(No, Peter had not expected such a connection between the priest's ghost story and the body of a Maenad. But he listened, leaning on the side-pillar of the huge fireplace, standing in the cool half-shade. The fire, reflected in the stained-glass windows, threw kaleidoscopic flashes all over the library, playing with the precious stones encrusted in the covers of the old volumes, on the stretched skin of the Javanese boa and flickering on the glazed bowls from Faenza.)
Being a rake and a carefree rascal from Volyn I belonged to a race which, as is widely known, does not distinguish itself for its patriotism and scholarship but is known for its loud mouth and boasts manly strength. I was an exception in one respect only, having diplomas in science, mathematics and philosophy. Thus, I, Count Apolinary - the name is unimportant, nobody here knows it anyway - used to dine with the cardinal and the ladies in his gardens at the Attis sarcophagus, which, adorned with violets, served us as a table many a night ... Hm ...
(Here, the priest let out a huge cloud of smoke from his pipe.)
One night I was walking down a narrow street in Trastevere, behind the Castel San Angelo. The street was empty, my sabre rang cheerfully on the cobblestones. Not a single passer-by in sight, darkness and silence reigned everywhere, though the rows of old palaces were often taken over by a rowdy carnival ...
The balmy evening air carried a scent from the pines whose silhouettes looked like pagodas in the dusk. At the same time a wet, and often deadly, breeze was blowing from the wonderful meadows of maremmas stretching along the sea outside Rome. In this fragrant freshness the thought of death began to knock gently on the back window of my mind.
There was not a soul in sight, the street-lamps were out and the only light came from a few windows, seeping through the Persian - or as they call them - Venetian blinds.
Suddenly, a rose fell at my feet. It gave off such a strong scent that it left a perfumed trail in its wake, hanging still in the air. I picked it up and though I could not see it in the dark I could have sworn it was scarlet red. I placed it on my heart and looked around trying to find the window it might have fallen from. The palace was drowned in darkness.
Then, I saw the light in the ground floor window; behind the bars, a lantern in her hand, stood a lady of exquisite beauty.
Following the custom practised by young Roman aristocrats ever since the times of Spanish occupation, I spread my richly embroidered cloak on the cobble-stones in the square of light. I bent my knee before the beauty and, sweeping the ground with my hat, I launched into an inspired speech full of admiration and amorous entreaties.
To my surprise the lady responded in Spanish:
"I am alone now, will you honour me with your company?"
I did not have to be invited twice.
The light disappeared. I reached for the old-fashioned, bronze knocker, depicting the Phoenix flying over a nest of snakes and when I turned it an invisible spring swung the door open. I entered, feeling my way in the darkness.
A strange, marvellous voice called my name from above:
"Senor Apollino ..."
I had never heard a voice of such sweetness before. It seemed like the sound of a fountain flowing into a crystal amphora. Such an unearthly voice one can hear only in springtime when the mountain glaciers blend their metallic music with the whisper of nymphs.
Slowly, I climbed the stairs, overcome by emotion.
There was more light on the second floor, where I saw an open door to a brightly lit room. The lady, wearing a dress such as one may see in the paintings of Velasques, led me into a splendid chamber where the ceiling was inlaid with huge blocks of carved black oak or ebony and the walls were covered by old tapestries from Arras.
She greeted me with a discreet wave of a rose so red it was almost black, and graciously showed me to a seat opposite her. I sat in one of the Gothic chairs, which looked as if it were both a throne and a confessional. The table glittered with crystal glasses and old faience bowls of rare beauty; the plates were of thick silver. I spoke fluent Spanish, luckily, but knowing the Spanish etiquette I did not dare to ask any probing questions. And so, while dining on strange, outlandish dishes, richly spiced in the old-fashioned way, we talked of love and mysticism. I do not remember much of our conversation, conducted in a way that enraptured the senses with the expectation of an unearthly ravishment. I only recall a couplet which the Dona spoke, among other, most peculiar sayings:
("Which means, if you do not understand Spanish ..."
"Why, me?" responded Peter:
"Hm ... Your imagination, young man, works to the disadvantage of philology. The poem means simply:
"Anyway, the next day ..."
"You spent the whole night there?"
"I was not a priest then, but I shan't dwell on that. All I can tell you is this.)
There were many courses and I served the Dona myself, taking the dishes from a special niche with a revolving screen so that the servants on the other side could not see us. I did not hear the slightest noise which would betray the presence of anyone else.
After the desserts, which were a feast fit for the god Comus, we drank the wines of Jerez and Gatta, the latter being similar to champagne but better, for it does not bubble and go to one's head. Then, we moved to the salon decorated with enormous Venetian mirrors, old and frosted, and a fireplace with a blazing fire. There, in the towercorner, we found a boudoir whose walls and ceiling were entirely covered by mirrors. It was furnished with tabourets and a small table in the Moorish style, inlaid with motherof-pearl.
My mysterious hostess sat there in the glare of the fire. I looked around in astonishment, seeing her reflection wherever I looked - on the walls, the ceiling, even on the floor - as she sat surrounded by the aura of awe and desire, radiating a truly Luciferian' charm.
