Part 3 (1/2)

”Biblical G.o.d.... Gaseous vertebrate.... I am not a believer.”

”That's from Huxley,” insinuatingly observed Monfiori. ”There was a biblical G.o.d, though.... The point is that He is not alone; there are numerous biblical G.o.ds.... A host. My favorite one is ... 'He sneezes and there is light. He has eyes like the eyelashes of dawn.' Do you understand what this means? Do you? And there is more: '... the fleshy parts of his body are solidly interconnected, and they won't budge.' Well? Well? Do you understand?”

”Wait a minute,” shouted Kern.

”No, no-you must think about it. 'He transforms the sea into a seething ointment; he leaves behind a trail of radiance; the abyss is akin to a patch of gray hair!' ”

”Wait, will you,” interrupted Kern. ”I want to tell you that I have decided to kill myself....”

Monfiori gave him an opaque, attentive look, covering his gla.s.s with his palm. He was silent for a time.

”Just as I thought,” he began with unexpected gentleness. ”Tonight, as you were watching the people dancing, and before that, when you got up from the table ... There was something about your face ... The crease between the brows ... That special one ... I understood right away ...” He fell silent, caressing the table's edge.

”Listen to what I'm going to tell you,” he continued, lowering his heavy, purplish eyelids with their wartlike lashes. ”I search everywhere for the likes of you-in expensive hotels, on trains, in seaside resorts, at night on the quays of big cities.” A dreamy little sneer fleeted across his lips.

”I recall, in Florence once ...” He raised his doelike eyes. ”Listen, Kern-I'd like to be present when you do it.... May I?”

Kern, in a numb slouch, sensed a chill in his chest under his starched s.h.i.+rt. We're both drunk, the words rushed through his brain, and he's spooky.

”May I?” repeated Monfiori with a pout, ”Pretty please?” (touch of clammy, hairy little hand).

With a jerk and a groggy sway Kern rose from his chair.

”Go to h.e.l.l! Let me out.... I was joking....”

The attentive gaze of Monfiori's leechy eyes did not waver.

”I've had enough of you! I've had enough of everything.” Kern dashed off with a splashlike gesture of his hands. Monfiori's gaze came unstuck with what seemed like a smack.

”Murk! Puppet!... Wordplay!... Basta!...”

He banged his hip painfully on the edge of the table. The raspberry fatty behind his vacillating bar puffed out his white s.h.i.+rtfront and began to float, as though in a curved mirror, amid his bottles. Kern traversed the gliding ripples of the carpet and, with his shoulder, shoved a falling gla.s.s door.

The hotel was fast asleep. Mounting the cus.h.i.+ony stairs with difficulty, he located his room. A key protruded from the adjoining door. Someone had forgotten to lock himself in. Flowers meandered in the dim light of the corridor. Once he was in his room he spent a long time groping along the wall in search of the light switch. Then he collapsed into an armchair by the window.

It struck him that he must write certain letters, farewell letters. But the syrupy drinks had weakened him. His ears filled with a dense, hollow din, and gelid waves breathed on his brow. He had to write a letter, and there was something else troubling him. As if he had left home and forgotten his wallet. The mirrory blackness of the window reflected his stripelike collar and his pale forehead. He had splashed some intoxicating drops on his s.h.i.+rtfront. He must write that letter ... no, that wasn't it. Suddenly something flashed in his mind's eye. The key! The key protruding from the neighboring door....

Kern rose ponderously and went out into the dimly lit corridor. From the enormous key dangled a s.h.i.+ny wafer with the number 35. He stopped in front of this white door. There was an avid tremor in his legs.

A frosty wind lashed his brow. The window of the s.p.a.cious, illuminated bedroom was wide open. On the wide bed, in open-collared yellow pajamas, Isabel lay supine. A pale hand drooped, with a smouldering cigarette between its fingers. Sleep must have overcome her without warning.

Kern approached the bed. He banged his knee against a chair, on which a guitar uttered a faint tw.a.n.g. Isabel's blue hair lay in tight circles on the pillow. He took a look at her dark eyelids, at the delicate shadow between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. He touched the blanket. Her eyes opened immediately. Then, in a hunchbacked kind of stance, Kern said: ”I need your love. Tomorrow I shall shoot myself.”

He had never dreamt that a woman, even if taken by surprise, could be so startled. First Isabel remained motionless, then she lunged, looking back at the open window, slipping instantly from the bed, and rushed past Kern with bowed head, as if expecting a blow from above.

The door slammed. Some sheets of letter paper fluttered from the table.

Kern remained standing in the middle of the s.p.a.cious bright room. Some grapes glowed purple and gold on the night table.

”Madwoman,” he said aloud.

