The ominous whine of helicopters grew to a deafening roar as they took off and landed on the roof of the castle. In our turret suite, Anastasia stamped her foot impatiently. The elderly maid looked up from her sewing and smiled at Anastasia. "Only five more minutes, Princess," the maid cajoled. "A few more rubies, my little darling."
"But, Nadia, I don't like spangles," Anastasia pouted.
The old woman looked up again, reprovingly. "All grown up now and you still don't like spangles?" She sighed. "Ach, all the spangled dresses you wore when you were a little baby. And you always flew into such tantrums. Remember when you ripped off the pearls from that pretty white dress I made for your first communion? And when your governess complained and His Highness ordered you to pick the pearls up, you picked them up with your toes one by one and then you swallowed them all and washed them down with a glass of neat brandy because you had read in a book about some Indian king who drank pearls and brandy every day to increase his sexual potency and you had such a bad stomach ache that we thought you were going to die and the cardinal had to be flown in all the way from Munich to give you the last rites but then you stuck out your tongue at him and skipped away because it was just a bad hangover? Are you still as headstrong? Just imagine what your nice young yellow gentleman will think about the way you're behaving," the old lady chided.
Anastasia looked at me and blushed. I grinned and kissed her bare shoulder. The old maid had already altered one of Prince Ludwig's tuxedos for me. Even so I was apprehensive that I might take off if exposed to even a mild gust of wind since the shoulders of the jacket stuck out about a meter on either side of me like impromptu wings. I felt even more ludicrous once Anastasia had been helped into her dress and I offered her my arm and we set off slowly to the party. A spectacular scarlet satin skirt sparkling with tiny rubies flowed out from a tight strapless bodice that clung to Anastasia's slender waist and a single immense ruby dangled between her full creamy breasts. I felt like a housefly perched on a luscious rose.
A full orchestra was playing in the landscaped gardens of the castle. Stacks of timber crackled merrily in immense porcelain stoves strategically placed in the snow all around a stone platform where a table was set for dinner. Prince Ludwig stood alone, staring at the dim lights of the little villages in the valley below. He did not turn around when we joined him. "They call me Ludwig the Mad down there," he said slowly. "Devil knows, my ancestors did all they could to prevent any misalliance in our family. And yet who can say? All it takes is one careless ancestress..."
"You're as bad as that dolt Max von Hohenstaufen," Anastasia retorted. "This fixation on the purity of blood is really too stupid."
"Ah, no, daughter, what is really stupid is this modern insistence that blood does not matter. Believe me, inbreeding always tells in the end." Prince Ludwig turned to me with a half-bow. "You should know."
"I can't say, I'm afraid," I confessed, thinking of my Scandinavian-Javanese-Jewish-Nigerian mother. Admittedly, she made every effort to be more Mongolian than thou, serving only real horsemeat in her chain of Mongolian fast-food restaurants, but she never could eat that ultimate delicacy, a sheep's eye, with quite as much relish as my father's side of the family.
"I can tell," Prince Ludwig affirmed mistakenly. "The practiced eye can always tell. Your ancestors were as careful as mine." He looked at Anastasia and I, standing side by side and nodded slowly. "Yes, you are both thoroughly inbred. You have the instinctive haughtiness, the tendency to alcoholic depression, the excessive touchiness. Do you have webbed feet? Is there not, perhaps, a record of imbecility in your family?"
I winced. The mad exploits of my great-uncle Taimur had always been a sore spot in my family, and as my grandfather was fond of saying in his usual enigmatic fashion, it really had been a quite miraculous coincidence that Stalin had died just before he could execute the blood-thirsty vengeance he had planned against our entire people, and all because Taimur had gone up to Stalin at the Opera in Moscow one evening, grinning in his usual imbecile fashion, and had tweaked Stalin's nose; of course, Stalin's bodyguards jumped out of their stunned immobility when they saw Taimur pull out a pair of scissors from his pocket in preparation for cutting off one half of Stalin's glossy black mustache, but still, the whole episode had been a ghastly embarrassment for all concerned.
"And yet," Prince Ludwig mused, "if the two of you were to have a child, the little mongrel would be boring. The complexity of your separate distinctive genes would collapse like a house of cards and one would have to begin the whole arduous process of breeding all over again."
