The Prank, page 3
“And what business is that of yours?”
“I’m sure you’re tired, Don Lay! What are you rehearsing?”
“A cantata, dedicated to Her Excellency, Countess Barabanta-Alimonda. But what business is that of yours?”
“It’s night, you know. Time to sleep, you’d have to say—”
“I must sing until ten o’clock tomorrow morning. Sleep won’t get us anywhere. Let those who wish to sleep sleep, but—for the glory of Portugal, and maybe even that of the entire world—I must not sleep—”
“But dearest,” his wife interrupted, “I need to sleep. Our child needs to sleep! Your singing is so loud that it is impossible to sit through it, much less sleep!”
“When you’re ready for sleep, you’ll sleep!” Having said that, he went back to stomping his foot and singing.
Zinzaga plugged his ears and dashed out of suite number 101 like a madman. Back in his own room, he beheld a touching tableau. There was his Amaranta, sitting at the table and making a clean copy of one of his novellas. Tears flowed from her large dark eyes—fat drops fell on the rough draft.
“Amaranta!” he cried, grabbing her hand. “Is it possible that the pathetic little protagonist of my pathetic little novella could move you to tears? Is it possible, Amaranta?”
“No, I’m not crying over your protagonist.”
“What is it then?” asked the disappointed Zinzaga.
“My friend, Sophia Ferdrabantero-Neracruts-Rozga, the wife of your friend the sculptor, broke the statue that her husband intended to present to Count Barabanta-Alimonda, and unable to bear her husband’s grief . . . poisoned herself with sulfur matches!”
“Poor statue! Wives, the devil take the lot of you and those blasted trailing dresses of yours that are forever getting caught on everything! Wait, she poisoned herself? Damn it, that’s a theme for a novel! On the other hand, no, much too trivial. We are all mortal, my dear. If not today, then tomorrow, if not tomorrow, then the day after tomorrow, it’s all the same: One day your friend would have died anyway. Dry your eyes and, instead of crying, listen to me.”
“The plot of a new novel?” asked Amaranta quietly.
“Yes.”
“Wouldn’t it be better, dearest, if I heard it tomorrow morning? My mind’s a little fresher in the morning.”
“No, now. Tomorrow I won’t have the time. The Russian writer Derzhavin has just come to Lisbon, and I have to pay him a visit. He’s here with your much beloved, regrettably much beloved, Victor Hugo.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Now listen!”
Zinzaga sat down opposite her, raised his eyes to the ceiling, and began: “The setting is the entire world! Portugal, Spain, France, Russia, Brazil, and so on. In Lisbon, the hero reads a newspaper and finds out about the heroine’s calamity in New York. He travels to her. He is kidnapped by pirates, who are bribed by agents of Bismarck. The heroine is a French agent. The newspapers are full of insinuations. The speech of the Russian ambassador. The English. A sect of Poles in Austria and Gypsies in India. Intrigues. The hero is in jail. They want to bribe him and when he spurns the bribe, they sentence him to death. You follow? And then—he is freed by a handful of students. He takes part in the Russo-Turkish War, as part of a Russian-Montenegrin regiment . . .”
Zinzaga spoke enthusiastically, passionately, waving his hands, flashing his eyes. He spoke for a long, long time. A terribly long time!
Twice Amaranta fell asleep and twice she awoke. Out on the streets the lamps went out, the sun came up, and he still talked. The clock struck six, Amaranta longed for a cup of tea. Still he talked.
“Bismarck resigns. Our hero, no longer wishing to maintain his disguise, reveals that he is Alphonso Zunzuga and expires in terrible agonies. A gentle angel carries his gentle soul up into the cerulean sky . . .”
Zinzaga had finished talking. The clock struck seven.
“Well?” he asked Amaranta. “So what do you think? Will the scene between Alphonso and Maria end up being cut by the censors, do you think? Well?”
“No, it’s a lovely little scene!”
“But do you think it’s good as a whole? Tell the truth. You’re a woman. Most of my readers are women. I need your opinion.”
“Well, how should I put it? It seems to me that I’ve already come across your hero before. It’s just that I don’t remember where.”
“Impossible!”
