“My love,” she whispered.
She clapped her hands. The majordomo approached and lowered his head, pressing against his belly. “A banquet in honor of my bridegroom!” she commanded. The majordomo whistled. The servants scurried about like ants.
Kotikokura, followed by “Abelard,” walked away slowly. Was he downcast or too moved to congratulate me? “Salome, you said ‘bridegroom’—not husband. Was it intentional?” I asked. “Yes, Cartaphilus. Today we shall celebrate our marriage, but we must postpone its consummation.” “Salome,” I pleaded, “how long shall my lips parch in the desert of my desire?” “Tomorrow or as soon as you can arrange it, you must leave, Cartaphilus.”
“Impossible!” I exclaimed.
“Yes, you must leave for Europe again. Steinach, in Vienna, you tell me, has isolated the feminine hormone. I need this hormone. I need other endocrine products from his laboratory. Homuncula can never be truly born without perfectly balanced internal secretions. And there is one more ingredient which I lack to complete my conquest of the moon…”
“I am stunned– —”
“Think of my lonesomeness when you are gone!”
“Will you be lonesome, Princess?”
She pressed me to her heart. Her eyes glittered.
“It is well, beloved. I obey!”
“If I can achieve my end without the ingredient or if I can isolate the hormone in my own laboratory, I shall send you a message. You will know that I have emancipated myself and my sex completely from ancient biological fetters. When I am free I shall be yours…”
“You are the creature predicted by Apollonius, the goal of man’s passionate pilgrimage. I seek neither Mary nor John, but—you, the synthesis of all sex attraction, the perfect Double Blossom of Passion! Hermaphroditus and Hermaphrodita are monsters: you are the ultimate, the unimaginable ideal!”
“Homuncula’s charms are more seductive than mine…”
“Homuncula knows neither suffering nor struggle. Her perfection is a gift from you. You have wrung your perfection out of the hands of the gods. However marvelous she may be, you and I, though immortal, belong to the race of men. We are united by indissoluble memories, by immemorial ties.”
Salomeb eyes moistened.
“When I am ready I shall send my messenger. You will know by this token that the two parallel lines of our lives have intersected at last. Come back to me then, the only man who ever captured his dream.”
“– —After two thousand years!”
“Two thousand years is little time for man to discover himself; for woman to shake off the yoke imposed upon her by a biological accident when the first man and the first woman first crept up from the slime of the sea.”
“I shall obey, most desirable of your sex, or rather, of the new sex for which the world has not yet invented a name!”
“When you are in Europe, execute your audacious game. Start your war, move your pawns, save the world, if you can! If the experiment ends in failure and confusion, come back to me. A new creation awaits you here.”
The train dashed on noisily like a whipped animal, Kotikokura and I smoked cigarettes in silence. “Kotikokura, do you bear me a grudge for being betrothed to the most perfect of women?”
He shook his head. I pressed his hand.
“Does not your master deserve a little rest after two thousand years of wandering and disillusion?”
He nodded sleepily.
“If only I can get those ingredients or if Salome can distill the elixir of life without them! I am once more a heart-hungry boy!”
Kotikokura yawned.
“We must try to understand her, Kotikokura. She is the eternal mother.”
“Ca-ta-pha eternal god.”
“And Kotikokura eternal friend. We are the perfect triangle, the meaning of ultimate truth. I have discovered nothing else in twenty centuries…”
We lit fresh cigarettes.
“Life is so simple and its essence is love!”
Kotikokura dozed.
“I have sought wisdom and happiness in every corner of the world before I discovered this secret. But that digger of ditches who, for one fraction of a second, waved his red handkerchief to us, may have discovered it likewise. Wisdom and happiness are attitudes, not realities. This is a truism and a platitude, Kotikokura. But no truth has reached perfection unless it has become a truism and a platitude, an axiom incontrovertible and beyond explanation. Before that, truth is an epigram, the tour de force of a poet or a philosopher. And this too is a platitude…”
Kotikokura’s eyes blinked painfully.
“Yet this, too, is a matter of mood. Love may hide from us the truth of heaven and earth. Hate, the struggle for survival, may be the sole compass of Reality, Kotikokura.”
Kotikokura grinned feebly.
“But how shall a man in love think if not platitudinously, seeing that love itself is the quintessence of all platitudes? Perhaps Cartaphilus will lose his own soul, if he returns to his mate. Perhaps the Great God Ennui will prevail in the end. Perhaps, to escape from his clutches, we must migrate to another planet.”
Kotikokura snored.
I lit another cigarette.
The smoke that wound and unwound, like some strange and occult sculptor, shaped the face of my Love.
“All is vanity save love.”
The smoke rose to the ceiling, curled about the electric bulbs, and vanished.
“Love, too, is vanity.”
Kotikokura gnashed his teeth in his sleep.
“And the truth of all things is—irony.”
EPILOGUE: MOUNT ATHOS
THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ISAAC LAQUEDEM
FATHER AMBROSE, his cross swinging about his neck, a pair of shoes in one hand and in the other two telegrams, ran, out of breath, toward the wing of the monastery in which Professor Basil Bassermann and Dr. Aubrey Lowell were quartered.
It was early morning, but already several monks were working in the garden, while others were walking slowly, counting the beads of Christ.
Since the arrival of Isaac Laquedem, the monks had seen their Father Superior act strangely, and, at times, they suspected, even a little out of harmony with the rules of their sacred order. They could not rebel, however, for they were unable to specify their grievances. To see, therefore, the Holy Father run out of breath, a pair of shoes in one hand and telegrams in the other, seemed only one more strange episode in a long chain of extravagant happenings.
They stopped in their work or in their prayers, looked at one another, shrugged their shoulders, and muttered mainly to themselves: “Since those foreigners came here, everything is topsy-turvy.”—”The Lord Jesus will punish us, I am sure.”—”Everything is going to the dogs.”—”I never used to lose one count of my rosaries. Nowadays I must go over them five times before I do the right number—and then I am not sure!”
Father Ambrose had meanwhile reached the door of Professor Bassermann’s room. He placed the shoes upon the floor and rapped nervously. The Professor, already dressed, opened.
“Ah, Father Ambrose, good morning.”
“The Lord be with you, my son.”
“What makes you so matinal, Father? As for me, I could not sleep the whole night through. There was something restless in the air. I finally dressed and was about to go out for a walk in your beautiful gardens.”
Father Ambrose stared at him. “I too found it impossible to sleep and when, at last, I did fall asleep for a half hour or so, I had the wildest dreams.”
“Our experiments are very fatiguing, Father. We should take a rest for a few days.”
“We shall take a much longer rest than that, Professor.” Father Ambrose pointed to the shoes.
The door of Aubrey’s room opened and the young scientist appeared.