‘Do you like to make wild, abandoned love in the night, on the roof, to the hurricane’s roar, with the teeming rain lashing your naked body?’ Kriton enquired without lowering his voice, ‘I truly love it.’
The poor Irkutsk girl was unable to find an answer to that. She looked round at Petya, but the rotten traitor moved away with a preoccupied air, striking up a conversation with a poorly dressed young man of very unattractive appearance: bright, bulging eyes, a wide, mobile mouth and blackheads scattered across his face.
‘You must have a fine taut body,’ Kriton surmised. ‘Whiplash-lean, like a young predator. I can just see you in the pose of a panther prepared to pounce.’
What should she do? How should she answer?
According to the Irkutsk code of conduct, she ought to slap the impudent fellow across the face, but here, in this club of the elect, that was unthinkable – they would think her a hypocrite or, even worse, a prim and proper provincial. And what was so insulting anyway, Columbine thought to herself. After all, this man said what he thought, and that was more honest than striking up a conversation about music or the various ills of society with a woman who had taken your fancy. Kriton looked absolutely nothing like a ‘young sage’, but even so the audacious things he said made Columbine quite feverish – no one had ever spoken to her like that before. However, on looking more closely at the outspoken gentleman, she decided that he probably did bear a certain resemblance to the god Pan.
‘I wish to teach you the terrible art of love, young Columbine,’ the goat-hoofed seducer cooed and squeezed her hand – the same one that Petya had recently squeezed. Columbine stood there woodenly and submissively allowed him to knead her fingers. A long stub of ash fell from her papirosa on to the carpet.
But just then a rapid whispering ran across the salon, and everybody turned towards a tall leather-upholstered double door.
It went absolutely quiet and she heard measured footsteps approaching. Then the door swung open without a sound and a figure – improbably broad, almost square – appeared on the threshold. But the next moment the man stepped into the room, and it was clear that his build was absolutely normal, he was simply wearing a wide gown like those worn by European university professors or doctors of philosophy.
No greetings were pronounced, but it seemed to Columbine that the moment those leather doors opened soundlessly, everything around her changed in some elusive manner: the shadows became blacker, the fire became brighter, sounds were suddenly more subdued.
At first she thought the man who had come in was really old: he had grey hair, cut in an old-fashioned style, the same length all round. Turgenev, Columbine thought. Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev. He looks just like him. Exactly like the portrait in the grammar-school library.
However, when the man in the gown halted beside the brazier and the crimson glow lit up his face from below, the eyes were not those of an old man at all – they were a refulgent black, and they glowed even brighter than the coals. Columbine made out a thoroughbred aquiline nose, thick white eyebrows and fleshy cheeks. Venerable – that’s what he is, she said to herself. Like in Lermontov: ‘The venerable grey-haired sage’, Or was it really Lermontov? Well, it didn’t matter.
The venerable sage ran his gaze slowly round the assembled company and it was clear immediately that not a single detail or, perhaps, secret thought could possibly escape those eyes. The calm gaze rested on Columbine for just a moment, no longer, and she suddenly swayed and trembled all over.
Without even realising it, she pulled her hand away from the ‘teacher of terrible love’ and pressed it to her breast.
Kriton whispered in her ear in a derisive tone: ‘And this is from Pushkin.
‘Those “curly locks of tender brown” are yours, are they?’ the young lady snapped back, stung. ‘And anyway, who needs you and your Pushkin!’
She stomped off ostentatiously and stood beside Petya.
‘That’s Prospero,’ he told her in a low voice.
‘I guessed that without you.’
Their host cast a brief glance at the two whisperers, and immediately absolute silence fell. The Doge reached out one hand to the brazier, so that he looked like Mucius Scaevola in the fourth-class history book. He sighed and uttered a single word: ‘Dark.’
And then everybody gasped as he placed a red-hot coal on his palm. He really was Scaevola!
‘I think it will be better like this,’ Prospero said calmly, raising the lump of fire to the large crystal candelabra and lighting the twelve candles one after another.
The light revealed a round table, covered with a dark tablecloth. The darkness retreated to the corners of the room and now that she could finally examine the ‘lovers of death’ properly, Columbine began turning her head in all directions.
‘Who will read?’ their host enquired, seating himself on a chair with a high carved back.
All twelve of the other chairs set around the table were simpler and lower.
Several people immediately volunteered.
‘The Lioness of Ecstasy will begin,’ Prospero declared.
Columbine stared wide-eyed at the famous Lorelei Rubinstein, She didn’t look as she might have been imagined from her poems: not a slim, fragile lily with impulsive movements and huge black eyes, but a rather substantial lady in a shapeless robe that hung down to her heels. The Lioness looked about forty, but that was in the semi-darkness.
She cleared her throat and said in a rumbling voice: ‘ “The Black Rose”. Written last night.’
Her plump cheeks quivered with emotion, her eyes darted upwards, towards the rainbow sparkling of the chandelier, her eyebrows knitted together dolefully.
Columbine gave Lucifer a gentle slap to stop him distracting her by slithering round her neck, and she became all ears.
The celebrated poetess declaimed wonderfully, intoning with real passion.
Just think of it, she had heard a new poem by Lorelei Rubinstein, one she had only just written! She and these few chosen ones were the first!
Columbine began applauding loudly, but immediately broke off, realising that she had committed a faux pas. Applause was apparently not the done thing here. Everybody – including Prospero – looked at the enraptured young woman without saying a word. She froze with her hands parted and blushed. She had muffed it again!