The naked woman answered calmly, lowering her voice in gentle persuasion:
“To erase your name from the Book of Life, my friend!”
A new outburst of scorn and self-confidence once more swept away the fear; this feeling of assurance neutralised for the moment the cold onset of paralysis. With a mocking laugh I said:
“Me?! I will destroy you, you ... thing from the blood of butchered cats! I will not rest; I will stick to your trail, follow the scent that you leave behind you. Panther, you have already been wounded; wherever you run, my hate will pursue you, man-eater, until I put a bullet through your heart.”
The Princess nodded, her thirsty gaze fixed on mine.
Consciousness slipped from me for a brief eternity. – – –
When, with an indescribable effort of will, I managed to tear myself from this state of lethargic paralysis, the Princess was no longer standing naked between the altar and the bookcase; rather she was lying, fully clothed, on the divan and was just directing a languid gesture of confirmation in the direction of the door.
Instinctively I turned round.
There in the doorway, dressed in the Princess’ livery, pale as a corpse and silent, like all the servants here, lids almost closed over expressionless eyes stood – my cousin, John Roger!
The horror crackled over my head like St. Elmo’s fire. I heard a half-stifled cry from my own mouth, steadied my stumbling feet and turned my staring eyes to the door once more – my overwrought nerves must have played a trick on me: the servant, who was still there, was indeed tall and blond. A European, at any rate, a German servant amongst all the Asian riff-raff but, apart from a vague similarity it was, after all ... not ... my cousin, John Roger.
And then 1 saw something else. At first, because I was still recovering from the shock at the sight of the servant, I merely registered the fact that the black statue of the Thracian Isaïs was now holding in the curled fingers of its right hand the end of a spear. –
I took a couple of steps towards the altar and saw that the broken-off fragment of the shaft as well as the spearhead itself was made of black syenite – just as was the statue itself. Stone had merged with stone, it was all hewn from one block of stone, as if the attribute had never left the Goddess’ hand. It was only after I had made sure that I was not mistaken that I remembered – and the force of it was like a hammer-blow to the head – that earlier the clutching hand of the statue had been empty! How did the spearhead come to be in the stone fist?!
But there was no time for further reflection on the matter.
The servant’s announcement to which the Princess had given a gesture of acceptance concerned a visitor who was waiting outside. I heard Assja’s soft voice:
“What has made you so silent, my friend? For minutes now you have just been staring into space and not paying the least attention to my learned account of the Thracian cult. I flatter myself that I am as interesting a speaker as any German professor – and you fall asleep in the middle of my lecture?! Where are your manners, my friend?”
“I ... Did I ...?”
“Yes indeed! You fell fast asleep, my friend. I will try” – the Princess’ peals of laughter cascaded over me again – “I will try to salvage a little of my shattered pride by assuming your interest in the finer details of Thracian art and culture was merely feigned. Of course in that case all my scholarly efforts were in vain ...”
“I don’t know what to say, Princess,” I stammered, “I am confused ... please forgive me ... but I can’t have just imagined it ... the statue of the lion-headed Isis over there, for example ...” – beads of sweat were dripping from my forehead. I had to mop my brow with my handkerchief.
“Of course! It’s much too warm in here,” the Princess cried in her vivacious manner. “Forgive me, my dear, I’m just too fond of the heat. – In that case I’m sure you will be happy to go to another room to meet the visitor who has just been announced?”
I suppressed my startled question in order not to admit too openly that I had slept, but the Princess seemed to understand it all the same.
“It is Lipotin who is waiting in the other room. I hope you are not angry with me for not sending him away; he is a mutual acquaintance?”
Lipotin! Only now did I feel I had fully recovered my senses, my spiritual strength. I cannot find a better way of putting it than to say that I felt I had risen from the bottom of ... where was the greenish light that had filled the room a moment ago? – Behind where the Princess was reclining a heavy khilim rug had been half drawn back; she leapt up and opened a concealed window. Motes of golden dust danced in the warm afternoon sunshine.
