An unusual diffidence pervaded me as I got out of the elevator during my first afternoon back at the University of Truth and Justice. Through the glass doors of the large dining room I saw again a crowd of bright young faces, but, in the polished glass, darkly, I also saw the blurred reflection of my own drawn and melancholy face, and I faltered at the contrast. I was the shy stranger at a foreign feast, anonymous.
But then a hand waved at me and a friendly face smiled in in welcome. "Hi! Lord Hades told me you were here," a handsome young man boomed jovially. Perfect white teeth glittered through carefully groomed designer stubble. "How was Berlin? Glad to be back in Prague?"
I blinked. This person seemed to know me. How much did he know? "Oh, Berlin is Berlin as usual," I replied evasively, trying to remember his name. The olive eyes gleaming through incredibly long eyelashes seemed familiar. Had Anastasia and I blindfolded him with a silk scarf before whipping him silly? Had he pressed charges? "And Prague is Prague," I added, with a noncommittal nod. "Where is Otto?"
"Oh, he's taken up ice-fishing," the young fellow replied. "He's gone for the day."
"Would you do me a favor? Could you let Pipi von G and T know that Lady Rudolphine Bing needs her for a moment?"
"Sure thing!" the young man replied happily. "Pipi is that little blonde cutie, right? Did Lord Hades really murder her husband?"
A pudgy man at the end of the table looked up at me, gasped, buried his sallow face in his hands, and began to sob loudly, but I paid no attention because I was too pleased to see a face to which I thought I could attach a name: that bony leprechaun face and wild crop of thinning hair belonged to my friend, the philosopher with whom I had spoken so often about ethics at the end of the world... damn, what was his name? And that pretty woman with high color in her cheeks and short silky black hair, surely I had seen her before as well? I passed a hand over my icy forehead and sat down heavily: what had Lady Rudolphine's ointment, Lethe, done to my memory? I resolved to face the crisis with cunning. "Won't you introduce me to everyone?"
"Sorry," the young man said apologetically. "I thought you knew everyone here, but, that's right, you left before the University really began functioning. Well, you know Immanuel, of course, and Divka..." I grinned with relief at my old friends. "This is Hachek Katastrofski..." A gaunt young man with long greasy blond hair, a high forehead, and an immensely hooked thin nose smirked insincerely at me and immersed himself again in his plate. He was playing with his food with great absorption but not a single bite or sip passed his lips. I resolved to ask about it later. Hadn't someone (wasn't it that famous Polish ex-dissident journalist, what was his name?) mentioned that Katastrofski had Fascist leanings? I recalled that Hitler was vegetarian and a teetotaller, which might explain Katastrofski's odd behavior, but why should this bizarre repugnance for the best things in life extend to rice pudding?
I wasn't the only one watching Katastrofski play with his food. A very pretty girl with short blonde curls sat next to the young Fascist, biting her rosy lower lip as she stared at his ostentatious profile. "That's Delilah." My young host exhaled the name reverently. "She's Professor Masaryk's assistant. We work together," he added proudly. Then, noticing her obvious fascination with Katastrofski, he frowned. "Lila, wake up," he snapped rather tetchily. "I'm trying to introduce you." The girl started, blushed, shook my hand, and sank back again into worried contemplation of her neighbor's nose. I too felt that it was a disturbing object, so much so that, in the days to come, I was never able to look at Katastrofski for longer than five seconds at a time. His nose reminded me too strongly of a craggy peak I was once forced to climb in the desolate wastes of the Altai mountain range in Central Asia and I suffer acutely from vertigo.
"What work do you do with Delilah?" I asked ingenously.
"I told you when we met in Berlin. I'm the coordinator of the Department of Culture. It's a great responsibility but I feel ready for it. I am, after all, Benito! And I like my job!" he added, laughing uproariously. His sheer animal vitality was infectious and I found myself laughing along. The pudgy man at the end of the table raised his head from his hands and gave us a look laden with misery and hatred.
"Who's he?" I whispered.
"That's Nero Insanetti," Benito whispered back. "He's Lord Hades's assistant. He's been acting very strange lately..."
"I know you're talking about me," the pudgy man screamed hoarsely. "All of you. I see your smiles." Nero drew a hand across his eyes rapidly, leaving sweaty smudge-marks on his forehead. "I know your wicked plots. You are cold and heartless. It is the Anglo-Saxon mentality." His voice broke as he stared sadly at Benito. Tears brimmed in his puffy eyes. "But you, my young Italian comrade? Et tu, Benito?" He slumped off his chair and crashed onto the floor. The babble of happy young voices ceased for a moment as people turned to stare.
"There, there, Nero," Benito said soothingly. He crossed over to the huddled form lying shapeless on the floor, pulled out a little plastic tube from his handsome tweed jacket, forced open Nero's mouth, and dropped the pill in. "Take a vitamin. It'll make you feel better. You really ought to take them more often."