“No, really! I’ve met your hero in some novel, the dumbest thing I’ve ever read, I have to say! Why, when I was reading it, I wondered how stuff like that gets published, and when I was done, it was clear that the author had to be as stupid as they come. What rubbish they publish, and yet they hardly publish you. Astounding!”
“Do you remember the name of the novel?”
“No, I don’t remember the title, but the hero’s name—that stuck in my mind because it included four r’s in a row. A stupid name! Carrrro!”
“And was it called The Sleepwalker Upon the Seas, by any chance?”
“Yes, yes, yes, that’s the one. How well you know our literature! That’s the one. You are so well-read! That’s the one. Your hero resembles Carrrro, but yours is much cleverer, of course. Whatever is the matter with you, Alphonso?”
Alphonso sprang up to his feet with a shout. “The Sleepwalker Upon the Seas is my novel!”
Amaranta blushed.
“My novel dumb? My novel?” he shouted so loudly that it hurt Amaranta’s throat too. “Oh, you fool! Oh, you brainless duck! So, madam, is that how you see my work? Is that how you see it, you she-ass? Let it slip out, did you? You’ll never see me again! Farewell, you idiot! My novel dumb? Count Barabanta-Alimonda doesn’t publish just anything, you know!”
Casting a disdainful look at his wife, Zinzaga pushed his hat down low on his forehead and strode out of suite number 147, slamming the door behind him.
Amaranta sighed, but she neither wept nor fainted. She knew that Alphonso would return to suite number 147, no matter how angry he was. For him to abandon suite number 147 would be for him to live and write on the streets of Lisbon, under the blue Portuguese sky, and where would he find someone to copy his work for free? Knowing this, Amaranta was hardly distraught over her husband’s departure. She just sighed and sought her consolation. Usually she consoled herself after one of her frequent quarrels with her husband by reading a page from an old newspaper that she stashed in an old tin candy box, next to a tiny perfume bottle. Squeezed in amid the advertisements, telegrams, discussions of politics, current events, and other reports on the human scene was that gem known as miscellany. There, below the stories of one American duping another, of the famous singer Miss Dubadolla Swist who ate a whole barrel of oysters and then crossed the Andes dry-shod, she found a short tale ideally suited to console Amaranta or any other artist’s wife. I include it in its entirety:
Portuguese parents and Portuguese daughters, take note! In one American town (America which was discovered by Christopher Columbus, that energetic and courageous man) there lived a certain Dr. Tanner. This Dr. Tanner was more of an artist than a scientist, which is why he was known to the whole world, and to Portugal in particular, as an artist after a fashion. He was an American, but he was also a man, and since he was a man, sooner or later he was bound to fall in love, and so he did. He fell in love with a beautiful American girl. He fell madly in love, like an artist. He was so much in love that once instead of aquae distillatae* he prescribed argentum nitricum.† He fell in love, proposed, and married.
At first, he lived quite happily with his beautiful American bride. So happily, in fact, that the honeymoon lasted, contrary to the nature of honeymoons, not one month but for six whole months. There can be no doubt that Tanner, being an educated man, and therefore exceedingly easy to get along with, would have lived with his wife quite happily till death did them part, if he hadn’t discovered that she possessed a horrible vice.
Madame Tanner’s vice consisted of eating like a normal human being. This vice of his wife’s struck Tanner to his very heart. “I will re-educate her!” he said. Once he set himself that goal, he got to work on Madame Tanner. First he weaned her off breakfasts and suppers, and then off tea. A year after her marriage, Madame Tanner was preparing one course for dinner instead of four. Two years after her marriage, she learned to be satisfied with unbelievably small amounts of food. Namely, during the course of twenty-four hours, she would ingest the following quantities of nourishing substances:
1 gram of salts
5 grams of protein
2 grams of fat
7 grams of water (distilled)
1 1/23 grams of Hungarian wine
Total: 16 1/23 grams
We do not include gases here because science is not yet able to determine accurately the quantities of gases that we take in.
