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“Yes he did, and you came back quick, quick, you’re here, take me, Kio,” she was writhing, possessed by the devil of Eden. “Kio, let’s sin here like Adam and Eve in Earthly Paradise, let’s sin, Kio. Come on!” The biblical tableau would not let go of her. “Don’t you want it, don’t you want me anymore?”

“And what if God were to appear and …” God nothing! she was not believing in God — the devil was tempting her with the tableau “… and to …” He heard a noise from outside the door “… and to shout: Adam …” The sound was now repeated clearly: someone was trying to put a key into the lock … For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return, uttered Melkior inside through force of memory, with a strange feeling of wakeful cataleptic dying. His legs went icy, for he could clearly hear someone trying to unlock the door.

“Listen, someone is unlocking the door.” But the meaning of the words was not getting through to her. “Someone is unlocking the door, do you hear?” At last she was present.

“He can’t do that, the key’s in the lock on the inside,” she said carelessly and began sinking again.

“What do we do now?” Here comes the Lord! Melkior straightened his legs to get out of bed, but she turned him back preemptively, without a trace of kindness. She had taken the matter into her own hands.

“Do? Stay put, that’s what. You had to invoke those gods of yours!” she whispered in a rage, swearing. “Why didn’t he send word he was coming? He can go to a hotel, I’m fast asleep, he ought to know as much!” She was now raging at the man outside.

In the silence of the flat the bell sounded irresolute as it rang, tearful, open up, it’s me. … But Melkior heard it as an angry scream, as the voice of the Lord, Adam, where art thou? — In here, Lord, naked, in thy marital bed. … The second round of ringing was anxious, what’s the matter, why isn’t she answering the door? and the third was already panicked: intermittent, long, short, chaotic. …

“All right, I’m not asleep anymore, I can hear you, dearest,” she whispered with a smile of sorts. But she was not stirring from the bed. She had a firm grip on Melkior’s arm, listening to that thing going on behind the door.

There was the sound of minor, muted demolition coming from the hall.

“Get dressed,” she commanded.

“What’s he doing?” asked Melkior, his foot missing the trouser leg.

“Smashing the door light …”

“It’s too narrow — he couldn’t even get his head through,” said Melkior foolishly.

She gave a soundless laugh and waved a hand in dismissive contempt.

“He’ll put his arm through, take the key out from inside,” she said calmly, getting up deliberately slowly, “then he’ll unlock the door …”

“Do you think I could get out somehow?” said Melkior, his fingers barely managing to find the buttons. “Is there another way out?”

“Yes there is,” she said mockingly. She had put on some underwear, and her housecoat over it. And was listening again.

The demolition was now much more hurried, more impatient; the job was clearly progressing well under his deft fingers.

Unraveling his tie with fear-maddened fingers, Melkior tried to imagine poor Coco in his full dignity: at the clinic, surrounded by a suite of assistants, nurses, technicians, over a patient’s wide-open innards, his calm, wise fingers carefully … smashing the door light at his own flat! He wished to save him in his mind, to lift him out of his embarrassment and shame, out of the bitter humiliation of a man betrayed and derided. …

“He knows someone’s with you,”—you damned whore, Melkior added inside, outraged.

“He’s imagining me with my veins slashed, seeing me poisoned, raped, slaughtered.” She spoke with an odd kind of enjoyment. “He’s hurrying, he thinks he may still have time to save me …”

“The wretched man!” sighed Melkior sadly.

“You’re the wretch! Why do you want to feel sorry for him in front of me? Who are you? The bastard who’s cuckolding him! He has such a … beautiful imagination,” she said without irony, indeed with a brand of delighted admiration.

O Lord, what is this thing? asked Melkior. Mimicry, replied the Lord scientifically.

She had remade the bed (as if nothing had happened); she was preparing for his entry.

“Right,” said Melkior after she had tucked in the sheets, “now go on and open the door to him. He’s going to find me here anyway … Wouldn’t it be more sensible if you opened it yourself?”

She gave him a glance and a contemptuous smile. She didn’t bother to hide her contempt. She was unnaturally calm, composed, even certain she had nothing to fear. Why, she was innocent! … though the circumstances were a trifle … “unusual.”

She’s thought of something … but Melkior was leery of relying on her certainty. She had already “dethroned” him, dispatched him to the outside world where she had picked him up in the first place. He felt rejected, excommunicated from the family consecration, an intruder, “the fourth ape.” What’s this, she seems to be looking at me with surprise: what’s this guy doing here? Who does he think he is, speaking to me in such an intimate tone? How dare he!

Coco had broken through the door light; the brass flap clanged on the anteroom floor. He’s already reaching through, thought Melkior, the “encounter” is only minutes away. He’ll strangle me, he thought, gulping air.

Enka had by then locked the bedroom door and gestured him on. She led him through cold dark rooms (… where to? wondered Melkior in a dungeon where languished incarcerated furniture). She locked each door behind her, giving a mumbled “hem” every time the key clicked in the lock.

Jumping over hurdles, poor Coco. Running from a pursuer in a dream, thought Melkior, bound to end at an impenetrable wall where to await Destiny’s strike to come … but that is the point at which we wake up. In the cinema, too, there is a way out in the nick of time. … This is ATMAN pitting Destiny against me. “Knock,” ATMAN had laughed. So I gave Destiny a hand and here I am — trapped!

Enka had turned a light on at last. They were in Coco’s study. Floor-to-ceiling bookcases lining all four walls, a set of leather armchairs; a skull grinning on the desk. That was where Melkior’s gaze rested: had Coco cut the head off?

Alas, poor Yorick! The dead man’s mocking face watched him from the empty sockets.

“A chimney sweep,” explained Enka as indifferently as a tour guide, stroking the dead man’s pate. “Fell off a roof, probably drunk; you can still see the fracture.”

Here’s what they’ll be saying about Maestro’s skulclass="underline" a journalist, a character, a terrible lush. Long before he died he sold his body to the Institute of Anatomy; we got his skull for a song from a lab assistant, a lush himself. … — What did he die of? — Syphilis, we think; rotted alive. There: it’s like this, on a desk, my poor Maestro, that you’ll be Yorick the jester in the dull day-to-day routine of some dolt who will now and then, yawning, say to himself Alas, poor Yorick and Yorick, thou fool, all thanks to the presence of your skull, to give himself a smidgeon of Hamletian subtlety. Anyway, who can be sure his skull won’t end up on top of a wardrobe?

“Sit down for a minute, why don’t you,” said Enka insultingly coldly, her tone suddenly formal, “we’ve got to wait a bit.”

“Wait for what?” asked Melkior, irritated. What do you know — we’re formal, are we! He felt as if he was going to slap her face at last.

She had of course sensed the “great moment”; she smiled at him in that fetching way which had always worked wonders before.