And at the end of the evening, Columbine played a trick that surprised even her. When the ‘lovers’ began going home, the Doge came over to her, his light-haired Bacchante, and took her chin between his thumb and forefinger.
‘Stay,’ he ordered her.
She responded with a long, intriguing glance. Then she gave his hand a glancing kiss with her pink lips and whispered: ‘Not today. I am going, dissolving into the night.’
She swung round lightly and walked away, and he was left standing there, perplexed, gazing beseechingly after the slim figure of the unpredictable and capricious enchantress.
And serve him right.
Friday is a special day
That Friday Columbine left her flat earlier than usual to go to the meeting of the club – it was that kind of evening; with a subtle, tremulous thrill, it held the promise of something either very good or, on the contrary, very terrible, or perhaps very good and very terrible at the same time.
She had already sensed the exciting savour of tragedy in the morning, when she saw the deceptively clear September sky covering the city like a semi-transparent porcelain chalice.
Before breakfast she performed her usual morning exercise to teach her soul not to be afraid of death. She went out on to the balcony, opened the cast-iron gate that led into emptiness and stood right on the very edge, listening to the rapid beating of her heart. The sounds coming up from the street had an eloquently hollow echo, the windows opposite her shimmered with tremulous patches of light, and below her the angel captured by Möbius and Sons stood with its wings spread wide.
Then came the day, empty and meaningless – a pause, a drawing-in of breath, the silence before the velvet curtains of the night parted. But in the early evening Columbine’s keen hearing caught the distant sounds of a mystical orchestra, discordant as yet, but already magical, and she simply could not stay at home any longer.
As she walked along the purple streets with her heels clattering, the sweetly alarming sounds of the overture came drifting towards her and with every step the thunderous melody became clearer and clearer.
Columbine was prepared for anything, and as a sign of her resolution she had dressed herself in the colours of mourning. The meek schoolgirl, seeking to comprehend the secrets of death, had put on a modest black dress with a narrow white collar and a lilac apron with a mourning border, she had woven her hair into two vestal plaits and drawn them together with a crimson ribbon.
She walked unhurriedly, thinking about beautiful things. About how Friday was a special day, forever soaked in the blood of the dreamy and starry-eyed Pierrot, whom the cruel Harlequins had nailed to planks of wood nineteen centuries before. Because the scarlet drops would not dry up, but kept oozing out and dribbling down the cross, shimmering and glittering in the sun, the fifth day of the week was filled with a deceptive, flickering gleam of calamity.
From the boulevard Columbine turned into a sidestreet, and there the overture came to an end, and she heard the first solo aria of this ominous opera – an aria so absurdly comical that the dreamer very nearly laughed out loud. For a moment she imagined that the night had played a joke on her by inviting her to a tragedy and instead staging a farce.
Standing there on the pavement under a streetlamp, about ten steps away from Prospero’s house, was a shabby old organ grinder wearing a red fez and spectacles with blue lenses. He was furiously turning the handle of his squeaky instrument and bawling out a stupid little song at the top of his tuneless voice – it must have been his own composition.
There were many couplets, but most of the song consisted of a repeated refrain, uncouth doggerel, like all the other verses. The tin-plated throat repeated it over and over again:
Columbine stood and listened for a minute or two, then burst into loud laughter, tossed the amusing old man a coin and thought: a pessimist like that – and a poet too – really ought to join us ‘lovers’.
‘Today we shall spin the Wheel of Death for the last time,’ the Doge announced to the assembled company. ‘And if a Chosen One is not named yet again, I shall invent a new ritual.’
First Caliban and then Rosencrantz threw the little gold ball, and both were rejected by Death.
‘I know what the trouble is,’ said Cyrano, wrinkling up his monumental nose. ‘The ambulance carriage that brought Prince Genji back to life is to blame for everything. It stole Death’s betrothed from under the very wedding wreath, so to speak. And now the Great Lady has taken offence at our roulette wheel. So help me, Genji, you ought to drink poison again. You’re the reason the roulette wheel is being stubborn.’
Someone laughed at this audacious joke. Genji smiled politely, but Prospero looked so unhappy that Columbine felt sorry for him.
‘No, no!’ she exclaimed. ‘Let me try my luck! If Death is offended with men, then perhaps a woman will be lucky? After all, the Tsarevich summoned the Lioness of Ecstasy!’
Once she said it, she felt frightened. What if she did land on the skull? Her presentiment, and her funeral garb both pointed to the same thing.
She strode up to the table very quickly, to give herself no time to imagine the possible consequences, grabbed the little ball and prepared to throw it.
At that very moment the last of the ‘lovers’, Gdlevsky, who was late, walked, or rather, came rushing into the room like a tornado. His ruddy face with the first timid fluff of a moustache was glowing with happiness and delight.
‘I have it!’ he shouted from the doorway. ‘I have the third Sign! And precisely on a Friday! The third Friday in a row! Do you hear, do you hear what he is singing?’ Gdlevksy pointed triumphantly at the window, through which only a minute earlier they could hear the wheezing of the barrel organ and the hoarse howling of the old man. ‘Did you hear what he was singing? “No amount of twirling will give me back my Beth”! And over and over again!’
But now, as if to spite him, the organ grinder had fallen silent. And apart from Columbine, none of the aspirants seemed to have bothered to listen to the refrain of the idiotic little song, so Gdlevsky’s announcement caused general bewilderment.
‘What Beth? What is she spinning?’ Kriton asked in amazement. ‘What are you talking about, young man?’