As far as I could, I forced myself to ignore the storm of doubts, questions and self-accusation the events of the afternoon had raised and accompanied the Princess into the next room, where Lipotin was waiting. He came to meet us and greeted us warmly.
“I am eternally sorry, Madam”, he began, “to find I have disturbed you the first time you have received a visitor whom I know you have long expected in vain. But I am sure that anyone who has once seen these venerable rooms will not miss any opportunity to repeat the visit. My congratulations, sir!” Still suspicious, I tried – without success – to spot any glance or gesture of collusion between the two. In the clear light of this ordinary drawing room the Princess was quite the lady of the house greeting an old friend. Even her strikingly well-cut dress seemed to me, elegant as it was, no longer as unusual as before; I saw now that it was made from silk brocade – rare, it is true, but not supernatural.
With a swift smile the Princess took up Lipotin’s words:
“On the contrary, Lipotin, I am afraid our mutual friend has formed a most unfavourable impression of his hostess. Just imagine: I insisted on giving him a lecture – he fell asleep, of course!”
The conversation sparkled with laughter and teasing banter on all sides. The Princess insisted she had forgotten one of the first principles of female hospitality: she had forgotten – yes, really, forgotten – to have the coffee sent in! And all because she could not resist the opportunity to parade her own learning, which was, after all, only second-hand, in front of a connoisseur such as her guest. One should always remember to provide one’s audience – one’s victims – with a stimulant before lecturing at them. Amidst all the badinage I felt a blush spread over my face as I remembered the fantasies I had indulged in during the minutes when the lady of the house thought I was asleep!
To make matters worse, at that moment Lipotin gave me a sideways glance which seemed to say that his antiquarian’s instinct permitted him to read my thoughts with a fair degree of clarity. This only served to increase my embarrassment, but fortunately the Princess did not seem to notice and interpreted my blush as the after-effects of drowsiness.
Suppressing a mischievous grin, Lipotin helped me out of the awkward situation by asking the Princess whether it was the inspection of her unique weapon collection which had so exhausted me; given the multitude of amazing treasures it contained, he could well understand how I felt. The Princess denied this with mock desperation and laughed, what on earth could Lipotin be thinking, she had not had time to get round to it and, anyway, she hardly dared ...
That was my cue to restore my somewhat damaged reputation, and I begged her, with Lipotin’s support, to be allowed to see what I had heard described as a fabulous collection. Jokingly I offered to allow her to put my attentiveness to the severest test: I would follow the most abstruse exposition of the most recondite facts in a field where my own knowledge was superficial in the extreme ...
The Princess acceded to my request and so, laughing and joking, we went back through the inner rooms to one, obviously in another wing of the villa, which stretched out before us like a gallery.
Between the glass cases the walls shone dully with the metallic gleam of countless suits of armour. Like the empty husks of insect-men they stood in a long row, as if vainly waiting for a shouted order that would bring them back to life. Around them and above
them were burgonets and tilting helms, chain mail overlaid with gold and silver thread, damascened breastplates, artfully riveted scale armour – most, as a quick glance told me, of Eastern European or Oriental origin. It was the fullest armoury I had ever seen, full, above all, of richly ornamented weapons encrusted with gold and jewels from a Merovingian skramasax to Saracen shields and daggers of the best Arabian, Sassanid and Thracian swordsmith’s work. The overall impression was strange, fantastic; in spite of its ordered rigidity, it somehow seemed alive, threatening, as if the weapons gleaming from the walls were beings in suspended animation. But even stranger and more fantastic to me was the sight of the owner in her fashionable dress passing elegantly amongst all these instruments of murder, commenting knowledgeably on this or that piece. A lady, a fickle woman – the passionate custodian of a chamber full of instruments of torture and death! However, I had little time to indulge in these thoughts. The Princess sustained a fluent stream of conversation about her late father’s passion for collecting and her own. She kept on pointing out priceless rarities, though, of course, I can remember only a few. What I do remember is that the collection did not seem to be organised according to the usual principles. The eccentric old Prince had obviously been particularly keen to acquire weapons whose value lay in their origin or in some story connected with them. He must have become fascinated by historical, not to say legendary, curiosities: there was Roland’s shield and Charlemagne’s battleaxe; on a cushion of purple velvet lay the lance of the Centurion Longinus from Golgotha; there was the magic dagger of the Emperor Sun Chiang Sen with which he drew the line which no Western Mongol dared to cross and along which later emperors built the Great Wall – to their own glory, as it was unnecessary given the existence of the magic boundary. Glittering cruelly, there lay Abu Bakr’s damascene blade, with which he had beheaded the seven hundred Jews of Kurayza without pausing once to draw breath in the course of his bloody work. Thus the Princess showed me a seemingly endless hoard of the weapons of the greatest heroes of three continents or of such as were associated with blood, horror or the most fantastic stories.