"I don't like children," I said reassuringly.
Prince Ludwig stared oblivious into the distance. "But who can say?" he continued slowly. "Perhaps, such a mating would produce a mutant like the world has never seen, something fabulous and strange..."
Pipi came running out from the house. "Our guests will come down any moment," she announced breathlessly. She primped and preened for us. "Do I look all right?" Prince Ludwig stared coldly at his young wife's shiny skin-tight jumpsuit and grunted. "Oh, I'm so glad you approve," Pipi trilled, clapping her hands happily. "I knew black leather would be appropriate for the occasion!"
Hans-Jurgen Gauss, Lady Rudolphine Bing, and Otto Hell joined us shortly, accompanied by a tall man in rich purple robes. The Cardinal had a dignified flaccid face bearing a dull resemblance to Prince Ludwig. We all sat down to dinner. We raised our glasses and drank solemnly to our host. Servants brought crystal bowls of caviar packed tightly around the edges with snow. I piled the little black eggs onto hot buttered toast, sprinkled the toast with lemon, and chomped away with relish, between munches eavesdropping on all the conversations.
Prince Ludwig speaking quietly to Otto Hell: "…come back from the Tamato factory in Japan. In the shadow of Mount Fuji. Extraordinary facility."
"Everything painted orange, I understand."
"Fluorescent orange. Glowing in the dark. Not a single light in the whole place. Why bother? Robots building robots..."
"No humans at all?"
"Not in the factory. Engineers in the design area, of course. Led by young Luciano Shinola. Reports directly to Tamato himself."
"Saw Xox and Tamato-san at a conference last month. Got along remarkably well. Cyborgs…"
And then the Cardinal conversing with the Chief Minister: "...the class of people with whom we must deal that bothers me, my dear Gauss." The Cardinal's robes fluttered in dignified agitation. "I will not speak ill of a brother prelate but one does wish that His Holiness had not entrusted the financial security of our Mother, the Church, to..." His Eminence's thin lips puckered as though he were sucking a rotten lemon. "An Amerikan."
"But I have met Cardinal O'Greedy several times, your Eminence," Gauss protested. "He struck me as a man one can do business with."
"You cannot do business with the Church," the Cardinal said stiffly. "It is right and proper to pay homage to the Church. God's work requires a devoted laity. Our Savior did not object to Joseph of Arimathea's house or food or wine. However, if Joseph of Arimathea and Peter had drawn up a contract for Our Lord's sustenance, so many drachmas for twelve loaves of bread, so many silver pieces for a shroud, then it is fair to say that our Lord would have found such behavior displeasing."
"But does your Eminence object to the idea of Hotbank as such?"
"Don't misunderstand me, my dear fellow. I recognize that the Holier than Thou Bank is vital for the smooth functioning of the Church's worldwide operations. The Zurich Club analysis clearly demonstrates this. I am even prepared to collaborate with the Muslims. Hotbank and Bank Ripoff should indeed merge operations as that pompous little man at the Zurich Club suggests."
"The Zurich Club is involved in this?"
"Unfortunately," the Cardinal sighed. "They always poke their noses into these bank transactions. I am always having to talk to this annoying man Pickie." I grinned, recognising the name of Navel's father. "It does not matter," the Cardinal continued. "We can always launch a crusade afterwards, when the time suits us. However, I cannot agree when O'Greedy tells us that we must join hands with..." A shudder ran through the Cardinal. "With flashy upstarts whose hands are still dripping with blood. They could at least wash them first."
"But I thought the Mafia connection..." Gauss leaned forward and lowered his voice and I only caught a few more snippets of their conversation. "Suspended, yes, but for how long? I would infinitely prefer to deal merely with the Nectarini." "Trouble?" "Yes, that's all I ever hear these days, Nectarini this, Nectarino that." It would have been impossible to eavesdrop further without being too obvious. In any case, I was more interested in another conversation, on the other side of the table, between Anastasia and Lady Rudolphine.
"But why am I not afraid, Rudi?" Anastasia asked, leaning forward, elbows earnestly on the table.
Lady Rudolphine flashed her white teeth, leaned back, and sipped some more Taittinger. "Why should you be afraid, darling? Frankly, I'm disappointed. I thought I had brought you up better than that."