Tanner rejoiced, but not for long. During the fourth year of his married life, he conceived a tormenting suspicion that Madame Tanner was consuming too much protein. He threw himself into her training with even more zeal and would have probably managed to decrease five grams to one or even to zero had he not discovered that he loved his wife no longer. Being an aesthete, he couldn’t help himself. Instead of remaining an American beauty well into her old age, Madame Tanner had all of a sudden decided to turn herself into the very image of an American beanpole. She lost both her beautiful figure and her mental acuity, and though that may have proved her to be suited for further training, she was now completely unsuitable for married life.
Dr. Tanner sued for divorce. Scientific experts duly arrived at his house, examined Madame Tanner from all angles, advised her to take a water cure, do calisthenics, go on a diet, and in general found the demands of their colleague to be quite justified. Dr. Tanner paid his expert colleagues a dollar each and treated them to a good breakfast. Since then Dr. Tanner lives in one place and his wife in another.
A sad story! Oh, women, how often you are the cause of a great man’s unhappiness! Women, is it not because of you that so many great men often do not leave descendants behind them? Fellow Portuguese, the upbringing of your daughters is your responsibility! Do not turn your daughters into home wreckers! The end.
There will be no newspaper tomorrow, on account of the editor’s birthday.
Fellow Portuguese! Those of you who have not paid in full for your newspaper subscription, please make haste!
“Poor Madame Tanner!” whispered Amaranta, having skimmed this little tale. “Poor woman! How unhappy she is! Oh, how fortunate I am by comparison! How fortunate!”
Amaranta, cheered by the thought that there were people in this world who were more miserable than she, carefully folded the newspaper page, put it back into the box, got undressed, and went to bed, glad that she wasn’t Madame Tanner.
She slept until she was awakened by a terrible hunger, as personified by Alfonso Zinzaga.
“I am famished!” said Zinzaga. “Get dressed, my dear, and go ask your madre for some money. Apropos, I apologize. I was mistaken. I just found out from the Russian writer Derzhavin, who came here with Lehrrrmontofff, another Russian writer, that there are two novels, completely unlike each other, that share the title The Sleepwalker Upon the Seas. Get going, my dear!”
While Amaranta was dressing, Zinzaga told her about an incident that he intended to write up, remarking, as he did, that recording this incredibly moving incident would entail a certain sacrifice on her part.
“Your sacrifice, my dear, will be a small one!” he said. “You will have to take dictation from me for no more than, say, seven or eight hours, and prepare a clean draft, and further, in passing, one might say, make a full critique of my entire literary oeuvre. You are a woman. Most of my readers are women . . .”
A white lie. Actually all of Zinzaga’s readers were women. One woman, in fact: Amaranta.
“Do you agree?”
“Yes,” Amaranta said quietly, then turned pale and fainted. She collapsed right on top of the dusty, tattered encyclopedia that was always lying about.
“What amazing creatures women are!” exclaimed Zinzaga. “How right I was, when, in A Myriad of Lights, I called woman a being that will always be an enigma and a wonder to mankind! The slightest hint of joy and she collapses to the floor! Oh, those delicate nerves . . .”
Happy Zinzaga went down on one knee before unhappy Amaranta. He kissed her forehead.
And there you have it, my dear women readers!
You know what, single girls and young widows? Don’t you go marry an artist! “May tarnation strike ’em!” as the Ukrainians say. It is better, my dear single girls and young widows, to live in a tobacco shop or to sell geese at the market than to reside in the best suite of the Hotel of the Venomous Swan with the best protégé of Count Barabanta-Alimonda!
Far better!
A view of the Capital City of Lisbon (The Street of the Four Gravediggers). Based on a photograph taken by Francesco d’Akchenzo.
* Anthony Van Dyck (1599–1641) was a Flemish artist.
† Peter the Hermit (c. 1050–1115) was a leader of the First Crusade.
* Distilled water (Latin).
† Silver nitrate (Latin).
PAPA
MAMA, lean as a Holland herring, walked into the study of Papa, fat and round as a beetle, and gave a little cough. As she entered, the maid jumped off Papa’s lap, darting behind the curtains; Mama paid no attention. She was used to Papa’s little weaknesses. She was the intelligent wife of a civilized husband. She understood.
