The small brass window set in the door opened; he heard her ragged, excited breathing inside. She’s alone, concluded Melkior, relieved.
“Who is it? Th-that co-code …” he heard her quavering whisper from the dark rectangle. He trembled all over with the nearness of her, he felt the noise of his blood in his veins.
“It’s not Coco, it’s me,” he said with as much co-cocky derision as he could muster.
“Kior!” she exclaimed madly. “Kior’s back! He’s back, he’s back. …” she spoke to herself cuddling, confidential, out of her mind with unexpected happiness. She kept turning the key in the lock, right, left, nervously, she barely managed to unlock the door.
“Where are you, where are you, you naughty boy, ahh …” petite and all aquiver, she clung to him in a tight embrace, “Kior, ah, Kior!”
She had an emerald-green velvet housecoat on, closely fitting the body Melkior knew so well … and underneath it—“Here, nothing, I’ve just taken a bath, Kio, I had an intimation, I knew, ah Kio, I was waiting for you.”
“How did you know? Did Adam tell you?” he asked suspiciously.
“Adam who? There you go again with your … Ah, you crazy man!” she got the point of the joke. “Yes, Adam, I’m waiting for you like Eve, see,” she unbuttoned the housecoat, showed herself naked to him; she had not understood which Adam he meant.
He hugged her eagerly under the housecoat and vigorously fell to kissing her neck and breasts, belly, hips, leaving the matter of Adam aside for the moment.
“In here, Kio, come here,” she pulled him into the room with the wide double bed. “I’m all alone, Kio, I’ve been alone for a long, long time, you all abandoned me, you bad, cruel men,” her tears began to flow, she was feeling sorry for herself. “No, he’s not bad, you’re bad, you never wrote a word to me all this time. Ahh, Kio, how I’ve been waiting for you!” She heaved a deep sigh flinging herself onto the bed with panicky speed, as if fearing the elusion of the reward for all the suffering she had borne.
“I’ve had a tough time of it, Enkie, I’ll tell you all about it,” said Melkior throwing his clothes onto chairs, the floor, every which way, he, too, was in a hurry. “I wrote to no one, I’ve been through … all kinds of things …”
“Ssh, don’t talk,” she whispered from the bed, all but pleading with him, “I want us to be happy tonight, to forget everything. Turn off the ceiling light, turn off all the lights. We’ll be watching each other and talking later, now I want to see nothing, to hear nothing. I just want to feel you in the dark, all of you, all of my darling. … Come, Kio. Ah, I can’t see you, where are you? Ah, Kio, Kio …” and she laughed madly in his tempestuous embrace.
They were sharing (of course) a cigarette and lying there in silence. She had her head propped on his lean upper arm and was surrendering with indulgence like a small boat in a sheltered cove; he had one of her small breasts cupped in his splayed fingers, regally, like a monarch’s orb. He felt on his chest the pleasing presence of the heavy cut-glass ashtray, rising and falling on the waves of his breath. He was remembering the dream he’d had on his first night in the barracks. Had it been this one, Enka, or … he could no longer remember. “That’s right, call me a liar!”—“I said briar … and anyway, you’re not a liar — you’re a fool, and that’s not a dream.”
“How could you go and spill everything like that?”
“I didn’t spill anything. He already knew all about it. He’s not a chiromantist for nothing.”
“Chee-rro-man-tist,” he enunciated mockingly.
“He got everything right — as if the devil himself was in him.” She snuggled up to him, keeping under his mighty wing, poor, small, helpless, alone. …
“And you believe he can soothsay?”
“I told you — he already knew all about it; I told him nothing, it was he who did the talking …”
“… and you did the confirming,” he said angrily. “Did you mention that you love your husband?” asked Melkior with concealed irony.
“But of course …”
“But of course … You can now expect him to blackmail you for as long as you live.”
“Why should he?”
“Why shouldn’t he? He now knows you are anxious for your husband never to learn about … this … well, you can see for yourself, can’t you?” He was ashamed to talk about it; he was getting irritated.
“But I paid what he charged!”
She paid what he charged! “Oh what naïve little creatures you women are!” He was angry and prepared to approve of ATMAN’S behavior. “You think your special little fifty dinars bought you the privilege of enjoying your safety? Oh no, that’s nowhere near enough, Madam! He hates you, he hates your pleasure and wants you to pay him for it!”
“Pay him for hating me?”
“You seem to be beginning to understand.” It was again he who had grown tired of her; he enjoyed being in a position to torment her. A fresh arousal; he saw tears in her eyes.
“Oh, Kio, that’s awful! You frighten me!”
“No fear … as long as you can afford to pay him.”
“Well, how long will he go on demanding it?”
“He may not ask for just money every time, heh-heh. …”
“That’s repulsive what you are saying!” she moved a little way away from him and removed the trophy ashtray from his hand; she gave a shiver and covered her breasts with virginal shame.
“Repulsive it may be … but there it is. He would do it to spite me, for one thing. Aren’t you flattered that he should envy me?”
He pulled her to him again and made a round of his little kingdom with a ruling hand. She clung gratefully to him and put herself fully under his aegis.
“Oh, Kio!” she kissed his hairy chest. “But even if he told Coco something, Coco wouldn’t believe him,” she laughed in a way that Melkior hated.
“Well, did you tell him that?”
“Tell who?”
“Adam.”
“Adam who?” she laughed; the conversation amused her.
“ATMAN. The chiromantist. Why are you laughing?” Her laughter irritated him.
“I’m laughing, oh God …”—can’t he see the point? — “isn’t it funny, a chiromantist called Adam, telling people’s fortunes?”
“It’s just a name. What’s so funny about it?” But there is something, damn it! he was admitting to himself, it really was funny.
“I mean the Adam of Earthly Paradise, that’s why I’m laughing.”
“You mean his original sin, too …”
“That business with the apple, Kio?”
“Yes, with the apple,” he firmly cupped her breast.
“Oh, Kio!” she was getting excited. She was imagining Eve, naked, with Adam, naked, in Earthly Paradise. Like the two of us here now — oh, Kio!
She sought the tree of knowledge that had grown tall and stiff in the midst of the garden.
“Oh, Adam, Adam …” whispered Enka in abandon, offering herself madly.
Adam the aphrodisiac, thought Melkior.
“Don’t smirk at me, you tormentor!” Enka surfaced for an instant with a martyr’s face and immediately sank back into the silt, as ATMAN would have put it.
“See how Adam works.” Melkior was resisting ATMAN’S “Destiny.” He had knocked on the open door, given her first aid — he now wanted to lord it over her, to be a little god in this mini-paradise.
“Didn’t ATMAN prophesy it … ‘in the rosiest of terms’?” mocked Melkior.