"But who is she, this dark woman in my dreams? And what does she want from me? Am I going to die? Is that it?" Anastasia persisted.
Lady Rudolphine shrugged a trifle contemptuously. "Anastasia, Anastasia," she chided. "You know who the dark woman is. And you know what she is offering you." Anastasia's eyes widened. Lady Rudolphine smiled again. "You know that Axel won't leave you alone as long as you keep this body. What could be a better solution?"
Anastasia shivered. "Now I am afraid," she said somberly.
Lady Rudolphine grinned at her. "I've changed bodies at least thrice in my life," she said lightly. She glanced casually over at silly little Pipi who was happily making eyes at a gruffly blushing Otto Hell. "And I'm planning to do it at least once more. All you have to do is to take a deep breath. Metaphysically speaking."
A passing rake of her blue eyes ran through me. She winked. I started. "Now take him, for instance," she said, pointing at me. "He's not afraid." I gaped. Not afraid of what? Fear was the only constant in my extensive experience of all moving objects from sheep through motor cars. In all honesty, I had to admit to myself that I was even afraid of most shampoos. "And he hasn't even had any training. Aren't you ashamed?"
Anastasia looked at me and blushed. For some reason, I was reminded of a moment much earlier in the evening, before the champagne and caviar, before the porcelain samovars in the sizzling snow, before the quails' eggs stuffed with roasted peahen and ground almonds and the astounding canard a la reine Margrethe, when her old nurse had scolded her for her dislike of spangles. A tremor of affection for this weird wicked witch ran through me, a feeling so strong that the earth shook beneath me, a vague terrestrial echo of an emotion beyond my experience, love, love unmixed, unadulterated by desire, longing, regret, or shame, a fierce adoration of the fiery curls on the bowed head opposite me, and my eyes filled with tender tears for the pure profile I saw now only in a white glare, for the full sensitive lips speaking words I could not hear...
And the earth shook harder and the noise grew louder and then I could see no longer in the hard brightness which enveloped us, the screaming luminosity of searchlights, the pounding vibrations of unearthly machines, and squinting up I could see nothing but a play of light emanating from dark hovering aerial menaces which I recognized only by the ominous whine of their engines...
"But, Nadia, I don't like spangles," Anastasia pouted.
The old woman looked up again, reprovingly. "All grown up now and you still don't like spangles?" She sighed. "Ach, all the spangled dresses you wore when you were a little baby. And you always flew into such tantrums. Remember when you ripped off the pearls from that pretty white dress I made for your first communion? And when your governess complained and His Highness ordered you to pick the pearls up, you picked them up with your toes one by one and then you swallowed them all and washed them down with a glass of neat brandy because you had read in a book about some Indian king who drank pearls and brandy every day to increase his sexual potency and you had such a bad stomach ache that we thought you were going to die and the cardinal had to be flown in all the way from Munich to give you the last rites but then you stuck out your tongue at him and skipped away because it was just a bad hangover? Are you still as headstrong? Just imagine what your nice young yellow gentleman will think about the way you're behaving," the old lady chided.
Anastasia looked at me and blushed. I grinned and kissed her bare shoulder. The old maid had already altered one of Prince Ludwig's tuxedos for me. Even so I was apprehensive that I might take off if exposed to even a mild gust of wind since the shoulders of the jacket stuck out about a meter on either side of me like impromptu wings. I felt even more ludicrous once Anastasia had been helped into her dress and I offered her my arm and we set off slowly to the party. A spectacular scarlet satin skirt sparkling with tiny rubies flowed out from a tight strapless bodice that clung to Anastasia's slender waist and a single immense ruby dangled between her full creamy breasts. I felt like a housefly perched on a luscious rose.
A full orchestra was playing in the landscaped gardens of the castle. Stacks of timber crackled merrily in immense porcelain stoves strategically placed in the snow all around a stone platform where a table was set for dinner. Prince Ludwig stood alone, staring at the dim lights of the little villages in the valley below. He did not turn around when we joined him. "They call me Ludwig the Mad down there," he said slowly. "Devil knows, my ancestors did all they could to prevent any misalliance in our family. And yet who can say? All it takes is one careless ancestress..."