Nero shook his head feebly and spat the pill out. He sat up, drool running down his chin, and glowered at Benito. "Ah, you young fool," he cried weakly. "Do you even know what is in these vitamins?" I listened intently, wondering if this obvious psychotic was onto something. What did he know? In the event I was disappointed. Nero launched into a long, unoriginal, and rather repetitive diatribe against modern faith in science. "It all started with fluoride in the water," he screamed as the big men in white uniforms came to drag him away. "Contaminating our precious bodily fluids. It is a plot to destroy our European culture... I will never take vitamins! I will suffer instead... And you!" he screamed at me. "You are the Antichrist! Don't smile at me! We know who you are..."
"What a kook," Benito said, shaking his head as we watched Nero shake his fist at me from a distance. "What's there to suffer about?"
An image suddenly pierced my heart: the memory of Anastasia stabbing her portrait in the living room of her apartment in Berlin, her subsequent faint and my attempts to revive her, the mistrustful look on her waif-face as she came back to life in my arms... I staggered and clawed at my chest. Lady Rudolphine's lotion, Lethe, had brought me relief for some time, but the throbbing anguish told me that my wounded memory had been torn open afresh and my broken heart was bleeding, again.
"Are you all right?" Benito looked concerned. I nodded faintly. "It must have been a shock," he added sympathetically. "Nero screaming at you like that. Not very nice, really," he said primly. "Even if you were the Antichrist."
"Is he Katholic?"
"I don't know Nero that well," Benito replied prissily. "I never inquire into people's personal beliefs. Personally, I'm into Limboism."
"What's that?"
"Oh, we're the new world religion," Benito answered breezily. "We're a synthesis of all the others. We're very tolerant."
"Do you believe in hell?"
"Gosh, no." Benito looked shocked. "Our religious leaders talk about an after-life in which those who don't share our beliefs linger on. Without any pain, of course. They just don't make it to paradise."
"A kind of cocktail lounge?"
"Yeah, maybe," Benito replied, his eyes twinkling brightly. "Perpetual Happy Hour."
"So what makes heaven special?"
"Your drinks are on the house." Benito laughed heartily.
"In that case, this must be heaven," a husky voice drawled. I spun around, my heart drumming against my ribs in a staccato beat, its thunder reverberating in my ears... The voice sounded so familiar. I breathed deeply. A slim woman stood leaning languidly against a pillar. She smiled slowly at me. A fine flow of mahogany hair flooded past a pair of hazel eyes, two circlets of olive green flecked with streaks of burnt siena around two wells of impenetrable black. She was wearing a beautifully cut black suit. I noticed irrelevantly the adroitly applied makeup on her pale olive face. She was beautiful and yet there was something very wrong, as though she were missing some vital body part… "You're sweating," she said in an amused murmur. "Are you afraid already?" She leaned forward, sniffed my neck, and swiftly grazed my unshaven cheek with her lips. I caught a whiff of expensive perfume and something else besides, something green and over-ripe, rotting… "I'm Marya Madlenova. Forget everything you have heard about me. I'm much more dangerous."
"In what way?" I asked unsteadily.
"You'll just have to find out, won't you?"
"How will I find out?"
She looked at me for a moment, coolly, and then shrugged. "Not by asking." She turned to Benito. "When is this meeting?"
Benito looked at his watch. "Lord Hades has postponed it until tomorrow. You're supposed to be at this meeting too."
"Why me?" I asked in chagrined surprise. "Anyway, I can't discuss it now. Not on an empty stomach." Not having eaten in over thirty hours, I was famished, and, as I remembered it, the food at the University of Truth and Justice was very good. Saliva dripped down my bristly jowls as I thought wistfully of a platter of Prague ham with horseradish. Rumor had it that Hitler broke free of his vegetarian vice only once in his life, when he rolled into Prague at the head of his conquering armies, and strolling around a pub, slapping his men on their backs as they drank their beer (no doubt causing many a stolid drinker to choke, splutter, and turn purple), caught sight of a plateful of Prague ham which he grabbed from a waiter who ran after him demanding indignantly that he pay, but Adolf was too quick for him and he got away and wolfed down the ham in the privacy of the nearest toilet. I have always considered it incontrovertible proof of Hitler's fundamental degeneracy that he returned to being a vegetarian, although it is pleasant to think that the ham probably made him violently sick since he wasn't used to the luscious juiciness of meat. We will never know. There were no witnesses and Hitler looked green most of the time anyway. "I didn't come back to Prague just to go to meetings."
"Oh, come on," Benito coaxed. "Poor Professor Hohenstaufen had to interrupt his holiday in Rome at short notice just for this meeting."