He laboriously s.h.i.+fted his shoulders. Like a steed he trembled with a prolonged s.h.i.+ver from the cold. Then, suddenly, he froze motionless.

Outside the window, swelling, flying, a joyous barking sound approached by agitated jolts. In a wink the square of black night in the window opening filled and came aboil with solid, boisterous fur. In one broad and noisy sweep this roughish fur obscured the night sky from one window frame to the other. Another instant and it swelled tensely, obliquely burst in, and unfolded. Amid the whistling spread of agitated fur flashed a white face. Kern grabbed the guitar by its finger-board and, with all his strength, struck the white face flying at him. Like some fluffy tempest, the giant wing's rib knocked him off his feet. He was overwhelmed by an animal smell. Kern rose with a lurch.

In the center of the room lay an enormous angel.

He occupied the entire room, the entire hotel, the entire world. His right wing had bent, leaning its angle against the mirrored dresser. The left one swung ponderously, catching on the legs of an overturned chair. The chair banged back and forth on the floor. The brown fur of the wings steamed, iridescent with frost. Deafened by the blow, the angel propped itself on its palms like a sphinx. Blue veins swelled on its white hands, and hollows of shadow showed on its shoulders next to the clavicles. Its elongated, myopic-looking eyes, pale-green like predawn air, gazed at Kern without blinking from beneath straight, joined brows.

Suffocating from the pungent odor of wet fur, Kern stood motionless in the apathy of ultimate fear, examining the giant, steamy wings and the white face.

A hollow din began beyond the door in the corridor, and Kern was overcome by a different emotion: heart-rending shame. He was ashamed to the point of pain, of horror, that in a moment someone might come in and find him and this incredible creature.

The angel heaved a noisy breath, moved. But his arms had grown weak, and he collapsed on his chest. A wing jerked. Grinding his teeth, trying not to look, Kern stooped over him, took hold of the mound of damp, odorous fur and the cold, sticky shoulders. He noticed with sickening horror that the angel's feet were pale and boneless, and that he would be unable to stand on them. The angel did not resist. Kern hurriedly pulled him toward the wardrobe, flung open the mirrored door, began pus.h.i.+ng and squeezing the wings into the creaking depths. He seized them by their ribs, trying to bend them and pack them in. Unfurling flaps of fur kept slapping him in the chest. At last he closed the door with a solid shove. At that instant there came a lacerating, unbearable shriek, the shriek of an animal crushed by a wheel. He had slammed the door on one of the wings, that was it. A small corner of the wing protruded from the crack. Opening the door slightly, Kern shoved the curly wedge in with his hand. He turned the key.

It grew very quiet. Kern felt hot tears running down his face. He took a breath and rushed for the corridor. Isabel lay next to the wall, a cowering heap of black silk. He gathered her in his arms, carried her into his room, and lowered her onto the bed. Then he s.n.a.t.c.hed from his suitcase the heavy Parabellum, slammed the clip home, ran out holding his breath, and burst into Room 35.

The two halves of a broken plate lay, all white, on the carpet. The grapes were scattered.

Kern saw himself in the mirrored door of the wardrobe: a lock of hair fallen over an eyebrow, a starched dress s.h.i.+rtfront spattered with red, the lengthwise glint of the pistol's barrel.

”Must finish it off,” he exclaimed tonelessly, and opened the wardrobe.

There was nothing but a gust of odorous fluff. Oily brown tufts eddying about the room. The wardrobe was empty. On its floor lay a white squashed hatbox.

Kern approached the window and looked out. Furry little clouds were gliding across the moon and breathing dim rainbows around it. He shut the cas.e.m.e.nts, put the chair back in its place, and kicked some brown tufts under the bed. Then he cautiously went out into the corridor. It was quiet as before. People sleep soundly in mountain hotels.

And when he returned to his room what he saw was Isabel with her bare feet hanging from the bed, trembling, with her head between her hands. He felt ashamed, as he had, not long ago, when the angel was looking at him with its odd greenish eyes.

”Tell me, where is he?” asked Isabel breathlessly.

Kern turned away, went to the desk, sat down, opened the blotter, and replied, ”I don't know.”

Isabel retracted her bare feet onto the bed.

”May I stay here with you for now? I'm so frightened....”

Kern gave a silent nod. Dominating the tremor of his hand, he started writing. Isabel began speaking again, in an agitated, toneless voice, but for some reason it appeared to Kern that her fright was of the female, earthly variety.

”I met him yesterday as I was flying on my skis in the dark. Last night he came to me.”

Trying not to listen, Kern wrote in a bold hand: ”My dear friend, this is my last letter. I could never forget how you helped me when disaster crashed down on me. He probably lives on a peak where he hunts alpine eagles and feeds on their meat....”