"You're as bad as that dolt Max von Hohenstaufen," Anastasia retorted. "This fixation on the purity of blood is really too stupid."
"Ah, no, daughter, what is really stupid is this modern insistence that blood does not matter. Believe me, inbreeding always tells in the end." Prince Ludwig turned to me with a half-bow. "You should know."
"I can't say, I'm afraid," I confessed, thinking of my Scandinavian-Javanese-Jewish-Nigerian mother. Admittedly, she made every effort to be more Mongolian than thou, serving only real horsemeat in her chain of Mongolian fast-food restaurants, but she never could eat that ultimate delicacy, a sheep's eye, with quite as much relish as my father's side of the family.
"I can tell," Prince Ludwig affirmed mistakenly. "The practiced eye can always tell. Your ancestors were as careful as mine." He looked at Anastasia and I, standing side by side and nodded slowly. "Yes, you are both thoroughly inbred. You have the instinctive haughtiness, the tendency to alcoholic depression, the excessive touchiness. Do you have webbed feet? Is there not, perhaps, a record of imbecility in your family?"
I winced. The mad exploits of my great-uncle Taimur had always been a sore spot in my family, and as my grandfather was fond of saying in his usual enigmatic fashion, it really had been a quite miraculous coincidence that Stalin had died just before he could execute the blood-thirsty vengeance he had planned against our entire people, and all because Taimur had gone up to Stalin at the Opera in Moscow one evening, grinning in his usual imbecile fashion, and had tweaked Stalin's nose; of course, Stalin's bodyguards jumped out of their stunned immobility when they saw Taimur pull out a pair of scissors from his pocket in preparation for cutting off one half of Stalin's glossy black mustache, but still, the whole episode had been a ghastly embarrassment for all concerned.
"And yet," Prince Ludwig mused, "if the two of you were to have a child, the little mongrel would be boring. The complexity of your separate distinctive genes would collapse like a house of cards and one would have to begin the whole arduous process of breeding all over again."
"I don't like children," I said reassuringly.
Prince Ludwig stared oblivious into the distance. "But who can say?" he continued slowly. "Perhaps, such a mating would produce a mutant like the world has never seen, something fabulous and strange..."
Pipi came running out from the house. "Our guests will come down any moment," she announced breathlessly. She primped and preened for us. "Do I look all right?" Prince Ludwig stared coldly at his young wife's shiny skin-tight jumpsuit and grunted. "Oh, I'm so glad you approve," Pipi trilled, clapping her hands happily. "I knew black leather would be appropriate for the occasion!"
Hans-Jurgen Gauss, Lady Rudolphine Bing, and Otto Hell joined us shortly, accompanied by a tall man in rich purple robes. The Cardinal had a dignified flaccid face bearing a dull resemblance to Prince Ludwig. We all sat down to dinner. We raised our glasses and drank solemnly to our host. Servants brought crystal bowls of caviar packed tightly around the edges with snow. I piled the little black eggs onto hot buttered toast, sprinkled the toast with lemon, and chomped away with relish, between munches eavesdropping on all the conversations.
Prince Ludwig speaking quietly to Otto Hell: "…come back from the Tamato factory in Japan. In the shadow of Mount Fuji. Extraordinary facility."
"Everything painted orange, I understand."
"Fluorescent orange. Glowing in the dark. Not a single light in the whole place. Why bother? Robots building robots..."
"No humans at all?"
"Not in the factory. Engineers in the design area, of course. Led by young Luciano Shinola. Reports directly to Tamato himself."
"Saw Xox and Tamato-san at a conference last month. Got along remarkably well. Cyborgs…"
And then the Cardinal conversing with the Chief Minister: "...the class of people with whom we must deal that bothers me, my dear Gauss." The Cardinal's robes fluttered in dignified agitation. "I will not speak ill of a brother prelate but one does wish that His Holiness had not entrusted the financial security of our Mother, the Church, to..." His Eminence's thin lips puckered as though he were sucking a rotten lemon. "An Amerikan."
"But I have met Cardinal O'Greedy several times, your Eminence," Gauss protested. "He struck me as a man one can do business with."