“Dumpling,” she said, perching on Papa’s lap, “my own, I’ve come to you for some advice. Dry your lips, let me give you a kiss.”
Papa blinked rapidly. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Listen, Papa . . . What are we going to do about the boy?”
“What’s the matter?”
“You don’t know? My God! How little fathers care. It’s just terrible! Dumpling, if you can’t be—if you don’t want to be—a proper husband, can’t you at least try to be a proper father?”
“There you go again! I’ve heard it all a thousand times.”
Papa shifted impatiently, Mama almost tumbled off his knees.
“You men are all the same: You just don’t want to hear the truth.”
“Did you come here to talk about the truth or about the boy?”
“All right, all right, I’ll stop . . . Dumpling, the boy’s brought home a bad report card once again.”
“So what?”
“What do you mean, so what? He’s not going to be able to take his qualifying exams! He won’t advance to fourth grade!”
“So he won’t. No great disaster. Just as long as he’s at school and not making trouble here.”
“But Papa, he’s fifteen years old! How can a fifteen-year-old still be in the third grade? Can you believe it: That nasty math teacher failed him again . . . Outrageous, isn’t it?”
“He needs a good beating, that’s what I say.”
Mama ran her pinkie around Papa’s fat lips. She frowned coquettishly (or so she imagined).
“No, Dumpling, not a word about a punishment . . . This isn’t our boy’s fault. They’re all out to get him. Why be modest: Our son is gifted; he has to know that silly math. He knows it perfectly, I’m sure!”
“He’s a fraud, that’s what he is! If he’d studied instead of making trouble . . . Why don’t you go sit down on a chair, my dear? I’m sure you can’t be all that comfortable on my lap.”
Mama slipped off Papa’s lap and glided over to the armchair like a swan (or so she imagined).
“God, how callous you are,” she whispered. She sat down and closed her eyes. “No, you don’t love our son! Our son is so good, so smart, so handsome . . . There’s a plot against him, I tell you, a plot! He mustn’t be held back another year! I won’t let it happen!”
“And what can you do, if the good-for-nothing never studies? Oh, you mothers! Well, in any case, enough. Go and may the good Lord be with you. I have something to take care of.”
Papa turned his attention to a paper on the table. Wary as a dog at his bowl, he glanced at the curtains.
“No, Papa, I won’t go. I won’t go! I can see that I’m a burden, but you’ll just have to put up with it. Papa, go to the math teacher and tell him to give the boy a good grade. Tell him that he knows his math but that his health is poor. That’s why he can’t cater to everyone’s whims! Force him to do it! Can you imagine a boy his age, practically a grown man, in the third grade? Do your best, dumpling! Did you know that Sofia Nikolaevna thinks our son is as handsome as Paris?”
“Yes, he’s a chip off the old block, but still, I’m not going! I don’t have time to go tramping back and forth.”
“You’ll go, Papa!”
“I won’t. That’s my final word. Go and the good Lord be with you, my dear. I have things to take care of.”
Mama stood and shouted, “You will go!”
“I will not!”
“You will!” shrieked Mama. “And if you don’t, if you won’t take pity upon your only son, then—” Mama screeched and pointed like an infuriated tragedian at the curtains. Papa was flustered and embarrassed. He started to sing. He took off his jacket. He always got flustered and acted like a total idiot when Mama pointed at the curtains. He surrendered. The boy was called for and an explanation demanded. Junior became angry, frowned, and scowled. He said that he knew math better than the teacher, that it wasn’t his fault if in this world of ours only girls, rich kids, and suck-ups got good grades. Then he burst into tears and produced his teacher’s address. Papa shaved, ran a comb over his bald spot a few times, dressed for the occasion, and set off to “take pity upon his only son.”
Following the habit of most papas, Papa walked in on the math teacher unannounced. The things you hear and see when you enter unannounced! He heard the teacher telling his wife, “You’ve cost me a fortune, Ariadna! There’s no end to your whims!” He saw the teacher’s wife rush to embrace the teacher, exclaiming, “Forgive me! I’ve done next to nothing for you, I know, but you’re everything to me!” The teacher’s wife was very attractive, Papa thought, especially in dishabille.
