with mirth, came Rodrig Ivanovich. Having tumbled out of the hole, they both sat down on the floor and now shook with unrestrained laughter, with all the transitions from guffaw to chuckle and back again, with piteous squeals in the intervals between outbursts, all the while nudging each other, falling over each other…
“It’s us, it’s us, it’s us,” M’sieur Pierre finally managed with an effort, turning his chalk-white face to Cincinnatus, while his little yellow wig rose with a comic whistle and settled again.
“It’s us,” said Rodrig Ivanovich in an unaccustomed falsetto and once again began to guffaw, flinging up his soft legs, clad in an Auguste’s grotesque spats.
“Ooph!” said M’sieur Pierre, who had suddenly quieted down; he got up off the floor and, striking one palm against the other, looked back at the hole: “Quite a little job we’ve done, Rodrig Ivanovich! Come, get up, my fine friend, that’s enough. What a job! Oh well, now we can make use of this splendid tunnel … Allow me to invite you, dear neighbor, to come and have a glass of tea with me.”
“If you so much as touch me …” murmured Cincinnatus and, as on one side, white, sweaty M’sieur Pierre stood ready to embrace him and shove him in, and, on the other, stood Rodrig Ivanovich, also with open arms, bare-shouldered, and with dickey loose and awry, both of them gathering momentum before piling on him, Cincinnatus