Again I soon began to tire. I felt stifled by the ghostly aura of these mute and yet so expressive objects. Lipotin must have noticed, for he turned to the Princess with an ironic smile:
“After the grand tour round this veritable Aladdin’s Cave of marvels, perhaps, Princess, you would like to acquaint our long-suffering friend with the gap which is your secret sorrow, the central point – the vanishing point, if you like – of the whole, magnificent collection? I think he has earned the right.”
I had no idea what Lipotin was talking about, and even less about what he and the Princess then whispered and muttered to each other in a hurried exchange in Russian. When they had finished, she turned to me with a smile:
“You must excuse us! Lipotin is pressing me to tell you about the spear ... the spear I assumed was in your possession – you remember? I think it’s time I gave you an explanation, isn’t it? Of course it is! I hope that when I have told you about what Lipotin calls the ‘secret sorrow of the Shotokalungins’ you will perhaps ... you will, after all ...”
Once more my throat tightened at the thought: they were going to start their little game about the mysterious spearhead again; and that might bring back all the rather dubious events of this afternoon. I pulled myself together and said, in as expressionless a tone as possible, that I would be happy to hear her explanation.
The Princess led me over to one of the high, glass cabinets and pointed to an empty case lined with velvet and just long enough to take a twelve-inch dagger. She purred:
“You will have noticed that every item in the collection has a card in Russian next to it – my father took care of that – which records its origin and story. You don’t speak Russian, so all I need to say is that each card contains the so-called legend of the individual piece. Weapons have often had more interesting lives than the most interesting people, especially as they live longer and have a greater wealth of experiences. It was above all the stories associated with these weapons that fascinated my father, and I must admit that I have inherited this ... this lust for knowledge about these things – if ‘things’ is the right word for them. And here, you will see, is an empty space. The item it is reserved for was ...”
“Aha!” – I almost startled myself at the speed with which I guessed – “it was stolen.”
“N-no.” The Princess hesitated. “N-no, not from me; in fact, not stolen at all, in the precise sense of the word. Let us say: lost in some inexplicable way. I prefer not to talk about it: for my father it was the most valuable piece, irreplaceable: and it still is for me. It has been missing since I can remember; I used to dream about the empty velvet even when I was a little girl. Although I bombarded him with questions, my father never told me how the spearhead came to be lost. Every time I asked he would go around with a sad face for days on end.” The Princess broke off abruptly and, half absent-mindedly, murmured something to herself in Russian in which I thought I caught the word Isaïs; then she continued out loud: “Just once, shortly before our flight into exile from the Crimea and only a few weeks before his death, he said to me: it will be your task to recover the lost jewel, my child, if all my efforts here on earth are not to have been in vain; I sacrificed more for it than should be expected from any mortal man. You, my child, are wedded to the spearhead dagger, it will be with you on your bridal day.
You can imagine the impression these words of my father’s made on me, my friend. Lipotin, who was in his confidence, will tell you how deeply moving was his dying remark about his lifelong efforts to regain possession of the missing spearhead.”
Lipotin nodded in agreement. It seemed to me he did not find the memory a pleasant one.