"In that case," I said sincerely. "I will be glad to come to the meeting. After I've eaten several meals first." Having already witnessed Otto Hell decapitate one German prince, I was curious about Hohenstaufen's fate. Appetite grows with eating, and revenge is the best dessert.
But then a hand waved at me and a friendly face smiled in in welcome. "Hi! Lord Hades told me you were here," a handsome young man boomed jovially. Perfect white teeth glittered through carefully groomed designer stubble. "How was Berlin? Glad to be back in Prague?"
I blinked. This person seemed to know me. How much did he know? "Oh, Berlin is Berlin as usual," I replied evasively, trying to remember his name. The olive eyes gleaming through incredibly long eyelashes seemed familiar. Had Anastasia and I blindfolded him with a silk scarf before whipping him silly? Had he pressed charges? "And Prague is Prague," I added, with a noncommittal nod. "Where is Otto?"
"Oh, he's taken up ice-fishing," the young fellow replied. "He's gone for the day."
"Would you do me a favor? Could you let Pipi von G and T know that Lady Rudolphine Bing needs her for a moment?"
"Sure thing!" the young man replied happily. "Pipi is that little blonde cutie, right? Did Lord Hades really murder her husband?"
A pudgy man at the end of the table looked up at me, gasped, buried his sallow face in his hands, and began to sob loudly, but I paid no attention because I was too pleased to see a face to which I thought I could attach a name: that bony leprechaun face and wild crop of thinning hair belonged to my friend, the philosopher with whom I had spoken so often about ethics at the end of the world... damn, what was his name? And that pretty woman with high color in her cheeks and short silky black hair, surely I had seen her before as well? I passed a hand over my icy forehead and sat down heavily: what had Lady Rudolphine's ointment, Lethe, done to my memory? I resolved to face the crisis with cunning. "Won't you introduce me to everyone?"
"Sorry," the young man said apologetically. "I thought you knew everyone here, but, that's right, you left before the University really began functioning. Well, you know Immanuel, of course, and Divka..." I grinned with relief at my old friends. "This is Hachek Katastrofski..." A gaunt young man with long greasy blond hair, a high forehead, and an immensely hooked thin nose smirked insincerely at me and immersed himself again in his plate. He was playing with his food with great absorption but not a single bite or sip passed his lips. I resolved to ask about it later. Hadn't someone (wasn't it that famous Polish ex-dissident journalist, what was his name?) mentioned that Katastrofski had Fascist leanings? I recalled that Hitler was vegetarian and a teetotaller, which might explain Katastrofski's odd behavior, but why should this bizarre repugnance for the best things in life extend to rice pudding?
I wasn't the only one watching Katastrofski play with his food. A very pretty girl with short blonde curls sat next to the young Fascist, biting her rosy lower lip as she stared at his ostentatious profile. "That's Delilah." My young host exhaled the name reverently. "She's Professor Masaryk's assistant. We work together," he added proudly. Then, noticing her obvious fascination with Katastrofski, he frowned. "Lila, wake up," he snapped rather tetchily. "I'm trying to introduce you." The girl started, blushed, shook my hand, and sank back again into worried contemplation of her neighbor's nose. I too felt that it was a disturbing object, so much so that, in the days to come, I was never able to look at Katastrofski for longer than five seconds at a time. His nose reminded me too strongly of a craggy peak I was once forced to climb in the desolate wastes of the Altai mountain range in Central Asia and I suffer acutely from vertigo.
"What work do you do with Delilah?" I asked ingenously.
"I told you when we met in Berlin. I'm the coordinator of the Department of Culture. It's a great responsibility but I feel ready for it. I am, after all, Benito! And I like my job!" he added, laughing uproariously. His sheer animal vitality was infectious and I found myself laughing along. The pudgy man at the end of the table raised his head from his hands and gave us a look laden with misery and hatred.
"Who's he?" I whispered.
"That's Nero Insanetti," Benito whispered back. "He's Lord Hades's assistant. He's been acting very strange lately..."
"I know you're talking about me," the pudgy man screamed hoarsely. "All of you. I see your smiles." Nero drew a hand across his eyes rapidly, leaving sweaty smudge-marks on his forehead. "I know your wicked plots. You are cold and heartless. It is the Anglo-Saxon mentality." His voice broke as he stared sadly at Benito. Tears brimmed in his puffy eyes. "But you, my young Italian comrade? Et tu, Benito?" He slumped off his chair and crashed onto the floor. The babble of happy young voices ceased for a moment as people turned to stare.
"There, there, Nero," Benito said soothingly. He crossed over to the huddled form lying shapeless on the floor, pulled out a little plastic tube from his handsome tweed jacket, forced open Nero's mouth, and dropped the pill in. "Take a vitamin. It'll make you feel better. You really ought to take them more often."