She picked up a mandolin and started singing a beautiful song. It is almost impossible to translate, so closely are the words bound up with the melody, but anyway - here is Satan talking to a nun:
I left in the morning, hurrying to my duties outside the chambers of His Holiness, where at nine o'clock I was to escort him to mass for a great crowd of pilgrims.
Suddenly, at the end of the street, I realised f did not have my sabre at my side. It was impossible to carry out my duties without it, for the code of the Papal Guard is very strict and entirely based on honour. I could, after all, buy a sabre somewhere on the way, but what shame! I, the captain who would punish the slightest offence with a month in the prison of Castel San Angelo!
I rushed back and knocked on the door.
Silence.
I knocked harder and harder, finally pounding on the door with all my might, convinced that my beauty was alone in the palace and had not yet retired.
Silence.
The thundering echo of my struggles with the heavy bronze gate would have woken a bear from his winter sleep, let alone a lover from her slumbers. In the end, a good quarter of an hour later, a trembling old man came out from the adjoining house. He had a bunch of keys hanging from his belt.
"Pardon me, Your Honour, what do you want at this house?"
"I left my sabre there."
"When?"
"A quarter of an hour ago."
"It cannot be ..."
"Carajo, tonto, porco do Bocco, bougre de canaille, vieux saltimbanque!" I roared at him, swearing in all the languages I knew. "When I, the captain of the Papal Guard say so it means it is so! You ..."
"Yet it cannot be," said the old man phlegmatically, "the palace has been empty for the last three hundred years. It used to belong to a Spanish duchess and now belongs to one of her descendants. But he has never been here. He lives somewhere in Chile, where he will spend the rest of his life in prison, after committing a horrific murder. I've never seen anyone enter the palace since I was a young man, nor have I ever been inside it; I had to take an oath that I would never enter it."
I was stunned. I looked closely at the old man's face; he appeared quite honest. Was he mad?
So I asked him, kindly but firmly, to find the key and open the gate for me. After thinking for a while he shook his head:
"Well, my end is nigh ... I can convince Your Honour, and see for myself if all is in order. Sometimes, at night, I hear strange noises, music played by an orchestra, and sometimes it is as if hundreds of people were dancing ... Some terrible games take place there. Popes come and go, and the devil in the shape of a woman comes here."
"Let's go, vamos, andiamo!" I told the old man impatiently, irritated by his drivelling.
With difficulty, the old man turned the key in the rusted lock; apparently, the knocker with the Phoenix above the nest of snakes failed to do the trick this time ...
"The same hall," I said to myself entering. "The sabre should be upstairs. We must be quiet, she will be asleep now."
"There is not a living soul in here," said the old man with conviction. "You see, Captain, there is an inch of dust on the stairs. But . . . corpo della Madonna! There are footprints here, just like yours, Your Honour ... Evil powers are mixed up in this, or Your Honour has a spare key."
I left the grumbling gate-keeper behind and ran up the stairs to warn the lady of my unexpected return. I reached the second floor and, finding no response to my knocking, I opened the doors.
The room was completely empty, and I could swear it was the same. I recognised the tapestries - a battle against the Moors and the royal coats of arms of Aragon and Castile - and the same Gothic chairs and table. All that was missing was the dinner-service. But that could be easily explained: the servants had cleared it away.
In the thick layer of dust covering the floor, which, indeed, had not been swept for centuries, I saw my footprints. They encircled the table in a tight ring and one line, straight as if left by a sleepwalker, led to the other end of the salon. I followed it to the tower-corner with its mirrored walls, passing the cold and windswept fireplace.
The boudoir was empty; even the small table in the Moorish style was missing. There, in the corner, stood my sabre.
I would have been less surprised if a purple thunder-bolt had struck me from the ceiling. I was in a dark labyrinth without a thread to follow.
"If I do not find the beautiful Dona's bedroom soon I'll have to doubt my sanity," I thought, though of course I did not realise then the true meaning of my experience.
"Who's led me here?" I burst out, running through the empty room with sabre in hand, ready to kill. I ran around trying the other doors but they were all locked with huge locks, the rust and spiders' webs seeming to confirm they had not been opened for a long time.
And how, in just fifteen minutes, could it all vanish? ...
"Where is the lady who lives here? ..."
I reached for the rose hidden on my breast. It was white, stained with blood ...
"That is possible," I said to myself, "I could have cut myself struggling with the gate."
But the wonderful, infernally intoxicating scent of the rose brought to life the memories and ... the certainty that here I had really held in my arms the live, beautiful Stranger.
I left the palace.
The street, Rome and I, Count Apolinary, the captain of the Papal Guard - mad? or converted to faith? The memory of those ravishing delights still burned in my veins, too hot to doubt that I had spent a night with the Venus of Hell.
I did not return to the Vatican. I placed my sabre as a votive offering on the altar of the first church I came across. Soon after I became a novice in the strictest of monastic orders and took my vows. To be honest, I regretted it sometimes. For if a man cannot fit into the world how can he fit into a priest's habit?
Later, I checked some old books and found that there once lived in that palace a Spanish duchess, a mistress of Cesar Borgia, who helped the Neapolitan king to imprison her lover by luring him into a trap.