"You cannot do business with the Church," the Cardinal said stiffly. "It is right and proper to pay homage to the Church. God's work requires a devoted laity. Our Savior did not object to Joseph of Arimathea's house or food or wine. However, if Joseph of Arimathea and Peter had drawn up a contract for Our Lord's sustenance, so many drachmas for twelve loaves of bread, so many silver pieces for a shroud, then it is fair to say that our Lord would have found such behavior displeasing."
"But does your Eminence object to the idea of Hotbank as such?"
"Don't misunderstand me, my dear fellow. I recognize that the Holier than Thou Bank is vital for the smooth functioning of the Church's worldwide operations. The Zurich Club analysis clearly demonstrates this. I am even prepared to collaborate with the Muslims. Hotbank and Bank Ripoff should indeed merge operations as that pompous little man at the Zurich Club suggests."
"The Zurich Club is involved in this?"
"Unfortunately," the Cardinal sighed. "They always poke their noses into these bank transactions. I am always having to talk to this annoying man Pickie." I grinned, recognising the name of Navel's father. "It does not matter," the Cardinal continued. "We can always launch a crusade afterwards, when the time suits us. However, I cannot agree when O'Greedy tells us that we must join hands with..." A shudder ran through the Cardinal. "With flashy upstarts whose hands are still dripping with blood. They could at least wash them first."
"But I thought the Mafia connection..." Gauss leaned forward and lowered his voice and I only caught a few more snippets of their conversation. "Suspended, yes, but for how long? I would infinitely prefer to deal merely with the Nectarini." "Trouble?" "Yes, that's all I ever hear these days, Nectarini this, Nectarino that." It would have been impossible to eavesdrop further without being too obvious. In any case, I was more interested in another conversation, on the other side of the table, between Anastasia and Lady Rudolphine.
"But why am I not afraid, Rudi?" Anastasia asked, leaning forward, elbows earnestly on the table.
Lady Rudolphine flashed her white teeth, leaned back, and sipped some more Taittinger. "Why should you be afraid, darling? Frankly, I'm disappointed. I thought I had brought you up better than that."
"But who is she, this dark woman in my dreams? And what does she want from me? Am I going to die? Is that it?" Anastasia persisted.
Lady Rudolphine shrugged a trifle contemptuously. "Anastasia, Anastasia," she chided. "You know who the dark woman is. And you know what she is offering you." Anastasia's eyes widened. Lady Rudolphine smiled again. "You know that Axel won't leave you alone as long as you keep this body. What could be a better solution?"
Anastasia shivered. "Now I am afraid," she said somberly.
Lady Rudolphine grinned at her. "I've changed bodies at least thrice in my life," she said lightly. She glanced casually over at silly little Pipi who was happily making eyes at a gruffly blushing Otto Hell. "And I'm planning to do it at least once more. All you have to do is to take a deep breath. Metaphysically speaking."
A passing rake of her blue eyes ran through me. She winked. I started. "Now take him, for instance," she said, pointing at me. "He's not afraid." I gaped. Not afraid of what? Fear was the only constant in my extensive experience of all moving objects from sheep through motor cars. In all honesty, I had to admit to myself that I was even afraid of most shampoos. "And he hasn't even had any training. Aren't you ashamed?"
Anastasia looked at me and blushed. For some reason, I was reminded of a moment much earlier in the evening, before the champagne and caviar, before the porcelain samovars in the sizzling snow, before the quails' eggs stuffed with roasted peahen and ground almonds and the astounding canard a la reine Margrethe, when her old nurse had scolded her for her dislike of spangles. A tremor of affection for this weird wicked witch ran through me, a feeling so strong that the earth shook beneath me, a vague terrestrial echo of an emotion beyond my experience, love, love unmixed, unadulterated by desire, longing, regret, or shame, a fierce adoration of the fiery curls on the bowed head opposite me, and my eyes filled with tender tears for the pure profile I saw now only in a white glare, for the full sensitive lips speaking words I could not hear...
And the earth shook harder and the noise grew louder and then I could see no longer in the hard brightness which enveloped us, the screaming luminosity of searchlights, the pounding vibrations of unearthly machines, and squinting up I could see nothing but a play of light emanating from dark hovering aerial menaces which I recognized only by the ominous whine of their engines...