The Princess meanwhile had taken out a tiny bluish steel key and opened the cabinet. She took out the flecked yellowed card and began to read it out to me:
“No. 793b: spearhead of an unidentified alloy (manganese ore with meteoric iron and gold?). At a later period reworked as a dagger blade. Hilt: late Carolingian, probably Spanish/Moorish work, not later than mid-10th century. Thickly encrusted with oriental alexandrites, chrysolites, beryls and three Persian sapphires. Acquired by Piotr Shotokalungin – this was my grandfather – as a gift from Catherine the Great. Originally part of a set of Western European curios, which Tsar Ivan the Terrible is said to have been sent by the great English Queen, Elizabeth. The following traditions are associated with it:
In ancient times this precious blade adorned the irrestible spear of the old hero and Prince of Wales – Hywel, known as ‘Dda’ which means ‘the Good’. Hywel Dda is said to have obtained the weapon with the magic aid of the White Elves, who are the servants of a brotherhood named ‘The Gardeners’ which guides the fortunes of mankind. Prince Hywel once did these White Elves, who are considered a mighty spirit tribe in Wales, a great favour, for which the King of the Elves instructed him how to make a weapon by grinding a special stone to powder and then mixing it with some drops of his own blood, all the time repeating certain secret magic formulae; from this mixture was forged a spearhead the colour of bloodstone, tougher than any metal, harder than the hardest diamond, which would render its owner invincible, invulnerable for all time and worthy of the highest kingship. And not only that, but protected against the wasting death that comes from woman. Down the centuries the knowledge remained alive in the family of Hywel Dda, the spear was carefully guarded, hope nourished and the rise of the descendants of the great Rhodri to the highest honours repeatedly seemed about to come to pass. But the spearhead was most shamefully lost by one of the line of Hywel Dda – now calling themselves Dee – who, mindless of the elves’ promise, fell into evil ways and sought a path to an earthly crown in a wanton bed. And he lost the dagger and his strength and the elves’ gift, and a curse fell upon the spear, a curse which will never be broken, unless perhaps the last in the hapless line of Hywel Dda can recover the spear and the old hope. For not u
ntil Hywel Dda’s spear is washed clean of the blood that once stained it can Hywel Dda be freed from the curse that ends in darkness and destruction.”
Here Lipotin interrupted the Princess and said quickly, turning to me: “Moreover, there is a prophecy according to which if a Russian should come into possession of the spearhead, Russia will rule the world in days to come; if it should come into possession of an Englishman, then England will conquer the Russian Empire. But that,” he said with an air of studied indifference “leads us to politics, and who is interested in matters of such little consequence?”
The Princess ignored his interruption; she put the faded note back in its place. She looked at me with a tired, absent-minded expression; she seemed to be gently grinding her teeth. She continued:
“Well, my friend, perhaps now you can understand my keenness to follow up any clue that promises to bring back the spear of Hywel Dda, as the legend of my ancestors calls it; for what can excite and satisfy a collector’s enthusiasm more than to have carefully locked up in his cabinet an object which would mean life, fortune and eternal bliss for someone in the world outside, if he could only get his hands on that thing that – – I have and I hold!”
At first I could hardly conceal from the others the storm of contending ideas and feelings that all this set off within me; but I was also immediately aware that it was essential to do so. The last mists hiding the fate of my ancertor, John Dee, of my cousin, John Roger, and of myself, were blown away. A wild joy, a wild impatience, a haphazard – and therefore dangerous – bubbling up of all my thoughts, ideas and plans threatened to run away with my tongue, and it was only with the greatest difficulty that I managed to preserve the mask of the polite visitor pretending to a lively interest in the fairy-tales of a past, superstitious age.
At the same time I was shocked by the expression of devilish malice on the Princess’ face when she spoke of the sadistic pleasure of the collector who experiences an almost sensual lust in keeping shut away in futile sterility an object which, if it were allowed to fulfil its purpose in the world, could play a decisive role in someone’s destiny, save their life or their soul. I found it loathsome that it was precisely the knowledge that such opportunities were being denied that added the real spice to the pleasure of collecting that the Princess had cynically revealed as her own: to find one’s highest pleasure in emasculating the virile power of fate, in killing the fruit in the womb of providence, in rendering infertile the fecund force of magic in the world!
The Angel of the West Window Page 30