Climbing the narrow, winding, badly lit stairs he finally reached the third floor of an old house, tenanted exclusively by the poor, and opened the door with a big key.
He was tired after work at the Telegraph Office. Every time he returned home his head was still full of a rattling noise ticking out impossible messages. Only after two glasses of tea with rum could he start thinking clearly, but that was hardly a relief. All he could see before him were years of hopelessly boring, tiring, stupid work.
He lit a small, crooked lamp whose paper lampshade covered the remnants of the original glass one, broken years ago.
The room, or rather corridor with a kitchenette, carved out of a flat inhabited by women of doubtful occupation, was neglected, dirty and looked very unsavoury. But with the years he had grown to like it, the way one grows to like something after a time of enforced familiarity. Prisoners grow to like their cells just as well as the rich their plush studies, perhaps even more, for their confined space fills more quickly with thoughts and dreams - the only goods a poor man can own. One dreams and it seems that there is so much ... so much ahead ...
He lit his kerosene stove and went to the kitchen to get some water. He was just about to turn the tap on when he stopped. The tap was dripping. Automatically, he began listening carefully to the quick, irregular rhythm of the falling drops.
It spelt out:
"Strange Street, number 36 ... Strange Street ..."
A cold shiver ran through him. He recalled quickly all the addresses of today's telegrams. No, there was no such address. Strange Street .. .
Was there such a street in the town?
He listened again:
"Strange Street, number 36 ... Strange Street, number 36 . . ." the drops were ticking out.
He shivered again and, with a great effort of will, he turned the tap on. The water gushed into the sink splashing around, forcing him to step back. He returned to the room with a saucepanful and put it on the stove. Then he went over to the wicker shelf where with a few books he kept all sorts of odds and ends, found a bottle of rum, poured himself a glass and drank it in one gulp. He felt warmer and soon even bright and jolly.
He sat on the bed watching the blue kerosene flame licking the saucepan, which was blackened, scratched and worthless like everything around him. His eyes wandered back to the bookshelf but after a while he turned his head away.
"Strange Street," he thought, "where could it be?"
He felt as if he was rising to an altogether different level of awareness; for a moment he saw himself on a higher plane of consciousness, surrounded by strange, unknown apparitions.
But after a while he shook off this vision.
"What rubbish!" he said to himself aloud. "These are the results of my idiotic occupation."
And he began to worry what would become of him in one, two, ten years time ...
"I'll go mad ... Surely, I'll go mad!" he said again loudly. Then he got up and made for the kitchen ... He did not even know why he was going there. He stopped by the door and listened attentively.
The water was dripping into the sink.
"Damn it," he swore and turned back. But before he had reached the bed he stopped, thought for a while and was back in the kitchen.
He stood by the door.
"Strange Street, number 36 ... Strange Street, number 36 ...19
Beyond any doubt, it was the water tapping out these words.
Quickly, he went up to the tap and turned it as tight as he could.
The water stopped dripping ...
He sighed, but still waited, unsure what might happen next. The silence was almost complete; he could hear only the faint voices of people talking in the yard and a baby's wailing on the floor below.
Relieved, he returned to the room. He lifted the lid from the saucepan. A puff of steam rose in the air. He put some tea into the teapot and waited.
A bell rang.
"Tonia!" he said to himself. "Good."
He was glad he would not have to spend the rest of the evening alone in the flat.
"Hello," she greeted him cheerfully, put her arms around his neck and kissed him on the
mouth.
Then she threw her hat and coat on the bed.
"What's new?" she asked. "Why are you looking so glum? Come on, tell me. Or maybe you've given yourself a day off, eh? You naughty boy!"
"No, no ..." he defended himself. "I'm just overworked. I'm very tired and even a day off is beyond my wildest dreams. Go on, make some tea."
"Where are you going?" she asked, seeing him leave the room.
"Nowhere, I want to have a look.-. ."
He came into the kitchen ... and stopped surprised, even frightened, to find the tap dripping. He did not even make an effort to listen. He knew what it was saying.
"Strange Street, number 36 ... Strange Street ..."
He went back into the room and stood by the table, which by now Tonia had managed to tidy up a little.
"I've brought you something nice," she was babbling away. "Guess what it is. Come on, guess..
He did not reply and she looked at him.
"Good God! You're white as a sheet!" she cried out. "What is the matter with you? Tell me. Maybe you should lie down ... Yes, yes ... Go to bed now. Drink your tea in bed. Look what I've brought ... It's a nice mix, isn't it?"
She was looking into his eyes, smiling endearingly.
"You've been looking rather pale these last few days. Do you feel ill?"
He shook his head.
"Come with me," he said gravely.
She was surprised but obediently followed him into the kitchen.
"Listen. Tell me what you hear," he said in a mysterious tone of voice.
Now she was becoming really worried.
"What's the matter with you, Frank! Good God ... what is the matter?"
"Pst!" he put his finger on his lips. "Listen carefully."
She was listening with her eyes wide open, staring into his face.
"I can't hear anything," she said after a while. "Someone is talking in the yard, a baby is crying and the water is dripping ..."
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