No, she hadn’t written about that petty, annoying trifle – what would be the point?
Afterwards she sat down in front of a mirror and studied herself for a long time. Strange, but she couldn’t see any particular changes, any new maturity or sophistication, in her face. They would come, but obviously not straight away.
One thing was clear: she would not be able to sleep on this great night.
Columbine sat down in the armchair by the window and tried to spot a star, even the very tiniest, in the murky sky, but she couldn’t. She felt rather upset, but then she told herself that it was all right. The thicker the darkness, the better.
She did fall asleep after all. And she only realised she had been sleeping when she was woken by loud knocking.
Leave
When she opened her eyes, she saw the sun already high in the sky outside the window and heard the sounds of the street: hooves clopping over cobblestones, a knife-grinder crying his trade. And then she heard that insistent knocking again: rat-a-tat-tat, rat-a-tat-tat!
She realised it was late morning and someone was knocking on the door, perhaps they had already been knocking for a long time.
But before she went to open the door, she checked to make sure there were no creases or indentations on her face after her sleep (there weren’t), ran a comb through her hair, straightened her dressing gown (cut Japanese-style, with Mount Fujiyama on the back).
The knocking on the door continued. Then she heard a muffled calclass="underline" ‘Open up! Open up! It’s me!’
Petya. Well, of course, who else? He had come to make a jealous scene. She shouldn’t have given him her address yesterday. Columbine sighed, pulled her hair across her left shoulder on to her breasts and tied it with a scarlet ribbon.
Lucifer was lying on the bed in a neat spiral. He was probably hungry, poor thing, so she poured some milk into a bowl for the little snake and only then let the jealous rival in.
Petya burst into the hallway, pale-faced, with his lips trembling. He cast a surreptitious glance at Columbine (at least, that was how it seemed to her) and immediately turned his eyes away. She shook her head in amazement at herself. How could she have taken him for Harlequin? He was Pierrot, an absolutely genuine Pierrot, and that was his real name, after all, Pyotr, Petya.
‘What are you doing here at the crack of dawn?’ she asked severely.
‘But it’s midday already,’ he babbled and sniffed. His nose was wet and red. Had he caught a cold? Or had he been crying?
It proved to be the latter. The disgraced Harlequin’s face contorted, his lower lip worked up and down, tears gushed from his eyes and he started blubbing in grand style. He spoke haltingly, incomprehensibly, and not about what Columbine had been expecting.
‘I went round this morning, to his flat . . . He rents one, on Basmannaya Street, in the Giant company building . . . Like yours, on the top . . . So we could go to lectures together. And I was worried after yesterday. I caught up with him and walked him home.’
‘Who?’ she asked. ‘Speak more clearly.’
‘Nikisha. You know, Nikifor, Avaddon.’ Petya sobbed. ‘He wasn’t himself at all, he kept repeating: “It’s been decided, it’s over, now I just have to wait for the Sign.” I said to him: “Maybe there won’t be any Sign, eh, Nikisha?” “No”, he said, “There will, I know there will. Goodbye, Petushok. We won’t see each other again. Never mind” he said, “it’s what I wanted” . . .’
At this point the story was interrupted by another fit of sobbing, but Columbine had already guessed what was wrong.
‘What, there was a Sign?’ she gasped. ‘A Sign of Death? The choice was confirmed? And now Avaddon will die?’
‘He already has!’ Petya sobbed. ‘When I got there, the door was wide open. The yard keeper, the owner of the house, the police. He hanged himself!’
Columbine bit her lip and pressed one hand to her breast, her heart was pounding so hard. She listened to the rest without interrupting.
‘And Prospero was there too. He said he hadn’t been able to get to sleep during the night, and just before dawn he quite clearly heard Avaddon calling him, so he got up, got dressed and went. He saw that the door was half-open. He went in, and there was Nikifor, that is, Avaddon, in the noose. He was already cold . . . Of course, the police don’t know anything about the club. They decided that Prospero and I were simply acquaintances of the deceased.’ Petya squeezed his eyes shut, obviously recalling the terrible scene. ‘Nikisha was lying on the floor, with a blue furrow round his neck and his eyes bulging out, and his tongue was huge and swollen, too big to fit in his mouth. And there was an appalling smell!’
Petya started shaking and his teeth chattered
‘So there must have been a Sign . . .’ Columbine whispered and raised her hand to cross herself (not out of piety, of course, but from childish habit), and only caught herself just in time. She had to pretend to tuck away a lock of hair.
‘Who can tell now?’ Petya asked with a fearful shudder. ‘The poem doesn’t say anything about a Sign.’
‘What poem?’
‘The death poem. It’s a custom of ours. Before you marry Death, you have to write a poem, it’s essential. Prospero calls it the “epithalamium” and also the “moment of truth”. He gave the constable fifty kopecks, and he allowed him to make a copy. I copied it out for myself too . . .’
‘Give it to me!’ Columbine demanded.
She grabbed the crumpled, tear-stained piece of paper out of Petya’s hands. At the top, in big letters, she read ‘A Riddle’. That was obviously the title.
But she simply couldn’t read the epithalamium with Petya there. He burst into sobs again and started telling the whole story for a second time.
So Columbine took hold of him by the shoulders, pushed him towards the door and said just one word: ‘Leave’.
She said it in exactly the same way as Prospero had to her the night before, after everything was over. Only she pointed with her finger for greater emphasis.
Petya looked at her imploringly, wavered on the spot for a while, sighed several times and walked out, like a beaten puppy dog. Columbine frowned. Surely she hadn’t looked as pitiful as that the night before?
Petya’s expulsion gave her a distinctly wicked pleasure. I definitely have what it takes to be a femme fatale, Columbine told herself, and sat down by the window to read the poem by the ugly individual who in life had borne the ugly name of Nikifor Sipyaga.
A Riddle