Part 29 (1/2)
Not a sound.
”h.e.l.lo?”
Perhaps a high thin whining noise?
”It's meeee,” he said, trying the door. It wasn't locked. Setting down the coffin, he opened the door cautiously.
A strong, strong smell: spice and sweetness, and blood perhaps. Golescu pulled out a handkerchief and clapped it over his nose. He leaned forward, peering into the gloom within the wagon.
Amaunet lav stretched out on her bed, fully dressed. Her arms were crossed on her bosom, like a corpse's. Her skin was the color of ashes and her eyes were closed. She looked so radiantly happy that Golescu was unsure, at first, who lay there. He edged in sideways, bent to peer down at her.
”Madame?” He reached down to take her hand. It was ice-cold. ”Oh!”
She just lay there, transfigured by her condition, beautiful at last.
Golescu staggered backward, and something fell from the bed. A cup rolled at his feet, a chalice cut of black stone. It appeared at first to be empty but as it rolled, a slow black drop oozed forth to the lip.
”The Black Cup,” stated Golescu, feeling the impact of a metaphorical cream pie. He blinked rapidly, overwhelmed by conflicting emotions. It was a moment before he was able to realize that the whining noise was coming from the cabinet under Amaunet's bed. Sighing, he bent and hauled Emil forth.
”Come out, poor little maggot,” he said.
”I'm hungry,” said Emil.
”Is that all you have to say?” Golescu demanded. ”The Queen of Sorrow is dead, and you're concerned for a lousy potato?”
Emil said nothing in reply.
”Did she kill herself?”
”The cup killed her,” Emil said.
”Poison in the cup, yes, I can see that, you ninny! I meant-why?”
”She wanted to die,” said Emil. ”She was too old, but she couldn't die. She said, 'Make me a poison to take my life away.' I mixed the cup every month, but it never worked. Then she said, 'What if you tried Theobromine?'. I tried it. It worked. She laughed.”
Golescu stood there staring down at him a long moment, and finally collapsed backward onto a stool.
”Holy G.o.d, Holy mother of G.o.d,” he murmured, with tears in his eyes. ”It was true. She was an immortal thing.”
”I'm hungry,” Emil repeated.
”But how could anyone get tired of being alive? So many good things! Fresh bread with b.u.t.ter.
Sleep. Making people believe you. Interesting possibilities,” said Golescu. ”She had good luck handed to her, how could she want to throw it away?”
”They don't have luck,” said Emil.
”And what are exactly?” said Golescu, staring at him. ”You, with all your magic potions? Hey, can you make the one that gives eternal life, too?”
”No,” said Emil.
”You can't? You're sure?”
”Yes.”
”But then, what do you know?” Golescu rubbed his chin. ”You're an idiot. But then again....” He looked at Amaunet, whose fixed smile seemed more unsettling every time he saw it. ”Maybe she did cut a deal with the Devil after all. Maybe eternal life isn't all it's cracked up to be, if she wanted so badly to be rid of it. What's that in her hand?”
Leaning forward, he opened her closed fist. Something black protruded there: the snout of a tiny figure, crudely sculpted in clay. A crocodile.
”I want a potato,” said Emil.
Golescu shuddered.
”We have to dig a grave first,” he said.
(n the end he dug it himself, because Emil, when goggled and swathed against daylight, was incapable of using a shovel.
”Rest in peace, my fair unknown,” grunted Golescu, crouching to lower Amaunet's shrouded body into the grave. ”I'd have given you the coffin, but I have other uses for it, and the winding sheet's very flattering, really. Not that I suppose you care.”
He stood up and removed his hat. Raising his eyes to heaven, he added: ”Holy angels, if this poor creature really sold her soul to the Devil, then please pay no attention to my humble interruption. But if there were by chance any loopholes she might take advantage of to avoid d.a.m.nation, I hope you guide her soul through them to eternal rest. And, by the way, I'm going to live a much more virtuous life from now on. Amen.”
He replaced his hat, picked up the shovel once more and filled in the grave. * * *
That night Golescu wept a little for Amaunet, or at least for lost opportunity, and he dreamed of her when he slept. By the time the sun rose pale through the smoke of Kronstadt's chimneys, though, he had begun to smile.
”I possess four fine horses and two wagons now,” he told Emil, as he poked up the fire under the potato-kettle. ”Nothing to turn up one's nose at, eh? And I have you, you poor child of misfortune. Too long has your light been hidden from the world.”
Emil just sat there, staring through his goggles at the kettle. Golescu smeared plum jam on a slab of bread and took an enormous bite.
”Bucharest,” he said explosively, through a full mouth. ”Constantinople, Vienna, Prague, Berlin. We will walk down streets of gold in all the great cities of the world! All the potatoes your tiny heart could wish for, served up on nice restaurant china. And for me” Golescu swallowed. ”The life I was meant to live. Fame and universal respect. Beautiful women. Financial embarra.s.sment only a memory!
”We'll give the teeming ma.s.ses what they desire, my friend. What scourges people through life, after all? Fear of old age. Fear of inadequacy Loneliness and sterility, what terrible things! How well will people pay to be cured of them, eh? Ah, Emil, what a lot of work you have to do.”
Emil turned his blank face.
”Work,” he said.
”Yes,” said Golescu, grinning at him. ”With your pots and pans and chemicals, you genius. Chickens be d.a.m.ned! We will accomplish great things, you and I. Future generations will regard us as heroes.
Like, er, the fellow who stole fire from heaven. Procrustes, that was his name.
”But I have every consideration for your modest and retiring nature. I will mercifully s.h.i.+eld you from the limelight, and take the full force of pubic acclaim myself. For I shall now become...” Golescu dropped his voice an octave, ”Professor Hades!”
(t was on Market Day, a full week later, that the vardas rolled through Kronstadt. At the hour when the streets were most crowded, Golescu drove like a majestic snail.
Those edged to the side of the road had plenty of time to regard the new paint job. The yardas were now decorated with suns, moons and stars, what perhaps might have been alchemical symbols, gold and scarlet on black, and the words: PROFESSOR HADES.
MASTER OF THE MISERIES.