Nero shook his head feebly and spat the pill out. He sat up, drool running down his chin, and glowered at Benito. "Ah, you young fool," he cried weakly. "Do you even know what is in these vitamins?" I listened intently, wondering if this obvious psychotic was onto something. What did he know? In the event I was disappointed. Nero launched into a long, unoriginal, and rather repetitive diatribe against modern faith in science. "It all started with fluoride in the water," he screamed as the big men in white uniforms came to drag him away. "Contaminating our precious bodily fluids. It is a plot to destroy our European culture... I will never take vitamins! I will suffer instead... And you!" he screamed at me. "You are the Antichrist! Don't smile at me! We know who you are..."
"What a kook," Benito said, shaking his head as we watched Nero shake his fist at me from a distance. "What's there to suffer about?"
An image suddenly pierced my heart: the memory of Anastasia stabbing her portrait in the living room of her apartment in Berlin, her subsequent faint and my attempts to revive her, the mistrustful look on her waif-face as she came back to life in my arms... I staggered and clawed at my chest. Lady Rudolphine's lotion, Lethe, had brought me relief for some time, but the throbbing anguish told me that my wounded memory had been torn open afresh and my broken heart was bleeding, again.
"Are you all right?" Benito looked concerned. I nodded faintly. "It must have been a shock," he added sympathetically. "Nero screaming at you like that. Not very nice, really," he said primly. "Even if you were the Antichrist."
"Is he Katholic?"
"I don't know Nero that well," Benito replied prissily. "I never inquire into people's personal beliefs. Personally, I'm into Limboism."
"What's that?"
"Oh, we're the new world religion," Benito answered breezily. "We're a synthesis of all the others. We're very tolerant."
"Do you believe in hell?"
"Gosh, no." Benito looked shocked. "Our religious leaders talk about an after-life in which those who don't share our beliefs linger on. Without any pain, of course. They just don't make it to paradise."
"A kind of cocktail lounge?"
"Yeah, maybe," Benito replied, his eyes twinkling brightly. "Perpetual Happy Hour."
"So what makes heaven special?"
"Your drinks are on the house." Benito laughed heartily.
"In that case, this must be heaven," a husky voice drawled. I spun around, my heart drumming against my ribs in a staccato beat, its thunder reverberating in my ears... The voice sounded so familiar. I breathed deeply. A slim woman stood leaning languidly against a pillar. She smiled slowly at me. A fine flow of mahogany hair flooded past a pair of hazel eyes, two circlets of olive green flecked with streaks of burnt siena around two wells of impenetrable black. She was wearing a beautifully cut black suit. I noticed irrelevantly the adroitly applied makeup on her pale olive face. She was beautiful and yet there was something very wrong, as though she were missing some vital body part… "You're sweating," she said in an amused murmur. "Are you afraid already?" She leaned forward, sniffed my neck, and swiftly grazed my unshaven cheek with her lips. I caught a whiff of expensive perfume and something else besides, something green and over-ripe, rotting… "I'm Marya Madlenova. Forget everything you have heard about me. I'm much more dangerous."
"In what way?" I asked unsteadily.
"You'll just have to find out, won't you?"
"How will I find out?"
She looked at me for a moment, coolly, and then shrugged. "Not by asking." She turned to Benito. "When is this meeting?"
Benito looked at his watch. "Lord Hades has postponed it until tomorrow. You're supposed to be at this meeting too."
"Why me?" I asked in chagrined surprise. "Anyway, I can't discuss it now. Not on an empty stomach." Not having eaten in over thirty hours, I was famished, and, as I remembered it, the food at the University of Truth and Justice was very good. Saliva dripped down my bristly jowls as I thought wistfully of a platter of Prague ham with horseradish. Rumor had it that Hitler broke free of his vegetarian vice only once in his life, when he rolled into Prague at the head of his conquering armies, and strolling around a pub, slapping his men on their backs as they drank their beer (no doubt causing many a stolid drinker to choke, splutter, and turn purple), caught sight of a plateful of Prague ham which he grabbed from a waiter who ran after him demanding indignantly that he pay, but Adolf was too quick for him and he got away and wolfed down the ham in the privacy of the nearest toilet. I have always considered it incontrovertible proof of Hitler's fundamental degeneracy that he returned to being a vegetarian, although it is pleasant to think that the ham probably made him violently sick since he wasn't used to the luscious juiciness of meat. We will never know. There were no witnesses and Hitler looked green most of the time anyway. "I didn't come back to Prague just to go to meetings."
"Oh, come on," Benito coaxed. "Poor Professor Hohenstaufen had to interrupt his holiday in Rome at short notice just for this meeting."
"In that case," I said sincerely. "I will be glad to come to the meeting. After I've eaten several meals first." Having already witnessed Otto Hell decapitate one German prince, I was curious about Hohenstaufen's fate. Appetite grows with eating, and revenge is the best dessert.
